When they first start training a lot of our members ask us why the programme doesn’t change every week. Although constant variety may be more exciting, it also limits our improvement, as we would lack two key elements necessary for progress.

These elements are adaptation and progressive overload, and skill acquisition. Every programme we develop has adaptation in mind. There are lots of different adaptations we can try and achieve with a specific programme depending on the training phase.

1. Neurological phase
   • Goal: strength (lifting the heaviest weight possible for the given rep range)
   • Method: Heavy load, low reps

2. Hypertrophy phase
   • Goal: muscle growth, lifting the greatest cumulative weight throughout that session
   • Method: Sets x reps x weight

3. Metabolic phase
   • Goal: fat loss, completing the most work in a given time frame
   • Method: higher reps, shorter rest

It takes time following a specific programme before these adaptations can occur. In order to achieve them we use a principle called progressive overload. This principle is always used in alignment with the specific goals of each training phase: increasing the heaviest weight used in a set (strength), increasing the total weight lifted (hypertrophy), or increasing workout density (metabolic).

Generally speaking, neurological adaptations take the longest amount of time to occur, metabolic adaptations are the quickest, and hypertrophy sits somewhere in the middle. This is why our metabolic phases are shorter than our strength phases.

If you’re chopping and changing your workout every week or selecting random exercises to perform to keep things ‘interesting’ then you’re missing out on all of those adaptations and making it impossible to measure your progress. We don’t track our members’ workouts so diligently for nothing!

Another key improvement achieved by consistency is skill acquisition. Alongside allowing the body enough time to adapt to what we’re throwing at it, we need to give ourselves time to learn new skills.

We need sufficient practice at movements in order to become proficient at them. Only once you’ve hit a certain skill level will your jumps in weight be from actual strength gain, everything up to this point is generally improvement in proficiency. This causes a ‘lag period’ each time you switch exercise before actual improvements in strength are made. The more experienced you get, the smaller this lag period becomes until it only takes 1-2 sets to ‘find the groove’ again.

Although not much of a pianist myself, if you were learning a new piece, you’d keep practicing that same piece until you’d really nailed it or were at least considerably better than you were. You wouldn’t dabble for 10 minutes, just about pick up the correct notes then move onto another piece – you wouldn’t get any better. Exercise is as much of a skill as learning an instrument is.

So with that in mind, here are our key take home points:

1. We need to ensure that overload is achieved, and subsequently that adaptation is triggered – keeping in movements for longer increases this likelihood
2. Beginners should stick with the same main exercise for longer (possibly as long as 12 weeks), only changing the rep range
3. More advanced individuals can spend longer away from exercises without losing skill proficiency

If you have any questions about structuring a training programme, don’t hesitate to give us a shout! You can email George here.