In this article, when I talk about loading I'm not talking about the amount of weight that you are lifting. Rather, the total stress that you are putting your body through. And the rule is simple:
INCREASE OR DECREASE BY A MAXIMUM OF 10% EACH WEEK.
This is the simplest way to think about it.
But first, what are we measuring?
The easiest way here is to take each session that you do in a week, look at how long each one was, and multiple them by the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) that you gave each session. RPE is a score, out of 10, relating to how difficult you thought the session was. A 1 is sitting there, doing nothing. A 10 should take you a long time to even get round to recording in your training diary because you are too tired to move.
So a couple of training days could look like this:
Day 1 (gym): 60 mins, RPE6
Day 2 (gym): 60mins, RPE 7
Day 3 (run): 30mins, RPE4
Day 4 (rest)
Day 5 (gym): 65mins, RPE 6
Day 6 (rest)
Day 7 (gym): 45mins, RPE8
So, multiplying the training length of each day by the corresponding RPE you would get:
Day 1: 360
Day 2: 420
Day 3:120
Day 4: 0
Day 5: 390
Day 6: 0
Day 7: 360
This gives you a total score of 1650.
The next week you want your total training to give you a score within +/- 10% of this. So between 1485 and 1816.
If your score the next week falls outside of these parameters, then you want to make sure that you are definitely back inside them the next agin week.
Why is this?
Well, remaining inside the parameters means that your body is getting the training load that it is used to. It is prepared to receive this load again. Anything much less and it will quickly adapt and become unprepared for such load again. Anything too much and it will be unprepared for that amount of training load. Both of these scenarios are factors in many non-contact injuries in any sport. This means that avoiding these large changes in training load, or 'spikes' in training load, will help to decrease your risk of injury, allowing you to consistently push yourself on to Improve Your Performance.
For ready-made programmes that take this into account, ensuring that your training load increases safely over time, whilst still getting you results, grab one of the programmes from our Shop.
Enjoy your training,
Max