Chapter 14
Creating a Personalized Program

Designing a training program can be a challenge even for experienced strength and conditioning coaches. It involves finding the right balance of key variables and adhering to established principles of exercise and program organization. A great deal of background information is required to develop effective strength and conditioning programs for athletes as well as for people who just want to become more fit. A strength and conditioning program, regardless of what tools it uses, will only work if it is a good fit for you. Although some benefits may be gained from doing a canned training program, optimal benefits will be achieved only if the program takes your personal background, goals, and preferences into account. The information in this chapter provides a foundation for successfully adapting or designing a training program to suit your needs.

Program Variables

Several key training variables must be addressed, manipulated, and successfully integrated to create an effective, comprehensive training program. The interplay of these variables can have a profound impact on the results you get. The variables must be balanced according to your needs, whether the primary goal is reducing fat, improving health and fitness, or enhancing sport performance. These concepts must be fully understood to optimize training results.

Five major variables must be considered when designing a training program:

  1. Intensity
  2. Volume
  3. Rest
  4. Recovery
  5. Muscle balance

Intensity

Intensity refers to the quality and difficulty of the exercise. An inverse relationship exists between the intensity of an exercise and its volume (sets × repetitions). Intense exercise sessions are stressful and can be extremely fatiguing, so you must reduce the volume of training because fatigue will limit the number of quality repetitions that you will be able to perform. You will also need more rest and recovery after intense training sessions when compared with less intense sessions.

In a traditional strength-training workout, intensity is prescribed according to a percentage of the maximum weight (a percentage of one-repetition maximum, or 1RM) or maximum number of repetitions that you can lift at a certain weight (called a repetition maximum, or RM). For example, if you can squat 300 pounds (136 kg), then training at 70 percent of the 1RM would mean working out with 210 pounds (95 kg). On the other hand, if you wanted to train at your 10RM, you would work with a weight that you could lift a maximum of 10 times.

People are typically instructed to perform plyometric, speed, and agility drills at maximal intensity. In other words, with these types of training, athletes train at or close to their maximum speed and power. The intent of these exercises is to teach athletes how to be more explosive, so training at less than maximal intensity doesn’t develop this ability.

With maximum interval training, intensity is calibrated a little differently. Here the focus is on helping you become resistant to the effects of fatigue. This type of training is not the most effective training approach to increase strength, power, or maximal speed. The selected intensity should allow you to complete the desired volume of exercise with good form and technique.

Volume

The volume is the quantity of the work that is being done. With strength training it is usually the number of repetitions multiplied by the number of sets. For example, performing three sets of 10 repetitions produces a volume of 30. But when performing maximum interval training, volume can be expressed in a number of ways. It can also be expressed in terms of time, distance, number of jumps, number of throws, and so on. For example, when performing kettlebell swings for 30 seconds, volume can be quantified by time. Volume can also be expressed in terms of distance, such as sprinting for 40 meters. Or it can reflect the number of repetitions, such as performing 20 crunches.

The greater the volume is, the lower the training intensity should be. Besides having an inverse relationship with intensity, volume is a powerful stimulus for various types of adaptations from training. For example, low volume is appropriate for activities that require a great deal of technique, speed, and power. Moderate volumes are good for developing hypertrophy. Higher volumes help enhance resistance to fatigue.

Recovery

Recovery refers to the time between exercise sessions. This period is important because it is when all the adaptations that we are training for occur. Failure to allow adequate recovery can eventually lead to a state of overtraining and injury. Although training every day is possible, special care must be taken to ensure that the activities are organized so that the same muscles, physical abilities, and qualities are not trained on successive days.

Table 14.2 shows two sample weeks of workouts. In the figure, workout A involves lower-body strength training and the power clean on Monday, sprints on Tuesday, plyometrics on Wednesday, lower-body strength training and the power snatch on Thursday, and sprint-based conditioning on Friday. On the surface this plan looks like an appropriate distribution of the workload across the week. The reality is that workout A involves a great deal of lower-body work Monday through Friday, so the schedule does not optimize recovery.

Workout B in table 14.2 takes a different approach. Monday involves total-body strength training with very heavy weights. Tuesday is focused on power training. Wednesday is a day off. Thursday involves lower-body strength training combined with sprints. Friday uses upper-body strength training, kettlebells, and core exercises for conditioning. In workout B the training sessions are distributed to allow the body a chance to recover.

Click here to go the exercise finder, which will link you to each exercise found in part II.

Training needs to be organized so that the muscles and energy systems get a chance to recover. In general, the 48-hour rule (i.e., rest a muscle group 48 hours before training it again) is a good one to follow. To help conceptualize the concept of recovery, table 14.3 describes the relationship between energy systems, qualities, and training. The table shows that certain types of training essentially train the same energy systems and require the same qualities. For example, strength, power, acceleration, maximum velocity, and even agility training all link up well and are considered compatible. On the other hand, hypertrophy training, speed endurance, and conditioning all link up. Using this example, strength and acceleration work would complement each other if they were done on the same day, but strength and speed endurance would not. This table provides some guidance on how to organize training so that the body has a chance to recover.

