#25 - Periodization
Hey, Hey, my lovely ladies. How are you guys today? Happy Wednesday. All right, we're going to talk about periodization today. Do you guys know what that is? It has nothing to do with your menstrual cycle. I promise. Oh, can you guys hear dude moving around my office? All right. So, periodization is a cycle of sorts. It could be cycle. We could call it a phase. It is a way to train that really optimizes progression that helps you achieve your goals faster, makes sure that your body doesn't hit plateaus along the way. I love periodization. I love cycling my training, phasing, the training I give to my clients. It's actually one of the reasons, I started Lady Sculpt 1.0, which was the original lady sculpt membership that I launched back before COVID it started back in 2019, I think. why I did that was because I saw so many women. Just following the same programs or just doing 15 reps of different exercise. But always hitting that 15 rep range, staying in conditioning all of the time. And our human bodies are so incredibly adaptable that as soon as we've been doing something for three to four weeks, it no longer serves us the same way as it did to start with. So we need change it up, shock our body a little bit, surprise our human body so that our human body changes and grows and adapts to that new thing. And this is essentially, how we sculpt the ultimate human body, my friends.
So let's talk a little bit about this. What is periodization? Basically what it is, is its variations of reps sets or weights or intensities of programs. So there's three different periodization cycles. There is the macro cycle, which is a long period of time with many smaller cycles within it. So a macrocycle might last one to four years. So a macrocycle might be like, I want to gain 10 pounds of lean muscle. I want to lose 40 pounds of weight. Usually macrocycles have big overall goals, attached to them that are fueling that entire cycle of training. But then we break it down. We don't just do one program for that entire macrocycle. We break it down into mesocycles, which are four to six weeks long. And focused on a very specific goal, maybe it's a strength goa, maybe it's a hypertrophy goal. And all these mesocycles added together will progressively give you the goal of your macrocycle. You with me? And then the third cycle is a microcycle. This is a cycle that is usually lasts one, one to two weeks let's say, so this might look like a de-load week or a dial in week, maybe the week or two before competition or it might even look like a menstrual cycle week where you're just, you know, giving yourself a rest week or a lower intensity week, like a de-load week in time with your menstrual cycle. Just so that your body can rest because we love ourselves, we're compassionate. Sometimes that week before our period sucks. Guys don't get it. Right. So we have the macrocycle, which is a year longer. We have a meso cycle, which is four to six weeks. We have a micro cycle, which is one to two weeks.
Give or take right. And then we have strength hypertrophy and conditioning as kind of the cycles that I use within training. So let's say someone has a goal of increasing their body mass, their lean body mass by 10 pounds over the course of a year. I may cycle them through meso cycles of hypertrophy and strength. And go back and forth, hypertrophy strength, hypertrophy strength, maybe two strengths in a row, and then a hypertrophy or two hypertrophies in a row and then a strength. And then I might throw in a conditioning, just to shock the body up a bit, hit those slow twitch muscle fibers that reacted better to high rep lower weight movement. Just to make sure that we're training their body from all angles in every way possible, might throw in some plyometrics in there, maybe a little bit of calla statics. There's so many different ways that you can train the human body. And I don't really care what your goals are. I think that there is a place for all of it for everybody. Even if your goal is weight loss, you will benefit from strength training. You will benefit from making your body stronger. Maybe not off the hop strength, training's intense. We may want to wait a few months until we've, you know, conditioned our body into it before jumping into five rep maxes. But. I think all women should train for strength. There's something so empowering about being able to lift heavy things and do pull-ups you guys. Every woman should be able to do at least one pull up, make that your goal this year. Make it your macrocycle goal. I would like to be able to do a pull up by the end of 2022 with no assistance. Okay. Go. All right. So let's say a macrocycle of, let's say someone who wants to lose 40 pounds. They may have mesocycle increments that look like conditioning, conditioning, conditioning, strength, conditioning, conditioning, conditioning, hypertrophy, conditioning, conditioning, conditioning strength. So they're really focused on conditioning and maybe those conditioning phases get changed at maybe one of them is really focused on higher rep range is 15 plus, and then one is more focused on keeping that heart rate elevated and doing more plyometric movements within the program. Right. You can change it up within the goal itself, the goal style of training as well. Do you guys see how this would keep your body? Like guessing all of the time this is a very common tactic to use. When I get in duro athletes that come see me that want their bodies to look differently. I have a lot of athletes that I've worked with over the years that are athletes. They're some of the best athletes in their sports, but they don't feel like they look as fit as they are. And a lot of times that's because the sport they're doing, the way they train for it isn't really periodized there. They aren't doing any cross training. They aren't taking breaks to shock their body. So their human bodies have adapted to doing hours of cardio a day or hours upon hours of cardio a week, but they don't use the accessory of weight training or periodization to achieve those ultimate visual goals, those ultimate aesthetic goals as well. So periodization you guys, it's fantastic for sculpting your body. It's a great way to make sure that you're lowering your risk of injury while optimizing your progress, while optimizing your results, which is essentially what we all want to do. Yeah. Get there as fast as possible. I know, I always tell you guys to slow the F down and I do, want you to have patience in your sculpting journey, but periodization you'd be silly not to do it.
