Thankfully, the intentions behind this industry chatter are typically genuine. Coaches want to help clients achieve results, and the general public is simply looking to feel better. However, amidst the confusion is a growing need for the fitness industry to develop a common language that both professionals and consumers can understand. And that common language should focus on helping society move better and more often for the long haul.

Promote Movement Quality

Changing the language of the industry may feel like an impossible task, but two principles are undeniable:

• Put movement quality first.
• Help people move more.

Regardless of your goals (muscle hypertrophy, strength, performance, etc.), these two factors are critical for the industry to head in the right direction. A movement-based approach to training has the potential for magic, and it needs to start in gym class for kids. The lack of a proprioceptive-enriched movement lifestyle for children is a major concern for society.

However, it is never too late to restore what Gray Cook calls “movement competency.” Here is Gray’s definition of how to find movement competency:

This we test with movement screening. If screening reveals pain or dysfunction in the form of limitation or asymmetry, there is a movement competency problem. Alternatively, there is a basic movement-aptitude problem—pick your term, but make the point. Adequate competency suggests acceptable fundamental-movement quality.

Achieving movement competency will be hard if we focus our fitness programs purely on looking better. I am a bodybuilder at heart and have worked on building bigger muscles and looking better since I was 15. Fast-forward almost 20-years and I have realized that my chase for aesthetics has left me with faulty movement patterns. I am now forced to work on improving my movement competency instead of working on looking good.

This doesn’t mean that I will never be able to work out for aesthetics, but I do need to earn the right to make that the sole focus of my training. Building muscle is increasingly important as you age, but you can still have a high-level of movement competency at any fitness level. Building muscle and getting stronger should be your main goal, once you start moving well.

A Catalyst for Change

This was my catalyst for developing a movement-based approach to hypertrophy training. In the past, bodybuilders would maybe perform light static stretching, five minutes on a cardio machine, and a few warm-up sets before jumping into a 25-set workout of chest and triceps. Young lifters without a lot of miles on their body can get away with this method for a while, but this approach may eventually leave you with asymmetries, injuries, pain, and frustratingly slow progress.

You don’t have to be in your fifties to have an old training age. As Dan John says, “It’s not the years, it’s the miles.” I have been training hard for almost 20-years with a week off here and there, but not often. The miles are deep in this young body.

If you want to last in the lifting game for the long run, endless sets of eight to 15 reps per body part may not be what your body needs. So, what should a person chasing a bodybuilding-type physique do instead of the typical splits? Revisit and master fundamental human movements and do them with realistic sets, reps, and loads. If you focus on moving better first, you will be surprised how fast your body will be able to get back to lifting heavy objects, often.

A Collaborative Design

Like any other trainer or strength coach, my philosophy has evolved over the years. These days, I follow philosophies of various tried-and-true methods.

Functional Movement Systems (FMS) is a useful approach to understand movement baselines and exercise modifications. Most people would benefit from an FMS screening. Along with a detailed health history at intake, FMS provides a solid foundation when designing programs. For the beginner or veteran, the fundamentals are where you start and finish.

Every strength and muscle hypertrophy program should include some variation of the following movements depending on the goal of the individual. This list is largely inspired by the legendary Dan John:

• Push: push-ups, bench press, overhead press
• Pull: dumbbell row, inverted row, chin-ups, pull-ups
• Squat: goblet squat, front squat, back squat, single-leg squat
• Hinge: deadlift, kettlebell swing, single-leg deadlifts, Olympic lifts
• Loaded Carry: farmer’s carry, suitcase carry, overhead carry, sandbag carry
• Groundwork: rocking, rolling, creeping, crawling, Turkish get-ups
• Core/Rotation/Anti-rotation: ab wheel rollouts, cable press outs, chops, lifts

The New Age Bodybuilding Template

Below is a foundational hypertrophy template that consists of lifting 3 days per week for 6 weeks. Dividing your strength and conditioning into four to six week phases will keep your body fresh, resilient, and improve general physical preparedness. This length of time seems to be the sweet spot, since most people have what I call “Exercise ADD.”

Program Components:

1. Correctives
2. Movement Preparation
3. Lift Weights
4. Finisher

Correctives

Correctives are based off of FMS and health history. For example, a perfect score for an Active Straight Leg is 3/3, 0 for pain. Your goal should be to achieve symmetry (a score of 2/2 or 3/3). If your score is 2/1, the following corrective exercises will use core and motor control to improve alternating hip flexion and extension.

• Alligator Breathing: Lay down in a comfortable position for 2-3 minutes. I prefer on the stomach to feel the abdominal wall. Breathe in and out through your nose. Focus on pulling air deep into your belly. It may help to imagine pulling air down into your feet.
• Assisted Leg Lowering: 10 reps each leg
• Cook Hip Lift: 5 x 10-second holds each side

Movement Preparation

Before you begin your workout spend 5-10 minutes on the following movement preparations:

• Kettlebell arm bars: 5 each side
• Half-kneeling kettlebell halos: 10 reps
• Goblet squat w/prying knees: 5 reps
• Lunge Matrix: 6 reps
• Plank to Down Dog: 10 reps (not in video)
• Inch Worm: 10 reps (not in video)
• Jump Rope: 2-5 minutes (not in video)

Lift Weights

Below are the rep rotations for the three lifting days. Organize your week so that you don’t lift two days in a row.

• Monday (or Tuesday): 5 x 5
• Wednesday (or Thursday): 8 x 3
• Friday (or Saturday): 3 x 8-12

The following exercise options are based on the fundamental movement patterns:

• Push: One-arm kettlebell press, single-arm bench press, push-ups
• Pull: Inverted row, chin-ups
• Squat: Goblet Squat, single-leg squat, front squats
• Hinge: Deadlift, single-leg deadlift, kettlebell swing
• Loaded Carry: farmer’s walk, suitcase carry
• Ground Work: Turkish get-ups, crawling and rolling
• Core (rotation/anti-rotation): McGill Big 3, rollouts, anti-rotation press outs

Finisher

Pick one conditioning finisher per training session:

• Air Bike Sprints: 6-8 rounds of 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off
• Concept2 Rower: 1,000 meters
• Ski Erg Sprints: 3 rounds of 1-minute on, rest 2 minutes in between sprints
• Sled Push/Pull: 5 x 50 yards
• Battling Ropes: 8 x 20 reps for 2 arm slams. Rest 30 seconds between sets.

Cool-Down

Proper recovery will provide your body with a better base to keep building muscle for the long haul. Before you skip out of the gym after your workout, run through this cool-down routine:

• Alligator breathing: 2 minutes
• Head nods: 10 reps up and down and 10 reps side to side
• Bird dogs: 10 reps/side
• Rock backs: 20 reps
• Egg rolls: 20 reps
• Get up and down off of the ground: 5-10 reps
• Baby crawling, Spiderman crawling: 30-40 yards each

Change Is Here

I will always be a meathead at heart. I love bodybuilding and I am amazed at the amount of weight powerlifters can move. But the “pedal to the metal” workouts eventually take their toll.

If we continue to direct the general public towards endless sets of body-part split workouts, force Olympic lifting on people who are not ready and may never be ready to perform, and max out on the squat, deadlift, and bench press, the long haul may never come. Let’s focus on keeping people moving instead.

The post Move Well First: A New Path for Coaching Fitness appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The methods that worked like a charm 10 years ago are relics by today’s standards. Teaching methods and coaches are evolving, as are the cookie-cutter software programs. In many respects, the convenience of these programs is worth its weight in gold. But are we losing some of the magic when we do it this way?

My Coaching History

I can’t speak for all coaches because I don’t know what they are up against. My story is a bit of an unusual one for a college strength coach. I paid my coaching dues in a unique way. I started at Eastern Kentucky University as an intern in the spring semester of 2000. Six weeks into my internship, my Head Strength Coach, Mike Kent, took the head job at the University of Louisville and had to leave. Because of the relative newness of his position at EKU, the administration was unprepared and asked me to fill in until a search could be conducted for Coach Kent’s replacement. I worked for three months alone, trying to keep an athletic department strength program afloat.

One of the most difficult tasks while filling in for him was programming the way he programmed. Get this: Kent wrote out every individual program by hand. Each team would have either one sheet or a series of sheets that would carry that team for a month or two. He created each plan in Excel, where the exercises would be built into the framework of the sheet. Then he would spend his weekend hand-programming loads for each athlete over the scope of the entire athletic department. One red pen, followed by hours and hours of work. Kent’s meticulous programming ensured every athlete got the level of individual attention that he felt they needed.

