Lifting Everyday – How to Return from High Frequency Lifting Programs

Stop biting your nails. Stop abusing caffeine. Put the toilet seat down. Visit your grandmother. Clean your house. Stop binge drinking. Stop cussing. Don’t have dessert. Don’t drink soft drinks. Stop gambling.

Stop every habit you have, and do it this very second.

Yeah, right.

On the low end it takes 18 days to change a behavior into a habit. The high end? 224 days.

This means that while I was practicing and preaching high frequency programs, I was creating a habit. One that has proven difficult to break. Both of the programs I frequently cited meet the 18 day limit. Dan John’s was 40 days. Chad Waterbury’s was 60 days. Considering I didn’t start them simultaneously, I had about 80 straight days of exercising. There was a vacation thrown in there, but I’m not counting that because I usually disengage from reality during those. But the day I returned, I was back into my routine. Solidifying the habit of exercising daily.

The concept of exercising daily can be misleading. I’m not talking about a light walk in the park. In fact, a light day for me was a minimum of fifty pull-ups, pushups, and goblet squats, at least ten minutes of handstand practice, deadlifts, and presses. On my light day.

Most would consider than insane, but the body adapts. This is one of the best reasons to train every day. You don’t know what your body is capable of until you push it to extremes. When you do, you find out how silly you can be. You find out that most times, it’s your mind – not your body – that holds you back. And of any condition – be it physical, mental, or emotional –you have, nothing taxes your motivation quite like dreary weather does. Those are the kind of things you learn.

But it starts to consume you. I can’t say when, or how, but it just does. You feel like you have to do something every day or else you’re a failure. After all, gymnasts train daily. So do Olympic Weightlifters. They have amazing physiques, skills, and strengths. Don’t you want those things? Then why aren’t you training every day?

It’s those kinds of things that run through your mind as you watch the rain drops teeter down your window like lightning bolts, trying to find motivation from somewhere.

If you’re looking for ways to stop these thoughts, I can’t say that I know of one. But here are some things to think about if your compulsions are eating away at your mind.

GYMNASTS train often because they are working on skills. Just go back and check out my Interview with Yuri Marmerstein. “Handbalancing has a slow learning curve,” he said, “taking a day off requires a day to get back in balance and by then I’ve lost two training days.”

They also don’t do the same thing every day. There are different events that need to be practiced, giving some movements and muscles a chance to recover.  But handstands aren’t really draining, so they are more apt to frequent training.

PERSONALLY, ditching daily training was tough because I saw impressive results. But looking back, there is no reliable progressions. That’s not to say that it can’t happen, but that it’s more difficult. When you train less the goal becomes more focused. If you are only given one day per week to train, you know you’re going to have to do meaningful work. But when you go in every day, it becomes less about progress and the motions. At what point would I get sick of doing ten sets of pull-ups? Sure, my arms, shoulders, and back responded well because they had to. But when would I be able to do five sets of twenty repetitions? Would I just be stuck with ten sets of ten for the rest of my life?

THE LONG RUN is more important than the short one. For every case of high frequency training working, there are people like Martin Berkhan and JC Deen that use a lower frequency to get freakish results. If you can spend 50% less time in the gym and see the same results then why not?

IF YOU WANT to continue high frequency training, train five days a week. Use your rest days to relax and enjoy life. Get used to letting the body recovery. The world won’t explode.

AN ALTERNATIVE to training with such a high frequency is to mesh everything together into a more “normal” routine. I have a lot of ideas when it comes to this, and when I can finally train with gymnastics rings I’m sure I’ll have many more. But here are some rules. After every set of presses and squats, do a comfortable amount of pull-ups. After every set of pulls and deadlifts, do a comfortable amount of push-ups. If eight is a “comfortable amount” for you, and you do five sets of presses, you just added 40 pull-ups that you wouldn’t have otherwise done. If you do that in between every set, the numbers add up.

IF THAT DOESN’T suit you well, then you can follow a more traditional three or four day split that would normally give you two days of rest back to back. For example M-W-F or S-M-W-Th. On your first rest day do a bodyweight blast, where you do nothing but a ton of pull-ups, push-ups, handstands, or whatever you want (or anything that you normally did with a high frequency). It would look like, S (upper) – M (lower) – W (upper) – Th (lower) – F (bodyweight).

THE BODY RESPONDS well to such a high frequency because it’s a “shock” technique. While effective, they should be used sporadically, just as Dan John suggests. They aren’t something that the body should adapt to, because once that happens they aren’t really that “shocking” anymore.

YOUR GAINS won’t wither away once you stop training daily. Strength and hypertrophy can be maintained with much less than what they are built with. Your mind will cause regression faster than your physical abilities will realistically deteriorate. What I mean by this is that the more you make yourself think you need to train every day, the more you will need to train everyday. The more you think your muscles dwindle away on a rest day, the less effective the recovery process will be. Don’t think of rest as a bad thing. Think of it as an essential time for the muscles to rebuild. Feed them. Take naps. Enjoy life. Spend time with your friends. Get the stress out of your life.

MY LAST TIP is to make the warm up a part of the workout. Hit thirty to fifty reps of the movements that you obsessed over during your high frequency run. Keep them brief with little rest to get the heart rate up. For example, I do three circuits of pull-ups, push-ups, and goblet squats for ten repetitions before I touch a barbell, whether it be an upper body or lower body day.

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I can’t say that I have this figured out yet. But I’ve always had a love for bodyweight skills, and I can’t get enough of them. Use the tips and information to close the chapter of daily training for now. At least, mentally, that’s what I’m doing. But I’m sure somewhere in my life, I’ll need to come back to this.

Think you have other solutions? Think I’m insane? Obsessive? Idiotic? Whatever, I’d love to hear what you have to say. Hit up the comment box below.