Totally Amateur Workout Program: 100% Intensity, All Of The Time

Essentially you have two options with a workout program:

 Which works great for total beginners.  

 

Or the other option, much more common in strength circles:

 Which works better for more intermediate clients, and much better for advanced clients.

 

Unfortunately there is a myth of being able to do hard all of the time.  Here is what that looks like:

 

 Week One: Hard

Week Two: Hard

Week Three: Hard

Week Four: Medium but it feels like it's Hard

 

Week Five: Medium but it feels like it's Hard

Week Six: Medium but it feels like it's Hard

Week Seven: Medium but it feels like it's Hard

Week Eight: Easy but it feels like it's Hard

Basically it just means that you lose the top end of ability and the body down-regulates you to medium all of the time anyway.  Or you start seeing overtraining symptoms: Minor injuries/tweaks all the time, trouble sleeping, starting to dislike workouts.

 

That's a long-winded way of saying that the body works really well in cycles of training.

 

We want to believe that going balls to the wall all of the time would produce better progress – but it doesn't.  Powerlifters, Olympic Weightlifters, Sprinters, Triathletes, Marathon Runners, Gymnasts – all of them train in cycles from easy to hard.  At the lowest and most amateur levels, beginners can get away with not.  At the highest levels (pro/national/international) then cycles/periodization is absolutely mandatory.

 

1. Power to the People, by Pavel (deadlifting and pressing)
2. Deadlift Dynamite, by Pavel and Andy Bolton (deadlifting)
3. 5/3/1, by Jim Wendler (powerlifting)
4. Foundation One, by Christopher Sommer (gymnastics)
5. Handstand One, by Christopher Sommer (gymnastics)
6. New Rules of Lifting Supercharged, Alwyn Cosgrove and Lou Schouler (fat loss)

And these are all essentially strength training books, either barbell or gymnastics.  But literally every book you'll find on running, biking, or swimming will follow a similar pattern (unless it's a "couch-to-5k" program for absolulte beginners).

1. Easy Strength, by Pavel and Dan John (barbell/kettlebell strength)
2. The Naked Warrior, by Pavel (bodyweight strength, but also applies to barbell)
3. Rings One, by GMB Fitness (gymnastics)
4. Parallettes One, by GMB Fitness (gymnastics)

So these fall into two categories: Easy or Autoregulation.

 

Easy Strength is a simple concept – treat strength like a skill, and practice it — on the easy side — all of the time.  Naked Warrior (and the Grease-the-Groove) concept is in that same world.  Practice strength, keep it easy.  Do it a lot.  Should be noted that easy all the time works better than hard all the time, for strength.

 

The next option are the Rings One and Parallettes One programs from GMB.  Both rely on autoregulation — where you track every set both how hard it feels, and what level your skill is at for that movement.  Because skill is paramount, and you cut off sets when they get too hard or when skill deteriorates, it creates it's own natural periodization: Some days you do lots of work, and some days you do a lot less.  

 

It ends up being some easy days, some medium days, and some hard days — you just listen to your body for when those days fall instead of following a plan.  If you are willing to track and cut workouts short when skill is suffering, this works amazingly.

Train smart.

 

In training smart, you're going to work really hard some times.  Other times you're going to rest and recover from that hard training.

 

As I like to say — sometimes it's day, and sometimes it's night.  Sometimes it's summer and sometimes it's winter.  Your training should move like seasons.

 

by Josh Hillis 
Author of the upcoming Fat Loss Happens on Monday, with Dan John 
Head Coach at PowerHour Group Personal Training in Denver.