The Ultimate guide to Periodisation and Progression

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Who knew Albert Einstein was the founding father of fitness programming?!

Jokes aside, his quote certainly has resonance within the fitness industry and especially its respective workout programming, the cornerstone of which we call periodisation.

If you do the same exercises, with the same weights, in the same format time and time again sure you will make progress initially, but this will very soon stagnate into a dreaded plateau. A professionally developed fitness program will therefore be built on the principles of periodisation and progression.

What is meant by periodisation and progression?

Like any profession, the fitness market has developed snazzy buzzwords to make very simple principles sound complicated and difficult, but at its core the concepts are actually pretty easy to understand.

• Periodisation – Periodisation essentially covers the structure of the workout. Within a well-crafted workout program you would have an ultimate goal that needs to be achieved within a particular time frame and to achieve that goal you would need to complete required activity each week and hit specific targets to stay on track. For example, if my ultimate goal was to be able to perform 5 pull ups in 6 weeks I would structure a 6 week routine designed to strengthen the main muscles utlised in the pull up motion (Lats and Biceps). This could broadly take the form of a 4 week strength followed by a 2 week conditioning cycle in which I priortise the target muscle groups from a strength and hypertrophy perspective in order to support my pull up strength. Additionally a similarly periodised diet would also be in place to support muscle growth in the strength phase and fat loss in the conditioning phase.
• Progression – Progression does what it says on the tin really. Within fitness, the term progression refers to the progression of your performance concerning exercise or activity. For instance, when undertaking a weightlifting program we are looking to strengthen our muscles and therefore we would need to gradually lift additional volume in order to force our muscles to adapt. We have a number of mechanisms to do this, we can add weight, add reps, add exercises or add sets…The best method of course would be down to your goals

Ultimately, if the workout program hasn’t been designed within the parameters of these two principles it’s effectiveness will be at best sub-optimal. That isn’t to say program design is inherently easy, and as it becomes more advanced we stray into the realms of macro and meso-cycles, varied progression models and optimal exercise selection…However no matter what, any properly designed workout program will be developed using the cornerstone of a periodised progression model. If your current program doesn’t fit the bill, then you should probably try something else!

If you have some experience in the gym, but are struggling with workout design and plateaus then why not try out Transform program. The program is built around the above principles and uses a linear progression model with a periodised workout and diet cycle designed to help you break-through that plateau and push on to the next level of fitness performance!