Training too often forces you to train with a medium intensity, and so to does not training enough.
“if you fail to plan then plan to fail”: you must schedule alternating ‘heavy’ ‘medium’ & ‘light’ days into your training protocol in order to maximize progress.
Heavy – means high intensity day : what ever that means to you / depending on requirements of your sport.
Medium – middle intensity day : 20% less work or intensity than Heavy day.
Light – low intensity day : 20% less than medium day
Heavy and Light are more important that Medium – but unfortunately most people are constantly training in this intensity zone.
You may be doing High Intensity Interval Training – but your performance is plateauing or even diminishing.
The human body need stimulus from both ends of the spectrum – it needs light, long and easy work outs & short, hard and heavy ones too. Furthermore the body also needs long, challenging “grind” sessions as well as short and brief light sessions. This is because many people forget that duration and intensity are independent variables.
Programming variables:
- sets
- reps
- load
- volume
- duration
- intensity
All of these need to be considered in a good workout program.
First You have to decided to start somewhere…
When you go to alter your program by the recommended 20% choose 1 variable. As you get more proficient at programming you can alter more than one variable at a time to make up that 20%.
You also need to learn how to alter variables on the fly during a workout when needed. This skill is important for both coaches and athletes. Determining your readiness for exercises is important for progress (and not overreaching / over training). Readiness can mean your too fatigued for a planned workout, or alternatively – you feel great and can perform more then expected. But for those on an upward trend however be warned, it won’t last forever. so instead of waiting to hit a plateau, plan ahead and schedule in Light days, so that your Heavy days can be really, really heavy 🙂