Over the last 6 years I’ve written hundreds of programs for clients from a wide variety of backgrounds from office workers training 3 days a week to drop a few kilos and improve their health through to military personnel and police training up to 3 sessions a day to achieve special forces selection.

In this article I want to outline the considerations and basic steps that I go through in putting together any program so that next time you need a program you can have a go at putting together a personalized program that takes into account your current fitness level, goals and available time and resources.

Programming Considerations

Goals

Before you begin to put together a training program it’s important to determine the desired outcome of the plan.  I won’t spend too much time on goal setting as it’s an area that most people are familiar with but one point I do want to stress is that in order for your plan to be successful your goals need to be fairly simple and they need to be achievable in the time frame you’ve set.  Many people I talk to are making the mistake of chasing too many goals at once and end up achieving nothing.  If you want to get good at several things that’s fine, just break your program up into smaller cycles and emphasise one or two goals at a time and put your other goals in a holding pattern.  If you are working hard on one aspect of fitness you won’t lose much ground on another aspect of fitness!

Time and Resources

This is a critical consideration.  If you want to join the SAS but you work 80 hours a week then chances are your available time is insufficient to achieve your goals.  Decide early on how many days a week you can REALISTICALLY devote to training.  You will save yourself a lot of frustration by planning and executing a solid 3 day week program compared to planning on 6 days a week and missing 3 workouts due to other commitments.

I would recommend a minimum of 3 days a week and a maximum of 6 days a week with a maximum of 15 training sessions for very serious athletes.

As with time, make sure you’ve got access to the right equipment before planning your training.  If you want to get strong you’ll need weights of some description, if you want to become the worlds greatest crossfitter then you are going to need a gym full of rings, rowers and all the other toys needed for the workouts.

Current fitness level, diet and supplementation, age and training age

I’ve lumped these together because they are all major factors in your ability to adapt and recover from training sessions.  Many people get frustrated because they set out to do a program only to burn out .  The problem is that unbeknownst to the athlete the program was originally written for a genetically gifted 25 year old professional athlete on a steady diet of food sleep and steroids!

At this stage of planning it’s important to conduct an honest assessment of how well you are going to recover from your training and take that into account when planning overall volume and intensity.

Putting the plan together

So once you’ve written down the main considerations above it’s time to put together a plan.   Here are the steps I go through when putting together a program.  Note that when planning initially I don’t try to put the program into a weekly schedule, I simply collect all the elements together and arrange them later, often shuffling things around a few times to get the best fit.

Match your goals with primary exercises/workouts

This stage is pretty simple.  If you’ve got a specific goal simply match up that goal with a short list of core exercises.  For example if your goal is to improve your powerlifting performance you would choose squat, bench press and deadlift and if your goal was to improve your aerobic fitness you might choose 3-4 variations of aerobic exercise like long distance runs, intervals, rowing and cycling.

Within your workouts these exercises should be “front loaded”, that is they should appear preferably as the first exercises in a session so that if the session gets cut short you’ve got your important stuff out of the way early.  I like to call these your “A” exercises and in a good program they will account for about 70% of your time and will give you about 80- 90% of your total results.  If you are on very limited time they may be the only exercises you do.

Choose supplementary exercises

Once you’ve got your big basics written down you can add a sprinkle of exercises that complement your core exercises.  This can be stuff like ab work, mobility work or strength exercises to balance out areas that need work to support the primary areas of interest in your program.  For a powerlifter this might be things like seated rows to balance out the shoulder or some conditioning work to keep bodyweight down.  For an endurance athlete this could mean strength work, soft tissue work or stretching.

These “B” exercises are still very important but because of their secondary role you can get away with dropping them occasionally (but you shouldn’t make a habit of it)

Sometimes I even go a step further and add some “C” exercises and workouts that are nice to have but not essential.

So for example a sample exercise grouping for a strongman in the early off season might look like this.

Main goal – Improve deadlift and overhead strength.

“A” exercises

Deadlift

Rack pulls

Military press

Push press

“B” exercises

Squats

Planks

Kroc Rows

Pullups

Bench press

Glute Ham Raise

“C” exercises

Kettlebell Swings

Strongman implement work

Conditioning work

Choose set, rep and loading schemes for your primary exercises

Once you’ve got your exercises sorted it’s time to choose your sets, reps and loads for your primary exercises.  This is where the art and science of programming can get a bit tricky as there are a number of effective (and some not so effective) loading patterns you can use.