Muscle Balance

Several important concepts are related to muscle balance. First, you should train all the muscles around a joint, whatever the type or purpose of your training. Failing to do this creates strength imbalances around the joint that can set you up for injury in the long term. For example, if you perform a pushing exercise like a chest press on a suspension trainer, you should balance that out with a pulling exercise like the suspension trainer row. Similarly, a number of total-body, kettlebell, heavy ropes, sprinting, and medicine ball exercises should be incorporated over time into a program to help ensure that you achieve muscle balance.

Second, you should perform an equivalent amount of work on opposite movements. For example, if you perform three sets of pushing movements, you should perform three sets of pulling movements. This approach prevents one side of the body from being overdeveloped.

Third, these concepts apply to nontraditional examples as well. They are not limited to weight room exercises. For example, if you are pushing a weighted sled as part of your workout, you would also want to spend some time walking backward and pulling it.

Principles of Exercise

The principles of individualization, specificity, overload, and progression should form the foundation of any successful strength and conditioning program. Regardless of the training goal or equipment used, these basic training principles should be applied to ensure the safety and effectiveness of a program. Failing to adhere to these principles can lead not only to injury but also to inadequate or haphazard training gains.

Individualization

Everyone is different, and those differences must be considered in creating and evaluating a training program. No two people have the same objectives, start in the same state, or develop identically from the same program.

Incorporating the principle of individualization starts with determining the reason for training. This reason has a tremendous influence on program development. It should drive every decision you make regarding the program. It determines your intensity, volume, training frequency, and even the exercises and modes of exercise. Unfortunately, most people don’t stop to consider this important first step and just jump into a workout program. Failing to identify the primary reason for training can lead to haphazard programming, which may ultimately lead to suboptimal results and frustration.

The next important bit of information to uncover is what your current strengths are and how much improvement you want to make. To map out the best way to reach a destination, you must first know where you are. After you have established the specific training goals, the next step is to consider where you are beginning your fitness journey in relation to where you want to go. This information drives the pace at which you can proceed.

Specificity

The principle of specificity says that you get what you train for. In other words, the body adapts to the demands placed on it. If you don’t perform certain exercises or you avoid training certain attributes, performance in those areas will not improve. For example, performing a lot of sprints in training will likely improve your 40-yard dash time, but it won’t increase your bench press strength. Specificity calls for taking into account several factors, such as the muscles and motions being used, the energy systems that produce energy for the activity, and, in many cases, the speed of movement required to perform the activity.

For example, let’s say that you want to improve your bench press. This activity involves the muscles of the chest, shoulders, and triceps. Training to increase how much you can bench press involves increasing maximal strength. As the amount of weight that you must move increases, the speed of movement goes down. Table 14.4 shows that during the bench press, many of the issues that result in a failed attempt are related to pectoralis major and deltoid strength (getting the bar off the chest) or triceps strength (arm extension, sticking at the midpoint).

Table 14.5 shows examples of how to address each typical problem area in the bench press. Note that each of the problem areas is addressed by focusing on the specific movement patterns and muscle groups used for this exercise. For example, although many exercises strengthen the triceps, we still need to select exercises that address the specific pressing motion needed to perform the bench press.

Table 14.6 is an example of a training program that applies the principle of specificity. For this example, an athlete wants to improve his or her bench press but is having trouble at the midpoint of the press. This program is meant to be done twice a week (Monday and Thursday in this example). On Monday the bench press is trained, followed by dumbbell floor presses to work on the elbow extension, seated rows to work on keeping control of the bar during the descent, and the military press to strengthen the deltoids. Note that the training is fairly heavy with a low to moderate number of repetitions.

The Thursday session is focused on the triceps. The floor press is the first exercise, performed at a percentage of the bench press. This is followed by weighted dips. Bent-over rows help strengthen the descent, and the dumbbell shoulder press strengthens the deltoids. Note that a moderate number of repetitions are used for each set on this day to allow the joints to recover.

Overload

The overload principle states that to keep making gains, the body must be continually challenged by training. The body adapts, which is why everyone exercises. One of the great ironies with exercise is that the process of adapting, which is what produces gains in strength, speed, muscle size, and so on, also leads to plateaus. After the body adapts, we have to find ways to make the workouts more difficult over time or we stop making progress.

The overload principle is normally applied by changing one of four variables. We can change the intensity, volume, kind of exercise, or amount of rest (i.e., rest between sets, rest within sets, and rest between training sessions). Any one of these variables can have a big effect on the difficulty of a training session, and all these variables are interrelated.

The intensity is the difficulty of the work that is being done. With strength training, intensity is expressed as a percentage of either how much weight you can lift one time (one-repetition maximum, or 1RM) or how much weight you can lift for a number of repetitions. For example, an 8RM lift is how much weight you can lift eight times. Intensity can also be expressed as speed, power output, height, distance, and so on.