The Difference Between Sheets and White Boards

The coach-athlete relationship is an interesting one. When it comes to compliance, athletes are mandated to show up whether they like it or not, and they don’t have a say in their programming. If you are a private trainer or own a gym/box, your clients have more say. But one thing shines clear in all settings — the people training in your space want to feel like they are being given their due attention, not just as members of a group but as individuals.

There are only a few instances where using a whiteboard is acceptable in my facility. Most of the time, we use whiteboards when we are teaching. When we are trying to get techniques dialed in and where loads are not necessarily a priority, the first month or so is a great time to rely on a whiteboard. Again, in my situation, which is very specific, we will also keep a team on the whiteboard if the team members are not showing a level of dedication. Let’s face it, nobody on campus takes weight training as seriously as I do, and there are some teams who “go through the motions.” I advise my assistants to act accordingly. There’s no need to devote hours and hours of programming for a team that will not give an acceptable effort.

Again, I understand that in a CrossFit box, most clientele can be transient and not as consistent as a college team that is required to show up. That makes the individuality piece more of a headache since you don’t know the next time your clients will show up. But nothing tells your clients you are all in with them, like handing them each a sheet with their name on it. It’s a simple gesture that speaks volumes about your commitment to their progress. Yes, it can be time-consuming, but it can also be a difference between a lackluster effort and a herculean one.

Computer Programming Vs. Hand Programming

I have never used a computer to run percentages for one of my programs. I have always done it by hand. And honestly, I have never used a set percentage to assign loads except for deciding loads for the beginning of a hypertrophy cycle based on a newly minted one-rep max. The method I use is one that Coach Kent taught me, and it’s based on that method’s natural evolution after 16 years of doing it that way.

Computer programming based on percentages, to me, makes some pretty bold assumptions for the duration of a training cycle. First off, if you use a linear method as I do, you probably write for eight to 12 weeks at a time. If I write a twelve-week hypertrophy/strength/power program for a football player, code the weeks with prescribed percentages, and then tap in a one-rep max to be our baseline for the percentages, I am asking the athletes to be perfect with their nutrition, their rest, their effort — at all times. And let’s face it, none of them are. It’s nearly impossible for a person to be that dialed-in all of the time.

Hand programming gives me several advantages that a computer will never provide. First, even though I use what looks like an algebraic formula in my head to determine loads, I get the flexibility to adjust on the fly. You need that flexibility when Joe Blow rolls his ankle the Friday prior. Hand programming gives me an out when I realize that the whole team is about to bonk, and an impromptu deload week is what is needed. It allows me (or forces me, really) to get a complete read on each individual and holds my ass to the fire to stay engaged with each of my athletes. You can ask me at any time of a training cycle what the weight on so-and-so’s bench is on his second set, and 99 out of 100 times, I will know what’s going on.

How I Program

If you were to watch me program, this is what it would look like: I have a stack of sheets, and each one gets the signature “pause and think.” I have to look at the athlete’s name and quickly review and remember what this person did last week. Then the writing begins. I will program a sheet twice a week in some training phases, once for the first half, then once for the second. It keeps me as current as possible for each individual.

When it comes to coaching, I am selling an idea. I am selling a formula. I am asking my athletes to have complete faith in me as I make decisions for them. The way I operate gives my athletes complete freedom not to think. They come in, and their job is to be focused and present and, most importantly, ready to perform. I do all the thinking for them days earlier, so they can just come in and kick ass.

Hand programming is part of that. If I hand you a sheet of computer-printed numbers, it will excite you as much as combing your hair or putting mustard on your sandwich. But when I give you a sheet with my handwriting on it, you should see someone who is partnered with you. The handwriting tells the athletes I have taken the time to think about them every day of every week.

The post It’s 2021 and I Still Handwrite My Training Programs. Here’s Why appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Writing programs is easy. You just need to do between 1-20 sets of 1-100 reps per muscle group at between 5-120% of your 1RM and rest for 1-300 minutes between sets. It’s science. This is obviously an exaggeration of what is written in most textbooks, but most textbooks provide general guidelines but fail to explain how to individualize those numbers for your client.

This is what textbooks are meant for, though. To give you a general idea of how to write a workout based on what is effective for the majority of the population. So, if you follow the guidelines listed, you’ll likely provide some decent results for your client, but what’s next? Do you just add weight to the bar? Do you perform more sets? More reps? What happens if they don’t get better, or even worse, decrease in performance? Do you just go back and repeat the previous program?

The reality is that most humans will respond similarly to various types of stimuli. If you lift heavy, they’ll get strong. If you do a lot of volume, they’ll get big assuming they’re eating enough (read The Ultimate Guide to Muscle Gain and Hypertrophy).

What differs is their starting point, how much volume/intensity they require to see adaptation, and their ability to recover from training. Implementing the concept of structural balance, INOL, and utilizing a general training framework while adjusting to fatigue can help you design an initial program and provide you the data to successfully write future programs.

What is Structural Balance?

First, let’s define terms. Structural balance merely implies that your total body musculature is balanced. So, the muscles on the anterior side of your body aren’t overpowering the muscles on the posterior side of the body, and you don’t walk around like a gorilla with a massive upper body and undersized lower body.

To determine if a client is structurally balanced, you should do two things. The first thing is a simple postural assessment. Depending on how comfortable you are with the client can determine how in-depth you can get. For example, an athlete you’ve worked with in the past who is extremely confident might not have an issue with taking their shirt off so you can see how their scapula move.

An overweight 40-year-old woman who is already super anxious about training will likely be made that much more uncomfortable if you ask her to remove her shirt. Regardless of whether you have your client keep their shirt on or off, you can generally see major imbalance like overly kyphotic T-spines or internally rotated shoulders.

The second would be by performing a variety of different exercises and comparing their maxes or calculated maxes. It should be noted that you would only do this with a client who has some degree of a training history or a client who has been through a movement emphasis training block with you like Block 0. So, if the client is capable of performing maxes, or rep maxes, you can see where their imbalances exist.

The Intensity Number of Lifts (INOL)

The next definition we need to look at is INOL. INOL is shorthand for the intensity number of lifts. It takes a look at the intensity from a %1RM standpoint and the number of lifts performed at those percentages. The actual calculation used is (Reps/(100-Intensity)). This provides you with a score for a certain lift.

In his paper, How to Design Strength Training Programs Using Prilipen’s Table, Hristo Hristov has recommendations regarding what score won’t cause enough stress for adaptation, what causes enough stress for adaptation, and what causes too much fatigue for effective adaptation. Even if you don’t utilize his specific numbers, utilizing INOL is an effective tool for gauging how much volume and intensity your client adapts to most efficiently.

Autoregulation: Adjusting Your Training to Your Needs

The final definition is autoregulation. Autoregulation allows you to adjust your program based on things like your recovery and CNS readiness. There are a variety of different ways to utilize autoregulation which we’ll get into later in this article.

The terms are defined, so what do we do with them? Well first let’s look at our structural balance. When looking at structural balance I recommend utilizing exercises that are pertinent to your client’s goals. For example, if they’re a weightlifter, or you have an athlete that will regularly be utilizing the Olympic lifts, you can test the snatch, clean, and jerk.

If you don’t plan on utilizing the Olympic lifts then there’s no reason to include them in the structural balance test. If this is the case, I recommend testing the conventional deadlift, back squat, front squat, bench press, overhead press, and barbell row.

Since maxing out, or performing AMRAPs, on multiple exercises is very fatiguing, I would split the exercises up between 2-3 days with 1-4 days in between. After getting all of your maxes, or calculated maxes from your AMRAPs, you can see what the correlation is between lifts and where your client’s imbalances might be.

To determine how each lift should be correlated, you can look at the work of people like Charles Poliquin, Christian Thibedeau, and Travis Mash. They’ve all written about the importance of structural balance and what constitutes structural balance.

Exercise Selection and Baselines

A possible example of structural balance would be utilizing the back squat as your reference lift. If your client back squats 100 lbs, then to be structurally balanced they should be able to front squat 85 lbs, conventional deadlift 110 lbs, bench press 75 lbs, barbell row 52.5 lbs, and overhead press 45 lbs (read Know Your Ratios, Destroy Weaknesses).

Now when looking at your structural balance assessment, you need to also take into account the anthropometrics of the client. If you have a client who has extremely long legs and short arms, they are most likely not going to be able to deadlift 110% of their back squat.

If they have a massive chest and super short arms, then they may be able to bench press greater than 75% of their bench press due simply to the shorter range of motion they need to move the bar. So, use the numbers of your structural balance assessment as your baseline, but adjust it as needed due to the anthropometrics of your client.

Utilizing your structural balance test, you can determine which exercises you want to emphasize within your training block. Determining exercise selection can be done a multitude of ways. One simple way is to train each movement category all three days of the week with your primary weakness earliest in the workout and your strengths later in the workout to ensure you’re getting the highest quality reps for your primary weakness.