Initially I suggest using a simple program like 5 sets of 5 with a steady linear progression in weights over 4 – 6 weeks.  You could also adopt a 5-3-1 loading pattern or alternate between sets of 5 and sets of 3.

For endurance programs a simple cycle of long distance, short interval, medium intervals with a linear progression in volume works well.

Conclusion

In part two of this article I’ll outline the final steps in putting together a program and provide some worked examples of programs for different goals.

The reality is that most people don’t train hard enough to justify the supplements they are on but they can be very useful.

Before taking any supplements you need to understand which level of training you are at and then get the appropriate stuff. You also need to make sure your basics are squared away. If your diet is crap, you don’t get enough sleep or your training program is rubbish no amount of expensive powders will make you big and strong.

So here is a guide for three basic levels of training, keep in mind that these are cumulative which means that people at the advanced/competitive level need to take everything from the levels below as well.

Before you think about supplementation check the following

1. Are you eating 3 solid meals a day + 2 – 3 snacks each containing some protein, carbs and good fats

2. Are you training at least 4 days a week with a focus on the big basics like deadlifts, squats, bench press, chinups and military press.

3. Are you getting 7- 9 hours of sleep a night.

If the answer to any of these is a no then spending big bucks on supplements is going to be a waste of time.

Level 1 – Beginners

During the first 6 months to 1 year of serious training it’s unlikely that you’ll need much more than lots of food and some hard training to make gains.

Supplements at this level are restricted to stuff that’s cheap and highly effective.

Multivitamin – Train hard and chances are that you’ll be working your bodies vitamin and mineral stores a bit harder than the average couch potato. While you may be getting enough from your diet a multivitamin is good insurance and costs bugger all.

Protein – Plain Whey Protein Concentrate mixed with whole milk 2-3 times a day. No need for fancy pants stuff that’s been bioengineered to death.

Fish oil – 3 – 6 caps a day for general heart, brain and joint health. Start now and never stop taking it.

Sports drinks – Gatorade or similar during hard training to replace electrolytes and provide energy. Avoid if your goal is fat loss.

Level 2 – Intermediate

If you have been training for at least 6 months and you are now using more advanced training methods because beginner programs stopped working then you are probably ready for some level 2 supplements.

This stuff is more expensive than the level 2 stuff and the performance gain is not generally as big you get from the basics.

Creatine – 5g a day with your recovery shake. Creatine improves performance in repeated bouts of near maximal exercise. This allows you to train harder and allows you to stress the body more for continued gains in strength. Good for strength and power programs, not so good for distance runners because you do tend to gain some fluid weight which makes you slower.

Minerals – Zinc, Magnesium etc can help you recover. I quite like “Endura” sports drink at the moment but you can also use a supplement like ZMA that may boost testosterone production.

Glutamine – The most abundant free amino acid in muscle. 3-5g once a day after workouts may speed recovery.

Level 3 – Advanced / competitive athlete

If you are 2+ years into serious training and you compete then you’ll be looking for anything that gives you the edge.

At this level it’s worth experimenting with different products and combinations as some things appear to work for one person but not another.

Some stuff to try

BCAA – Branch chain amino acids may help recovery

Vitamin D – 5000IU a day, this may turn out to be like fish oil in that it’s long term health benefits are becoming compelling but for sports performance at the moment it may help or it may not.

ZMA or GABA – Worth trying for improved sleep and growth hormone secretion but not cheap.

Anything else that takes your fancy, antioxidants, weird plant extracts, Nitric oxide supps, caffeine in high doses (be careful with this one). At this level you might get 1 or 2% from trying something new or you might get nothing but the proverbial “expensive urine” however as a competitive athlete sometimes that 1% is the difference between first place and fourth, and no one EVER remembers the guy who came fourth.

Want Supplements?

I get all my supplements from  The Edge Sports Nutrition

I’ve known the guys at The Edge since I first started training back in 1997, they’ll be able to give you advice on exactly what stuff you need.

Pulling 240kg in April

In my experience the vast majority of athletes are always on the look out for the magic program that is going to boost their performance into the stratosphere while making them 10X sexier to the opposite sex.