In Lady Sculp, let's talk about this a little bit. I periodize for the women in Lady Sculpt, I build programs in Lady Sculpt that are designed to paradise their training. So let's talk about a program like the build, which essentially is a three-phase program. So it takes you through 12 weeks of training and each phase is progressively increasing the difficulty in the intensity of that program. And then I tell my athletes in Lady Sculpt to remember, to take de-load weeks or to remember, to take a week off between finishing a program and starting another program. And then there is programs in Lady Sculpt, like the strength and the burn and the build that you can see, even from the names of them, that they are cycling all three ways of training your muscle fiber. So it takes all the guesswork out of it. It takes all the research out of it. My female athletes can come in there and just be like, okay, this is my goal this year, this is what I got to do. So I'm going to break this down. You guys know me.
I'm going to break this down into three easy steps. You ready? Are you guys sick of my three easy steps yet? I've been getting messages from you guys, emails about my three-step processes, It's fantastic. I love getting emails from you guys so much fun. Okay. You ready? It's pretty straight forward. Step one, make a macro cycle plan. So what this is, is take a look at the next year to four years. Right. You get to decide however long you want it to be? And set a big goal, maybe it's to compete and get on stage, maybe it's to be able to run a marathon, maybe it's to sculpt your perfect physique and knock it onstage. Right. It can be anything you want it to be. But set a goal, a big goal, a macro goal.
Step two, you're going to break that goal down, month to month, four to six week periods. All right. So maybe your goal. Let's say you have a one-year goal. You're going to look at a calendar. You're going to break it down. I actually did this with my sculptors this year in January, we created sculpt strategy charts. We wrote all of our goals at the top of the page for the year. And then we broke the year down into months and we decided ahead of time, how we were going to train, what programs we were going to do each month, what our goal focus was going to be for each month for the entire year. This takes all the brain drama out of it. It also sets your brain up in advance to know that you're getting ready to work for the year. So that you have this kind of confidence in yourself that you're going to do this for the next year. It takes away the, well. I don't really feel like working out this month or my membership to the gym stopped. So maybe I'll take a break, no. Set up a goal for the year instead of a game plan for the year that doesn't mean that you're going to not have rest periods. Maybe you go to the island every August, long weekend. So maybe you take a de-load week or even a week off. And you plan that in ahead of time. And then there's no guilt when you go. And maybe you plan. You know, the few months leading up to August to being conditioning. You look damn good on the island for August long weekend, right? We can do this on purpose for our future selves. So much fun.
So step one, make a big macro goal. Step two, break it down into meso cycles. Okay. You may need help with this. You may need to find a coach. You may need to sign up for a Lady Sculpt, or if you can do this on your own, all the power to you to sit it down, make a plan, break it down.
Step three, plan those rest weeks and those de-load weeks ahead of time. So I'd say every eight to 12 weeks, you should plan a rest week, and this may be a de-load week that you have just some lighter workouts in, maybe some yoga, maybe some stretching, maybe it's like a week that you're on vacation and you're just doing some hiking or it can be a complete week off. It's okay to take weeks off. What this does is it allows our body to completely recover. And when we go back into it and start a new program, our human body gets shocked just a little bit. You're going to feel some Dom's. That's a good thing, right? Means that the human body has grow and improve and get stronger to keep up with you. So if you're finding it hard, like if you're noticing that you've hit a plateau with your strength or with your weight, if you're training like a crazy person doing conditioning training doing tons of reps and tons of cardio and you're not seeing results on the scale for weight loss, you may need a week off my friend. I know it sounds so backwards, right? You might be over-training. Periodization is a great way to ensure that you're not over-training that you're not risking injury. If you are strength training and you're hitting a plateau. So you can't get your bench to push, like through that one 50 marker through that got hundred pound mark. You may just need a de-load week. You might just need to lighten up that weight a little bit, do more reps, take some time off and then come back to it and try that big lift again. Yeah, might surprise yourself. I'm always shocked at how strong I am after rest weeks. Or after vacation. Especially if I've been eating all the food, then I'm like totally fueled. Ready to go. Super strong. Love it. Okay, so you got that super easy three easy steps. Basically, we're just going through the cycles. Plan a macrocycle, big goal at least one year long. Break that macrocycle into meso cycle. And then find your microcycle rest and de-load weeks. Super easy. You guys, if you join Lady Sculpt, I've got a sculpt strategy plan that will help you do this. All right. That's what I have for you guys today. Super easy, periodization. Add it to your training. Let's go. So you guys next week. Bye for now.