If we split our movement categories into deadlift/Olympic variation, squat/lunge variation, upper body push, and upper body pull, we can then include an exercise from each of those categories in the workout. Since all exercises are not created equal in regard to the stress they impose, it’s a good idea to utilize exercises of descending stress throughout the workout.

So instead of utilizing the highest stress exercises in each movement category and including conventional deadlift, back squat, bench press, barbell row you can use exercises of descending stress like a conventional deadlift, front squat, overhead press, chin-up.

Determining Individualized Intensities Using INOL

Now that you have your exercises selected, we can take a look at intensities. Utilizing the concept of INOL, and Hristov’s numbers, we can see that you want at least a score of 0.4 in a workout during week 1. Anything below this generally doesn’t cause enough stress to cause positive adaptation.

0.4-1 is considered very doable and optimal if you’re not accumulating fatigue and 1-2 is considered tough, but good for loading phases. I’m a big proponent of utilizing the minimum effective dose to get strength gains and think it’s always better to undershoot and increase training stress rather than overshoot it and potentially set yourself back.

With this in mind, I’d recommend using a score of 0.8 initially for your primary exercise. So whatever loading parameter you utilize, whether it’s straight sets, wave loading, working up to something heavy and performing back-down sets, when you put it into the equation (reps/(100-intensity), it should come out as 0.8.

This number can be increased by up to 10-20% initially for your primary exercise, but you’ll need to decrease some of your other exercise categories by the same percentage. With each week, you can decrease the volume and increase the intensity. After each training block, increase the INOL of week 1.

If the previous training block was effective, then increase the week 1 INOL to 0.88. If that ends up being effective, then increase it to 0.96. Keep increasing it until you no longer see a positive adaptation. If INOL ends up being too great in a single training session, and you routinely can’t recover enough for another hard training session that week, then it’s better to decrease the volume on that day and add another training session within the week.

It’s at this point when you look back at your training logs, and see what week 1 INOL your client had the greatest improvement on. Utilize that amount of training volume the majority of the year, while occasionally going above and below it to overreach and recover at times, and you’ll be setting your client up for their best opportunity for success since the volume is individualized to them.

It’s important to remember that when you train, you’re not training in a vacuum. What happens on day 1 affects day 2. With this in mind, we want to have the ability to auto-regulate our client’s training based on what we are capable of on a given day.

There might be days where your client didn’t get enough sleep, didn’t eat enough calories, their significant other broke up with them, or the previous training session was too stressful, so they can’t hit the numbers they’re supposed to hit on that day. This can become very obvious once the client starts training, and you can make an adjustment then, but ideally, you want to be able to adjust their training before the training starts.

To make the call on whether or not to change the plan, you’ll want to utilize some type of procedure for measuring CNS readiness. There are a variety of options. One option would be to test heart rate variability (HRV). There’s a variety of tools you can purchase to measure HRV, but they’ll end up costing you anywhere from a couple hundred to a few thousand dollars.

Another way is by measuring bar speed at a reference percentage for a reference lift. The equipment for this also would cost you a couple hundred or a few thousand dollars. These are great tools to utilize, so if you have the resources, then I would recommend getting them since they’ll provide you with a ton of training data.

If, however, you don’t have the money for an HRV or accelerometer equipment, then you can utilize cheaper methods like a hand dynamometer. In Thomas Kurtz book, Science of Sports Training, he discusses measuring grip strength to test recovery since grip strength is correlated with CNS readiness.

He states that if an athlete has a decrease of grip strength more than 2 kg, then they are under-recovered. A hand dynamometer can be purchased for as little as $20. The important thing is that you utilize the same hand dynamometer every time you test because if you use different ones, it will decrease the reliability and validity of your test.

Another thing to consider is that if you have a lot of training that taxes your grip then you might get a low score due to peripheral fatigue instead of systemic fatigue. For this reason, it’s a good idea to have a secondary test like a countermovement jump height.

If your client is under-recovered and needs a lighter training session, then you can utilize the ‘rule of 60’ and decrease training volume load to 60% of your original plan (read Supertraining). Instead of decreasing the volume in the form of sets/reps, I’d recommend decreasing it by training intensity (%1RM) since the under-recovered athlete’s max for that day is likely lower and this still provides plenty of practice with the movement.

Continuous Assessment and Adjustment

Utilizing INOL with your auto-regulation protocol will also help you plan for the future. At the end of each training block, take a look at the adjustments you had to make and what the INOL your client ended up doing as a result of those adjustments. This will give you a better picture of what training volume your client can actually adapt to and allow you to more efficiently plan future training blocks.

Initial training programs for any client is always an educated guess, but utilizing these tools in a bottom-up approach, will allow you to use more of a top-down approach in future programming for your client. Seeing how they adapt to a certain program allows you to better understand them and create more individualized plan overtime.

Everyone adapts similarly to similar stimuli but having the ability to individualize a program to each client will increase their chance for continuous optimal results. Set yourself apart from other coaches and utilize your tools to provide the best program for your clients.

The post Individualizing Training: Structural Balance, Intensity and Autoregulation appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

What many people lack in their programming is balance. There is a bias toward training the “mirror muscles,” and general overuse. Repetitive motions or positions like excessive overhead work, pressing, or squats can lead to shoulder and knee injuries, something that we currently have an abundance of.

Programming for Balance

It is of critical importance for strength development and injury prevention to balance the shoulders by balancing pushing and pulling in the vertical (frontal) and horizontal (sagittal) planes. Likewise, you must balance the lower body between quad- and hip-dominant pushing and pulling.

Typical hypertrophy-based programs can be very anterior-chain dominant. The body never works in isolation. Even on “arms day,” we are working the anterior shoulder and chest as well. On “back day,” lat pulldowns and pull ups still overload the anterior shoulder, utilize shoulder internal rotation, and the chest musculature. They do not balance out all the pushing and chest exercises, unlike the row and its variations such as face pulls, which are often last in the order of exercises, if included at all.

I like to break my upper body programs into horizontal push and pull exercises, and vertical push and pull exercises. These distinctions help to create balance, and allow us to even up the load and volume. Looking at the lower body, it would be easy to just separate things into lower body push or pull. It would also be easy to put all squat and lunge variations into the quad-dominant realm. But it doesn’t actually work out that way.

Mike Robertson proposed a better way of thinking about it:

• Angled Torso + Vertical Tibia = Hip Dominant
• Vertical Torso + Angled Tibia = Quad Dominant

The thing is, even this isn’t black and white. If you start any of your deadlifts with your knees more forward, like in a trap bar deadlift, it becomes more quad dominant. If you take a long lunge and keep the tibia vertical, drive off the lead foot heel and angle the torso forward (it’s a pretty cool pistol progression) it becomes more hip dominant. How you perform an exercise can often determine whether something is more hip or quad dominant.

Muscle Balance and Injury Prevention

Why balance the quads and hips? The functional hamstring-to-quad ratio refers to the ability of the hamstrings while lengthening (eccentrically) to brake the quads shortening (concentrically). This is important because if the ratio isn’t 1:1, you could be setting yourself up for injury. Let’s put this into simpler terms.

Say you’re running. As your knee straightens, your quads shorten or contract, and your hamstring lengthens. If your hamstrings are too weak, then your quads pull your hamstring faster than it can lengthen, so you end up “pulling your hammy.”

When you injure your knee—specifically the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL)—the likely cause is relatively weaker hamstrings. When you are running and stop or change direction suddenly, the femur (thigh bone) wants to continue travelling forward over your tibia (shin bone). Your hamstrings help your ACL stabilize the knee by stopping the forward movement of the femur on the tibia. If your quads are too strong compared to your hamstrings, a sudden change in direction or awkward landing can cause the knee to slide forward, and cause an ACL tear. This is particularly important to female athletes, as they are more susceptible to ACL tears.

Did  You Really Balance Your Push and Pull?

Now that we have a basic understanding of upper body pushing and pulling, and lower body pushing and pulling, some additional things to consider when programming are:

1. Type of exercise matching
2. Order of the exercises
3. Load
4. Volume

Let’s look at an example of how all of this is important to building balance and health in the shoulders.

Say today is your “chest” day, and you do 3 sets of 10 reps on bench press at 100kg. That’s 3000kg of total volume. Let’s say tomorrow is back day. What is your first exercise? For most people, it’s pull ups or lat pull downs, which are not the functional opposite of the bench press. But of course you know that, so let’s say you do a bench-supported, wide grip row, or a wide grip seated pulley row, or a bent over row, which are as close as you are going to get to the functional opposite of a bench press. You do 3 x 10 x 70kg, which is 2100kg of total volume.

