Step Three: Use a phase-training approach over your ten-week training period.

    The overall training schedule in this work is broken down into two high-intensity
training phases, one five weeks long and one four weeks long, separated by one week of medium-intensity workouts. The reason for the medium-intensity week is simple-it heals your recovery ability and prevents over training.
This back-off period is necessary because of the way the body handles stress.

    Dr. Hans Selye called this stress-coping mechanism the General Adaptation Syndrome, stating that when your body encounters a repeated stress like high-intensity weight training, it goes through three levels of response, as follows:

    Alarm: During the first one to two weeks of training your body begins adjusting as it prepares to compensate for the new stress.

    Resistance: During weeks three to five body actually adapts to the stress by getting bigger.

Exhaustion: During week six your body hits a wall, or plateau, and your gain are stalled as as a state of over training sets in.

    By shifting into a medium-intensity phase after four to five weeks of high intensity-training, you avoid exhaustion. In other words, you can go from alarm to resistance, back to alarm and then to resistance again. With this strategy you get two growth surges, resistance stages in a 10-week period, whereas if you continued with a high-intensity training without a break, you'd dig yourself into an over training rut-the exhaustion stage-and cause your muscle growth to stop completely and perhaps even regress.
[For a more detailed explanation of Seyle's General Adaptation Syndrome and sample phase-training bodybuilding itineraries, see IRONMAN's Home Gym Handbook.]

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