Paint by numbers.
Sounds pretty straight forward, right? The number equals a value. You apply that equal value where it corresponds with the number.
While the habit of keeping a training log for your exercise sessions is encouraged by most, the instructions for using one are often quite linear. For example, this is the number you hit this session, so this is the number you need to hit next session in order to be progressing. It is almost always about increasing your numbers moving forward from session to session.
But we are not linear. We have a bio-rhythm that is constantly in flux. We have factors outside of the training itself that add to the overall accumulated stress, fatigue and tension that affects it. To date, the most effective means of accounting for those factors and integrating them with our “numbers” for the most expedient progress, without constant crashing or burnout is the Intuitive Training Protocol. I learned it from one of my teachers Scott Sonnon, creator of the Circular Strength Training, and have incorporated it into the Club Evolution programs.
The Intuitive Training Protocol relies on tracking the level of Effort, Discomfort and Technique we experience with each exercise and throughout the course of a workout session. The great power in the way it gets us to do that? It’s based on our perception of what that is for each of us individually. That’s right. There isn’t some external source or gauge saying “On this exercise you should be experiencing a high intensity level of exertion, which means your numbers should be x and your weight should be y.” The priority should not be on what the numbers should be. It’s on what the numbers should be for you.
So keeping track of those three indicators from day to day, you know if your technique is off, if the level of discomfort in your body is too high, if you’re pushing yourself too hard or if you can push yourself harder. Then the NUMBERS start to have much deeper meaning beyond pass or fail. Because maybe, for example, a Moderate intensity session one day had you hitting 10’s for your numbers. But then on another Moderate intensity session you were only able to hit 8’s for your numbers (lest you push yourself into a High intensity day, when this one needed to be a bit lighter for optimal progress). In the world of linear number tracking, that would be a big FAIL!! You would not be progressing, you’d be seen as regressing. Developing a greater level awareness, however, through the intuitive protocol, you have a tool to help recognize where the dip in numbers came from, where you can improve upon it and allow the dip to happen as a natural course in your systems dynamic fluctuation.
Most of the time in the past I would not always keep track of the numbers because it just felt very robotic and didn’t really hold alot of meaning for me. But, without a doubt, marrying those numbers to the development of that internal gauge showed a picture that was living and breathing, with all the ups and downs that come with that and a tracking of information that transfered over into having meaning for my day to day life, rather than just to an hour out of my day and at the exclusion of everything else.
Now I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t always track my training. There are times when it actually feels better for me not to. Where I need the experience of the training to be purely internal. Even that experience though, has been enhanced and means more, because of the time I took to integrate tracking the numbers and how they fluctuated and measured against the actual physical experience I was undergoing.
If you want to make the greatest progress in your training, truly take hold of the fact that you are not a robot, but a living dynamic being. And track what that looks like for a deeper understanding of where you are, where you were and where you can go!
Dare To Evolve,
Shane.
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