Why are there different phases in strength training?

If you've come along to a few of our 'Strong' classes, you may have spotted a rotation in our programming styles month to month, but do you know what distinguishes each training phase or why we program in this way?

Understanding the “why” of our training can really boost your motivation levels, so let’s clear it up.

Our 3 main training phases, Endurance, Hypertrophy and Strength, generally run for 4 weeks, and rotate in the above order throughout the year.

An easy way to distinguish the three phases is by their rep count (how many times you complete the movement consecutively), set count (how many times you complete the rep count) and any adjustments (tempo’s, speed, recovery time). These can differ between training phases based on your goals, but as a general rule, here's what each phase looks like:

Endurance Phase

The Endurance Phase is the time to raise rep ranges, often working on upwards of 12 reps in each set. As the name suggests, this phase aims to build your tolerance for the length of time your muscles are operating under tension without rest. Recovery from these sessions will often feel very different than the later phases, requiring longer to recover between sets and sessions. This is a great phase to change up your training routine, bring in more restorative classes, or simply reduce your weekly session count.

Hypertrophy phase

The Hypertrophy Phase is perfect for adding new stimulus in terms of tempo, speed, pauses and 1/4 reps, moving the focus from the overall volume completed to HOW we complete the reps. This allows the focus to move to smaller portions of your range of motion, for example slowing the lowering phase of your exercise.

Strength phase

The Strength Phase is the time to shift focus towards the difficulty of the exercise. Often this looks like larger numbers in terms of the weight of the dumbbell or bar, but it can also be achieved by choosing a more technically challenging option, or focussing on increasing your range of motion.

These phases can be a lot to wrap your head around, but it can help to visualise them as a triangle:

The triangle is an incredibly strong shape, but remove a corner, and the whole structure can fail.

The same can be said for our training phases! We may feel strong and confident in one element of our strength training, but without the other 2 corners of our triangle, our overall strength can only progress so far. Each phase in turn supports the other 2 and vice versa.

Stay tuned for more of a deep dive into each of the different phases over the coming weeks!