When you first start lifting weights, almost any decent programme will work. In fact, your biggest problem is rarely finding the 'perfect' plan. It’s just sticking to one for long enough to master the movements and progressively add a meaningful amount of weight to the bar.
That's the only 'secret'.
But after enough years in the gym, you begin to notice that not every session arrives under equal conditions. Some days the weights move like they’re filled with helium. On others, your warm-up feels suspiciously like a max-effort set.
According to Arnold Schwarzenegger, recognising these differences – and knowing what to do with that information – is a skill in itself.
In The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, he calls this ‘The Instinctive Principle’.
Arnold’s Instinctive Principle
‘When you begin bodybuilding training and are attempting to master the fundamental exercises and create a basically sound muscle structure, it pays to follow a set programme,’ writes Schwarzenegger.
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In his earlier training years, Arnold says he followed his workouts in ‘a rigid, set pattern, the same way every time’. That changed when he began training with fellow bodybuilding legend Dave Draper.
Draper would arrive at the gym knowing which body parts he was training and which exercises he intended to perform. But he didn’t necessarily follow the same running order every time.
‘If he usually began a back workout with wide-grip chins, he might decide instead to begin with bent-over rows and finish off with chins,’ says Arnold.
Occasionally, Draper might abandon his normal workout altogether and do ‘something entirely different’: 15 sets of bench presses, fewer sets performed with heavier weights or a high number of sets completed rapidly.
This wasn’t just random exercise selection. Draper had spent enough time training to recognise what his body was capable of on any given day.
‘He had learned to trust his instincts to help guide him through his workouts,’ says Schwarzenegger. ‘I learned from Dave that the body has its own rhythms, that it is different from day to day and that the more advanced you become, the more you need to be aware of these variations and cycles.’
Training for the Body You Have, Today
Arnold’s principle shares some ground with what we’d now call autoregulation: adjusting parts of your training in response to your performance, rather than assuming you’ll be capable of exactly the same output each time you enter the gym.
Modern autoregulation is generally more structured than Draper’s approach. Methods using rating of perceived exertion, repetitions in reserve or bar speed allow lifters to adjust their loads or volume while still following the broad direction of a programme.
In practice, this might mean reducing the load when your warm-ups feel unusually heavy, adding weight when everything is flying or stopping a set based on the number of good reps you genuinely have left.
Basically, using your instincts.
Even though there's now some science to back it up, research has also shown that most of us haven't yet honed the judgement necessary to really 'follow our instincts'. A review of 12 studies found that lifters tended to underestimate how many repetitions they had remaining, with accuracy improving as they moved closer to failure.
Which brings us to Arnold’s warning.
This Isn’t Permission to Programme Hop
‘Let me caution you, however, that this awareness does not come overnight,’ he writes. ‘A year or more of training is usually needed before you can begin to profit from making these occasional instinctive adjustments in your programme.’
Occasional is the operative word.
The Instinctive Principle isn’t permission to choose a new workout every time you step into the gym. Constantly swapping exercises, rep ranges and training methods makes progress incredibly difficult to track. Worse still, ‘listening to your body’ can quickly become a convenient excuse to skip the movements you find difficult, avoid heavy sets and chase whichever workout looks most entertaining on Instagram.
Keep logging your lifts. Keep progressing the same fundamental movements. Keep the overall goal intact. Then, when experience tells you that today calls for more weight, less volume or a different exercise order, act on it.
Just make sure it’s instinct speaking – not boredom, or cowardice.
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