Make your training natural

Published: 2025-01-17

I often talk about how there are wrong and right ways to train. I stand by it. It means you're not as special as you think. However, it doesn't mean you should avoid personalizing your training. Today I dig into one way of doing so through a concept that perhaps isn’t the fastest way to your goals but probably is the best long term investment for reaching them – I call it "making your training natural".

Optimal for whom?
Being mentally there
The best training plan in the world
Case study: my nature
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Optimal for whom?

There is a correct way to train. There are better and worse methods. Suggesting otherwise is the equivalent of stepping back into the dark ages and deny science in favor of the word of a god who simply yells “you need to find what works for you”. Constantly saying "find what works for you" is so fundamentally opposed to science and logic that I roll my eyes most times I hear people toss it out in the gym or on social media, which is far too frequent.

Still, there are aspects of training where we indeed need to find what works for us as individuals, whether they be because we don’t have the correct measurement tools yet or the correct premises to deduct the conclusions. For better or for worse, it seems to be the case for now. You adapt the training to the circumstances, to the natural ebb and flows of life.

Being mentally there

One such example is our mental state when it comes to training. Psychological factors play a huge role in the results we get. Motivation sometimes make a world of a difference. I’ve been well aware of this for years and always tell my lifters to let me know when they’re dealing with emotional problems. I’m not going to be your psychiatrist but it’s important for me as a trainer to know because the emotional stress can really mess up training and it’s sometimes wise to back off or modify the training methods when the lifter is dealing with significant emotional stress.

One way to counter this is to make the training successful. Of course training should alway be successful but what I mean is that the lifter should feel better about themselves and more accomplished, rather than drained or tired after the session. No sets should be taken to failure and we try to create “good momentum”. Will it cure the emotional problems? Probably not, but it certainly won’t make them worse like a constant head bashing against a wall will.

That’s one way of making the training “natural”. You adapt the training to the ebb and flow of your psyche. Things (hopefully) get better and the flow of the training can change again, perhaps to a state where at least some of said head bashing is useful (or not).

The best training plan in the world

Another example. What if I told you that the best and fastest way to increase your 1 repetition maximum (1RM) is to simply max out in the lift every day of the week. Let’s ignore if it’s actually the case or not. We’ll imagine it as a firmly established rule based on the laws of biology. Let's apply it to two different lifters.

Lifter 1: On one hand we have a lifter who thrives on it, who loves to max out, who hates doing lifts other than the main ones. Perfect! It’s simple (and therefore efficient) and it’s the best way according to our just made up biological laws. It’s the way to train!

Lifter 2: Next we have someone whose mental state tanks when they miss a lift and gets bored out of their mind doing the same thing over and over. Assuming our best way to train™ we can predict that this lifter will also make good gains... At least for three weeks or so. After that something happens. They come to the gym with tired eyes, half-assedly attempts their 1RM, yells and screams in anger when they fail, is pissed off for the rest of the session and three more weeks removed they quit and take up Zumba.

Our one best method just fell apart. It’s still the best method, from a physiological standpoint, but for that person it’s not a sustainable method. In this case, we need to make the training natural to them. A good natural ebb and flow for that person is to train with managable weights that can still cause adaptations, gradually build up to “easy” personal bests and switch either lifts or methods or both somewhere around every 3-6 weeks. They’re no longer doing the training that physiologically speaking will cause the fastest adaptations, but they’re doing the type of training that will create new adaptations for not only 3-6 weeks but months and years. They can still be world champions, because Glob knows that many a champions have trained with sub-par methods!

There are reasons that hard/medium/easy planning work so well. Some of those reasons are physiological and relate to how fast the body can recover. But, at least for many, one reason is likely that it tends to sync with a natural flow of a persons state, and not just the physiological one.

Case study: my nature

A long time ago I noticed whenever I put together a new training program for myself I was super motivated the first week, I felt much worse the second week, and the third week I was OK again. It took me a surprising amount of years for someone who takes pride in thinking and analyzing a lot to figure out I should just plan the second week easier for myself. It fit my natural ebb and flow.

I’m super creative in the morning and around 2 in the afternoon I hate everything I’ve ever done... Slight exaggeration but not by much. It took me a long time to figure out that at 2 I should simply stop working and go out for a long walk. That’s a biological clock if I ever saw one and circumventing it the way I described is adapting to my day naturally.

Find your ebb and flows or find a trainer who can identify them for you. Don’t take as long as I did to accept that what’s on paper might be the best, but the optimal might still be to make your training more natural.

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Online training. Constantly messing up your training or not making any progress? I help regular folks who want to be strong, as well as athletes - from rank beginners to international level lifters.