GOING OFF PLAN: 4 Adjustments You Can Make

GOING OFF PLAN: 3 Adjustments You Can Make
By Shane Robert

Having a training plan is one of the essential components to making progress in the gym. If you want to get bigger and stronger, you won’t get there without some kind of pre-planning and tracking for progression. Even in heavily autoregulated programs, there is some kind of pre-planning, whether it’s the main movement, the accessories, and/or the sets and reps. Once a plan is made, sticking to it is important to gauge benefit. Program hopping, frequent switching of training programs before they have finished, is a common error beginners are warned against. 

Even the best training plans can't take every aspect of your stress into account. It can predict recovery needs from the training by assuming an average amount of life stress, but it’s impossible to know exactly how much stress you’ll have and when. Sometimes, for seemingly no reason, we have terrible days. Days where we are tired or feeling generally under-recovered and creaky, the weights feel heavy and moving slowly, your motivation is low and the thought of being in the gym is repulsive. In those instances, what are we supposed to do? Follow the plan?

The short answer is, likely, no! There are times when we need to modify the plan. The weightlifting coach John Broz famously said that how you feel is a lie. I think this is true to some extent. There have been many times when I walked into the gym where I was convinced that I was going to have a terrible day. Lo and behold, it was a perfectly normal training session or, as is often the case, a slightly better than normal session. This is a common phenomenon among lifters. However, there are also days when you think you feel fine and realize that everything is not working as it should. Of course, you may feel like garbage and start to perform like garbage as well. All this to say, don’t let how you feel be the sole decider of how to modify your plan. Start your training and test the waters before you make a decision. 

Once you determine that you need to adjust the plan for the day, what should you do? There are 4 adjustments that can be made:

1. Match volume but adjust the variables
2. Drop main lifts and just do accessories
3. Active recovery and pump work
4. Live to fight another day

MATCH VOLUME 

This is for days when your central nervous system seems to be a little sluggish, or your joints don’t feel ready for heavy loads and top-end strength isn’t there. 

The volume of loading (total reps) is the main driver of adaptation over a training cycle. Intensity, in this case, refers to the scientific definition of percentage of 1 rep max, not effort, as some people use it. As such, matching the volume that is called for ensures that you don’t disrupt the volume calculations for the training cycle. 

The minimum intensity to see positive strength adaptations is around 65%. As long as you are using that or greater, you will be working toward your end goal. Will it be the same adaptation as the heavier load? No. But it won’t be far off. 

Another option is to keep the intensity and volume the same but alter how the volume is done. If you are in a volume block and the day calls for 4 sets of 8, simply switch to 8 sets of 4. Or 16 sets of 2. Or 32 singles. You get the idea. In my experience, this will lead to the same kind of strength adaptations as the original plan. 

I generally prefer my lifters to adjust intensity and match volume, rather than simply adjusting the dials, but some lifters respond better to that than the former. Especially those who struggle psychologically with having to lower the load.

DROP MAIN LIFTS

This is a simple change for the days that you want to train but your body (and maybe CNS) does not agree. Heavy barbell lifts are the most centrally taxing to our bodies. Dropping it for the day and just doing the accessories gives your body (and brain) the break it needs while still stimulating the muscles to get bigger and not get out of the routine of training. 

The next session that calls for the lift(s) may require some load adjustment, so be aware of that. You can either do the weight called for in the previous skipped week or go up half as much as a normal jump. This works better than you might think since recovery should be enhanced. 

ACTIVE RECOVERY

When you’re really not feeling it mentally or physically, even after warming up, this is a great option toenhance your recovery for the next session. It gets your blood moving and warms up your joints. Nothing is heavy or taxing and should leave you feeling better than when you came in. 

This type of session can use things like sled pulls, high rep band work, low rep explosive movements like bounding and incline plyo-push ups. It may include low-intensity cardio but nothing outside of zone 2 and total sessions should be 30 minutes or less. 

RETREAT!

Even the thought of training makes you want to puke, trying to warm up feels like torture and looking at the work planned for that day makes you cry. We all have these days. Maybe it’s in the first days of being a new parent and you haven’t slept in seemingly forever. Maybe you haven’t been eating well or enough. Maybe we all just have these days that we can’t explain. 

Whatever the cause, lean into it. Don’t do anything! Go and sleep some more. Eat an extra meal. Meditate. Whatever you think you need. Do not, however, force yourself to train through it. 

All 4 of these options have a time and place in a training cycle. In the grand scheme of things, a day or 2 per training cycle that isn’t fully on plan isn’t going to make or break the training cycle. The important thing is to remember to get right back on plan at the next session. Don’t let it derail the entire cycle. 

If you feel that you are needing to do this more than about twice in a 12-16 week program, you need to look at overhauling your training to something more sustainable for your recovery.