How do you know what amount of effort to put into your work each day? Whether it’s your job, your family or your exercise routine?
Many people fall into one of two silos – work too hard all the time and get burnt out or don’t work hard enough and experience little to no progress.
In relation to exercise, too light all the time leads to lackluster results. Too much all the time can lead to tweaks and twinges. Both lead to plateaus of strength and results.
In our daily lives, we have days where we put our head down and need to get a lot done. These are hard days – there’s a lot on our plate and we have to eat it. The quality of our work matters. We’re meeting deadlines and working on important items on our urgent list.
The main goal is to get a lot of quality work done during hard days.
Make your training very intense during hard days. Your hard days are when you are going to push your limits. Rate hard days at 100%.
You usually can’t repeat multiple hard days in a row. If you do you will feel worn out quickly.
This is why you make the next day light.
In your career this might be working through your weekly to-do list completing items that aren’t urgent but important. Light days don’t take much mental energy and include things like paying bills, scheduling or attending appointments, studying, or driving your kids around for their activities.
In your training, light days reduce the total volume to a point allowing you to focus on quality work and aid your recovery. Rate light days at 50%.
The next day you ramp it up again, but not to the level of your hard day. Finish a project or embark on a new one. Step outside your comfort zone. Days like these are medium in effort. You’re still focused and increasing the intensity over your light day but not matching the hard day.
In your training, medium days set you up to be mentally prepared and ready for the intensity of the next hard day. Rate medium days at 75%.
Pavel Tsatsouline and Bill Starr are known for waving their training programs with hard, light and medium days.
Dan John writes about this too – out of 10 training sessions, 1-2 will be challenging and you’ll feel great about what you accomplished, 1-2 are going to be light (these can drive you crazy but are good for you), and the rest are medium and right where you likely need to be.
We’ve applied this formula into our ELEVATE Bars & Bells (advanced lifter) and Worcester Kettlebell Club (hardstyle kettlebell training) programs with much success.
This formula can work two ways: H-L-M and H-M-L.
Most days are going to be medium days.
Enjoy and appreciate the medium days and understand the bridge they connect in your life and in your training.