If you’ve followed me, my style of training, and the kind of programs I design for any real length of time (say, oh, anything longer than 5 minutes or so), you know I’m a fan of getting a lot of different things done at one time – or at least with one program.

I’m also a fan of being good at many things rather than being great at any one thing. The reasons for this are several, but here are a couple of the most important:

1 – the first venture into "real" strength & conditioning training (instead of just the pumping routines listed in many of the bodybuilding magazines) I had was trying to figure out how to design workouts for MMA fighters. Remember, this was back in the late ’90s and early ’00s – back when MMA was still banned on cable/PPV, tape trading was the norm (though "hush, hush"), and very few guys fought full-time.

This was formative to how I wanted to design programs, as MMA had such a wide need of different physical qualities, and most guys had to work a full-time job (sometimes more than one) just to put food on the table and support their families, much less train. And in those days, it wasn’t going to the local MMA gym to train – it was doing BJJ, boxing, wrestling, kickboxing/muay thai, and maybe more – all multiple times per week. Workouts had to be short, to the point, highly effective, accomplish a lot of different things, and not drain recovery.

2 – A lot of the people who do my programs are the "regular guy" (or gal). While they might not be professional fighters, they are in much the same position as the old school MMAists I mentioned above. They want (and need) to get complete and all encompassing workout programs in – ones that make them stronger, more explosive, keep them lean, build a strong heart and lungs, promote flexibility, increase vitality and health, etc.

Most of all, these are folks that not only want to look good, but want to be able to "be" good. There’s not much point in looking like the guy in the fitness ad if you get winded doing yardwork, or bringing in the groceries could be considered a maximal effort.

And, like the fighters, most "regular guys" (and gals) lead pretty busy lives – full-time jobs (and let’s face it – "full-time" these days many times means 50+ hours/week), kids, a spouse, honey-do lists, school events, and more.

They don’t have all day to train, either.

So when I put together programs, I like to get a lot done, do it all at one time, and accomplish many different things if I can. On a scale from 1 to 10, I’d rather be a 7 or 8 across the board, instead of a 9 or a 10 in a couple different things, and a 3 or 4 at everything else.

That’s where I have to return to one of my old bodybuilding-based books.

I’ve mentioned these guys before, but back in the ’90s, there was a company called Optimum Training Systems. The company was headed by Leo Costa, Jr., and in some capacity, he worked with a guy by the name of Dr. R.L. Horine. In fact, for a while, the "Golden Eagle" Tom Platz even partnered with them.

I won’t bore you with the long story, so here’s the cliff notes – Costa had built up a fairly successful personal training business in California, and, as the story goes, was supposedly invited overseas to attend a symposium where Bulgarian Olympic lifting coaches (who had some of the most successful lifters in the world) would reveal the secrets they used to train their lifters. After learning as much as he could (and with supposedly even a return trip to Bulgaria, I think – but don’t quote me), Costa came back to the States and wrote a series of books, applying what he’d learned to bodybuilding.

If memory serves me correctly, the first book was called "Bulgarian Power Burst Training", then "Serious Growth", then "Big Beyond Belief", and I can’t remember what the fourth one was called.

Now since that time, I’ve come to learn that the stuff Costa wrote about in his books didn’t really mimic what the Bulgarians did, and the programs he had int he book were so damn volume heavy overall that they’d kill most folks. But really, that didn’t matter a whole lot to me, as I learned some pretty good stuff from Costa’s writings that I still use to this day.

One of the things he wrote about was what he termed "micro-periodization".

Basically, micro-periodization was just compressing the entire concept of periodization into very short timespan. So, while using traditional linear periodization, an entire cycle might take a year or longer, spending a few months (or at least several weeks) in each phase of training, you would actually complete an entire cycle in just one week, performing a day or two of training each week in each phase or style of training.

So, if you had a phase dedicated to endurance training, a phase dedicated to hypertrophy, and a phase dedicated to strength development, you’d do workouts dedicated to each phase each week. It’s pretty similar to conjugate and concurrent forms of periodization.

However, the way I liked to use micro-periodization was to incorporate different movements and lifts into athletic-based programs (that would also involve some vanity work now and again). And by no means are you limited to endurance, hypertrophy, and strength training – you could pick any three forms of training you wanted.

For instance, say you did a workout devoted to bodyweight exercise, a workout devoted to strength work, and a workout devoted to complex training.

Or a workouts that went from high volume, low intensity (i.e. – lower weight used), to medium volume, medium intensity, then to low volume, high intensity, rotating exercises and/or movement planes with each workout.

Or workout that concentrated on maximum power, then intense conditioning, then ending the week off with adding some additional muscle?

See what I mean – as long as you’re smart about it, there are a whole variety of ways to implement this type of ‘do-it-all’ protocol to your programs.