The Art of Strength Training

We hear strength being put around as the method of training. Why wouldn’t it be? Maybe I’m biased because I love the feeling of being able to do more weight in the bench press, squat or deadlift. Or the sensation of being able to pull my own weight up over a bar in the form of the chin up, or the harder variation, the pull up.

But ever heard, If you keep putting in what you always do, you’ll always get what you’ve always got?

This is just a fancy little way of saying, something little has to change. Have you ever found yourself struggling to get stronger?

But ever heard, If you keep putting in what you always do, you’ll always get what you’ve always got?
This is just a fancy little way of saying, something little has to change. Have you ever found yourself struggling to get stronger?

Read on, you’re going to be taught.

What’s the word Periodisation mean to you? For some, it’s just a scary word that’s too close to that blasted chemistry term,  periodic table (Note: I hate chemistry). But to the field of sports science and in the Strength & Conditioning fields, this means to organise the intensity, loads and timings of training to create a greater outcome. I’m going to show you the way I implement periodisation in the simplest of forms, and to allow for greater learning and understanding of each movement.

Step 1: Test

Like all of the greatest scientists, we must treat this like a project itself. We test what we can do for a maximal result, and see what we can do to improve it. Choose something that you know is adjustable to you, and understand what is considered an improvement.
Tests can include such of the following:
– 1RM to 5RM Bench Press, Squat or Deadlift
– Maximal Reps in Push Ups, BW Squats or Chin Ups

Anything where the test is repeatable and the variables can be replicated i.e (in the push-ups, make sure chest touches the floor and elbows are fully extended)

For the sake of this example, let’s say I had done 1 rep on the Bench press at 100kg.

Step 2:
The Momentum method.
Implement 50% of your maximal load for a certain amount of repetitions. Make sure it’s something that you can do with sound technique! Unsure about how many reps? Use a little chart which we call Prilepin’s Chart.

Based on my example of 1 rep at 100kg on bench press, I will use an intensity percent of my bench press at 55%, which makes 55kg. From here, I’ll use the highest amount of reps per set at 6, and to make it optimal for reps, I’ll need to do 6 sets.

Step 3:
Implement intensity increases over time. Here’s a simple rule that we can apply with programming, “As Intensity increases, the volume must decrease”. In this example, the intensity is in the form of how many repetitions we can complete but in other examples such as the bench press or deadlift, it’s in the form of what weight is on the bar.

For this example, I will now use 60% of my intensity and decrease the reps from 6 to 4. From here, I’ll now implement using 6 sets of 4 at 60% (60kg) for bench press. This is now how I’ve periodised my programming in a very simple and basic manner.

This is periodisation shown in it’s simplest of forms. Without trying to throw you off, there are other things to take into consideration such as deloads and supercompensation periods. Other things such as Intensity and Relative Intensity have also been omitted from this post just so I don’t intimidate you.

But if there’s one thing to take note of when you are next training, is to ask yourself if you’re progressing in different ways. If you’re going to go with a lighter weight on an exercise, try to implement more reps and as you feel confident, increase that weight and decrease the repetitions to build it up once again. It’s always wise to take 2 steps backwards to make 3 steps forward.