They are normally impatient for the performance and sexiness to arrive and try 4, 6, 8 or 12 week super cycles that promise the world but often deliver overtraining, frustration and injury instead of results.

While it may not provide instant results or sexiness (your mileage may vary) Jim Wendlers 5-3-1 system is a definite antidote to the endless skipping through radical plans.

It’s more of the slow cooker approach to strength development and if you’ve got a tiny bit of patience for the first few weeks then you’ll reap some big rewards.

I’ve been using 5-3-1 now for a few months, testing out variations of the program in my own training and want to share some observations so that you can decide if it’s a good option for your training.

Background

I first heard of 5-3-1 months ago but was already heavily into a serious strongman training program training 6 times a week for up to 2 hours at a time plus a 3 hour event training session.  On the plus side I was getting stronger at a rapid rate but on the downside my food bill was killing me, I was constantly sore from training and I was spending lots of money and time on recovery methods each week.

Overall at the time it was worth it but after two strongman competitions I decided that I needed a more sustainable plan both for the sake of my body and also because I had a lot of work coming up running a big weightlifting competition and training time was going to be cut back to 3 x 1 hour sessions a week.

Even on such a time limited program I wanted to try and make progress that would serve as a base for future strongman competitions.

After tossing up a few ideas I bought a copy of 5-3-1 from Elite FTS and got stuck into it.

The first thing that struck me about 5-3-1 was the simplicity of the program and also a degree of hesitation.  Coming from an Olympic weightlifting coaching background I’m used to programs where you squat 9 times a week, pull 9 times a week and put stuff overhead 9 times a week.  Where training is ruled by strict percentage charts and where you stop at the specified number of reps even if you feel like you could do more.

To go from this to doing each basic lift (squat, bench, deadlift and military press) once a week and only hitting one truly maximal set in each session was a massive shock at first but after a couple of cycles I discovered that there are definite positives that can be taken from such a program.

1.   If you really put your heart and soul into that one crucial set then you don’t need to do 5 sub max sets. This is very time efficient

2.   When you are time poor and under a lot of job pressure it’s far easier to psych yourself up for one death set and get it over with than it is to sustain the intensity across multiple sets and exercises.

3.   Therefore even if you are having a rotten day and are tired you can normally squeeze out that one good set and even if that’s the only thing you do in the gym that day you can walk out knowing that you’ve done the important stuff.

4.   By starting well away from your current comp 1RM and working on rep PRs you build a habit of success and getting a flying start on the more difficult work closer to your 1 Rep max.

5.   Even though I was sore after some sessions overall I was much fresher and more enthusiastic about training. I looked forward to each session and looked forward to breaking rep PRs.

On top of the basic program Jim has many recommendations for assistance work to fill in the gaps.  Overall I ended up using a few variations of the assistance work including not doing any at all! What I found was that you can either use the assistance work to add some volume if your recovery is in order or you can use the assistance work to correct deficiencies and advance your main lifts by doing complementary work.

One word of caution.  Initially it looks like a 5-3-1 program is too easy and you may be tempted to add extra workouts, tons of extra exercises etc etc.

DON’T

As prescribed 5-3-1 ain’t the fastest way to gain strength in the short term but over a period of months and even years it’s going to build a massive, solid foundation and result in steady progress toward your goals.

The beauty of the system is that you are always striving for rep PRs which give you a sense of achievement without wearing you out and then on the occasions when you do test your max you are bound to be surprised by your results and chances are over the course of a year you’ll make better progress than some streak of lightning who comes into the gym, pounds out a 4 week mega everything cycle and then gets burnt out or hurt and has to take months off!  I’m not saying that there isn’t room for the occasional focus program but unless you’ve got experience in planning training or a good coach 5-3-1 is going to be a more reliable and safe way to build long term strength for powerlifting or strongman.

Some figures from my program

Rep PRs

Bench press      95kg x 8  increased to 100 x 13, 110 x 8 and 115 x 5

Squat        155kg x 3 increased to 155 x 8 and 170kg x 5

Deadlift        195×3 to 200×7 and 215×3

These results were from the 8^th of July to the 1^st of October or just under three months.

