Hi, just a quick question to help shed some light on a discussion i’ve been having with some mates. Has anyone ever trained in an “instinctive” way by that I mean still with a template or bodypart split of some sort but without any fixed routine for that day.
We thought it might be fun for a little while to just turn up on leg day or whatever and do what ever we feel like doing on that day. Might be singles, might be high reps, might be circuits or supersets. In the era of high-tech program design it could be a bit of fun just to wing it for a while. Just wondered if any of you guys had done anything like this before and what were the results like? Thanks in advance fellas.
Absolutely, i like to do this once every 6 months or so just for a month or two… i cant say i have ever noticed any special gains from it, but it IS nice for a change of pace.
Oh yeah, I don’t do it normally its pretty random. I simply walk into the gym and it feels like a good day to do some heavy ass deads or a good arm day and so on.
Ya I have actually been doing that for the past 2 1/2 months after about 3 years of doing set programs, keeping a log etc. Honestly, I think its going to be very tough to stop working out like this since I find my intensity is so much higher when you don’t have to think of tempos, how many reps you got etc. Not to mention strength and size has increased quite dramatically.
Thanks for the replies guys we’ve decided were gonna give it a go for a while and see what happens. We used to do it everynow and again just for one session when we had nothing planned and always ended up with killer workouts! It will be intresting to see the results of this type of training in the long term…
I follow programs, but I no longer record the weights im using.
Instead I determine how much to lift each session based on my warm-up
Ive only been doing this for about 2 months, but my previous best deadlift was 335, and in my last workout I repped 355 for 3. Still not amazing, but shows you dont have to be exact with the numbers.
[quote]Natural Nate wrote:
I’ve been doing instinctive training lately. Which is probably why I end up skipping the gym in favor of dumping chocolate sauce on myself in the tub.[/quote]
Ok just to give anyone who cares a quick update we’ve opted for an upper/lower split trained lower on Monday and upper tonight and it was hard as hell!!!
We warmed everything up with a few light sets then pyramided up to are first heavy set on the first exercise and thats where things got crazy. As soon as I finished that first set I jumped up picked another exercise for an opposing body part and off I went. My 2 training partners followed suit and the pace was super intense, we only rested long enough to decide what the next excersise was going to be and then got on with it.
The whole session including warm up only took about 40 minutes and at the end we were totally wiped out and sweating like pigs and even though the reps were low and the weights heavy we all got really pumped. I think we’ll play around with this for a little while and see how things go.
I usually train at college, but when I’m at home for breaks and don’t have a gym membership, I train in my friends basement. We’re always spontaneous and I always try to do something totally different than what I’ve been doing back at my normal gym.
It’s refreshing, I think it’s an absolutely great idea if you know how to listen to your body properly.
A lot of novices don’t know how to listen to their bodies, so they just go in there and lift the same weight every week.
But if you know what your body is telling you and can up the weights when you need to or change around the rep range, etc… then by all means go ahead.
My 2 training partners followed suit and the pace was super intense, we only rested long enough to decide what the next excersise was going to be and then got on with it.
The whole session including warm up only took about 40 minutes and at the end we were totally wiped out and sweating like pigs and even though the reps were low and the weights heavy we all got really pumped. I think we’ll play around with this for a little while and see how things go.[/quote]