CHAPTER 44

Instinctive Training and Returning After a Layoff

“To really make instinctive training work for you, you have to know your body inside and out, and you need a strong work ethic. Otherwise it’s too easy to be lazy and call it ‘instinctive training.’”

– Frank Sepe, top bodybuilding model and columnist for MuscleMag International, offering caveats on instinctive training.

When you first begin bodybuilding you can’t go wrong by following an organized, preset program. Use the information you find in books such as this one and magazines such as Reps! and MuscleMag International. Make sure to also learn firsthand from knowledgeable trainers at your gym. Look for someone with a good attitude who has a body you want to emulate. If you read and learn, your workouts will be both productive and safe. Eventually, after all this reading, learning (and most important, doing!) you’ll become more in tune with your body. You will know its strengths and weaknesses. You’ll recognize what exercises give you great results and which ones seem almost useless for you. Perhaps most important, you’ll be able to recognize when you are just being lazy and when you really do need a day off.

The instinctive principle is without doubt the most advanced and important of all training philosophies. But its success depends on you and you alone. No one else can tell you what works best for your physique. It takes years to master instinctive training, but once you do, you’ll be master of your own destiny.

The instinctive principle can be applied both short term and long term. Short term refers to modifying your workouts on a daily basis to suit your individual body needs and rhythms. Let’s face it, there will be days when you can’t max out on your exercises. There will even be days when your body is warning you that the best thing to do that day is avoid the gym entirely. Odds are this was preceded by a stretch of great workouts using maximum or near-maximum workout poundage. The secret is knowing when your body is telling you this and when your mind is telling you that it’s a really nice day and wouldn’t you rather sit on a patio somewhere drinking beer?

Instinctive training also means listening to the individual bodyparts. Let’s say one day you plan on working chest but before your workout you realize your legs feel like they are lacking. You might decide to work legs that day and move your chest to the next day.

Long-term instinctive training means adding and dropping exercises to suit your body’s unique characteristics. In short it means experimenting. For example, most bodybuilding books (this one included) consider flat barbell presses, squats and chin-ups to be among the best beginning and intermediate level mass-building exercises. But for some bodybuilders barbell bench presses do nothing more than tear up the shoulders or build the triceps. Likewise, squats may do more for your glutes than your thighs. And chins, while being the staple of many a great back workout, might leave you with a great biceps pump, but do nothing for your lats. If after a period of a few months you discover that some exercises seem to be doing nothing in regards to your development – get rid of them. What’s the use of doing a “must do” exercise if it “don’t do?” Use your instinct and find the exercises that are best for you.

However, it must be said that instinctive training can also be used as an excuse to be lazy. Maybe you aren’t working back today, telling yourself that your chest really feels the need, just because you prefer working chest to back. Maybe you are telling yourself that squats do nothing for you because you just don’t like to work that hard. You must always take a close look at your reasons for changing your routine.

Photo of Chris Cormier by Jason Breeze

Besides using the instinctive principle to modify your training, you can rely on it to determine when to take some time off. No matter how precise your exercise technique or attention paid to nutrition, heavy training will be very demanding on your body. Your recovery system will constantly be working overtime to prepare you for the next workout, and the heavy poundage may begin to take its toll on your joints and your nervous system. When you find yourself feeling sluggish, lacking motivation and generally aching all over, take a week or two off. As I stressed earlier and repeat again here, you WILL NOT lose any muscle mass over those weeks off. In fact you might even gain a few pounds as your recovery system is given a chance to fully catch up. Your time off will also do wonders for your joints and allow all those little aches and pains to heal. And perhaps most of all, your training drive and motivation level will go through the roof. You’ll go back refreshed, re-energized and ready to tear the place apart. And if you need an ego boost you should be aware that after a couple of weeks off and a few days to ease back in, you will probably find your poundage jumping to a whole new level.

However, if you’ve only been working out for three weeks you do not need the time off. If you’ve been working like a madman and know that you are training too hard at this point, you should just calm down rather than take time off. Taking time off when you have just begun training is likely to cause you to get out of the habit again – the last thing you want.

