Short and hard with periodization

If you divide your training into phases that regularly put new stimuli on your body, you will steadily advance your development. If you don’t do it and always train the same way, you won’t make any progress after just a few weeks. In this post, you’ll learn what periodization means and why it’s so important for your daily short workout.

What does stagnation in training mean ?

Almost everyone who has ever trained or pursued a training goal knows the problem: when you start training you feel clear progress in the form of muscle building, strength gain or body fat reduction – until after a certain time you reach a point where you can no longer progress. You train just as intensively as before, but the training effect becomes smaller and eventually stops altogether – you stagnate.

Why does stagnation occur?

From sports science we know that the muscle adjusts to a certain training after only a few weeks and subsequently no longer develops as desired. This is shown, for example, by the fact that after a certain time you no longer get muscle soreness: the muscle has adjusted to the load and as a result no longer reacts to the training stimulus.

How to keep the training progress high?

Through periodization, i.e. the regular alternation of training stimuli. This keeps the training progress high and prevents so-called training plateaus (stagnation). Thus, the muscle cannot adjust to one type of load and must constantly adapt. It also makes training more versatile and increases motivation because you are always faced with new challenges.

Can you compare this with the great progress made by beginners?

Right. A beginner makes great progress in training at the beginning because the muscles are not used to the loads. The musculature reacts accordingly and one is highly motivated due to the noticeable training successes. With a good periodization, we virtually make ourselves beginners again and again. This way we can keep the progress and motivation high with short trainings.

Without periodization, will motivation be lost?

This is preprogrammed. If you train and don’t feel any progress, the motivation for training automatically collapses. This process can be observed, for example, at the beginning of the year. In January, the studios are full of new faces. By the end of February, a large part of it is already gone.

How does the periodization work in MIKE5 ?

We rely on the change of the interval. This is a simple and practical system, which can be used even without prior knowledge. We are thus moving in an intensity range that is always new for the muscle. This scheduled change in training demands leads to long-term and sustainable performance improvement in all areas (maximum strength, strength endurance, muscle building, body fat reduction, etc.).

Conclusion

Periodization of training is much more important than training volume. With a good periodization you always manage to set an effective muscle stimulus. This is achieved with the appropriate intensity, even with very short training sessions. By constantly providing new muscle stimuli, the training progress is maintained. In MIKE5, periodization is ensured by regularly changing the five-minute interval. The system is simple, efficient and can be used by both beginners and advanced users.