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Periodization: The Personal Trainer's Secret to Designing Exercise Routines

By John Preston

Periodization; the personal trainer’s secret to designing exercise routines. Everybody wants to know; what is the best exercise routine to get in shape? The truth is that here is no single workout that will get you to your goals. The world’s greatest workout, the one you will read about in almost every magazine this and every month, isn’t so great. It will only work for a short period of time. Your body will adapt to it and then you will stop seeing result. This is called a plateau If you want to break out of your plateau then you will need to do something else. Having a plan to make frequent changes to your exercise routine is called Periodization. It is the focus of this article.

There are two types of periodization; linear and undulating. You should begin with linear. Linear simply means that you should start out light. Use a light load and a low number of repetitions (reps) and sets. Then over a period of weeks increase the weight, number of reps, and sets of your exercise routine. Not making these changes is the biggest mistake I’ve seen people make in the gym. They join, and start out light which is good. But they never progress. If you are trying to firm up your triceps with one set five pounds and you don’t see any results, doing one set with five pounds for a year won’t do anything for you. You will have to progress to a more intense exercise routine. Unfortunately, even linear periodization will stop working for you eventually. When this happens it’s time to introduce undulating periodization to your exercise routine.

Undulation simply means to go back and forth. You will take the information I have provided in other articles I’ve written for FEN and periodically (this is why it’s called periodization) change your exercise routine. There are an endless number of ways to adjust workouts and continue to see results. But to keep it simple I will only present only three phases or types of training; endurance, hypertrophy, and strength phases. The changes you make to these three phases will focus mostly on changing the load or the resistance.

The endurance phase simple means that you will use a lighter weight and increase reps (15-20). Remember that with a lighter weight and higher reps you typically will perform fewer sets and have shorter rest periods (30 seconds).

The hypertrophy (muscle growth) phase uses a medium load and fewer reps (8-12). In this phase you can do more sets and have slightly longer rest periods (60 seconds). If you really want to push yourself during this phase keep the rest period short (30-45 seconds). The strength phase will require heavy weight and low reps (4-8). You will want to perform a lot of sets of each exercise and have very long rest periods (2-4 minutes).

A simple guideline to ensure that you are using the proper weight (load) is that if you can’t perform the least amount of recommended repetitions for each phase the weight is too heavy. Conversely if you can perform more than the recommended maximum numbers of repetitions for each phase the weight is too light.

After you stop seeing results from linear periodization it is time to move on to undulating periodization. If you are a beginner it could be 12 to 16 weeks or longer before you need to make this change to your exercise routine. Once you make the change stay will the endurance phase until you feel as though you are not progressing. This time period should be no longer than six weeks. Then move on to the hypertrophy phase for the same period of time. Finally move on to the strength phase. To keep things simple rotate between the three phases forever. Within each phase you should be pushing yourself to increase the load. Your signal to move to the next phase will be when you no longer can increase weight and stay in the proper rep range. The longer you workout consistently the shorter the period of time you will stay in each phase. Experienced exercisers may rotate every week or two.

The bottom line is that your body is very resilient. It will adapt to the stresses that are placed upon it only enough so that those stresses stop being stressful. If you want to get in better shape you need to change the stress (workout). In this article I referred to a lot of information that was presented in other articles I’ve written for FEN. If you didn’t get a change to read those and are a little lost, please contact me and I will make sure you receive copies of those articles.

About the Author:

John Preston is a Certified Pesonal Trainer with 14 years of experience. He holds certifications from both the American Council on Exercise (ACE), and The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), as well as a B.A. in Kinesiology for Long Beach State. His website is http://www.johnprestonfitness.com