So far in this series, we’ve covered a huge part of designing your strength training program — your goals and the assessment, exercise selection, exercise order, and repetition ranges. We’ve also learned about becoming a complete athlete and how to safely prepare yourself for a workout. Now, to constantly progress, you need to change your program periodically. But how will you do that? What will you change? And when?
The art of this is called “periodization,” and there are several models of tweaking a strength training program to achieve consistent gains. In this article, I’ll breakdown the theories behind each one, what it means, and how to do it with your own program.
But first, a little vocabulary.
What Is Periodization?
Periodization is the method of altering your training program to get consistent strength gains and adaptations while avoiding fatigue and overtraining.
In fitness coaching, periodization separates the strong from the weak. Too often, personal trainers focus on workouts when they really need to be thinking about programs — it’s the difference between a trainer doing whatever he feels like that day compared to doing Workout #7 in structured cycle of 12 workouts.
Traditional periodization uses things called “microcycles,” “mesocycles,” and “macrocycles,” which refer to varying lengths of training focus. Microcycles are shorter in duration and make up a mesocycle. Several mesocycles make up a macrocycle (which can last an entire year). For the sake of this article, I don’t want to make this a CSCS exam prep course will skip this stuff.
Rather, I want to discuss the three main methods of periodization that everyone who wants to build an awesome strength training program need to know.
The Linear Model
Linear periodization takes a direct approach to get results — volume consistently decreases as intensity increases. For example,
Weeks 1 – 4: 3 x 15
Weeks 5 – 8: 3 x 12
Weeks 9 – 12: 4 x 8
Weeks 13 – 16: 5 x 5
In this sample program, the total reps of each training cycle drops as intensity climbs.
Using the linear model, you can gain a lot of strength because the volume keeps dropping and your loads will automatically rise. It’s also an easy way, however, to program yourself into a hole. Why?
What happens after Week 16? Drop the volume again? Eventually, you’ll reach a point where you can’t drop the volume and raise the intensity anymore. (We can’t just go down to 1×1.) Also, you can’t train at such a high intensity for too long — you’ll fatigue your muscles and central nervous system and lose progress.
Perhaps, we could return to our original 3 sets of 15 reps?
That’s one way to program with the linear model — start from the beginning and shoot for higher weights than before. The drawback with that, however, has to do with adaptations.
Using our example, let’s say on weeks 17 – 20, we return to 3 x 15. Well, now it’s been twelve weeks since we last trained endurance-type work. And it’ll take a few workouts just to readjust to the volume.
(Oh, those lovely adaptations.)
If it takes us 3 months to return to endurance, strength, or hypertrophy phases each time, we won’t get comprehensive changes to our body.
But what if we tweaked the order?
The Undulating Model
With undulating periodization, you switch between different phases of strength, hypertrophy, and endurance.
Using our previous linear model:
Weeks 1 – 4: 3 x 15
Weeks 5 – 8: 3 x 12
Weeks 9 – 12: 4 x 8
Weeks 13 – 16: 5 x 5
We can change it to:
Weeks 1 – 4: 3 x 15
Weeks 5 – 8: 4 x 8
Weeks 9 – 12: 3 x 12
Weeks 13 – 16: 5 x 5
All I did was switch weeks 5 – 8 with 9 – 12, but the difference is everything. That way, we’re alternating between high-volume and high-intensity phases and we’re never more than four weeks away. We’ll also develop multiple adaptations in the same amount of time.
With the undulating model, if I wanted to return to 3 x 15 on Weeks 17 – 20, it wouldn’t be as difficult because I trained 3 x 12 only four weeks ago.
The research suggests that undulating periodization beats linear periodization. (Check out this, this, this, and this.) By switching between different rep ranges, the body is always in a state of growth for different adaptations. Also, the athlete will always be one month away from different phases.
The length of each phase is your choice. When I worked at Results Fitness, we usually did 4-6 week training phases. There were some programs that undulated every workout. I generally don’t prefer that because I want my clients to take the time and develop the adaptation for strength, endurance, etc, but there are situations where want to do everything at once.
If someone only has 8 weeks to get in shape, maybe we’ll take the daily- or weekly-undulating approach. They’re not going to gain massive amonts of muscle in that time anyway (though more than with linear periodization), so we might as well develop everything at once.
Simple Daily-Undulating Model:
Monday: 4 x 8
Wednesday: 3 x 15
Friday: 5 x 5
The Conjugate Method
The Conjugate Method – to my knowledge – was pioneered by Louie Simmons and the guys at Westside Barbell. This system combines several methods at once to get constant progress and help trainees improve their lifts. You also rotate through many different exercises that mimic the main movement and also strength weak areas of your body.
For example, to increase your bench press, you can spend more time on the bench press. Or, you could ditch the bench and substitue it with floor presses, incline presses, dumbbell presses, chain presses, band work, etc (along with specific triceps, shoulder, and back exercises). Rotating through these exercises will help you increase your bench without having to actually bench. Even better, when progress stalls with a particular assistance lift, you can switch to another one and continue your gains.
The same goes for a squat. As you progress on a special exercise (say a glute-ham raise), your gains will decline — that’s when you switch to another movement and keep the progress going. With this approach, you can constantly raise your numbers. Training can also be divided three ways:
- Max EffortIn this area, you’re using near-maximal loads in order to develop pure strength and stimulate the nervous system.
- Repeated EffortThis method targets “hypertrophy” or muscle growth. Here we’re trying to pack on muscle mass and almost reaching failure (where you can’t do anymore reps).
- Dynamic EffortNon-maximal load with the great speed possible. In this method, you’re working to improve your rate of force development, i.e. power.
There’s a lot of literature written on the Conjugate Method, so I’ll let you partake in some self-indulgence.
Which Method Is Right For You?
Again, it depends on your goals and your deadline. Who’s to say you can’t do one, then another, then another?
If you have a lot of time to program, I’d go with the undulating periodization. If you want to get strong as all hell, try linear or Conjugate. Whatever you choose, at least you’ll know where you’re headed in the future.
Stay tuned for the next article in this series where I’ll answer one of the most common questions among strength coaches: how strong is too strong? Unless you’re purely a strength athlete, there comes a point of diminishing returns for strength training. For example, can Usain Bolt squat 400lbs? Maybe. Honestly, it wouldn’t blow my mind if he could. But should he?
Throughout this seres, I’m sure you’ll have a lot of questions, so be sure to ask using the comment section of this post. Feel free to reach out to me via Facebook and Twitter to get your question answered. See you soon!
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