Small Adjustments Lead to Huge Progres
Early in my training career, I fell prey to an all-or-nothing mentality. Training would usually go something like this: I’d pick (or write) a new training program. After several weeks or a few months, I’d start feeling a little beat up, or my progress would slow or even regress. At that point, I’d take a very easy deload week with the hope of eventually working back up and continuing to make progress. Often I’d even scrap the program entirely and move on to something else radically different.
As long as you train progressively and consistently over a long period of time, you’ll make some progress. But I’m not concerned with “some” progress; I want you to optimize and maximize progress.
My early approach wasn’t optimal. I still made progress over time, but I was never able to learn what really worked for me. I trained with such a huge variety of movements, set and rep schemes, and frequencies that there’s no way I could analyze what was going on with my training over the long term.
Here’s a better approach, and the one I use now, both with myself and my clients.
Here’s a scenario: your current training program is beating you up. You’re always sore and have little joint aches and pains that won’t go away. You aren’t injured and you’re still pushing forward, but you’re starting to feel like you’re on the road to something bad happening.
Instead of scrapping the entire program or taking a drastic deload or week off, trying subtly reducing your volume, intensity, or frequency. An easy way to start is to just eliminate one set from each movement. See if you start feeling more recovered. If that doesn’t get your lifts moving again, try messing with intensity (weight on the bar) or frequency.
Here’s another scenario: your progress on your lifts has started to slow. You made great progress for several weeks, but now you aren’t progressing as quickly as you’d like. You aren’t feeling beat up at all and want to continue pushing forward.
Instead of looking for the next greatest program, try increasing one of the variables we talked about: volume, intensity, or frequency. Since you aren’t able to add a ton of weight to the bar, tweak your volume and frequency. If you aren’t beat up but your progress has slowed, you probably need more volume. Try adding a set to each movement or adding another short session per week.
This approach will also work for endurance sports. If you’re beat up, don’t stop training entirely or take a very easy week. Make subtle tweaks in distance or pace and see what happens. Or add a bit if you aren’t progressing.
With any of these scenarios, it’s essential that you closely monitor your strategy and results. A coach can be incredibly useful. You won’t know if your adjustments are working if you don’t track your results closely.
There are lots of other ways to approach these problems, but I’ve had the most success with making small tweaks. If you change programs entirely, how will you know what was wrong in the first place?
If you’re looking for a fitness trainer in the Mt Juliet/Hermitage/Nashville TN area, online fitness training, or just need some advice to get your fitness program started, contact me