Here’s something you’re probably sick of hearing: athletic performance outcomes are contingent on regimented work; athletes need to adhere to the training plan in order to stay on track towards achieving their goals; these plans are carefully sequenced, periodized, and timed in order to peak the athlete for competition; deviation from this regimen should only be exceptions, and more often than not are the results of setbacks. While all of these aphorisms may have their element of truth to them, I’m here to tell you that just because you have a training plan, with carefully planned out periodization, you have a lot more flexibility and latitude than you think you do. Furthermore, exercising this flexibility does not signal a lack of discipline or motivation, nor is it a sign of slacking off. Quite the opposite, being flexible in how you execute your program can be a sign of versatility, self-awareness, creativity, and lead to better performance outcomes in the end.

In strength and conditioning programming, we generally talk about periodization in terms of cycles. The macrocycle, which we generally refer to as training blocks, denote the phases of your training within the competition season, for instance, the as short as eight and as long as 16 week programming for either preparation, specification, pre-competition, competition peaking, transition, etc. The mesocycle, is the cyclic accumulation of volume and intensity within a macrocycle, generally a three to four week accumulation, followed by a one week back off. Finally, the microcycle is your week to week training, by which you generally know that within a given macrocycle, the same sets of exercises you are going to perform on each weekly training day. But here’s the thing, there is no inherent reason why your microcycle needs to be a week long, and sometimes, shortening or lengthening the microcycle from the standard seven-day week may be beneficial, provided that you also control for some other factors.     
I once asked Greg if there is any inherent reason why a microcycle has to be seven days, and his response to me was that there is no reason that it needs to be, only that it is awfully convenient. And he is right, virtually most of world use the seven day week, with a five day work/two day off split. What is important to realize is that this measurement of time, by which we have organized most of our work and social lives around, was standardized due to a complex interplay of structural economic changes, labor movements, and political considerations. As such, maybe for most of us, working off a seven-day microcycle in training might be more convenient in fitting our training around our work and social lives, it may not necessarily be optimal in certain situations.

The first situation is if someone’s own schedule does not follow the standard workweek structure. People like shift-workers, academics, contractors, often find themselves working around the clock, and the notion of a weekend is more of a moving target. Furthermore, given the rise of remote work and working from home, more people are finding more flexibility in their workweek, but conversely, also that they are working more on weekends due to lack of separation between work and rest. Some people may work ten days on and five days off. In these situations, it is entirely possible to imagine a microcycle that is more compatible with their work rhythms.

Another situation that is related to the first: you may want a longer microcycle in order to provide yourself with more recovery but still have the same amount of exposure and frequency of exercises. Let’s say you are given a program in which you are training four days a week. Instead of trying to find four days within a regular 7-day week, perhaps it takes you 10 days to get through each week of the program, giving you an extra three days of recovery, while still keeping the same amount of load, volume, and frequency over the duration of the program. The only difference being, it will take you about 30% longer to finish. But that’s okay, as long as you plan for it depending on what your competition season looks like.

Conversely, there might be situations where your microcycles are shorter than the seven-day standard. Perhaps you’re starting your competition season training later than usual for one reason or another, and need to accumulate a higher volume over a shorter period of time. However, in situations like these, you have to be extremely mindful of your recovery. Fitting in 10 workouts in a five day microcycle can work if you are really dialed in and you have adjusted the load and volume in order to accommodate the increased frequency.

What is important if you are considering going this route of changing your microcycle from the standard seven days is that you plan accordingly and understand the cascading affect that this will have on the rest of your competition season in terms of timing. If every macrocycle takes you 30% longer than usual to complete, then you will need to adjust accordingly, and cut the macrocycles shorter in order to adjust for it. Alternatively, perhaps you want to start your training season earlier, because you still want to keep the same total volume and tonnage accumulated over the course of the entire season. Furthermore, you will have to do the additional work of being more diligent in tracking your training because it doesn’t map on to our normalized vernacular of Sunday to Monday.

In the end, when it comes to improving athletic outcomes, any program will work provided that they adhere to certain scientifically proven fundamental principles, such as progressive overload, frequency, periodization, and rest. As Marine General Jim Mattis once said, “doctrine is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” So, get creative, figure out what your body needs and what will work for you. These structures and guidelines we’ve built around training are not universal, divine givens, but social constructs, and in the social sciences, I always like to tell folks, you make your own history, albeit not under conditions of your own choosing.