Is a Maintenance Phase Ever a Good Idea?
There have been times in my lifting journey when I contemplated a maintenance phase and even tried it once. I still feel the temptation now and then, as I have been doing more combat sports this year, and it’s not so easy to strive for progress in two physically taxing disciplines at once. That said, my view on maintenance phases is that it depends on two things. 1. What does one mean by maintenance, and 2. The psychology behind seeking out a maintenance phase.
What Do We Mean by Maintenance?
Typically when I look to enter a maintenance phase regarding my body composition goals, this is relatively simple. I have been tracking my calories for quite some time, and eating in a maintenance range, on average, is not an issue. The same goes for lifting. However, the concept of maintenance is simple in theory, but in reality, I don’t think it works.
Fitness and bodybuilding, in particular, contain many nuggets of wisdom which apply to other skill-based disciplines, which teach us something about universal laws of our nature and the world around us. And never in human history has any person, business or civilisation been able to pull off maintenance.
We have two options. To grow or to decline. All living organisms on the planet seek to expand themselves. We are no different in this regard. Progress and growth are crucial in achieving our primary objective: survival.
Attempting to maintain one’s physique requires that one also seeks to grow their physique.
So in asking what we mean by maintenance, does this mean producing the same volume, intensity and form, across all exercises, whilst maintaining the same body weight? If so, this is going to fail to work out in reality.
A more realistic goal would be one of the following actions instead:
To continue on the path towards progress.
To periodise one’s training and to accept a progress tradeoff by shifting the goalposts. i.e. An example of this would be to sacrifice progress on increasing muscle mass while in a calorie deficit to improve body composition by losing body fat.
The psychology behind seeking out a maintenance phase
‘No More Mr Nice Guy’, authored by Dr Robert Glover, has been a critical resource in my self-development journey. One of the key traits of what he terms ‘the nice guy syndrome’ is squandering potential by attempting to live a problem-free life.
Is this one of our motivations for seeking out a maintenance phase?
Maybe not. Maybe it is an attempt at setting your training and nutrition journey to cruise control so you can focus on other areas.
That was the way I had previously rationalised it, at least. But make no mistake; this is the proverbial serpent in the garden of Eden.
If other areas of life, or even other fitness-related disciplines, are the real motivation, then it would be better to initially scale back on one’s training frequency and continue striving for progress within the new set of constraints.
If you want maintenance-free assistance with smashing your training and body composition goals, check out my online training service.