Program Design
This entire web page is geared towards helping you design your own program. Building
a better, healthier body with weights is an ongoing process. Your experience, fitness
levels, and goals may all change, which is usually accompanied by a change in your
program. This article will help you choose variables such as sets, reps, rest,
tempo, exercise selection and training frequency.
This article will be directed strictly towards weight lifting program design, and
won't include other factors such as diet and aerobic excercise. You can find that info
on other pages like the original programs page.
Many of the variables are interrelated, so this article may at times seem confusing.
Just read it twice, and if you have any questions, let me know!
Exercise Selection
When choosing exercises for your weight lifting program, here are a few things you
should keep in mind:
Muscle Balance - working chest but not upper back can lead to a dangerous
hunching forward of the shoulders that can lead to injury. Try to keep the work load
between opposing muscles similar.
Goals of Program - are you looking to improve performance in a sport? If so,
choose exercises that mimic the movements you use during your sport. If not, stick
with more multi-joint exercises.
Equipment Available - do you have access to free weights? machines? Take inventory
of the equipment available to you so you can develop a well balanced program.
Training Experience - you always hear how great an exercise the squat is. But if
you are just starting out, the squat can take a lot of time to master, and should not be
perfomed with poor form. You might consider sticking with leg press and leg extensions
until you build up your strength base, and start practicing the squat with little or no weight.
Free weights or machines? - machines are nice for novices because they allow for
quick muscle learning, and are very safe. However, free weights should not be avoided
because little or no movements in real life are as 2 dimensional as machine movement patterns.
Training strictly with machines can cause weak stabilizer muscles, and increase your
risk of injury.
Sets and Reps
Probably the question I get most often is how many sets and reps to do. The answer, of course,
depends on your goals. Here are the answers:
Hypertrophy - a.k.a. growth!
If you've never lifted weights before, you can walk into the gym and throw around
some weights for a month or two, and you will most likely experience some growth.
After that you'll be fighting for every ounce! The most commonly accepted range of
repetitions is about 8-12 to failure for growth. This number stimulates the greatest
release of testosterone and growth hormone.
The number of sets you do can also vary greatly. I have had success with both the HIT
(High Intensity Training: one set to failure) method of training, as well as multiple
sets. In my course we were taught that for optimal hormonal changes, aim for about 5
sets per muscle. I prefer to do 2-3 exercises, with 2-3 sets each for a total of about 6
sets. If you do try the one set to failure approach, make sure to make that one set
count, using drop sets, rest/pause, forced reps, etc. Keep rest periods short, 1-2 minutes
between sets.
Whatever method you choose to try, it won't work forever. You have to alternate if you
want to avoid a plateau. Some say every 4 weeks, some every 6, and some people make
every workout different. I would recommend at following the same method for about 4
workouts before moving on. Keep track of your gains, and you'll know if you should
use the same method again in the future.
Strength
If your main goal is to increase your strength and power (without too much increase in
body mass, i.e. for wrestling, etc.), you'll need to lift heavier
weights. The fact is, you won't significantly improve your 1 rep max if you always
lift a weight for 15 reps to failure. In order to adapt to heavier weights, you need
to expose your body to heavier weights. Aim for reps in the 1-6 range, always starting
with ample warmup, and use a spotter!
Lower reps like this is usually associated with higher intensity, which is inversly
related to volume. Whereas hypertrophy requires a fair bit of volume (reps x sets, i.e.
10 x 6 = 60), you can't have a lot of volume with heavy weights. But you can increase
the number of sets without increasing the volume too much. I.e. 8 sets with an average of
4 reps is only a total of 32 reps, about half as much volume as when training for hypertrophy.
Rest between sets should be longer to allow fuller recovery for maximal effort: 2-4 minutes,
i.e. 2 minutes for small muscles, 4 minutes for larger muscles.
Endurance
As you might have guessed, endurance training requires high reps. And to keep the volume similar,
you should keep your sets close to or less than for hypertrophy. Aim for 15 reps or more,
and 2-6 sets, depending on how many reps. I.e. only 2 sets of 50, but 6 sets of 15. Rest
should be kept short, around 1-2 minutes.
At first you may wonder why anybody would want to bother training with such high reps. Well,
it will help your physical condition in many useful ways, primarily better fuel
utilization (development of more mitochondria will increase fat burning capacity) which
makes you feel more energetic, and you'll be able to endure longer workouts better.
Program Design for Sports
Something I haven't touched upon much on my web page is the use of weight training
to improve athletic performance. The course I took did focus a fair bit on just that,
and I will put what I learned here!
Most, if not all sports, have seasons: the off-season, pre-season, and the
competetive season. Training can vary substantially from season to season, as it would make
little sense to workout 4 days a week if you have to play hockey for 3! Here is a quick
look at how the training generally varies from season to season:
Off-season
The off-season is ususally used for general strength and endurance increases, and maybe some
hypertrophy (increase in muscle mass). In some sports however, mass increase may be
unfavourable, and hypertrophy should be avoided. The off-season can vary from one or two
months up to 6 months or more. Generally, you should set up the program to allow 4-8
weeks of pre-season (sport-specific, power training) followed by one light, unloading week
prior to competition/competetive season.
Exercises used can be non-sport-specific, preferably large muscle, multi-joint exercises
like deadlifts, squats, barbell rows, bench press, etc.
Since the goal is strength and endurance increases, medium to light loads with high volume
and short rest periods should be used. Reps in the 6-12 range are good for strength and
hypertrophy, but aim higher if endurance is more important. 1-2 minutes rest is good
for stimulating growth response.
Pre-season
The pre-season should include training to benefit the athletes performace directly.
In many sports, explosive power is very important, and training will include low
rep, heavy training, perhaps even some plyometrics. Many sports have common movement
patterns, and these movements should be mimicked in the gym to strengthen it. For
example a shot-putter would do a lot of heavy squats, incline and should press.
Exercises should be more sport specific. The athlete, or his coach, needs to analyze
the athletes movements will performing the sport, and determine which exercises best
mimic those movements in the gym. Since the focus will be on low reps, heavy weight
power training, overall training volume will be reduced. Large, multi-joint exercises
not specific to the sport may be dropped in favour of some single-joint exercises
that work the muscles the way the sport will.
The goal is now to increase strength and power. The movements should be similar to those
used in the sport, we will use heavy loads, low reps, low to medium volume, and longer rest
periods. Reps in 1-6 range for sport specific movements, maybe slightly higher for
non-specific. 2-5 minutes rest (depending on muscle size, bigger muscle=more rest) for
more complete recovery between sets for maximal performance.
Competetive season
The athlete will most likely be quite active during his/her competetive season, and
so as not to limit their performance, we will cut down on training volume further.
In fact, we will limit training to once or twice a week, and we will stick with just a few
multi-joint exercises to maintain strength. Few total sets, low reps/heavy weights with
2-4 minutes rest.
An example would be squats, bench press, shoulder press on one training day, and
deadlift, chinups, and leg curls the second training day. Do 3 heavy sets for each exercise
with 4-8 reps each.
