Fitness Tip - Macro, Meso, and Micro

This week's fitness post from Kalev Personal Trainer, Virgil Isaacs:

Two weeks ago I went through a period of low energy and lack of motivation in the gym. I would try my hardest to psych myself up before a workout…before a set…and nothing would come of it. I don’t know why, but for some reason the “fire” just wasn’t there. I began to think that maybe I’ve been over training. Maybe I was getting bored (which played a small roll. Thank goodness for muscle confusion). I thought maybe I needed to redefine my goals and change my approach, but I couldn’t think of any other performance or fitness levels I would like to train for. Before almost being ready to accept the stage as nothing but a “funk” I was in, I remembered my lessons in school about periodization.

Long term specific programs should be broken down into periods; cycles. The macrocycle is the entire program, taking you from point A to Z. The mesocycles are subdivisions of the macro, and the microcycles are further subdivisions of that. Every mesocycle has a rest period at the end of it to allow the body to completely heal and recharge for the next push.

Depending on what you’re training for, you may or may not have your program designed so rigidly. It may not be necessary. What’s most important is to remember that after every so often its important to take breaks like the ones at the end of every mesocycle, and allow your body to completely recover. I believe this is the step I forgot to take in my program which is the reason why I had such low energy levels. Instead of continuing to push myself for those two weeks, I should have backed off and stuck to a light cardio program for just one week, and I bet I would’ve been back in action the following week, ready to pick up from where I left off.

At least I know now for the end of the next “mesocycle“, which typically comes around every month on average.

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