More Than Just "Working Out." Three Simple Periodization Tactics for Lifetime Fitness
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A failure to plan is a plan for failure, especially when it comes to fitness and training. Lifting weights only for the sake of lifting weights will be a short-lived endeavor. Building long-term health and fitness requires endless motivational drive. Structuring your training in a way that keeps that motivation elevated is a necessary factor in promoting a lasting and effective regimine. The most common approach tends to also be the least successful. Many good-meaning people engage in some form of random ‘working out’ that is loosely focused on ‘strength’ or ‘cardio’. While well intentioned, human psychology is a tough nut to crack, and the majority will cease exercise for reasons that include a lack of variety, a lack of priority, or just simple boredom. It is time to re-think how you are going about your fitness. That means you are going to need a bit more intention behind your goals, and even more so, you might need to use some form of PERIODIZATION to keep your progress going for the long-term.
“But what is periodization?”
Evolved from the science of training for peak performance, training on a periodized plan arose as the premier strategy to illicit ultimate performance. By alternating the training focus, exercises, and intensity at strategic times in the year, athletes can produce their best performances when it matters most. While you might not be in the position to be trying to compete in the Olympics, you can still benefit from setting some intention and planning behind your training. Using just three basic principles of periodization, you can find your answer to maintaining a long-term habit of successful training.
1.) Planned Exercise Variation
Embedded within the concept of periodization is a planned variation of exercises. Note that this is not about mixing up your workouts with new exercises every session but rather a deliberate and focused commitment to a set of exercises until you’ve maximized your progress. The goal is to fully capitalize on gaining as much strength or size as you can realistically accomplish within a certain window of time. Only once progress has been fully drawn out do you change up to the next variation of the exercise (presumably a harder, more complex version.)
Why would you not want to mix it up every training session? The answer is PRACTICE. The more you practice a movement, the more your nervous system adapts and finds how to efficiently produce force within that pattern.
In enough time, you will start to see progress slow and you will eventually start to plateau. Rather than try and keep charging through it with a low return on investment, alternating to a different exercise can give you a fresh start and maintain that pursuit of untapped strength and fitness potential. Keeping your exercises structured around the same general movement pattern can provide a potentiation effect, where the successful strength gain of one movement helps to promote the strength developed in the next.
2.) Hierarchy of Goals
It is not coincidental that Periodization is a concept that is widely implemented in the world of athletics. The multi-component fitness demands of athletics demands that several qualities have to be developed throughout the year, but some must be prioritized earlier or later in the year depending on the status of the athlete’s fitness. For your own training, establishing a hierarchy of goals that work towards a larger goal. This simple strategy helps give a motivational structure that keeps your attention rooted in getting a successful workout each day. It provides a layer of consequence to each session that can help motivate you to put in the necessary work and avoid the feeling that your workouts don’t matter. This strategy also helps to reinforce a ‘growth-mindset’ and helps to keep your mental energy focused on comparing the success of each individual training day rather than comparing each day to the long-term goal. Gaining fitness is hard. Continually gaining fitness is even harder. The more you progress in your training, the harder it becomes to keep that progression going. By maintaining a growth-mindset, you keep the success of the program rooted in your locus of control. Each small win adds up, and before you know it, you have done something that you once thought too hard to even start.
3.) Emphasize skill progression and complexity
The opposite of a growth-mindset is to constantly compare your current status to that of the long-term goal. This psychological hurdle is called being ‘Outcome-Oriented’. You’re probably all too familiar with this way of thinking.
Examples:
“It doesn’t matter that you lost 5lbs this week, it’s not the 50lbs that you want 6 months from now.”
“It doesn’t matter that I bench pressed 215 x 5 for a new best, it’s not the 315lb press I want to achieve before the start of football season.“
A big part of the challenge is that fitness exists in a delayed-return environment and you don’t see the payoff of your work until weeks / months / years of continual training. A big part of overcoming this hurdle is to find ways to bring more short-term progress to the forefront of your focus. One of the best strategies is to use ‘Skill-Based’ exercises in your routine as they provide almost immediate opportunities to see progress. Periodized strength plans will commonly implement general skill based exercises early in the year and save more specific exercises for later in the year. This orientation of skill progression allows for less burnout for the athlete. If you can handle feeling a bit vulnerable at first, the reward of building movement skills is incredibly motivating. Learning hard things is one of the greatest aspects of being human and challenging your body to master something physical allows you to add skills to experience.
A word of wisdom: Plan as much as you can but do not be afraid of being flexible.
When it comes to athletics, the schedule dictates what needs to be done to prepare. That demand was represented in our strict calendar-based delivery system, which encouraged you to stay on track so that you could fully maximize your potential in each block of training. Outside of athletics, life is a bit more chaotic and unpredictable. A strict training schedule usually must take a back seat when the duties and obligations of family, work, and life take precedent. Volt now allows you to train at the pace that best fits your week, all while still maintaining our adaptation focused block structure. This slight change can help make training more accessible in your weekly schedule and give you some breathing room if you have competing priorities.
Periodization helps when trying to manage complexity but that does not mean it has to be complex. By controlling the variation of exercises, intensities, and adaptation goals, you can give yourself a long-term plan that can keep producing benefits. By prioritizing consistency, you help to make physical fitness part of your lifestyle.
Want to continue learning about Periodization? Check out our new course: Periodization for Athletic Performance
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