Resources

Clients Adapt to an Existing Exercise Program, so Program Modifications Are Needed

It is a well-accepted fact that the muscles in the human body will only continue to grow in both size and strength by continuously being subjected to new stimulus or an ever changing program. The muscle fibers will adapt to any reasonable training stimulus over time that they are subjected to.
Not only will changing the clients program help provide their body the needed stimulus to assist in additional growth but will also help keep their program new and challenging as well as fun.
This brings in to play the subject of periodization as a technique to provide an ever-changing training regiment to provide the muscles with the stimulus that is required to allow continuous growth. There are, in addition to periodization, many other ways to alter or adapt a clients program to provide the above noted required stimulus. Such as adding or removing any of or many of the following techniques.

Periodization

Periodization represents a process of structuring training into periods. These periods are made up of three cycles, a micro-cycle, a period of training approximately one week. A mesocycle which is a period of training 2-6 weeks long, and a macrocycle a period of training including several mesocycles; usually an entire season.

Periodization can be defined as changing the clients program over time to provide an ever-changing source of stimulus for his or her muscles to continue development. This technique was originally developed by Eastern European weight lifters as a way to allow for better recovery and therefore more power and more strength. The same applies to all traditional periodization programs which follow the same general principles. So no matter if you are a cyclist, runner or body builder the periodization programs will allow for the highest peak performance. The training year would begin with a high training volume and a low training intensity, which would reverse as the training year progressed to an end with a low training volume and a high training intensity. A classic example of a periodization program would be as follows, the first phase or mesocycle would be the hypertrophy phase which would mainly focus on increasing the muscle size and strength by training with high volume and low resistance exercises.

The periodization training programs are the key component to advancing any athletes full potential, as a result allowing clients to peak for target events and races.