One of the Best Training Methods Ever Designed: Periodization

Your own GPS to success!
Magnus Agren
www.magnusagren.com

Do you feel that the effort you put out in the gym, don’t give you the results it should? O do you feel that you should see results at a quicker and more constant rate? Every day I see people going through the motion in the gym, going by feel and spending at least four to six days a week in the gym, with little or no significant result to show for it. You can call me nuts, but I have other things to do than spend every day in the gym! I like to social with friends and enjoy life outside the gym as well. So when I am in the gym I want results for my effort.

This is also my work as a trainer and coach, to maximize the time in the gym for my clients, so they get the most from the least so to speak. It also means that my clients will have more time to spend with friends and family, going to the movies or just to relax.

But if you want to get the most out of every session you need a plan, not some program taken out of the blue. So that is exactly what I am about to teach you how to do in this article, so stay put and read on!
A plan that tells you what to do and when to do it to keep you on track, and not letting you take the easy way out and doing only the things you like to do - which probably is what you need to do the least of! “Why do I need a plan?” you might think, “I can go by feel just as well!?” No, no, no it´s not so simple! Going by feel might be the best in some cases, but by doing so in this case you would probably miss out on one or more important aspects of training! Since your body is programmed for survival, it WILL do so by fighting to keep and reach a constant level, homeostasis. If you lower your caloric intake, the body will answer by lowering its metabolism to save you from starvation and keep you from wasting valuable energy. It will even prevent you from building muscle, which craves energy and thereby disturbs the energy balance your body wants to keep! The fact is that no matter which your goal, to gain or to loose weight, homeostasis is your enemy. Your body only lets you build and keep muscle if you give it a good reason for it! So to build bigger muscles, you have to trick your body into it.

In order to trick your body into letting you build muscle, or loose fat for that matter, you need to progressively increase the demands and change the stimuli on the body. If you simply perform the same program over and over again, your body will quickly adapt to it and find homeostasis, that is ways to make the work progressively less stressful so it can use a lesser amount of muscles and energy each time. This is why progression and variety are so important. The body is a lazy bugger and will do anything it can to make things as easy as possible for it!

By now you have probably figured out that it is not effective to constantly repeat the same program. So, in order to minimize this slight disagreement between us and our genetics, most of us try using progression in our training, more weights, more sets and so on, which gets us on the right track. Well, at least for a start, but after a while the body will find ways to fight this, too. Sooner or later you will plateau due to boredom, overuse injuries, overused neuromuscular connections or the fact of adjustment. This occurs when your body has perfected its form on the chosen program to the point of needing the bare minimum muscle recruitment to lift the weights. So this is when we answer by changing our training around, switching exercises and training objectives, don’t we?! Which is the first point where you might miss out on some substantial details?

Many just change exercises but stay in the same training zone - you do not simply change your reps and training objective around enough to trick the body enough. To increase the demands on the body and throw it off balance you NEED to train for different qualities. No matter what you goal is you need to train for hypertrophy, strength and so on, to get the best results in the shortest amount of time! Yes even if you goal is fat loss or hypertrophy, you need at sometime train for strength to get even better results.

So you see, even if you use progression in your training it has its limitations, but being the foundation for your training anyways and used together with different training methods and something called periodization it will trick your body and help you on your quest! So before moving on let us have a look at some simple ways to use progression in your training and how to train for different goals.

Progression:

1. Increase reps, do one more reps on the same weight as your last session

2. Increase sets, add one more set using the same weight you did the previous session

3. Decrease rest between sets, use less time to rest between sets but keep the same weight you had last

4. Increase speed of movement in the positive/concentric portion of the movement, same weights but increase the positive phase speed.

5. Increase the load, try to make the same amount of reps using heavier weights

Training methodology:

(Notation. Sets, reps and such are only guidelines and not written in stone. But it will give you a good start and understanding of the concept and has produced some good results when used by me and other trainers.)

Hypertrophy	Best methods of progression: Change between increase in sets and reps
Level	Rep volume per muscle per week	Rep volume per session	Load	Rest between sets	Sessions per week per muscle
Beginner and Intermediate	60-108	30-50	6-12reps (8-14RM)	60-120s	2-3
Advanced	100-120	50-120	6-12reps (8-14RM)	30-120s	1-2

Strength and Hypertrophy	Best methods of progression: Change between increase in speed of movement , weights and sets
Level	Rep volume per muscle per week	Rep volume per session	Load	Rest between sets	Sessions per week per muscle
Beginner and Intermediate	60-72	24-36	4-6reps (5-8RM)	90-180s	2-3
Advanced	96-108	48-108	4-6reps (5-8RM)	90-180s	1-2

Hypertrophy and Fat loss	Best methods of progression: Change between increase in sets and decrease in rest time
Level	Rep volume per muscle per week	Rep volume per session	Load	Rest between sets	Sessions per week per muscle
Beginner and Intermediate	60-72	24-36	6-12reps (8-14RM)	10-60s	2-3
Advanced	96-108	48-108	6-12reps (8-14RM)	10-60s	1-2

Strength And Fat loss (Not optimal)	Best methods of progression: Change between increase in movement speed and decrease in rest time
Level	Rep volume per muscle per week	Rep volume per session	Load	Rest between sets	Sessions per week per muscle
Beginner and Intermediate	60-72	24-36	3-6 (4-8RM)	60-180s	2-3
Advanced	96-108	48-108	3-6 (4-8RM)	60-180s	1-2
Strength	Best methods of progression: Change between increase in movement speed, reps and weight
Level	Rep volume per muscle per week	Rep volume per session	Load	Rest between sets	Sessions per week per muscle
Beginner and Intermediate	20-32	5-15	1-5 (1-6RM)	120-270s	2-4
Advanced	24-60	12-30	1-5 (1-6RM)	120-270s	1-2

Some clarifications of the tables:

Rep volume per week –

The total amount of reps you do for a body part during the week. Simply add the reps from each session to get the total amount of reps of the week. If you for example train twice a week with a weekly rep volume of 96-108 and you during your first training session do 48 reps total, you have max 60 reps left for your next session.