1RM

Bench press from       120 to 130

Deadlift                         240 to 245

Squat                            200 no change but the day I tested it I felt off

So in summary

I found 5-3-1 to be well written, easy to understand, easy to implement and a very effective program that deserves a look by anyone serious about building a base of raw strength that can be applied to any strength and power sport.

Note – I have no financial arrangement or affiliate deal with Jim Wendler, I just think it’s a great product and people should know about it

The other day on one of the forums I post on the following question came up.

It’s always said not to train to failure. What I’m wondering is why?

I’ve done it a little lately to vary it up, and while it really smashes me I at least feel some progress. Learnt the hard way though to do it close to bed time, cause if I go to failure (or beyond with lowered weight) a few times with small break in between I’m absolutely wrecked till I sleep a while.

After answering the question I thought i might as well pu tthe answer up here because i’m sure other people would have the same question!

So here is what I wrote…

This is a fairly complicated subject and depending on who you talk to you’ll get lots of different opinions.

I’ll try to simplify things to the three most common scenarios.

1. Muscle mass - Training to failure is an easy way to ensure progress when trying to build muscle.

Basically a fairly high volume of work with moderately heavy weights leads to a break down in muscle fibres and the bodies response is to build more muscle to compensate.

Due to some quirks of physiology though not all the muscle is contractile fibre (the bit that lifts stuff) so you can get bigger muscles but you aren’t necessarily as strong as you look. You still get stronger but just not the same way that pure strength athletes do.

Bodybuilders who train to failure in the 8 – 12rep range are in the muscle building zone and will often experience delayed onset muscle soreness.

2. Strength and power – strength is more neurological than most people think. When aiming to develop maximal strength and power you need to lift as heavy as possible but not necessarily to the point of failure.

By avoiding failure you recover more quickly and therefore can train more often. Like all skills the more often you practice the better you get.

This is why olympic lifters favour low reps (1-5 and mostly 1-3) and often twice daily training. They never train to failure in multi rep sets and only really “fail” during one rep max attempts when the weight is too high to lift.

Olympic lifters still get DOMS sometimes and initially they often build a lot of muscle mass but then tend to plateau when they get to the body weight they want to compete at.

3. Muscular endurance - When the goal is high rep local muscular endurance (20+reps) for things like pushups you can train effectively either with multiple sets of sub maximal numbers or you can hammer away at training to failure. Either will work for a while and then it’s probably best to switch.

During long sets or circuits you end up with different types of failure if you push to the limit. You can experience metabolic failure where the muscles don;t have enough energy to contract or a build up in acid levels is inhibiting contraction. When this happens you’ll stop because you are out of breath basically. You can also get the same type of failure as doing bodybuilding type training whereby you might have the energy to do the reps but you’ve run out of nueromuscular juice.

At the end of the day you need to overload the muscles and your energy systems and try to progress every few sessions, once something stops working switch to a slightly different plan and start again!

Some of these exercises are good, some are bad and some are just pointless (anyone standing on a BOSU curling a 5kg dumbell i’m talking about you).

So let’s assume you’ve already got a solid basic program based on the powerlifts, olympic lifts, kettlebells or Crossfit often the question becomes:

What are some additional exercises you might want to add to your program that are going to push your strength and fitness along without turning your program into a circus act?

Over the next few weeks I’m going to add some short videos of exercises that I’ve added to my training and the training of my athletes recently and will tell you WHY you should add them to your program.

Here are the first couple

Band Benching

Face Pulls

Over the last few weeks I’ve been shooting lots of footage and have now done most of the editing for a DVD on the advanced kettlebell drills that I use with clients.

Now, unlike some other kettlebell DVDs this one isn’t going to give you a thousand variations of every exercise, 99% of which you’ll never use!

I’ve picked the drills that I use in my own training and with my clients in order to get the best results in the least amount of time.

The DVD will be available for pre-order later this week and will ship out on the 6th of April.

Here is a short sample of the DVD, more details to follow!

So as I progress toward the comp I figure I’ll make some notes about my musings and see how they work out in reality.

This weeks random thoughts

1. 5kg may not seem like a lot but in strongman it can be the difference between easy and impossible! This week I did farmers walks at 100kg (relatively straight forward) 105kg (hard but doable) and 110kg (made it a whole 8 metres!) and had the same experience of axle cleans. 80 for triples and then a bunch of missed attempts at 85kg.

