Where There Is [No Struggle], There Is [No Strength] – Part 1

To Push or Pull?

In this series I will be telling you why without struggle, there is no strength. What that really means is if you never have to try particularly hard, you’re never going to get better at what you’re doing.

Our bodies love staying the same, so to induce change we must provide a stress big enough to cause a response. However, if you keep pushing, never pulling back, you’ll cause problems, because you won’t have time to respond and grow to overcome the issue.

Yet if you don’t push hard enough or for long enough, you’ll simply never see a positive change. It is knowing when to push and pull and why that is important, and that is what Part 1 is about.

The Push- ‘Progressive Overload’
The principle that is progressive overload simply means that there is a need to increase training load in order to progress. In gym talk, you gotta add more weight to the bar or get more reps out if you wanna make gainz.

So to get stronger you have to push right? As touched on before. That push comes in the form of more weight or reps. Yet like previously discussed, you cannot push all the time. Why? Because our bodies cannot take it, we increase the risk of injury, overtraining and are likely to stagnate and even go backwards. No gainz.

The Pull- ‘Deload’
How do we pull back? This is usually done by reducing volume, and or intensity. The purpose is to allow our body to grow and repair from all the pushing. Growth and repair means gainz.

Combing the Push & Pull – ‘Periodisation’
Periodisation is the means by which we organise our training into blocks of low, medium and high volume and intensity. We have a microcycle (weekly), mesocycle (monthly) and macrocycle (yearly) to organise this within.

If we are always on the high end of intensity and volume all the time, we are pushing too much. Yet if we are using a low volume and low intensity approach, we aren’t providing enough of a push. If we get that balance right, we are on the way to gainzville. This process is captured particularly well by Selye’s General Adaption Syndrome (GAS) model of adaption to stress.

As you can see as we push we start to adapt, but push too long and we can stagnate or even deteriorate. Yet, given the right amount of stress the body will not only adapt but overcompensate (‘supercompensation’) to a higher level in anticipation of similar stress to come.

Push and Pull the right amount, say hello to gainzville.

When to Pull?- ‘Deload’/Taper
Right so we know that we can push our bodies too far causing no further progress. Yet we also know that if we do not push enough we won’t be stressing our bodies sufficiently to adapt. We must find the sweet spot, enough push, and then pull back at the right time.

The time we want to do this is when supercompensation peaks, as said before, too late or too soon and we will stagnate. That is brilliantly depicted below.

How do we know when our supercompensation is going to peak? This is dependent on our training age/experience. And that is where I am going to come to a close on Part 1.

What have we learnt?

• We need to continually push our bodies (progressive overload), to provide a stress response.
• We must take periods where we pull back (deload), to allow for supercompensation.
• This is done via a manipulation of volume and intensity, which is provided via periodisation.
• How you approach periodisation is reliant on your training experience.

Stay tuned for the rest of the series if you want to get really strong!

Periodise For Gainz!

Fatigue, Fitness & Preparedness

Fatigue – how well recovered you are.
Fitness – how able you are to lift at your best.
Preparedness – how ready you are to show your fitness.

These three are all interrelated, and to get the most out of your training you can be clever and periodise your workouts, to allow for the best of all worlds.

So how are these concepts linked?
Well to get fitter we all know you need to apply stress to the body, so we can recover and get stronger. Therefore, we need a certain amount of fatigue to improve our fitness levels. However, when we are fatigued we are not in the best position to show our fitness, in other words our preparedness suffers when we are tired.

So what can we do? If we want to get fitter we need to produce fatigue, but when we are fatigued we lose are preparedness and therefore cannot perform at our best. This is where periodisation comes in handy.

Periodisation
Essentially there are a few types of training; Strength, Hypertrophy and Power. Periodisation is how you distribute these different methods across a period of time, and there are literally a gazillion (yes that many) different ways you can do this.

In general; strength training is more intense, as you are training with higher %s of your 1 rep max, Hypertrophy work is higher in volume as you are doing a greater number of reps and Power is lower in both intensity and reps as it is all about force production.

Fitness can be improved by both volume and intensity. Fatigue is largely determined by the amount of total volume performed, to decrease your fatigue you’ll want to lower your volume. With lower volume therefore you will have greater preparedness, and therefore can lift with more intensity.