Rep volume per session -

The amount of reps you do per session. If you for example do 3 sets of 10, your rep volume is 30, which leaves you 18-78 reps left to go if the goal is 48-108,

Sessions per week –

As a beginner you will do well with total body training 3 sessions per week, or you could try an upper- lower body system 3-4 sessions per week. If you have trained seriously for about two-three years and strive for maximum muscle development, you usually benefit most using a 3 or 4 way split, training each body part every 5-7 day. As a rule, the more frequently you train a muscle the lower the volume needs to be!

The volume is slightly reduced in the templates involving fat loss in regards of the stress that dieting puts on your body. A too high volume might in such a case lead to overtraining.

Now that we have covered some basic progression principles and training methodologies lets look at periodization and how to use it to reach your goals. Periodization is to put it simply a way to structure your training blocks/methodologies in a fashion that gives you the most out of your training. And it IS used by every athlete worth his or her salt! When making a periodization plan you need to know which kind of periodization you are going to use. So let us look at the most common variations and its benefits limitations.

Linear:

This is the most common. Here you concentrate on one quality at the time. The phase is usually 4-6 week long. This type of periodization is a good way to structure the beginner’s training, and to use in the first phase after a break. But a limitation is that if you use it in a long time periodization scheme, you will not keep your former training quality gains optimally, since you don’t stimulate it enough in the next phase. When you have trained for one quality, the least you should do is try to keep it.

Wave:

In this system you use a constant change of sets, reps and sometimes the load between each session. One session you might do 2 x 12 reps and in the next session 4 x 6 reps. This is a very useful type of variation to use when training for hypertrophy, keeping your body and muscles off guard.

Conjugate:

Here you focus on developing different qualities like speed of movement, strength, hypertrophy and muscle endurance in the same phase and use them in a mix in each session. For example: 4 heavy sets with 3 reps for strength followed by 1 set with 8 reps for hypertrophy and finally 1 x 20 for muscle endurance. If you train for strength oriented sport this kind of training has proven very effective.

No matter which system you use, but to get the most out of it you have to break each phase down in blocks. A block could be a week for simplicity, and one phase usually consists of 3-6 blocks. A more advanced trainee needs more frequent changes and therefore his or her phases are often shorter than the intermediate or the beginner.
Each of these blocks has its reasons. To keep it simple I will break a phase down in four blocks or weeks.

Week 1 – Introductory week

• New exercises are introduced and the focus is on technique and form.

• You use lower sets. If the program suggests 3-4 sets for this phase, you do 2-3 sets this week. The change of exercises will give the body enough stimuli for both muscles and nervous system, so you can use a lower set volume.

• Use a load that is about 10% less than you could use. The focus this week is is form and function!

Week 2 – Base week

• Increase the weight to the previous level we had, or slightly above. But not so heavy that we cannot fulfill the set and rep goal.

• Use the prescribed set and rep scheme. The increase in sets will induce a structural adaption in the body to cope with the increased demand.

• You still use perfect form.

Week 3 – Overload week

• Increase your reps on the same weight you used last week or increase the weight and use the same reps. Try to set personal bests this week.

• You still use perfect form and don’t go to full failure in any set.

Week 4 – Shock week

• This week it is all or nothing! You should try to beat last week’s results in every aspect.

• You can use advanced techniques as forced reps, drop sets and negatives if necessary. It should not be a goal but you may have to use it sometimes to beat your personal records from last week. Use it sparingly.

• Try to use as good form as possible. This is the only time it is ok to miss a repetition due to failure. And yes, you will grow even if you do not always use failure, it might even help you reach your goal faster as it may keep you from overtraining. Most of us don’t sleep enough, eat right or/and get as much relaxation as needed to recuperate from training enough to use failure too frequently. And if you plan your training well you will get steady results anyways.

Week 5 – The story begins again!

• You simply start over at week 1

Ok to sum it up let me give you an example on how a 6 month training plan could look like using periodization. This is for someone looking to gain some muscle, and be able to show it off in the end in a nice way.

Block 1 Week 1-4	Block 2 Week 5-8	Block 3 Week 9-12	Block 4 Week 13	Block 5 Week 14-17	Block 6 Week 18-21	Block 7 Week 22-25	Block 8 Week 26
Anatomical Adaption (Train your weakness and prehab)	Strength	Hypertrophy	Strength & Hypertrophy	Hypertrophy	Strength & Fat Loss	Hypertrophy & Fat Loss	Active Recovery

For those of you who wonder about the order of the phases, a short explanation.

A strength phase before a hypertrophy phase gives you the benefit of being able to use heavier weights in your hypertrophy phase. This in turn will lead to quicker gains in mass, due to more fiber recruitment needs. That is why I almost every time proceed a hypertrophy phase with a strength oriented.

And I always start of light after a break and focus on weaknesses and prevention training, prehab. This gives the body a chance to ease in to training without overtraining.

Now you should have a basic knowledge on how to make your training more productive. After having mastered the above, you could try to mix things up in different ways to see how this affects your body. Just take some time to write down your goals, structure your training around that goal. And you have your own GPS to lead the way! And probably more time to spend with your friends!