2. Strongman is unforgiving of weaknesses and when you find yours you need to prioritise training. I’ll freely admit that my overhead strength is crap at the moment but in the first weeks of my program I was treating mil press and push press as accessory exercises but now i’ve made the first exercise in each gym session an overhead lift with an additional overhead lift later in the program. No use having a huge deadlift and squat if you are going to fail as soon as the events head above the shoulders.

3. Back off weeks are your friend! Last week I was cranky and sore but a week of lighter workouts has renewed my enthusiasm for training and i’m looking forward to attacking the next few weeks of training.

Anyway here is a video of some farmers walks and stone simulator training. Stay tuned for the next video of some squat and deadlift variations i’m experimenting with in my quest to hit a 230kg / 500lb deadlift before April.

As regular readers will know I’ve just entered a Strongman show in June and despite competing in the “Lightweight” category at 101kg and 179cm tall I’m a good 4kg under the weight limit for the class.

Now from weightlifting I can tell you that the last thing you want to do in a weigh category sport is train and compete so far under a weight limit for two reasons.

1. It’s muscle mass that you are just giving away

2. Some other dude will train all year at 110kg and then squeeze himself down to 105 for the weigh in, rehydrate and effectively you’ll be competing against a 110kg monster.

Therefore I’m aiming to add about 6-8 kg over the next few months so that I can be that guy that lives and trains at 108 – 110kg and then squeezes in under 105 for the comp.

What most people don’t realise is that putting on QUALITY muscle mass for strength sports is not easy. You can’t just eat crap all the time because you’ll put on fat and once you’ve reached a certain level of muscle mass it becomes harder and harder to convince your body of the need for more. Furthermore while you could use bodybuilding techniques the type of muscle you put on is different to the type required for true strength sports.

So stay tuned and in furture posts I’ll be sharing some of my strategies.

I was watching it last night while I was doing some work and even though I’m not big on bodybuilding as a “sport” or even on training just for looks I have to say it’s a pretty good movie for a few reasons.

1. It shows what bodybuilders looked like before the ridiculaous steroid freaks of the current era looked like. Was there steroid use in mid 70′s bodybuilding, undoubtably but nothing like what you see now! The guys in Pumping Iron are big, muscular and lean but none of them look like they’ve dropped out of an Alien spaceship. These days bodybuilders present a completely unrealistic picture of what you can achieve in the gym, mostly because the magazines refuse to admit that these guys are all juiced up to the eyeballs! Kind of like airbrushed female models modern probodybuilders set unachieveable goals for guys and make everyone wonder why they can’t be 110kg of ripped to shreds muscle!

2. The strength training in pumping iron is pretty basic. Over and over you see guys benching, rowing, squatting (deep squats too), pressing overhead and deadlifting. There are few fancy machines around. Big basic training like this should never have gone out of fashion!

3. In places Pumping Iron is just damn funny. Listening to a young Arnold talking about sex, commitment and playing mind games with other lifters is very interesting. It’s no wonder the guy has had three very successful careers in bodybuilding, acting and politics. Love him or hate him the guys got ambition and balls.

I believe that there is a new edition of Pumping Iron out on DVD soon so I suggest getting together with some fellow muscleheads and watching it for a little motivation!

The article is by Pavel Tsatsouline and was posted on Tim Ferriss’ 4 hour Work Week blog. (I highly recommend getting a copy of Tim’s book)

The main thrust of the article is that many people do too much fluff in the gym and that you can eliminate much of the crap, work hard on the basics and achieve better results.

The article outlines a plan to cut powerlifting training down to bench, deadlift and squat. Of course you may not be into powerlifting but I think that the principles outlined in the article are sound and could easily be applied to other fitness areas. For example an Olympic lifter could choose clean and jerk, snatch, pulls and squats and apply the program, or a kettlebell lifter might cut back to snatches, turkish get ups and presses.

I’ve kind of being doing this for the last few weeks anyway. I’ve been squatting heavy, doing either pullups or military presses and then a short conditioning workout at the end of each session. It allows me to squeeze in a workout before my clients and athletes turn up to the gym and i’m hitting rep PBs on back squat.

Anyway check out the full article here

Tim Ferriss – Pavel Tsatsouline Blog post