You will see workout difficulties listed in various places on your Dashboard and Workout Calendar. The workout difficulties, training phases and ultimately your training schedule help to create your individualized periodization model. The periodization model trains your body in cycles allowing for maximum performance, proper resting, and avoiding overtraining.
Workout difficulties are simply general terms that we use to help explain how difficult your workouts will be on a weekly basis. Here is an important point with workout difficulties. Difficulties such as Very Easy or Very Hard do not dictate the training phase of your workouts, only the difficulty of your workouts. For example: You could be in an Endurance Phase and have both Hard or Easy workouts.
These workout difficulties are mathematically derived and supported with INOL values. You can also see your daily and weekly workout INOL values by looking at the workout metrics on your workout. You can also see a specific exercise INOL value by clicking on the information icon next to the exercise on your workout.
The INOL values were adapted from Prilepin’s Table by a man named Hristo Hristov in 2007. He did this so people and athletes in the broader lifting community (not just competitive Olympic lifters) could create and evaluate their strength training workouts to ultimately improve their performance.
Prilepin’s Table is named after A.S. Prilepin, a Soviet Sports Scientist. Prilepin, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, examined and compiled data from the training logs for thousands of athletes including World and Olympic weightlifting champions. His research and guidelines are highly regarded in the competitive weightlifting communities.
These short terms just help to give you an idea of what’s happening in your workout on a weekly basis. Here are the 7 WD’s we use throughout our system:
- Very Hard
- Hard
- Moderately Hard
- Moderate
- Moderately Easy
- Easy
- Very Easy