If you chose a narrow grip seated pulley row, it isn’t really the functional opposite of the bench press. Just as likely, the row is not first in your program, so it doesn’t get the same focus or effort as your bench press. That aside, the load is not as high, because you are you not able to pull as much as you can push, and you end up with a 900kg difference in volume!

We haven’t even touched your accessory work yet. Most chest days have incline and decline bench press variations, as well as pec flys or crossovers, and pullovers. Back days usually have only one to two row variations, later in the order of exercises, and at a lesser load and volume. When all’s said and done, it is very easy to see how shoulders start to get banged up and we lose balance through the body.

The problems are the same on leg days; lots of squatting and lunging, and not a lot of hip-dominant pulling variations. Most people will squat or leg press considerably more volume than they can deadlift or pull from the ground. Even professional athletes with big squat or leg press numbers have disproportionately low Romanian deadlift (RDL) numbers.

The Outline of a Balanced Program

Overall, considering most people are desk-bound most of their day, it is evident we need to see a lot more horizontal pulling in our programming. Secondly, as most people are quite strong already in the quads and literally sit on their butts, they develop what has been called gluteal amnesia. What we need is more hamstring- and glute-dominant pulling exercises to balance the hips and get that functional hamstring-to-quad ratio back to 1:1.

With all that in mind, a rough example of some smart programming might look like this:

2-day Full-Body Program: Workout A

A1: Activation

A2: Power work/skill work

B1: Mobility/activation (active recovery)

B2: Horizontal pull

B3: Quad-dominant double-leg push

C1: Mobility/activation (active recovery)

C2: Horizontal push

C3: Hip-dominant single-leg pull

D: Conditioning/finisher/core

2-day Full-Body Program: Workout B

A1: Activation

A2: Power/skill work

B1: Mobility/activation (active recovery)

B2: Vertical push

B3: Hip-dominant double-leg pull

C1: Mobility/activation (active recovery)

C2: Vertical pull

C3: Quad-dominant single-leg push

D: Conditioning/finisher/core

Exercises listed as “A” are done in a superset, or tri-set for “B,” and so on. Some activation work to light up the body is followed by the highest skill, balance, or power demand work, which should come first while the athlete is fresh. I also like to use mobility or activation exercises as active recovery in between sets, rather than looking at my phone or the TV in between my main exercises. Conditioning work or a finisher is done at the end, depending on time remaining energy levels.

The Best Program Is the One Written for You

It is important to remember that injury prevention and resilience is part of performance, not separate from it. Becoming well-balanced should be every athlete’s goal. Programming needs to focus on addressing weaknesses, such as the functional quad-to-hamstring ratio and shoulder health. Strength work should, first and foremost, serve to balance out all the sport-specific training to prevent injury.

I hope this gives you some ideas on how to program this way. Rather than follow a cookie-cutter program which may not be suitable for your goals or limitations, try to integrate these principles and concepts to design your own, based on your own needs.

The post Advanced Programming Principles for Shoulder and Knee Health appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

We all have habits in movement, in food, and in emotional responses. My habits revolve around fixating on minutiae and figuring out ways to change a person’s experience. It works really well for what I do—I have a knack at seeing patterns in people’s movements that are creating a lack of freedom or not allowing the person to move in a way that feels strong. I’m able to hone in on ways to create better strength, mobility, and coordination. I get upset with myself if I miss something in a person’s movement patterns that could change their experience, reduce pain, or increase their strength; the solution, then, is to not miss anything.

My Stagnant Self-Programming

These tendencies don’t translate into strengths when it comes to self-programming. My strong dislike of failure is largely why I used to create workouts for myself that were controlled and the risk of failure was low. If I began working towards a goal that was going to take many months, I would abandon it for something a little bit easier. I enjoyed success; not succeeding, not so much.

Eventually, I realized I was stagnant and a little bit unenthused with the programming I had created for myself. While I felt strong and fairly mobile, I felt like I wasn’t tapping into higher levels of fitness. After working through several online programs and going through an apprenticeship that involved online coaching and feedback, I realized that in order to get out of my box, I needed to put my programming in someone else’s hands. I liked what I liked, and I was pretty sure the likelihood I would continue to work on what I liked (and variations there of), without dealing with the things I didn’t like was very high.

Moving Forward with a Coach

The only way to get stronger and more flexible is to work in ways that are uncomfortable, consistently and with variation. Programming is actually fairly simple; it’s following the program that’s laid out that is hard. When I was writing my own programs, it was easy to tinker and go completely off course in favor of an exploratory tangent, or ditch what I planned all together in order to do handstands, a little bit of mobility work, and lots of my favorite groundwork.

As soon as I began paying someone to write my workouts, my brain relaxed. Because I wasn’t constantly analyzing and thinking about what I should do while reverting back to what I could do, I found myself enjoying my workouts more, along with the increased strength that accompanies progressive overload. It turns out, picking up heavy things consistently and in different ways is much more effective for getting stronger than picking up heavy things the same way, over and over. Just because I know how things work doesn’t always mean I am good at implementing the principles on myself.

I just finished a two week cycle that involved pistol squats, crawling variations, arm balances, push ups, heavy(ish) deadlifts, and a really awful kettlebell swing ladder that I never would have written for myself because it’s anaerobically uncomfortable. There were jump variations (not a strength of mine), and hanging and pulling variations that, while challenging, forced me to work outside of my comfort zone. There was also one day of handstand training instead of the five days of handstand training I was doing and, wouldn’t you know, the wrist that was feeling a little tired four months ago feels amazing.

Movement fascinates me. I love going to workshops and learning different ways to explore strength and mobility. I also love playing with the concepts I learn and figuring out how to apply them to help my clients move in a freer way. I understand the importance of the basics and make sure my clients engage in progressive, consistent strength based work, but I lack the patience to apply these same concepts to myself.

The Role of Online Programming

We live in an amazing era where you can get world class programming online. There are so many incredible programs that, if you pay for and follow them, will improve whatever it is that you are looking to improve. You want to improve you deadlift strength? Great! Follow this six week program. You want to improve your hip flexibility? There is an eight week program for that, too, as well as for handstand training, back squats, front splits—you get the idea.

For online programming to be successful it requires doing the work and not second-guessing the program. It also requires having decent body awareness. Taking it a step further and paying for individualized coaching in a system that resonates with you is far more affordable than in-person training and enables you to address specific needs. However, there is no one there cheering you on, and the only person that can truly push you is yourself. Before I hired my coach, I went through a four month bodyweight programming that was reminiscent of training for a ½ marathon—I trained, alone, with no one but myself to measure my progress. Fortunately, the program was extremely well laid out and worked. I saw enough improvement to reward my dopamine centers and keep me moving forward but, by the end of it, I felt depleted. Unlike a race, where the end result is the race itself, which takes places with other people and allows you to celebrate your achievement, the end result was simply completing the program.

The Trainer’s Private Struggle

Maybe this is why many fitness professionals struggle with maintaining varied, progressive programs: our struggle is ours alone. Unless we are working out with others or create a tribe of some sort to cheer each other on, most of us squeeze it in before or between clients, motivating ourselves, by ourselves. We don’t often give the same thought to our own workouts as we do to our clients, or we get stuck in ruts because it’s easier than thinking about our programs in a more objective way. When your role is to provide others with the guidance and enthusiasm to move forward, it’s hard to muster that same energy when it comes to yourself.

I wonder if more trainers and strength coaches were willing to pay for the same service they provide if there would be less burnout, issues of chronic pain, and overall apathy towards their own fitness? I will probably never know, but I do know this: hiring a coach was one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time.

The post Online Workouts: A Trainer’s Perspective appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

At Breaking Muscle, we have some great authors discussing many programming ideas and fundamentals of training. For the beginner to the seasoned athlete, all of these choices would seem to be a good thing. However, research indicates that having too much choice may not be so good.

Let’s start with the scope of choice that we have in available programming for just a few fitness goals (sorry for all the great programs I leave out; it is certainly not meant to be a comprehensive list):

CrossFit

• Your local affiliate’s programming
• CrossFit Main Page
• Outlaw Way
• OPT 
• Competitors WOD 
• CrossFit Invictus 
• Competitors Training

StrongFirst or RKC Kettlebell Certification

• Brett Jones Plan 
• Dan John’s Plan 
• Scott Iardella’s Plan 
• Andrew Read’s Plan 
• Whole 9 Plan 

Strength Training

• Rippetoe’s Starting Strength 
• Wendler’s 5/3/1 
• Westside Barbell 
• Easy Strength 
• Power to the People 

Olympic Weight Lifting

• Soviet System
• Bulgarian System 
• Greg Everett’s System
• Dan John’s Program 

Wait a Minute, Choice is Not Always Good?

