All the Ways You Need to Adapt Your Workouts As You Get Stronger
We talk a lot about what it means to start lifting weights or even exercising. But one day you will come to the end of your initial stage, and something will have to change.
The day will come when you will be strong. Maybe not as strong as you would like to be (who ever was?), but much stronger than when you started. Loading a 45-pound disc onto a bar will no longer be a separate workout.
As you get stronger, some of your gym habits need to change. So are the programs you follow and maybe even the exercises you do. Here are a few ways you’ll need to adapt as you move from beginner to intermediate and above.
You will need to pay more attention to doing things right.
For a beginner, good technique is a learning tool. As an intermediate, this is a security issue.
For example, if you’re still working on learning how to squat, it doesn’t really matter which direction you’re facing when you take the bar out of the squat rack. But by the time you have hundreds of pounds on your back, you need to set your hooks properly and do an efficient three step back walk . No jokes.
Or take up deadlifts. You can lift 95 pounds any old way. But when you’re pulling double your own weight, you need to learn how to take the slack off the bar during setup so you don’t get a sudden jerk when the bar comes off the ground. (Technically, at lower weights, you’re pulling slack from your own body, not necessarily from the bar, but that’s a discussion for another time.)
It’s best to start working on these things while you’re still at the beginner stage, but it’s never too late. Tweak your settings. Load the plates correctly. Know when to use a rack, when to use blocks, and when to use crash bags. And politely, helpfully, teach the newbies in your gym the same.
You will need stronger friends
Even though weight lifting is a solitary sport, there is a lot of value in the community. I mean not only social, although this is also important. I mean, when you associate with people who are stronger than you, you will learn a lot about how to become stronger.
You will see how they tune in to the climbs, and all those little things that we talked about above. You will probably notice that they do some things differently than you were taught and you can ask them why. You will get new ideas that you might want to try yourself.
You will also be able to indirectly experience many things that you are not yet able to experience yourself. This may be reassuring , but it can also show you what the future holds for you. Do you want to train as hard or as often as the strongest person in your gym? Do you understand what it takes to get there?
Your workouts will last longer
This one creeps up on you. When you’re a beginner, five sets of five reps is a quick thing that you can do in fifteen minutes. A barbell set, a 95-pound set, a 135-pound set, and then three sets of 155 pounds with a two-minute rest in between. Very simple.
When you are strong, each step on the path takes much longer. You need more warm-up sets to get to a working set during the day. And because these work sets are harder, they require your body to work harder to recover. More ATP for regeneration, more metabolites for cleaning, and so on. This means you need to rest more between sets: three to five minutes instead of just switching plates and being ready to go. Hell, changing the plates themselves is more work, since there are more of them and they are heavier.
A word of advice so that you don’t train all day long: work on your conditioning. Believe it or not, the better your cardio training, the faster you’ll be able to recover between sets . You may never get back to a two minute rest between heavy squats, but you can stay in the three to five minute range instead of being the ten minute guy.
You will need a good program (or a good coach)
For a beginner, the only thing that really matters is that you get more work done than before. And when your base level is zero, literally everything will give you a profit.
There are some popular beginner programs that are fun and easy because they let you ride the wave. ( Starting Strength and Power Lifts are two of the most popular.) Pick a few exercises, do a few sets of multiple reps, and watch your results grow. Often you can add weight in every workout and you don’t have to do boring support work.
But these programs don’t last forever, and you’ll soon discover their shortcomings the hard way. They don’t give you enough volume, and some of them will make you do less work when you get stuck, although the reason you’re stuck is because the program didn’t give you enough volume in the first place. They also culminate in you pushing yourself to the limit—your five-rep max for five reps—which will leave you feeling overwhelmed and may lead to minor injuries. If low numbers annoy you and your knees hurt, it’s time to move on.
What’s next? It depends on what you want to do, but your best bet is to find a coach, instructor, or proven program that can give you a broader base from which to develop. Key features include more sets, more variety, and less time with weights that are at your absolute maximum.
For example, after dropping one of those programs that gives you five sets of five reps of squats once or twice a week (which, you guessed it, led to delayed results and knee pain), I ended up with than a typical week give me 6 sets of 6 reps in the squat, 6 sets of 8 in each leg press and pause squat, and instructions on how to do a certain number of exercises for biceps and triceps, cardio and core work. I flourished.
Your nutrition will matter more
As with beginner programs, beginner nutrition is not critical to success. You will gain muscle mass, no matter what. And even if you don’t build muscle, you’ll still get at least a little stronger, since many of those early strength gains are just your body learning the skills to lift weights.
But as you get stronger and your workouts become more demanding, you need to fuel well for them. If you skip breakfast and do a long workout first thing in the morning, you’ll find that forcing yourself to eat a banana or smoothie ahead of time will have a huge impact on how strong you feel.
More importantly, you will find that malnutrition is bad for your health. If you need to lose weight for health reasons, so be it; but as soon as you give up this diet, you will find that your strength has skyrocketed. You will have more energy in the gym, and if you allow yourself to gain weight, it will be much easier for you to build muscle.
If I could summarize the strength athlete diet in a few words, it would be: Eat plenty of protein, enough calories to keep your weight moving in the direction you want (up, down, or steady), and eat the damn veggies.
You will stop obsessing over new PRs
When PRs fluctuate week after week, it’s easy to focus on them as a measure of progress. But someday these PRs will slow down . This doesn’t mean that your progress is slower, just that it has more components. My weightlifting coach told me many times that progress is not linear; it happens in steps. There can be a long horizontal stretch where you don’t reach PR at all, and then all of a sudden you make what seems like a huge progress.
In between these PRs, other things happen. You build more muscle, hone your technique, learn to be more consistent, fight your weaknesses, and do a million other things that make you better and stronger. At this time, you will want to make progress in all these other areas. Maybe my snatch is stalled, but my squat is growing. Maybe I haven’t hit my new 1RM yet, but I can do my 80% for more reps than before.
Sometimes I miss those early days when I was guaranteed publicity just for showing up to the gym. But then I remember how much weaker I was! At the time, the double-disc deadlift was a pipe dream; now a workout. Getting strong is very rewarding – you just have to stop training like a beginner and allow yourself to progress.