Program Design made easy

You have just signed up to the gym, restarted at the gym after some time off or you're coming in for a workout outside of a PT session. You walk in with your program and get started. But after a while things become stale, progress stalls or you simply don't know where to go next in your workouts or simply you haven't changed plans in years. In many instances this is where people tend to fall off the wagon with their health and fitness goals. I want to help you stop doing that with some simple tools to follow when creating your own program to follow.

What goes into a program?

From my own personal experience allot goes into my programs that may be invisible to the naked eye. We want to take into account loading parameters, exercise selection specific or acceptable to the clients goals, any injuries or muscular imbalances, unilateral work and different muscle group focus where needed. We can also partner this with different exercises through different planes of movement in the body.

So where do I start?

A simple point to begin with is to decide how often you're going to train and work from there. I like to focus on 6-10 week patterns, as I've found this is enough time to learn the skill, apply the right stimulus and then get the necessary adaptations we are looking for. We are going to look at full body structuring today and in a later blog I will speak to split programming. With your amount of days in mind you want to train we then want to focus on creating the plan through our movement patterns.

What does this look like?

An effective place to start is by selecting 6 exercises that focus on different things. The way I put the 6 together is as follows. Lower Body exercise, Pushing Exercise, Pulling Exercise, Single Leg exercise, Core exercise and an Accessory exercise. When put together this provides an excellent structure to a workout.

Lower Body- this could be any exercise that focuses on our large leg muscles. I like to focus on movements like squat and deadlift variations but you can also utilise leg press variations.

Pushing Exercise- this focuses on exercises that work the pushing muscles of our upper body. So chest and shoulder press variations. Some examples include the bench press or standing overhead press.

Pulling Exercise- this works all of the pulling muscles of our upper body. These muscles are predominantly back muscles and include exercises like chin ups and rows.

Single Leg Exercise- it is important for stability and strength to include unilateral work into our plan. As we age balance is a key indicator in health and longevity so focusing on it can pay long term dividends. Think exercises like step ups and lunges when thinking of single leg but there are also things like single leg deadlifts and bridges.

Core Exercise- we all know the importance of a strong core by now so it is important to bring core into play. We don't want to be thinking "abs" however. When we think this way we think more aesthetic as opposed to functional. Always remember abdominal definition is a result of proper nutritional choices, low body fat levels and genetics as opposed to a specific focus on abdominal exercises. We want to strengthen our core through safe and effective exercises. Think things like planks, deadbugs, anti rotational presses and wood chops.

Accessory Exercise- this is an area where you can get specific to yourself or have some fun with an exercise you like. I generally like to focus on a lagging area in the body or a nice functional exercise like a farmer walk. But here is a great place also for an arm exercise or rotator cuff specific exercise. This is an area that you can be creative.

Putting it together

So we have our 6 areas to focus on and below is how this may look transitioned into a workout.

Training Session

Squat (Lower Body)

Dumbbell Bench Press (Push)

Lat Pulldown (Pull)

Dumbbell Lunge (Single Leg)

Plank (Core)

Triceps Pushdown (Accessory)

Is this enough?

Quality over Quantity is crucial when designing a training plan. Our goal should never be to rush through a plan. The goal is to acquire new skills, progress them and stimulate the muscle so it adapts. Too often we focus on the amount of work done and not the quality. When paired with an effective warm up and cool down this plan would give you everything you need for an effective workout.

What about sets and reps?

Sets and repetitions are quite individualised depending on your specific goals but we can create some basic parameters when building our program. Anywhere between 2 sets on the low end and 5 sets on the high end will be a good place to settle in. For repetitions we break it down into our goals. For Strength we want to aim between 1-6 reps per set, Hypertrophy will be 6-12 reps per set and Endurance will be 13 repetitions and beyond. These guides are a great place to start when building your plan.

Remember Consistency is Key!

Now you have the basic guide to build up a program remember that consistency is key. It is never so much the program but the adherence to it that will net you the results you are looking for. Aim for 2-3 resistance training sessions each week and remain consistent and emphasise quality over quantity when it comes to work and you will be well on your way to the results you want. For any more information please email me bpitfit@gmail.com. You can also check out my plans on my website as I have created a journey that is easy and effective to follow to take care of all your programming needs.