I am not sure how you feel after reading this list, but I know I got excited creating it. I love reading about programming philosophy and thinking about how I can utilize it in my coaching and for my personal goals. I have often jumped from program to program because of this excitement. 

And this is exactly why having too much choice can sabotage us. Let’s take a look at what economists and social scientists say are the four most common problems with too much choice:

1. Paralysis

Have you ever been in the grocery store and felt completely overwhelmed? I get that way with picking out toothpaste. There are types of toothpaste that reduce plaque, have 24-hour protection, or are “advanced.” I can’t even tell which one is supposed to be the best. So many features to choose from with this very simple product.

When we have too many choices, we tend to get stopped in our tracks and not make any choice. I work out at fully stocked strength and conditioning facility and if I don’t have a plan beforehand, I wander around from movement to movement because I just can’t choose. Maybe having only a few kettlebells is nice because then choices are a bit more limited.

Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper found that choice demotivates people to take action.² They asked people to taste jam in an upscale grocery store. When participants had only six choices, they were much more likely to buy one than if they had 24 choices. Similarly, Iyengar and colleagues found a similar trend when asking people to choose a retirement account.¹ When given the choice of many funds, most people did not choose a retirement fund (even though they gave up a great deal of matching employer funds by not choosing).

Thus, if a person is trying to determine the best possible program for themselves, he or she may not choose to do anything because of the overwhelming number of choices.

Photos courtesy of CrossFit Empirical

2. Thinking About Opportunity Costs

Opportunity cost is an economic term that defines what we give up when we choose to engage in an activity. For example, if you chose to focus your workout practice on Olympic weightlifting, then you would lose out on the opportunity to get better at deadlifts.

The problem for us comes in when we think about what we are missing. I have always wanted to get better at weighted pistols and every few workouts I think about it. This attention to opportunity costs makes me less happy with my workout and gets me thinking about what I am missing. We may even do that with programming. A person could be doing the Easy Strength program and wonder what would happen if he or she switched to the Wendler 5/3/1 program.

When we start worrying about what we are missing, it affects our performance and happiness with our current program.

3. Escalation of Expectations

With all of the choices in the list above, it would seem like I could train to be an outstanding athlete or coach someone to an elite level. Some programs have fancy calculators (e.g., Smolov squat routines or 5/3/1) or have been tested by top-ranked athletes. With all of these great “features” in these programs, I expect to have a great outcome. 

But if all I had was an old Muscle and Fitness magazine with only one workout in it, I wouldn’t expect as much. I have heard gym owners sometimes wish that they could just open up a grungy old garage gym. There they could go back to the simpler days of training without all of the extra equipment.

I am guessing the reason they want to go back to the good ol’ simpler days is that it would lower people’s expectations.

4. It is your Fault if the Choice doesn’t Work

With all of the choice and the escalation of the expectations, there is only one person responsible if you don’t [insert your goal here]. If you are following your coach’s program, you can complain about it all you want and not take home any of the responsibility.

However, if you are picking a program with all of the choices available to you, you have now given yourself the responsibility. “If only I had found a better program or read more information.

Photos courtesy of CrossFit Empirical

How do We Fix the Problems Associated with Choice?

• Limit Your Choice – If your main focus is CrossFit there are always many skills on which to focus. From a behavioral economist’s perspective, it is a program built on way too much choice (and a poor reinforcement schedule). One suggestion is to follow your coach’s program strictly (then it is your coach’s fault if it doesn’t get you prepared). If you are more advanced, plan out your goals a year in advance. If you goal is the CrossFit Open next year, you can plan out cycles until that event (e.g., powerlifting strength cycle followed by an Olympic weightlifting skill and strength program followed by more CrossFit-like programming a month out from the event start). With any plan, make sure you give it enough time. Don’t jump to a new plan from week to week.
• Train for Something – I found that training for kettlebell, barbell, and bodyweight certifications caused me to focus in preparation for each. I set up three- to six-month training cycles for each. Train and do a powerlifting event or Olympic weightlifting event. Having a goal can really help you focus your energy.
• Pick a Program That Is Right for You – Everyone is different and not all programs will be a good fit. I see some of the advanced Westside Barbell athletes and I would love to follow their program. However, my body (i.e., my recovery methods) are not able to keep up with the rigor of the program.

The Take-Home

In general, having more choices seems like a good idea. However, it has some negative consequences that may interfere with your training. Focusing on one program and limiting choice is helpful to keep you motivated for your goals.

For more check out Bob Takano’s discussion of how there are no secret programs.

References:

1. Iyengar, SS., et al. “How Much Choice Is Too Much? Contributions to 401 (k) Retirement Plans.” Pension Design and Structure: New Lessons from Behavioral Finance, 83–95. 2004.

2. Iyengar, SS., et al. “When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79 (6): 995. 2000.

The post When Too Much Choice Is Bad for Your Training appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

• What exercises should you use?
• Free weights, machines, or both?
• What set and repetition schemes are the best?
• How many days per week should you train?

A Simple System to Program Your Training

No need to get in a tizzy and overcomplicate the matter. I’m here to make it simple for you. Using total body resistance training workouts as the norm, I have constructed four templates for you to easily set up a variety of workouts. You choose the exercises, the sets, the reps, the work time scripts, and the training days per week. Two or three non-consecutive days per week will both work, depending on your schedule.

Perform your self-designed workouts in the category order listed for each template.

Template 1:

• Upper body push
• Interval
• Upper body pull
• Interval
• Lower body
• Abs/finisher

Click Here to Download

Template 2:

• Upper body
• Lower body
• Interval
• Abs/finisher

Click Here to Download

Template 3:

• Interval
• Lower body
• Upper body pull
• Interval
• Upper body push
• Abs/finisher

Click Here to Download

Template 4:

• Lower body
• Upper body
• Interval
• Lower body
• Upper body
• Abs/finisher

Click Here to Download

Free weights and machines both provide resistance to the muscle structures. One set or three sets? Work hard on each one, and you won’t have to perform endless sets to achieve good results. Lower body before upper body? Upper body pushing alternated with pulling? An interval at the beginning, midpoint, or end of the workout? Those choices are all relative to the specific template you choose.

How to Use These Templates

There are numerous ways to construct a sensible training plan. Variety is good, so mix and match as in the following examples:

Workout Template Example 1 (click to see example):

1 set of 10-14 repetitions of each:

• Plate-load chest press
• Barbell incline press
• Standing barbell press
• Close grip push up
• Tricep extension

Interval:

• Jumping Jacks: 4 sets of :45 work time/:25 rest time

1 set of 10-14 repetitions:

• Pulley upright row
• Plate-load row
• Close grip chin up
• High row
• Bicep curl

Interval:

• Elliptical trainer: four sets of 1:00 work time/:30 rest time

One set of 12-16 repetitions:

• Machine squat
• Romanian dead lift
• Dumbbell lunge
• Heel raise

Finisher:

• Farmer’s walk for three minutes

Workout Template Example 2 (click to see example):

2 sets of 8-12 repetitions:

• Machine overhead press
• Wide grip pulldown
• Decline press
• 2-Arm dumbbell row
• Barbell bench press
• Face pull

2 sets of 8-12 repetitions:

• Dumbbell deadlift
• Leg press
• Prone leg curl

Interval:

• Stairclimber: six sets of :45 work time/:25 rest time

Abs:

• Any abdominal exercise for two minutes

The Results Come From the Work

Train hard, rest adequately between sessions, train progressively, and you’ll get results by using these simple-to-use workout templates. Whatever you choose will work, provided you work.

The post 4 Practical Templates to Simplify Workout Design appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

No matter what style of training you use, one of the most important things you can do is learn how to sequence the exercises and the different training segments in your program. Sequencing properly is important for many reasons. Let’s look at two significant ones:

1. Central Nervous System Use
2. Energy Production

The central nervous system is a key component when programming. It is needed for all lifts, but more importantly lifts or movements that require a high degree of technique, like Olympic lifting and jump training. The central nervous system allows the body to send impulses to the muscles quickly, so the movements occur at a speed that is useful for the mover and safe for the body. If the CNS becomes fatigued, impulses are slower, allowing less force production and possible technique failure. When this happens, injuries can take place.

To avoid CNS fatigue, proper rest intervals are needed, along with proper sequencing of movements. If rest and sequencing are correct, the body can restore energy and recharge the CNS to be ready for progressive overload or whatever the program is calling for.

Understanding energy production goes hand in hand with sequencing. Energy production shifts as we utilize it in highly technical lifts to higher energy movements like sprinting. Energy production has to be sequenced correctly with how technical the lifts or movements are. As previously mentioned, higher technique movements should be placed early in the workout, both for CNS use and energy availability, which is higher towards the beginning of the session.