The rest is the amount of time between sets, circuits, and workouts. When more rest is allowed, more recovery occurs, which means that work can be done at a higher intensity. When less rest is allowed, less time is available to recover, which means that the intensity cannot be sustained.

The exercises selected can also have an effect on the difficulty of the training session. Many exercises train the same muscles and the same joints, using similar movement patterns. But changing an exercise to one that is similar but stresses the body slightly differently may be sufficient to keep the body adapting. An example would be performing a one-handed kettlebell swing instead of a two-handed swing.

Table 14.7 shows examples of changing each of the preceding variables. The first column shows the base workout. The columns to the right of the base workout show the new workout after changing one of the variables (so the second column shows changing the intensity, the third shows changing the volume, and so on). Notice how all the variables are interrelated; when one variable changes, others must also change. Changing the intensity has an effect on the volume (increasing the amount of weight to be lifted means that it cannot be lifted as many times). Changing the volume has an effect on intensity (performing more repetitions per set means that less weight can be lifted). Decreasing the amount of resting between sets also reduces the amount of weight that can be lifted.

Table 14.8 shows how to apply the overload principle to a maximum interval-training session. In the figure, the base workout is shown. Performed as described, the base workout will take an athlete approximately 18 minutes. The next column shows the session with a change in the weight of the kettlebell as well as an increase in the weight used when performing the squats and lunges. An example of changing the volume (each exercise is performed for a longer time) is also provided. The rest after each exercise can be reduced or eliminated. Finally, an example of changing the exercises is included. For each modification, the workout will still take 18 minutes.

Click here to go the exercise finder, which will link you to each exercise found in part II.

When applying the overload principle, keep the principle of specificity in mind. Failing to do this can mean that you will develop the wrong qualities and energy systems, which may conflict with your training goals. For example, performing a set of 100 bodyweight squats may be challenging because lactic acid will build up and cause a burning sensation in the legs. This type of activity primarily trains the glycolytic energy system, so it improves muscular endurance. In contrast, performing a set of squats that would allow you to perform only four repetitions before you fatigue would primarily work the ATP–PCr energy system and would emphasize muscular strength rather than endurance. So if your goal is to increase maximum squat strength, performing the set of four to near muscular fatigue will be more conducive to producing this training outcome.

Progression

According to the overload principle, to continue making gains over time, you have to find a way to make the workouts more challenging. The principle of progression tells us that this overload should be added using a steady, sequential approach to maximize safety and effectiveness. This goal is accomplished in two parts.

First, you need to build a fitness foundation. Building a solid fitness foundation prepares the joints, skeleton, and muscles for the rigors of advanced exercises and workout programs. This preparation reduces the chances of developing an injury from the workout program.

The second part of the principle of progression is developing a technical foundation before attempting advanced exercises. Correct technique ensures that the exercise is effective and that the joints are being loaded appropriately. Learning correct technique is important because when you become fatigued, technique typically suffers. When this happens, you not only gain less benefit from the exercise but also increase the likelihood of becoming injured.

Whether we’re talking about fitness or technique, progression can be thought of as a series of steps. Each step builds on what came before. Adding the steps one by one and taking the time to ensure that each is solid before adding more ensures that you’ll have a stable structure.

Most long-term training programs for athletes evolve from an extended period that is focused on all-around fitness to a period when that fitness is applied to the needs of the sport and finally to a period when the athlete is peaking for the sport. This process helps athletes follow an appropriate training progression. These concepts can also be applied to those who are reaching for any type of training goal. Creating a fitness foundation and a technical foundation and building on the foundations in a measured, steady manner is critical for success!

Sequencing and Prioritizing Your Training

The principles of training described earlier help to determine whether an exercise is going to be effective in achieving your goals. At some point, all the various types of exercise and workout sessions have to fit together into a larger, unified whole, or program. This part of the chapter presents suggestions to simplify the complex process of achieving the right mix of modes of exercise and program design variables.

When putting together your training program and determining the order in which you proceed, two important considerations have to be balanced.

First, although there are always exceptions, you normally perform the exercises in a natural sequence in which you tackle those that call for more energy early and save the lighter, less taxing work for the end. In general, exercises that require speed and power should be performed at the beginning of a training session (sprinting, plyometrics, or the Olympic lifts). Total-body exercises like kettlebell swings should follow. Next should come multijoint exercises like the squat or press. Exercises that are more isolated in nature should be performed last.

Second, while keeping the first point in mind, you need to put your training program together in a way that allows you to prioritize your goals. You should do the aspect of training that you believe is most important first and give it the most attention. A list of physical qualities that you might want to train is included in the left column of table 14.8.

The right column of table 14.9 shows how you would arrange your workouts if you decide to focus on conditioning work. Conditioning is trained three times a week, which is the most of any of the qualities. Strength, power, speed, and agility are trained once per week. Hypertrophy, which aligns well with conditioning work, is trained twice a week. Mobility is always important, so it is emphasized twice a week. If you decide at some point to prioritize agility training instead, then the frequency would need to be reworked with that in mind.