COMING BACK AFTER A LAYOFF

I’d be negligent if, after advising you to listen to your body and take time off, I didn’t give some sort of guidance on resuming your training. It’s not just a matter of heading back to the gym and loading the bars and machines up with the same weight you were lifting before you took time off. You have to ease back into your training. Generally speaking, the longer you were off, the longer and more gradual the lead-in time. If you were off for only a week or two, a couple of 50- to 75-percent intensity workouts will probably suffice. But let’s say you were off for a couple of months (nothing wrong with this and more bodybuilders should try it). Maybe you got a new job, there’s someone new in your life or you just needed time away from the gym. No matter what the reason, you haven’t even seen a dumbell in two or three months and that latest issue of MuscleMag International with Jay Cutler on the cover has got you chomping at the bit. So what’s the first thing you should do? How do you get back into the swing of things without tearing yourself up or pushing your body back into an overtrained state?

Photo of Tom Platz by Paula Crane

Photo of Brian Chamberlain by Ralph DeHaan

THE COMEBACK WORKOUT

Few workouts are as important as the one following a layoff. In fact it’s probably more important than the very first one you ever performed. You’re now much stronger and capable of subjecting your body to far more stress than when you started training. Your technique may have been primitive the first time you strolled into the gym, but the lighter weight would probably allow you to escape serious injuries. It took many months, if not years, to condition your body to rep with hundreds of pounds of weight. You don’t just take a couple of months off and then walk back in the gym and pick up where you left off. Unfortunately that’s what many bodybuilders attempt to do. The end result is either extreme soreness or worse: some sort of injury.

Your first step on your return to working out is deciding what to wear. My suggestion is to dress “heavier” than normal. By this I mean a sweatshirt and track pants instead of a tank top or T-shirt and shorts. The extra clothes will keep you warm as well as preventing you from staring into the mirror to see if you shrunk while you were off. Trust me, you haven’t, but you’d be surprised how many bodybuilders think they have.

The next step is to design a 12- to 14-day introductory training program. I suggest doing full-body training, one exercise per bodypart and keep it short and sweet; say 1 to 2 sets of 12 to 15 reps. Your workout should take no more than 45 minutes. If you think this is a simple workout, you’re right. It is. But it’s supposed to be. After a couple of months off, this is about all your body can handle. In fact, after being off for a few months this is all you’ll need in the way of stimulation to get your muscles to grow again.

Besides the low number of sets, select a weight that is about half of what you’d normally use. Even if your strength levels are still high, resist the urge to put more weight on the bar or stack. Remember, the goal is to simply get the muscles used to contracting again. Subjecting them to hundreds of pounds after many weeks of doing nothing is neither necessary nor safe.

Stick with this routine for about two weeks. You can gradually ease back to regular training poundage, but always make sure you’ve warmed up properly. If you’re like most bodybuilders you were probably becoming set in your ways before your layoff. In fact it could very well have been such monotonous training that led you to stop training in the first place. If so, don’t make the mistake of falling back into the same rut. Your motivation level may be sky-high upon resuming training, but it won’t take many weeks of such repetitiveness to push you back to square one. Try experimenting with a whole new program when you get back to the gym. Shift muscle groups around, try new exercises, incorporate some new training techniques. Odds are you’ll end up with a routine far more productive than the one you were following before the layoff. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when resuming training after a layoff:

• Always dress warmly to prevent injuries.
• Don’t attempt to pick up where you left off. Ease back into training.
• Perform only one exercise per bodypart.
• Keep the number of sets to 1 or 2.
• Keep the rep range medium to high – 12 to 15.
• Use only 50 to 75 percent of the weight your strength levels will allow.
• Resist the urge to put more weight on the bar.
• Experiment with new exercises and techniques after a few weeks of training.

RETURNING TO ACTION
Here is a sample workout you can follow for a few weeks to get you back into the swing of things after a layoff. You may switch the exercises, but don’t add extra sets.
EXERCISE	SETS	REPS
Bodypart – Legs
Squats	2	12–15
Leg Curls	2	12–15
Standing Calf Raises	2	15–20
Bodypart – Chest
Flat Barbell Presses	2	12–15
Bodypart – Back
Chin-Ups	2	12–15
Bodypart – Shoulders
Dumbell Front Presses	2	12–15
Bodypart – Biceps
Barbell Curls	2	12–15
Bodypart – Triceps
Triceps Pushdowns	2	12–15
Bodypart – Abdominals
Swiss-Ball Crunches	2	12–15
There you have it – 18 sets in total. Allowing for about a minute to do a set and a minute between sets you should be able to complete this comeback workout in 35 to 40 minutes. After a couple of weeks you can revert back to a split routine if you wish.