The Sequence

Sequencing is crucial to any program. The correct sequence accounts for things like percentages, reps and sets. The higher the percentage of the lift, the closer to the beginning of the session it should be. If you sequence properly, you have a better chance to hit PRs, avoid overtraining, stay injury free, and have enough energy to finish a workout.

In general, programs should follow the pattern below:

1. Power movements

• Plyometrics
• Sprinting
• Olympic lifting

2. Strength or core exercises

• Squat variations
• Bench variations
• Overhead pressing variations
• Posterior chain variations

3. Auxiliary work

• Single joint movements
• Higher rep movements
• Smaller muscles

Sample Program Sequences

Program 1: Sports Performance With No Lifting

1. Warm up
2. Mobility
3. Flexibility
4. Correctives
5. Dynamic warm up
6. Agility ladder
7. Plyometrics and Core – linear work
8. Agility

Program Design 2: Sports Performance Program

1. Warm up
2. Mobility
3. Flexibility
4. Correctives
5. Dynamic warm up
6. Agility ladder
7. Plyometrics and Core – lateral work
8. Speed – linear work

Program Design 3: Linear Program

1. Warm up
2. Mobility
3. Flexibility
4. Correctives
5. Dynamic warm up
6. Agility ladder
7. Power – Olympic lifting or multi-joint lifts. Reps and percentages based on overall program goals.
8. Core lifts – Squat, deadlift, bench or any multi-joint lifts.
9. Auxiliary Lifts – Small muscles or single-joint movements.
10. Conditioning

Program Design 4: Nonlinear

1. Warm up
2. Mobility
3. Flexibility
4. Correctives
5. Dynamic warm up
6. Agility ladder
7. Power – Olympic or multi-joint lifts. Percentage-based, high-percentage lifts first.
8. Core lifts – Squat, deadlift, bench, other multi-joint lifts. Percentage based, anywhere from 60-85%.
9. Auxiliary Lifts – Small muscle, single-joint; low percentages, generally 40-65%.

Program Design 5: Complete Sports Performance

1. Warm up
2. Mobility
3. Flexibility
4. Correctives
5. Dynamic warm up
6. Agility ladder
7. Plyometric – Linear or lateral
8. Speed or agility
9. Power – Multi-joint lifts at 75-95%
10. Strength – Core lifts at 65-90%
11. Auxiliary lifts – Small muscle, single-joint lifts at 45-70%

Proper Sequences for Maximum Training Effects

There is much flexibility in these program design layouts. When incorporating speed and jump training, remember that available power and CNS state is crucial for technique acquisition. Percentages give a great base or expectation of each training day, and an be used to create a program which 6-12 months in length.

When designing programs that involve all facets of sports performance, sequencing becomes a vital component. Proper sequencing as stated above will allow you to achieve success in all facets, while remaining injury-free. Everyone wants to be faster, stronger, and in shape, but most importantly on the field, ready to compete. Smart sequencing will help make sure you get all of those benefits from your program.

Is your CrossFit box making any sense?

The Nebulous Nature of CrossFit Programming

The post How to Sequence Your Strength and Conditioning Program appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I write this as a veteran of the resistance training profession going back over 40 years. I’ve seen it all, heard it all, thought about it all. And some things continue to disappoint me. Take, for instance, the solid answers and practical application to prescribing resistance training sets and number of repetitions provided by the long-time proven facts on muscle fiber recruitment schematics. The average new trainer has little knowledge of proven muscle fiber recruitment due to modern-day thinking obscuring past-day proven research.

There are many out there under the age of 40 who have no clue who Arthur Jones is and have never studied Henneman’s Principle of muscle fiber recruitment. They also fail to understand genetic limitations and blindly follow pop culture, regardless of the aforementioned neuromuscular aspects of muscle fiber recruitment that offer optimum muscle overload.

Does all this complication about sets and reps matter to the average trainee? [Photo credit: Pixabay]

The Specificity of Traditional Training Theory

Years ago, the resistance training set and repetition scripts I used to improve the muscle capacity of athletes were all about what was popular at the time: multiple sets, specific use of percentages of 1-rep maxes (1RMs) for a designated number of exercise repetitions (reps), and a varied number of sets performed. The resistance training scripts varied between 3 x 20, 4 x 10, 10-8-6, and 5 x 3, to name a few. They were based on the muscular outputs of endurance-only reps of 15+, strength-only reps of six to 10, and purported “power” development using lower repetitions + relatively lighter resistances + faster speed of movement executions.

Those exercise prescriptions were deemed appropriate based on the purported training goal. But were they accurate regarding their actual outcomes? Is a relatively lighter resistance moved at a relatively fast speed for two to four repetitions the best means for power development? The exercise prescriptions were supposed to result in the following, but did they?

Traditional set/rep thinking looks like this:

• 3 x 20 – Muscular endurance
• 4 x 10 – Hypertrophy
• 10 x 8-6 – Strength and hypertrophy
• 5 x 3 – Strength and/or power only

When you think about it, it’s an embarrassing punch in the gut to anyone with a tincture of common sense and intellect.

If one performs three sets of 20 repetitions, are they only developing muscle endurance? If you are doing the 4 x 10 script for supposed hypertrophy, what if 4 x 9 or 4 x 11 were performed? What type of development occurs with either of those? Will five sets of three repetitions with heavy and naturally slow-moving resistance will only improve one’s strength? What script is dead-on for developing muscle power, irrespective of strength or hypertrophy? How many repetitions? How fast should be the speed of each repetition? How many sets should be performed?

Binary Objectivity in Training

You get the idea. Designating a specific amount of resistance for a specific number of repetitions at a specific movement speed to supposedly attain a specific type of muscle development is completely irrational. It does not take into effect one’s genetic make-up and the various conscious muscle contraction options within one’s genetic confines between both ends of the contraction continuum: muscle fibers contracting all-out in one maximum effort (strength display) or contracting muscle fibers continually over an extended period of time (endurance display).

Progressive resistance training will augment anyone’s ability to display greater muscular strength, power, and endurance, all other factors remaining equal. That should be common knowledge. The aforementioned set-rep-type of development is one issue, but what about the optimal number of sets to perform to augment specific muscular developments? That is, is one bout of an exercise sufficient or should repeated bouts be used for strength, power, and endurance?

Whether you are a hardcore competitive athlete, an experienced workout fanatic, or a novice trainee just starting out, understand this concept:

Doing something is 100% better than doing nothing. Moving is better than not moving. Going to the gym and exerting in some capacity will always be better than sitting on your couch and exerting only with the remote control. If 100% maximum effort is given on the “doing something” side of the ledger, it is 100% greater than 0% on the “doing nothing” side of the ledger.

Think of it this way. A zero level of intensity to an all-out level of intensity. The zero to 100% is very objective.

One Set, Multiple Sets, and the Average Trainee

Let’s apply that logic to the one set vs. multiple sets argument.

For the average trainee who has minimal time to spend in the gym due to a plethora of life commitments, performing one set of an exercise with 100% effort is 100% better than not performing a set of an exercise. One set of a strength training exercise performed all-out, for a maximum number of repetitions (safely), documenting the result of the event, then attempting to do more in the next session is a simple and viable plan. The number of repetitions notwithstanding, and all other factors considered equal, a 100% all-out set will better anyone’s ability to express muscular strength, power, and endurance.

Consider this one-set-per-movement workout example using various repetition ranges:

• Chest press x 10-14
• Pulldown x 10-14
• Overhead press x 8-12
• Low row x 8-12
• Multi-joint lower body (squat, dead lift, or leg press) x 16-20
• Backside movement (leg curl or RDL) x 10-14
• Abdominal (trunk flexion) x 16 – 20

Performing the above series of conventional resistance training exercises for one all-out set of the prescribed repetition ranges is 100 percent better than not doing it. If all exercise sets are performed with maximum effort—that is, as hard as possible to the point of volitional muscular fatigue where they are no longer able to perform another repetition safely and correctly—it results in complete muscle stimulation via the 100% all-out conscious exertion. That productive overload can then be objectively documented and progressed with the established repetition range to further progression.

So you now get my point: A one-set-per-exercise strength training program performed with all-out effort will work for anyone if they truly apply 100% effort. For a large percentage of the average trainees out there, there is no excuse for doing nothing when only a minimal amount of time is needed to make physical alterations to your body.

How effective can one-set training be? Try it and find out:

The One-Session, One-Exercise, One-Set Strength Plan

The post Do You Need Multiple Sets, or Just One? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

There are plenty of articles that go into exhaustive detail on sets, reps, and percentages. I’m not going to do that. Instead, in this article we’re going to take a look at the big-picture stuff that most people completely ignore. These aspects of training are far more important than how many sets you did at 92.5% of your one-rep max.

