Training Basics
A brief dive into the fundamentals of training. Effort will only get you so far, a good understanding of how proper training affects your results is essential to progressoin long term. The more experience you get, the more you will need to implement sound periodization and training techniques to stay injury free and keep smashing personal records
Key Definitions
Training Program: A general or specific template that outlines one's training regimen. Programs can be broad or specific in their goals
Hypertrophy: A goal of training to get bigger, more muscle mass
Periodization: How a program organizes and regulates intensities over time
CNS: Central Nervous System
Peaking: The end of a training cycle with the goal to enter peak performance for a competition
Over-reaching: Pushing into a mild state of fatigue with training. Regression in performance sometimes does occur during an over-reaching period, yet performance rebounds back very quickly, usually above and beyond it's previous level, with a short period of rest or lowered volume (within days)
Under-reaching: Occurs when you intentionally "take it easy". This is like taking your foot off the gas in your training intentionally. It also can be good or bad depending on how you do it
RPE: Rate of percieved exertion. A scale from 1-10 dictating how "intense" an exercise is. A "10" is a true max effort, with 0 reps left in the tank. Where as a "6" would be 4 reps witheld from failure
Foundational Principles of Training
Specificity
Physiological adaptations are specific to the muscles trained, intensity of exercise and metabolic demands of exercise
Carryover of training to performance is dependent on the sport and program. A training program for powerlifting will have huge carry over because competition movements are being practiced every session. A program to develop football strength and power wont have 100% carryover due to the nature of the movements and training compared to the actualy athletic performance needed. For program design, chose exercises that has similar neuromuscular coordination and targeted muscles for most carryover
Overload
For adaptations to occur then the demand of the exercise must exceed what the body is normally accustomed to. If no change in training intensity, overall intesnity will lessen overtime for athlete and will cease to make adaptations. A program's periodization will dictate the changes of intensity over time
Progressive overload can occur in many ways when it comes to training
- Increase intensity / volume ( effort )
- Heavier loads lifted
- More time under tension / less rest between sets
- Variability, new challenging movements
Individuality
Athletes respond differently to training programs. 50 athletes will yield 50 different responses to a single program. There are several factors to explain this such as training age, genetics, and gender.
Dimishing Gains
As training continues, strength and performance gains are more difficult to achieve. Everyone has different genetic ceilings. The law of accommodation states that repeated effort of the same stimulus will result in in less and less adaptation. One needs to change the stimulus on a regular basis to achieve results. This is one of the driving principles behend the Conjugate Method and Westside Barbell.
Reversibility, Detraining And Overtraining
Once a training stimulus is removed the performance gains will revert back to their original state (Detraining)
Overtraining is when an athlete chronically over-reaches for months or years. This leads to performance regression and possibly other negative results
- Oxidative enzyme activity in muscles decreases (up to 60%)
- Glycolytic enzymes remain unchanged with up to 84 days of detraining
- Muscle glycogen content (and thus storage capacity) decreases
- Acid-base balance becomes disturbed
- Muscle capillary supply and fiber type may change
- Most lost after a short break (3 weeks) comes from lost neural adaptations, muscle loss won't occur until 2-3 weeks of inactivity
- Feeling "smaller" after 4-5 day break is not muscle loss, just a decrease in muscular inflammation, a decrease in myogenic tone, and lower level of intramuscular glycogen
Overtraining leads to performance regression that takes months of recovery. This can lead to permanent endocrine disruptions and fatigue. Most athletes never reach a true overtrained state. Overtraining can lead to an imbalance in the autonomic nervous system. This can result in sympathetic overdrive during rest (restlessness, weight loss, increase in resting HR), paraympathetic overdrive during exercise (fatigue, depression, reduced resting HR), and exhaustion of neuroendocrine system. This can also be monitored by Testosterone/Cortisol ratio. Cortisol is a stress hormone that breaks down glyogen and fat stores to produce energy. However if the balance is disrupted, too much cortisol can be catabolic in nature, and recovery will be insuffecient
High Cortisol
- A corticosteroid, decreases immunity by inhibiting actions of white blood cells
- Increases abdominal fat deposition
- Cortisol promotes the breakdown of muscle, bone, and connective tissue in order to increase blood sugar for the brain
- Inhibits thyroid hormone activation
Overtraining is multifactorial and can be a result of excessive training, emotional stress, endocrine imbalances, depressed immune function, nutrition, lack of sleep, and psychological factors
They key to preventing over-reaching and overtraining is to prioritize rest and recovery. Overtraining can take weeks to months to fully recover
Periodization
Periodization is the process and organizing of a program, adjusting workouts and training cycles to improve progression and performance
When designing and periodizing a program one has to take into acount many variables. A program must follow a goal, and have speficic enough exercises to translate into performance in the goal. Overtime, intensities must be altered to stave accomodation and staleness. Too intense of training and you risk burnout. To easy and it stops becoming fruitful and more boring. Ideally, the intensities should in a range where its challenging enough to create positive adaptations and easy enough so its not anxiety or injury inducing. However, it might be beneficial to have very high intensity workouts programmed, going to RPE 10 or even past failure. The following types of progressions are a few ways to organize your training over time.
Linear Progression
Usually the most popular form, especailly for beginners, linear progression is when more stress is gradually applied each workout. In theory, you adapt to each stress and keep increasing the stress over time. Some basic examples, adding 10lb on your squat each week for 6 weeks straight or running for 30sec longer each time you jog. This is an effective way to model a program for beginners due to their nature to gain strength and perform better each workout. Novices that are untrained can add weight each workout because of their neural adaptations and coordination greatly increases each time they touch a new movement. Linear progression will ultimately lead to a plateau, where one eventaulyl fails and would have to do a deload.
Block
Some programs may be divided into 2-4 week periods or "blocks". What occurs in these blocks are dependent on the program or coach. Block periodization is benefitial to athletes who need to focus on certain adaptations for their sport. For example, focusing on a 3 week speed block for a tennis player, or a high volume bench block for a powerlifter. A popular schema is to divide the program into accumulation (50-75% intensity), transmutation (75-90%), and realization (90%+). Another example is dividing heavy / volume intensities during each block and rotating exercises. Take the Cube Method for example, where you only lift heavy for each main movement once each block(3 weeks), and rotate between the other movements in different intensities.
Non-Linear / Undulated
Unlike the gradual increase of on variable in linear periodization, undulated periodization changes various stimuli in the program. Exercise selection, volume, intesity, and frequency are often changing in the given time frame. Daily Undulating Periodization (DUP) has changes each workout, but there can also be weekly or bi-weekly undulations in a given program. This is a popular training method for advanced athletes, training concurrent variables like strength, power, and endurance.
Wave
Wave periodization is a form of non-linear progression where there are constant jumps in intensity, not just forward but also backwards. This gives the athlete more time at a given intensity range while also exposing them to more jumps in intensity. For example, 6 weeks of wave training can look like 60%, 70%, 80%, 65%, 75%, 85%.
Step Loading
Where other progressions tend to change load each session, its the opposite for step loading periodization. When applying this to a program, an athlete would perform a movement at the same load / percentage for multiple weeks, staying with the same set and rep scheme, or maybe slightly increasing volume. Once the athlete has progressed at the specific intensity, a small jump in load occurs and the process is repeated. This is benefitial for movements where load threshold is hard to increase weekly, maybe for smaller muscle groups or isolation movements.
Table of Contents
- Key Definitions
- Foundational Principles
- Periodization
Periodize
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