WHAT TO DO IF YOU MISS STRENGTH TRAINING DAYS

If you are training, not just working out at the gym, but doing a program that requires that you do certain things at certain times throughout the week with specified amounts of weight, you are approaching strength training in a way that most people do not because most people do not have the wherewithal to put together six months of actual dedicated training, even really much less, six weeks. If you're actually training with weights, you're on a schedule and you don't miss workouts, then you are doing something that very few people do. Very few people approach their training in this way. But if you approach it this way, you get results: you get stronger and you get bigger. In fact, if you want to get bigger and stronger, there's no other way you can approach it. You have to put the some thought into the workouts that you're going to do: when you're going to do them, how you're going to do them, what you're going to do them with, your equipment... Primarily the schedule.

The schedule is extremely important if you're going to actually train. Your schedule will depend on your level of training advancement. The level of training advancement is discussed in excruciating detail in "Practical Programming for Strength Training". If you're actually interested in doing this correctly, you need to get that book and read it a couple of times and set your workouts up correctly.

For someone just starting off who is a what Mark Rippetoe calls a novice, every one of your workouts will pretty much be a total body workout, and every one of those workouts will feature an increase in weight on all of the exercises that you do that day. If you're starting off in the typical novice fashion:

1. You're going to squat, you're going to bench press, and you're going to deadlift on Monday.
2. Then Wednesday, you're going to come in and you're going to squat again, you're going to press, and then instead of deadlifting, you're going to power clean.
3. And then on Friday, you're going to come in and squat again, bench press again, and deadlift again.

Every one of those exercises is going to use a little bit more weight than they used on the previous workout. So that week is going to feature the squat going up 5 pounds every time. The press and the bench press will both go up from their previous work set weights, and the deadlift will go up as well. It's very important that you correctly pick the increases in weight that you use. Don't try to go up 10 pounds on the squat per workout. Don't do that on the deadlift either. You're only going to do the power clean probably once a week, and you're probably going to want to go up 2.5 pounds on the power clean. But the increase is what is making you stronger. So the increase is terribly critical to the success of this program. You have to go up, but you can't go up too much. And if you don't go up enough, you're just wasting your time.

But this will always happen. There'll be a day where you can't make your workout. You got to go to a funeral or your mom's in the hospital. You have no control over your schedule that day. So, you have to figure out what you're going to do in the event that a workout gets missed. This will come up. It doesn't matter how dedicated you are. It doesn't matter how serious you are about your training. It will happen because we're humans and we've got to live within our means, so to speak. We're subject to the whims of our existence. So, you've got to figure out what you're going to do if you're going to miss a workout on Friday. So, what do you do?

If you're going to miss Friday's workout, you're either going to know in advance that you're going to miss Friday's workout or something's just going to happen at the last minute and you're just not there for Friday, what do you do? This will of course depend upon your level of training advancement. What Mark Rippetoe recommends is to do this. If you are on the novice progression and you're going up in weight on all exercises every time you come in the gym, you will miss that workout and do what you would have done on Friday on Monday. It's just that simple. You're going to have an extra two days of rest in between the workouts. This won't hurt you, but if it keeps happening all the time, it will hurt you because the missed workouts will accumulate into missed sets and missed reps at the end of a set. That's what will happen. So, you don't want to do that. But if you have to, what you do is you just take Friday off and you do that workout on Monday. Do that workout on Monday and everything will be pretty much OK because if you're serious about this, you've already arranged your schedule so that you're not missing workouts.

If you miss a workout every month, you need to not do that. That's something you need to try to avoid having done. But by the same token, if it's something that you legitimately cannot control, you know, don't let it keep you awake at night, just come back in the next time you can and do that workout. For example, if you are in a situation where you're training Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Monday, and Wednesday are normal workouts (everything went exactly right), and an uncle dies, and you got to go to the funeral on Friday. Just go to the funeral and then come in on Saturday and do Friday's workout. There's nothing wrong with doing it like that. What that means is you've got one less rest day between that workout and Monday's workout. It's okay. You did that on Monday to Wednesday. So, it'll be all right every once in a while. Although, the week is set up to where the two-day rest on the weekends becomes very important, the more advanced you become in your training and the more fatigue that you can apply to yourself in that workout. So, if it occurs, don't worry about it. Don't let it keep you up at night because that's just as bad is not getting recovered.

If you're in a situation where you're training on a weekly basis, in other words, you're an intermediate training where each week is a block of training. If you're a novice, you're doing 3 sets of 5 reps on your squats three days a week. But if you're an intermediate level trainee, you might be doing a higher volume workout on Monday (a set of 10 reps or a set of 8 reps), doing light squats on Wednesday, and then doing 3 sets of 5 reps for PR on Friday. So, your training is a week long. If you miss one of those workouts, it's a bigger deal. If you've gotten to the point where you're doing intermediate level work, then you have already committed your time to this program and you'll figure out a way around these kinds of things. Like if there's a funeral on Friday, you'll go to the funeral, then you'll come in late Friday and do that workout and get it in because it's important to you, and your dead uncle will understand. He would probably have done the same thing. So when you're doing your workouts according to longer periods of time (you're an intermediate or advanced trainee), you'll have already committed to being there for the workout. That's just what you do. It's just what happens. It's an important part of your life that at that point you're going to have to figure out how to compensate for schedule interruptions.

If you're an advanced trainee, you've been training two years and your program is now blocked off in a group of weeks instead of one week at a time or a month, or two months. This get these things can get complicated when you're up in your 600s when you're squatting. They get complicated. You got to make plans to do these workouts and the plans can't be interrupted. If you're an intermediate or a late intermediate or an advanced trainee, you already know how to do it this way. You've already committed to it. And this is just a part of actual training for strength under the bar.

So get the grey book "Practical Programming for Strength Training" and read it. There's several suggestions for how to do this in there. But those complicated workouts cannot be compromised because if you miss a workout on an advanced program that may set you back three weeks. The further along you go, the more dependent on each workout you become. So keep these things in mind while you're training. You need to be making plans for how the world gets in the way of your training.

Bibliographic references:

• Starting Strength. (2026). Don´t Miss Training Days, But If You Do Watch This [Video file]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/gTPGgMxIhC0?si=_VGYew7P0e2JU6Rb
• Rippetoe M. (2014). Practical Programming for Strength Training, 3rd Edition. The Aasgaard Company.