Why You Can't PR Every Day: Understanding the Natural Rhythms of Fitness Progress

Transcript

Introduction to Training Rhythms

Speaker 1 0:01

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Train for a Great Life . I'm going to touch on something , the idea of something that I wrote about probably 12 years ago . It was an article , blog article called why Can't I PR Every Day . I had noticed people in the gym working incredibly hard and just every now and then kind of going through you know a week here and there , where everything they touched just was nowhere near what their full capability was . I've experienced the same thing . So I , while I don't remember exactly what I exactly the words I used , I know the themes Okay . So basically , you can PR every day for a while .

Speaker 1 0:54

If you are new to something and have like this upward linear trajectory , you're just you're going to kind of be getting those newbie gains or like . There is a concept within CrossFit that , like , everything is everything , meaning like , as your hip extension gets stronger through a deadlift , your power clean should probably get better as well . Through increased force development , your pressing might get better and then when you retest handstand pushups , they might get better . There's going to be time in between all these things , but there's a lot of carryover between them . Anyway , that's kind of beside the point , but you can get better at things for a long time , especially if you have the mindset that you're going to push

Traditional Strength Programs and Deloading

Speaker 1 1:37

things . The mindset that I brought into the gym when I started CrossFit for the first years . Mean , I said it out loud . I said I am not interested in doing something that I've done before . Meaning that , if you know , I had a PR of a 250 clean . I was going in that day to hit 255 at a minimum and probably that , and then the next day would be more than that . So that mindset can take you a long way . Eventually , just training rhythms will catch up to you . Okay , so what happens ? And in more like traditional strength programs I'm going to kind of bring this back around In more traditional strength programs there are deload phases .

Speaker 1 2:17

Okay , it's very common to have like three weeks of building and then a week of deloading where your body gets to recover a little bit before you kind of ramp back up . Okay , crossfit is not necessarily meant to be that . It is a program that is keeping you kind of ready at all times . We're not necessarily trying to specialize in anything . We are looking for general physical preparedness , gpp . Okay , with that said , in our gym we do a lot of structured strength training and strength training cycles which do work quite well , but , like again , sometimes the way that your body functions and the rhythms of it will not overlay perfectly onto the rhythm of a strength cycle . Okay , an example , perfect example , if you're familiar with 5-3-1 , the 5-3-1 strength training program .

Speaker 1 3:15

So you do like a set of five , set of five and then a max , max reps at a certain weight . Then the next week it gets a little heavier . You go three , three and then three plus , meaning max reps , and then the next week a little heavier for max reps , and then you take a deload week and then you repeat , like you know , plus three to 5%

Understanding Your Body's Natural Cycles

Speaker 1 3:34

. I remember years back I was just in the right mindset to like take this to an absolute max in the first week and I think I pulled a 345 deadlift for like 15 reps . It's like double body weight for a ton of reps , and the next week , like I kind of just fried myself on that and I was not recovered enough to be able to do that again . I think I had nowhere close to it .

Speaker 1 4:03

So a couple things here . One , as so the rhythms of your own body , like you , might go through little peaks and valleys you're going to . The longer that you do this , especially if you've been doing it very consistently for like two to three years or more , you will start to notice , or hopefully notice , that you're going to go through rhythms and very likely , the week that you're having trouble hitting a PR or like , basically you're not able to do what you thought you would be able to do the week before , that was probably pretty frigging good it's . When you look back , you might recognize that , okay , and then again , coming off of that week where you were , you're kind of not able to do what you expected , you'll probably be able to do some good things again . Okay , so there's going to be rhythms of this . As you get a little bit older , like that's , there's just going to be a little bit more of that . Maybe the cycles kind of like tighten up a little bit .

Speaker 1 5:10

Um , you know , I I've noticed that I I don't have more than probably

Accepting Peaks and Valleys

Speaker 1 5:15

like three or four really good , solid days of intensity , sometimes even two in a week , whereas I used to have , you know , basically every day , like there was like , okay , no days off every day .

Speaker 1 5:27

You know that mindset that I talked about a little bit earlier . So what I'm getting at here again , just to state it more simply is you're not just going to be up and to the right all the time . Okay , there's going to be waves of things . If you zoom out , then , yes , hopefully up and to the right is the general trend . But there's going to be those ups and downs , there's going to be peaks and valleys and there's going to be little cycles within there . Sometimes you know , it's outright strength , sometimes it's explosiveness , sometimes just , you know , power production over time , like a more anaerobic type of thing . But don't be discouraged . The more that you train and the more that you've gotten yourself into like years of consistency , the more evident this becomes . And just understand it and try to keep your head in the right spot and I will see you in the gym .