The “trap” I see people in the gym fall into, the complacency and habit trap.  The redundancy trap.  The inefficiency trap.

What is this specifically?  Only utilizing a hypertrophy, bodybuilder program over and over again, with the same global sets/reps/tempos, hoping a 2-3% overload increase over the years will lead to GAINS!  Now, barring the usage of some substances on the Russian figure skater “vitamins” list, over the long run, the gains are not likely to happen.  AND, the shear pattern overload is likely to put you on the fast track to numerous joint issues.  (And...we won't be getting into nutrition and supplementation in this blog post...those will follow.)

Well, The Flex Wheeler Development System has the answer in the utilization of PERIODIZATION.  What we do is break down time frames into “cycles” of long, medium, and short periods.  The overall long-term period is called a “macrocycle,” and can last anywhere from 6-12 months or longer.  The goal for a macrocycle can be, for our purposes, adding 5 lbs of quality muscle.  Next are the “mesocycles,” these can last 4-12 weeks.  Several mesocycles will make up an overall macrocycle.  In our current example, for physique development, we’ll alternate between 4-week strength mesocycles and 12-week hypertrophy mesocycles...the magic being that they compliment each other as we progress!  Gotta love SCIENCE!

The shorter strength mesos will resemble more of a powerlifter program with the goal of increasing total strength.  This will allow the athlete to increase overload intensities when we shift to the hypertrophy meso.  An increased overload during a hypertrophy meso will lead to greater muscle gains.  Then, we follow a successful hypertrophy meso, where we’ve increased lean muscle mass, with another strength meso.  We make that awesome, new muscle even stronger.  Everything cascades from there.

As for the short “microcycles,” these typically last 1 week and make up the mesocycles.  This is easy to develop for the aforementioned strength mesos, as tweaking sets/reps/tempos weekly is bread and butter for powerlifting programs.  BUT, current research is finding some great results doing similar with hypertrophy programs.  We have had some GREAT results varying sets (4-6) and reps (8-12) for hypertrophy/muscle growth on a weekly basis (obviously that would come with varying intensities). 

And this is all without even touching the varying of tempos!  (We go over that in an older blog post.)

Bottom line, if the program you use today looks eerily similar to what you were doing a year ago, I got some news for you...it ain't happening.  PERIODIZATION will be your savior.