You Can’t Out-Recover Low Work Capacity

A few years ago, a close friend of mine started CrossFit. She had gotten into fitness a few months before that, but was doing her own stuff, mostly some running and circuit training at the gym. As far as I know, this was the sum total of her training history. About a week into CrossFit, she texted me asking how she could recover better.

I have to be honest. I had no fucking clue what she was asking me.

The concept of “recovery” has become a hot ticket subject in the last couple of years. I think the unfortunate truth is that most of what’s talked about when it comes to recovery is either complete bullshit or at the very least, scientifically dubious.

When an athlete says, “I’ve been tracking my workouts, and my objective performance markers are starting to plateau or backtrack. I don’t think I’m recovering enough,” that is a hugely different observation than, “I’m really sore and it hurts to work out. I need more recovery.”

The hard truth about long-term training goals is that you’re not always going to feel great.

Some days you’re going to ache all over, and other days, weird muscles are going to be sore. If you’re like most people, you probably won’t ever hit a point where training hard doesn’t leave you feeling a little beat up. You will, however, hit a point where being beat up just isn’t that big of a deal. Part of evolving as an athlete is realizing being strong is not for the faint of heart.

If you’re obliterated after every workout, it isn’t your recovery. It’s your work capacity. (Photo courtesy Cara Kobernik)

Most peoples’ perception of their recovery is based on subjective information. In my friend’s case, she not only felt like garbage, but she couldn’t perform in the gym the way she had only weeks ago. But her problem was not inadequate recovery or the need for more foam rolling and ice baths. The problem was a lack of proper progression and recognition of work capacity.

You can’t go from zero to 100 in three months and start working out 2-3 times a day after doing nothing for ten years and think you can make up the difference with “recovery.”

You can build your work capacity fairly quickly, given proper dosing and a reasonable timeline, but you need to use a practical progression. I realize doing a certain workout and steadily titrating your training load to increase adaptation without crossing the threshold into un-recoverable territory isn’t exciting or sexy. The truth rarely is.

“You’re not overtrained, you’re under-recovered,” is a convenient myth for most people. It allows them to ignore the root of their problem: excessive programming. If your goal is to keep training and progressing for as long as you can, understanding proper progression is paramount. You can’t cheat biology.

Why So Complex?

Let me ask you something. If you were going to put a nail through a piece of wood, and that was all you had to do, what tool would you choose? A hammer is probably the simplest choice, right?

So it is with programming. Complexity for the sake of complexity doesn’t add anything of value. Your programming only needs to be as complex as the task demands. In the case of hybrid athletes and Games competitors, there is a fair amount of necessary complexity. For most people, however, the complexity exposes them to unnecessary risk and, more importantly, takes the emphasis away from the more meaningful work.

Powerlifting is probably the most common example of this issue. Here we have a sport where you sign up months out and only have to perform three specific tasks well. Yet powerlifters are doing all sorts of weird shit. It’s one thing if you are including a weird assistance exercise for a specific reason, but I interact with enough powerlifters to know the reasons often aren’t specific.

Most people wouldn’t ever ask if a hammer is a good tool. It’s good insofar as its purpose fits the task. Programming is the same way. You don’t need endless variations and fancy assistance exercises. You need the simplest possible tools that are adequate to address the task at hand. One of the worst ideas to ever permeate the mainstream was that cross-training is always superior to specificity. It’s not.

There Is No Short Game

“Fitness is a journey.” It’s probably one of the biggest clichés in the industry. And like many clichés, it happens to be true. 

In most cases, the thing that drives people to excessively complicated and intense programming is a misunderstanding of timelines. You can certainly make some awesome progress in a short period of time. Most people can get in the best shape of their lives in less than a year. The trouble is confusing the best shape of your life with the best shape anyone’s ever been in. Being the fittest you’ve ever been probably still doesn’t make you a professional athlete. This, for some reason I’ll never understand, seems to offend people.

There are things you can do that may improve your short-term gains at the expense of your long-term health or training career. I’m not going to tell you training like a crazy person isn’t effective and that’s probably the hardest part of all of this. Training like a madman is extremely effective in the short term. The trouble is that it’s not sustainable. You want to lose thirty pounds in a month? You totally can. You probably won’t keep it off and it’s probably not the smartest approach but it’s possible. Possible and optimal are not the same thing.

This is the real “one weird trick” of working out: Over time, consistency and effort applied in a wise and realistic manner will outweigh pretty much everything else. You cannot circumvent this basic truth of training with secret programs or shortcut protocols.

Training your brains out can work for awhile, but it’s not a recipe for long-term success. (Photo courtesy Cara Kobernik)

Keep It Simple, Succeed for Life

I’ve been in the game for a little under twenty years now. In that time I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. There’s never any shortage of wildly impressive physical feats and short-term transformations.

For all that, I can tell you the following with absolute certainty: The people who’ve made the most progress and stayed the healthiest are not those with the flashiest routines or the most scientifically calculated programming. They’re the people who show up day after day and follow a program specific to their goals. Simplicity may not be sexy, but when it comes to strength, it’s the name of the game. 

If you aren’t making progress, there’s another question to ask yourself:

Are You Working Hard Enough to Succeed?

Coaches: Are you overthinking your athletes?

A Simple Programming Formula for Any Client

The post There Are No Tricks in Fitness appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The world of strength and conditioning advice is full of impossible promises and complicated programs and methods. Every athlete presents a unique challenge and every coach will create their program with a different set of experiences, priorities, and biases. The differences are beautiful. They not only drive innovation in the world of athletic training, but also drive the world of competitive sports as every team and individual will train for their sport specific demands in a unique way.

While the differences in each training program address the specific needs of the trainee, there are undeniable pillars of an optimal training system. Every program should be built on these 5 immutable laws of strength and conditioning.

Pick Up Heavy Things Often

You must lift heavy things often to gain physical strength. High-level athleticism stands on a foundation of work capacity. Nothing trains overall work capacity like heavy loads. Heavy means truly heavy, near the peak of your physical abilities. There is a time and a place for studio-style fitness classes, but if 5lb dumbbells and 10lb kettlebells are the only weights you ever move, your training falls far short of providing a necessary stimulus for strength gain.

Set a goal to move something heavy every day. Lift, carry, push, or pull a load that makes you truly uncomfortable. Only when you push your strength limits do you stimulate an increase in bone density, connective tissue strength, and overall work capacity. You do not need to attempt a one-rep-max lift every day, but challenge your physical strength with heavy carries (farmer’s carries, suitcase carries, front rack, or overhead), lifting heavy objects like stones, sandbags, or logs, dragging or pushing heavy sleds, or the classic lifts such as squats and deadlifts.

Picking up something heavy every day does a lot more for your body than build muscle. [Photo credit: CrossFit]

Hip Hinge and Triple Extension

The hip hinge is the method that the human body uses to generate maximal power. If overall strength is the cup that athleticism fits in, speed and power are the main ingredients for creating a strong cocktail of athletic prowess. All athletic movements require power that originates from the core (and a strong hip hinge) that radiates out to the extremities.

Training the hip hinge and triple extension (a coordinated and fluid extension of the hips, knees, and ankles) with speed develops power. The kettlebell swing and the Olympic lifts offer the greatest training effect for the hip hinge. Focus on speed in these movements and engagement in your posterior chain, particularly your glutes.

Power in your hip hinge and an awareness and connection to your posterior chain are the two greatest assets you can develop as an athlete. Your posterior chain is the primary mover in nearly all athletic movement, yet our modern lifestyles leave us hopelessly out of touch with its true potential.

Sprint

Sprint often and value your sprint training analogous to the “pick up heavy things” rule from the first pillar. Just as you need to challenge your work capacity near the peak of our abilities, you need to challenge your speed and turn over near your physical limits.

The sprinting pillar exists as a subset of training hip hinge and triple extension, but presents such a dramatic benefit in its own right to deserve a rule of its own. For this discussion, I consider maximal running and jumping as sprints. There is simply no substitute for sprinting and jumping. Kettlebell swings and power cleans are the best developmental tools for power, but the triple extensions required to run your fastest or jump your highest have no training equals.

Incorporate running sprints and maximal jumping efforts into your training often. The distance, heights, and relative amounts will vary by athlete but maintain a focus on maximal efforts. When running, focus on distances that you maintain your maximal turnover cadence. Running downhill or pulled by a faster partner will supercharge this stimulus by pushing you into ranges at the limits of your fast-twitch capabilities.