So we can go through a period of time where volume is high but intensity is lower. This will build our fitness, but will also produce a high degree of fatigue, but that is OK because we aren’t required to show to lift maximally. You may call this a volume block.

Now we have built up our fitness, we want to show it off. Best way to do that? Drop our volume and increase the intensity. So fatigue will be lower, so we will be able to show our fitness plus our fitness is maintained due to the higher loads used. This might be called an intensity block.

And there you have it, a very simple explanation of two blocks you could implement into your training. The length of those blocks could differ greatly, they could be 4 weeks long or just a week long, they could even be done within the same week…as I said the possibilities are pretty much endless. Whats best? I recommend trial and error.

Thank you and #REVIVESTRONGER

Lyndsey Palmer- ‘I don’t have any food restrictions and the feeling I get from that freedom is amazing’

Lyndsey has been incredibly enjoyable to work with and continues to be a pleasure. I have seen her confidence grow with time and we have successfully brought up her calories, reduced her cardio, increased her food flexibility and developed a healthier mindset, whilst maintaining body composition. In lay mans terms; Lyndsey can eat anything within reason and can now enjoy more food then ever, so she can literally now eat cake and look great.

Don’t just take my word, here is what Lyndsey had to say:

In 2013 I prepped for and competed in three bikini competitions over the course of six months. Each of these competitions, despite being very well coached and obtaining great outcomes during the shows, were all done using a traditional prep in which I ate “clean” foods and was only allowed to have certain types of foods. This required a great amount of discipline in the beginning, but was still manageable. After the first show, it became more and more difficult to stick to this type of eating and I found myself wanting to stray from the plan more frequently. My peak weeks were extreme in terms of amount of carbs I had to cut, water I had to drink, sodium I could consume, and I had even more food restrictions than normal. After my last show, I was on my own without any help from a coach. I ate anything and everything I wanted for the next week and soon my cravings spiralled out of control. I told myself if I was ever going to do another show, I would never follow that type of plan again. This is when I began learning about IIFYM and that a lot of these people had been down the same path as I had. I decided at this point I wanted to find a coach who believed in this principle and would honor my wishes to follow IIFYM in an attempt to find a healthy balance with food and not have it consume my life. My boyfriend actually discovered Stephen, via Instagram, and recommended I work with him as he followed IIFYM and seemed to be very knowledgeable about the science behind nutrition.

Since starting with Stephen, approximately four months ago, I have been extremely pleased with many aspects of his coaching. He tailored my workouts to meet my specific goals and has been great about making changes to my program to accommodate an ongoing hip injury and any other minor problems I’ve had during my workouts. Stephen does a great job of communicating with me via email. He responds in a timely manner and answers all my questions in a detailed fashion. As far as nutrition, I’m so very thankful for Stephen’s knowledge and patience.

I started out at a lower level of calories, as that was what my body was used to and all that my metabolism could handle at the time. After about a month, I began reverse dieting and have been doing so ever since. Stephen has managed to increase my total caloric intake by almost 600 calories and increased my carbs by 100 grams, yet my weight has remained stable. (start Left, current Right)

My initial goal with Stephen had nothing to do with cutting fat or prepping for a show and everything to do with having a healthier mindset. If one were to look at my progress pictures, it would not appear as if I have much to be excited about. I have not had a crazy physical transformation, but I believe I have not only met, but surpassed my initial goal of a more healthy relationship with food and I have Stephen to thank for that. Each time I’ve “fallen off” or went over my macros for the day, he has been there to assure me that I will be just fine and to get right back on track. I don’t have any food restrictions and the feeling I get from that freedom is amazing. I still love food and sometimes eat more than I should, but I finally feel like I’m in control again.

I’m close to being able to prepare for my second goal, competing again, but this time, using IIFYM. Stephen’s style, compassion, and dedication is exactly why I would choose him as my coach for future competitions and I would recommend his services to everyone!

I am so incredibly proud of Lyndsey, her success is terrific and very much down to her patience, consistency and determination. I have seen her grow as a person during the process, gaining a better understanding of nutrition, training and the impact each has on her body.

Interested in coaching check out my services HERE.