How Hard Should Your Training Be?

The answer really comes down to two important points. Number one: how intense of training can you adhere to long-term? Number two: how intense of training can you recover from? Let’s first go over point number one: how intense of training can you adhere to long-term? Dr Eric Helms, researcher at Auckland University of Technology’s Sports Science Institute and author of The Muscle and Strength Pyramid Training Guide, succinctly put that the intensity a person can stick with long-term is largely dependent on how realistic, enjoyable and flexible their training programming is (Helms, 30). 

We need to be honest with ourselves about what our body can realistically physically perform. The spectrum of physical abilities amongst humans is incredibly vast. A primarily sedentary 45 year old who has not been exercising should not follow a training program that a 22 year old former collegiate athlete follows. For beginner gym goers, it is a safer bet to start with exercises that have a controlled range of motion in a non-explosive manner. For example, resistance machines are great for beginners because they offer a variety of strength training movement patterns, a variety of load options, and a very controlled range-of-motion.  The enjoyment you get while training is another important factor to consider. When you enjoy doing something, you are far more likely to put more effort into it! Finding exercises that you enjoy, or at the very least do not mind performing, is essential to long-term training success. I always recommend my clients try a variety of training modalities because often people do not know what forms of physical activity they like most. Try out different physical activities, cardio machines, and even exercise classes. Take notes about each one that you try, and after a few weeks you should begin learning what forms of exercise you prefer. Arguably the most important aspect of training adherence is ensuring flexibility in your training program to offer a buffer for “life”. Stress, energy levels, and other physical activities that may interfere with gym performance are constantly in flux. Rather than trying to force yourself to adhere to a rigid training program that cannot change regardless of what life throws at you, allow yourself to make modifications to your training, even if significant, when necessary. There are periods of life when training may be hard to focus on, and life simply gets in the way. During these times, you may reduce the frequency of training, the intensity, or the duration. You may also find your that preference of training type changes over time. In your 20s, you may love weight lifting. In your 30s, you might fall in love with distance running. In your 50s, you may love pickle ball and want your training to support your performance. It is okay to have a change in exercise preference and a subsequent change to you training programming. To summarize, how intense of training can you stick with long term depends on selecting exercises, loads, and total volumes that are realistic for your current physical abilities, selecting exercises that you genuinely enjoy, and allowing yourself flexibility to change exercises, set volume, or entire workouts when needed. If you are asking yourself ‘can I handle a more intense training program?’ and you know that you have been performing workouts realistic to your physical abilities, that you have been enjoying them, and that you allow for modification to your program when needed, then the answer may be "yes"! So long as you can adequately recover.

This brings me to point number two: how intense of training can you recover from? When we train, we accumulate fatigue, and this fatigue reduces our performance. By definition, we are considered to be “recovered” when our performance has either returned to what it was prior to the training, or, ideally, increased due to training adaptations. If we do not allow ourselves to recover, our performance will stagnate long-term and can even decline. Ultimately, what we want to achieve is a training program intense enough to provide an adequate stimulus that triggers the physical adaptations we desire while also providing enough recovery time to allow these specific training adaptations to occur in the body. This is a balancing act that may take some trial and error, and it is a significant reason why having quality coach can really expedite your progress. There is great individual variance in the amount of stimulus needed to trigger training adaptations and in the amount of fatigue a person can recover from. Factors such as training age (novice, intermediate, advanced), sleep quality and quantity, stress levels, nutrition, and genetics all affect how well we perform during training and how well we recover. Over the span of multiple weeks and months, you should see progress that is measurable via a load increase (e.g. you are able to lift more weight while performing the same number of repetitions in a given set of an exercise) or a repetition increase (you are able to lift the same amount of weight for more repetitions in a given set of an exercise). If you are consistently progressing in either of these two ways, you are getting stronger and developing more muscle mass. As long as you continue to progress, you know that the balance between training intensely enough to provide an adequate stimulus and getting enough rest to recover is fine. If you notice progress has stalled for a while, especially if you are near the end of a training cycle when you expected to be performing near your best or getting PR’s, then something is likely off. Deloads, or very easy 1-2 week easy training periods, are specifically designed to allow your body to recover and reduce accumulative fatigue. A quality training program actually automatically includes pre-planned deloads at the end of almost every training cycle. Referencing Dr. Helm’s The Muscle and Strength Pyramid Training Guide, there is a post training period assessment consisting of 5 yes or no questions that help to determine whether or not a deload is necessary. These questions are: 1. Dreading the gym? 2. Sleeping worse than normal? 3. Are your loads/repetitions decreasing? 4. Is stress worse than normal? 5. Are aches and pain worse than normal? If you answer “yes” to two or more of these questions, you definitely want to deload. If you answered “yes” to just one question, you’ll probably be fine either way. If the question you answered yes too is extreme, for example, if you answered only “yes” to aches and pains being worse than normal, and your aches are in multiple areas of the body, I would error on the side of caution and take a deload. But, if you answered no to all of these questions, or if you answer yes to only one, and it isn’t extreme, you’ll probably be fine skipping the deload (Helms, 123). Importantly, Dr. Helms recommends that if you do in fact skip a deload, following the next training block, do not under any circumstance skip the next deload. This is a safeguard to help ensure you do not get injured. To recap, how intense of training can you recover from? Well, if you are continuing to progress in load or repetitions, you know that you are getting stronger and building muscle. You can increase the intensity of your training, and if you continue to progress, with all the factors of training adherence in good standing, then keep on increasing intensity. Below are a few more articles on similar topics! They are great reads for those looking to take an even deeper dive in the intricacies of training and recovery. https://rpstrength.com/blogs/articles/how-hard-are-you-really-training https://rpstrength.com/blogs/articles/sleep-the-missing-link-to-gains-and-recovery https://jeffnippard.com/blogs/news/how-hard-should-you-train-to-build-muscle