Training vs. Working Out: Part 1

When you first start working out, you can do just about anything and see progress. Your fitness improves, and you begin to see the many benefits of working out during your daily life. As that progress slows down, maybe you step up the intensity and frequency of your workouts and that works for a while, but eventually, your progress comes to a screeching halt. What do you do? Well, if you are happy with where you are and love the feeling of working out and the many benefits it has, then there is no problem with what you are doing. Keep crushing it! But, if you want to continue to make improvements in fitness and have specific goals you want to conquer, then the first step to take is to stop just working out and start training. 

"What is the difference?" you ask, "Aren't working out and training the same thing?" Well, not quite… When you are working out, you are just exercising for the sake of exercising, but when you’re training, you are exercising with the goal of building fitness! Pat Flynn had a great quote that summed this up nicely.

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Training is about the incremental, specific improvement of a thing [fitness]. Training is practicing something in a progressive and periodized way; it's structured; regimented; planned out. It isn't haphazard or chaotic. And it may or may not involve breaking a sweat or feeling sore, etc." – Pat Flynn.

This quote does gloss over what I think is the most crucial factor in going from working out to training, and that is consistency! The more you can train, the more chances you will get to improve your fitness. Therefore, the more consistent you are, the faster you will see progress. More so, improvements in fitness take time, and many aspects of fitness need to be trained consistently multiple times a week to see progress and, at a certain point, even to just maintain fitness. This is known as the reversibility principle. The reversibility principle is a concept that states when you stop working out, you lose the effects of training. If you are inconsistent with your training, it is impossible to see optimal progress. How quickly it takes for detraining to occur once you stop exercising depends on many factors including your age, how fit you are, how long you have been exercising, what type of exercise you were doing and at what level. Some aspects of fitness such as technique and aerobic capacity can start to detrain in just a matter of days! We will talk a lot about programming later in this article as it is the other crucial factor in going from working out to training. But the worst program done consistently is better than the best program ever that is done inconsistently. In this sense, the best program is the one that you will adhere to! Make sure to find something you enjoy and stick with it. 

The effects of detraining on different markers of fitness

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Being consistent is easier said than done. Life gets crazy at times, and there can be stretches where it is hard to get your training in, and that is okay. The key is never to pause your training completely. Instead, think of your training as a dial with 1 being minimal training and 10 being the most intensive training. There will be times in life when you have to turn the dial down. However, realize there is a big difference between turning the dial down to 2 or 3 and turning the dial all the way off. Precision Nutrition has an excellent article going into more depth about this dial mentality. Click here to read their article for more information on it.

You can turn the dial down, but never off!

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The next key to moving from working out to training is to start following a program. According to our definition of training above, there needs to be an "incremental improvement of some aspect of fitness." This is done through a regimented plan with structure and progressive periodization, or what we in the fitness world like to call a program. This program will be your roadmap for success, and the foundation for programming is periodization. You've heard this word a few times, but what exactly does it mean? According to the exercise science department at the University of New Mexico; 

“Periodization is a form of training that may be defined as the strategic implementation of specific training phases. These training phases are based upon increasing and decreasing both volume (which is reps times sets) and intensity (which is the load or percentage of 1 Rep Max) when designing a training program.”

Since there are so many aspects of fitness, if we try and improve them all at the same time, we won't see much improvement in any one place. This is where periodization comes in. By setting up a program that focuses not just on the short term but the entire long-term picture, you can organize your training in such a way that you can best meet your goals. For example, if your end goal is strength, you may start by working on aerobic capacity to build a big work capacity and solid base to work off. Your volume will be super high and your intensity low which sets you up to be able to handle volume in a low-stress manner. After your aerobic capacity has risen, you will be able to handle more training volume. Now you switch your training to a hypertrophy block in an attempt to elicit muscle growth and put on some lean muscle. You drop the volume a little bit and raise the intensity a little bit. Now you have put on some muscle so you decide it is time to make that new muscle work. This means you continue to raise the intensity and drop the volume. As your strength increases, you decide you would like to test your strength. Now you lower the volume even more and raise the intensity once again. In the end, you have been able to train many aspects of fitness that all built on one another and led you to your ultimate goal of maximal strength.

There are many different types of periodization and many ways to set up a program.

No way is right or wrong!

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By looking at the long-term picture, you can plan to progress over time slowly. By having a program that looks not just at the day-to-day, but instead month-to-month and even year-to-year, you can ensure continual progress. Your program should be set up in a way that each week builds on the last and each month builds on that, etc.… Small jumps in volume or intensity week to week build up over time to make more substantial changes over time. This slow and continual progress is also key to preventing injuries. Instead of your volume and intensity jumping all over the place day to day, the small jumps from week to week will allow your body to adapt to be able to handle more weight or more reps over time instead of all at once. In our example above, the intensity rose slowly as you went from aerobic to hypertrophy to strength. This slow continual progress will allow your body time to adjust to the demands you are placing on it and help you to avoid injury while making the most progress possible. The amount of volume and intensity each person can handle is very variable from person to person. This is why it is best to invest in an individualized program that is catered towards your training capacity.

A well thought out program will allow safe, continual progress over time

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That is it for part one. Come back next week to get part two which will cover exercise selection and why it is important to stick to the program.