When jumping, focus on heights (for box jumps and vertical jumps) and distances (for long jumps and broad jumps) that require nearly maximal efforts to achieve. Always include ample rest between all efforts. Remember, your focus for this area of your training should remain on nearing (and expanding) your physical limits, not on overall work capacity.

Cycles of Tension and Relaxation

Athletic performance and vibrant health both depend on the ability to switch on and turn off effectively and at the right moment. This rule applies to a micro scale within the range of certain movements, but also to the macro scales of rest between sets and rest days between workouts.

Think of the requirements of hitting a baseball or returning a tennis serve. The athlete must go from a state of relaxation to full engagement in an instant. If they were too bound up and tense they would never be able to position themselves to connect or return volley effectively. Yet if they could not switch on completely and instantly, they stand no chance of offering an effective counter move. Soccer players must cycle back and forth between full sprinting efforts and complete relaxation or they would never remain effective for an entire 90-minute match.

Practice cycles of relaxation on every scale to develop your athletic abilities:

• Within a Movement: During a kettlebell swing, recognize and utilize the ability to release your body tension during the “float” phase to more effectively engage during the hinge phase.
• Between Sets: While resting between sets of movement, practice an active recovery strategy known as “fast and loose.” Actively rest and recover by walking to moderate your heart rate, jiggling limbs to release tension, and focus on deep, slow, belly breaths to encourage full body relaxation.
• Rest Days: Use active recovery and mindfulness strategies to optimize your rest and recovery days. Mellow jogs, swims, bike rides, or paddles offer a perfect combination of low impact and restorative movement with a moving meditation. Tai chi, qigong, and yoga present even better ways to mindfully connect with your body and movement. Use targeted mobility and flexibility work and myo-fascial release techniques (both self-applied and from practitioners) to aid in recovery.

Mindful Movement

All high-level movers – yogis or dancers, Olympic lifters or gymnasts – share one key characteristic: a deep connection and awareness to how they move and feel. No matter how you train, maintain a mindful awareness to how you move and the physical sensations that you experience. Seek a coach or training partner that can offer a keen eye to your movement. Always strive to improve efficiency in your movement quality and mastery of your body.

Learn the type of sensations that you should experience during a particular movement and use drills and props to develop them. Train sensations rather than movements. Maintain a mindfulness practice outside the gym to develop as an astute observer of your thoughts, emotions, and physical condition. If you truly want to move well, you need to develop an intimate relationship with your body.

Sweat the Details, But Remember the Pillars

We can so easily fixate on the specific details of our program. These details are the key for world-class athletes, yet a diligent focus on the fundamentals brings most of us far beyond the athleticism we desire. Have fun with the details of your program, but make sure that your training is built on the five pillars of strength development.

Once you understand the big concepts, the details take care of themselves:

Programming for Snowflakes

The post The 5 Pillars of Athletic Training appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Part of the problem of designing a program for yourself is, well, yourself. As Dan John says, “the coach who trains himself has an idiot for a client.” It’s difficult to look at ourselves honestly and see exactly what we need to do to make improvements. It’s too easy to gloss over our weaknesses and focus only on our strengths.

But let’s say you’re going to design your own program anyway. I’m here to help you get your ducks in a row. Let’s take a look at this programming monster.

What Is a Program?

A program is nothing more than a map or a timetable. It is an arrangement of instructions to be followed in a particular order leading progressively to a specific result. It’s a form of optimizing, an act or process of making something as functional and effective as possible.

So how do we begin designing a program for ourselves that will make us better in some way? There’s your first clue: “better in some way.” What is the “in some way” you want to get better? What are your goals?

There. We have arrived at step one.

If you’ve decided to go it alone with your programming, take a studious approach. [Photo courtesy Jorge Huerta Photography]

Step One: Identify Your Goals

Often people have more than just one goal. Once you have your goals listed, start looking at which ones may be impossible to achieve at the same time. Sometimes two goals can be conflicting: looking like Arnold, but at the same time performing like a Navy SEAL. That only happens in the movies. You will not be able to train for and run a marathon competitively while also preparing for the next Olympic weightlifting competition.

Your job is to determine what your most desired goal or goals are. Be realistic. Take a hard look at where you’re at right now. Take into account your age, health and injuries. If you are 50 years of age, 60lb overweight, and have bad shoulders it makes no sense to train like a gymnast on the rings. If that was your goal, it would be smart to re-evaluate your goals and pick some new ones more in line with who you are. Dreams do not always become reality.

Step Two: Do Some Research

Now it’s time for a bit of research. As some people say, follow those who have already been there. Look at what other people have done to achieve the same goal you have. Read, study, and figure out what they did to reach that goal. Take a look at five or six different individuals and make notes on how they achieved the goal you desire. And notice how long it took them to get there.

Highlight the similarities between the individuals’ training programs. You’ll probably find a format they follow; which days they train, which exercises they do, and the sets and reps they like to use. You will notice how they ramp up, deload, scale down, and then build up again. And if you’re smart, you’ll also take down the commonality of their eating habits and recovery habits. This is a huge missing part of the puzzle for many people.

What’s this about ramping up and deloading? Read more here:

Train and Recover Smarter: A Periodization Primer

Basically, you want to take a six-week or longer weekly snapshot of how they train and overlay it on top of the other programs. Where do they mesh, and where do they deviate? You should notice a common thread. Set up a six-week training schedule based on that common thread.

Note the parts where their programs differ. Differences in programming are often due to personality, individual response to particular movements, and individual body differences. Taking note of the differences will be useful down the road as you learn to tweak the program to best suit you as an individual.

Step Three: Find the Missing Pieces

At this point, you should have a list of your main goals, as well as a list of methods and exercises that can get you there and a tentative six-week program. Now take a hard look at what may be missing from this program. 

Dan John sorts exercises into five basic human movements. You want to make sure they’re all present and accounted for in your program. Those movements are:

• Loaded carries
• Squat
• Hinge
• Pull
• Push

Learn which exercises fit into each of these categories. A few other basic movements could be included, such as lunging, rotating, walking, jumping, running, tumbling, and others. Dan lumps those into a sixth category: “Everything else.”

Compare your program to this list. Are things missing? If so, you’ll want to even things out so you can prevent muscular imbalances, which often lead to injuries. Even if you have a specific goal like winning the local small-town strongman competition, the hidden goal in your program should be to build strength, mobility, and ease of execution in all the fundamental human movement patterns.

Step Four: Is This Program for Me?

At this point you should have a fairly decent six-week program set up. Now take a step back to assess it. The examples you started with may have been actors or professional athletes. Keep in mind that these are people who have been training for years. They have tons more ability just from proper coaching and years of practice. Your ability to perform the movements is not going to immediately match theirs. They also have a whole staff of people to push and guide them. They follow eating habits that would make a Spartan wince. With all that help, they can make radical changes in six weeks. It’s all they do.

You can model your routine after what they did, but be aware it will take you longer to achieve the same goal. You just have to spread the workload out a bit more. They might train twice per day, two hours at a time and six days per week. That’s 24 hours per week and 144 hours of training in six weeks. 

With a full-time job, family, and other responsibilities, you might only have 45 minutes per day, three days per week to devote to exercise. That’s 2.25 hours per week and only 13.5 hours of training in six weeks. Get the picture? At that rate, it will take you approximately 64 weeks to accumulate the same amount of training exposure that actor achieved in six weeks.

Basing your program off of a professional athlete is fine, but have realistic expectations. [Photo courtesy Jorge Huerta Photography]

Now Go Do It

Now’s the time to enact your plan. Train that way for six weeks. Record everything in a training journal. After six weeks, look back at what you accomplished by referring to your training journal. Are you closer to your goal? If not, what could you eliminate that isn’t helping? What may be missing? Does one of the exercises seem to cause you problems?

Go back and look at the programs you built your program from. How did the people who used those programs change and adapt? It may be time to tweak a few things in your program. Do not be tempted to change everything. Just change one or two things. It might be using a similar but different exercise or implement that works the same movement pattern, like subbing in double KB front squats for barbell front squats or back squats.

Test the changes out for another period of six weeks. Then re-evaluate and keep repeating the above steps. Keep accurate records. Occasionally, test yourself to see how you are doing.

Evolve Your Program

Unless your goals drastically change, your original program should remain easily identifiable, even after you’ve tweaked it through the years. Once you have a program that’s working, you can use it as a template to develop other programs to target specific attributes. In time, these programs can coalesce into a training system that others can use. This long process is what will get you to your goals, keep you there, and even help you set and achieve new goals.

Or, of course, you could always just hire a coach.

Making the jump from athlete to coach? Read these first:

8 Crucial Principles for New Coaches to Master

The post So You Want to Write Your Own Program appeared first on Breaking Muscle.