Embrace Seasons
By Gus
As we transition from summer to fall, it’s a good time to reflect on seasonality in the gym. Unless you’re a competitive weightlifter or powerlifter, it’s a fair guess you are not focused on building strength all year-round. There’s much more to human existence than the optimal training program. So rather than winging it, your training over the whole of your life will be more effective if considered with seasonality.
A Time for Beginning
Anyone who has not given a thorough effort to exhaust a Novice Linear Progression has robbed themselves of the most effective training hours available to them. The sooner in life you can accomplish this, the better its potential. Whether your genetics and recovery allow the NLP to last 10 weeks or 40 weeks, it’s proven time and again to set a better baseline of strength than immediately jumping to more advanced periodized programs.
If you find yourself firmly in another season, then I fully understand waiting for that one to wane. But this should be your next stop. Deepest winter, hottest summer, you need to begin your strength journey if you haven’t already.
If you’re not in any season, but things just seem too crazy. Congratulations, the time for beginning has come. You must create your own structure. If you wait for life to settle down the time for beginning will never arrive.
A Time for Achievement
It’s normal to desire a goal and it’s a shame to leave it as a dream if you could instead make a plan to follow. At the gym I refer to this as “start where you are, pick where you go.” You don’t get to pick where you start, you have to start where you are. But you do get to pick where you go next, so you should choose something that aligns with who you are.
When we choose to focus on a goal, we must accept that other things will suffer while we optimize for that specific thing. At the gym, it might mean your Press isn’t growing while you focus on your Bench Press. But it could also mean you’re finally going to break that 7-minute mile run and you want to swap out some days you had been strength training for running intervals plus a mile attempt every 3 weeks. Or maybe your softball league just started up and that’s where your real passion lies.
Accept that your real desire is this achievement, and adjust your program to support it for a time.
A Time for Work
You cannot be strong enough. Your body will always gain value from improved force production. Even if you’re not at your peak of strength year-round, you must make seasons for work to improve. You’re already past the season of beginning, so it’s not so simple anymore. It may feel like a grind. You may need support from friends or a coach. You may not enjoy it.
Measure the work, solve problems as they arrive, and celebrate the improvements you earn.
A Time for Rest
I find that when you need to rest, life finds a way to tell you. Your whole family gets sick. You saved up all those vacation days for three weeks of traveling. A loved one needs assistance after an surgery. These are all valid reasons for training to slow down.
“I don’t feel like it,” is not.
So when a valid reason shows up, acknowledge the season. Decide what exercise regimen still fits your season of rest, and recover enough to Work or Achieve as the season passes.
The Danger of Seasons
Rarely can you trust your feelings at the change of seasons.
You might be halfway through a season of Work but get disgruntled enough that it seems like some rest is in order – stopping before your real improvements have time to take hold. Your season of Achievement may have finished up months ago but the time still doesn’t feel “right” to start that strength program Gus keeps talking about. It’s pretty easy to spot in a friend or family member, but we’re great at fooling ourselves.
So now – right now – take an honest look over the last couple years of your life. Find what seasons you were in and what they looked like. Look for the signs of when you should’ve switched or started or kept at it. Then look at yourself now – what season are you in?
And which season is next?
