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If you are moderately successful in your field of choice, then you probably already know that planning is one of the major keys to success in everything we do. You can just show up and ‘wing it’ for only so long before you start to be passed up by your competitors, who have their plans of action put together better than you do.

One planning tool which is used by bodybuilding, powerlifters, fitness/figure competitors, and athletes of all sport involves the concept of periodization. In the planning sense, it is the breaking up of goals into units small to large. You can then select each of them for several purposes. You can make goals for each period, and the plans of action you will establish for each as well. Let’s look at the standard terminology used when it comes to periodization for the bodybuilder.

Training unit
This is your actual daily workout. This can be 12 sets for chest and 8 sets for triceps, performed early on a Tuesday morning. Or it can be a workout split into two sections, in different parts of the day. This is one training session – a unit.

Microcycle
This is one week of training. Goals for times like this would include items like “lose one pound of fat” or “move up 2.5 pounds on the bench press for 10 repetitions. This workout cycle will be a Monday-Friday list of training days. Not too specific, but enough to encompass everything you do in a single week – that’s a Microcycle.

Mesocycle
This is a period of 2 to 4 months. This might be a single steroid cycle, a pre-contest diet, a powerlifting phase, or a bulking period. This is one of the 3-4 goals we have per year – a Mesocycle.

Macrocycle
This time lasts 1 to 4 years, and encompasses those bigger life goals like “lose 100 pounds of fat” or “gain 25 pounds of lean muscle”. This doesn’t happen in 6 months. These are the bigger goals of your life, and area accomplished in a Macrocycle.

You may be using periodization already and not even know it. You might set your goals and planning up in this manner already. If so, keep rocking – you are on the right path. If not, then you should consider changing things up and seeing if doing so would be a wise move for you. As always, no matter what tool you use to split up your training routines and to establish your long term goals, as long as you are actually planning (by putting the pen to paper or fingers to keyboard), you already have an advantage over your competitors who are just flying by the seat of their pants!