Quote: (05-19-2015 06:22 AM)StrikeBack Wrote:
I generally don't write programs for people I train for a few reasons:
- I don't have time, I only do this as a hobby
- I'd rather teach people to come up with their own programs that suit their personal goals and limits
- I don't even write a detailed program for myself
When I coach people at the lifting club, often they already have a program written by someone else. Usually it works well enough for them, which is why they're on it in the first place. What I do is to teach them how to get the most out of that program.
This is what I'm aiming for here: showing you guys how to train, not what to train.
Here's one of the very first things I teach newbies about programming.
Don't be a slave to the numbers: weights, sets or reps, or weight increments in linear progression in any given session. As long as in the long run, you are increasing the weights, reps and sets in your lifts, you are heading in the right direction.
Whether it's from an Internet program or a custom written one for you, do not stick to them religiously. You need to understand the intention behind the Set X Rep X Weight: they are simply proxies to your actual goals, not your goals themselves.
With compound lifts
When you see something like 3x5x120kg squat in your program, it is not written in stone that you have to do exactly 3 sets of 5 reps with 120kg on the squat, or else you will fail in achieving your goals. What you should read from that are:
- You are training mostly for strength in the squat (because it's 3x5)
- You are doing 5 reps for about 3 sets (you may do more)
- You want to be doing, ideally, at least 15 quality working reps in the squat (most important)
- The weight you're using is about 120kg, or approximately X% of your squat 1RM (if you had one)
- You are a sportsman practicing a skill, in this case, the squat.
If you don't feel too confident of starting the first working set at 120kg x5, you may start it at 115kgx5 or even 110kg x5, then jump to 120kg x5 if it feels good. Or you may go 2x5x120kg then feel too tired and decide to take 7.5kg off the bar and do 112.5kg x5. Or you're having a fantastic day and decide to bump to 125kg x5 for the second set and smoke it. Sometimes you end up with 3 sets like this: 115kg x5, 122.5kgx5, 120kg x5.
The difference in strength/hypertrophy between that and doing a regular 3x5x120kg, provided all reps are of quality? Practically nothing. However, if you are grinding out 120kg with poor form, and end up with 5 good reps, 5 ok reps and 5 poor reps, then it is worse for you than doing something like the above.
If next week you're meant to add 2.5kg to your 3x5 squat, but you show up on the night not feeling too great for whatever reason, stick to the same weight as last week, don't add just because the program says so.
Failing reps or grinding out poor reps is actively harmful to your progression, especially if they become a habit. It will teach you bad movements which take way more effort to unlearn, tire out your nervous system, deplete will power, and slowly destroy your confidence and momentum.
I highlight the above because I see it over and over again with newbie lifters especially the ones on the popular 5 reps linear progression programs.
On the flip side, don't hold yourself back when you feel really good on the night, but the weight on the program feels too easy, and you think you could've done a bit more. It helps build confidence and momentum.
You can manipulate the weights as long as overall in a long term view, your average weight is going up, and you're not simply using this as an excuse to chicken out. The manipulation part is there so you can get the most out of any training session, regardless of what happens in your life.
Here's a more advanced scenario. You've already done 3x5x120kg, but didn't feel too great about your form. You didn't quite get some of the tips from a squat clinic thread that you read. Well, let's take the bar down to 100kg and do, say, 5 sets of 2 to practice those tips some more. Is that in the program? No, but some athletes in other sports would stay behind and do some extra work after they've done the main program by the head coach, and those athletes are often way ahead of their peers.
I'd occasionally do this in my training, and I'd go up to a huge number of x2 sets, to the point I'd lose count. Why x2 with a medium weight? Because you can practice almost forever with that sort of weight without burning out, while getting plenty of training effects including many more times the setup which is hugely important.
With small lifts
This is simpler. Let's say you see DB Curls 3x10. What does that mean?
- You're meant to work on hypertrophy for biceps, with DBs for muscular and strength symmetry
- You're working in the 10 reps range, and do about 30 reps total
What it doesn't mean:
- you have to do the same weights for all 3 sets
- you have to do exactly 30 reps total and no more
- you have to do exactly 10 reps per set
What you should think:
- you're aiming to, after a few months time on this program, lift 3x10 on DB curls at X kg
- Right now you're on 3x10 DB curls at Y kg, and it's very hard to add weights regularly to DB curls
- You can add more sets to a point, then drop back down to 3: week 1 - 3x10xY, week 2 - 4x10xY, week 3 - 5x10xY, week 4 - 3x10x(Y+1)
- You can add more reps to a point, then drop back down: week 1 - 3x10xY, week 2 - 3x12xY, week 3 - 3x14xY, week 4 - 3x15xY, week 5 - 3x8x(Y+1), week 6 - 3x10x(Y+1)
What you're achieving: both strength and hypertrophy (due to extra volume) progression.
There are a lot more ways you can lightly manipulate the Set X Rep X Weight part of the program, to make them work more effectively for your goals, as long as you remember that they're there to help you, not dictate what you must do in a session. What I write above is just some examples off the top of my head. I can slowly introduce some other ways, or you can use your creativity and experiment to see which works best for you.
Great post. This is one of the biggest things that happened for me with my own training, was focusing more on the quality of work, and the intention behind it, than the actual number of sets and reps. I spent years stopping at X reps because that's what the program said, rather than figuring out how to work hard and do what was required to get the right training effect for what I was trying to achieve.
I think once you realise that, you appreciate that there is not really any wrong way to train, so long as the movements you choose and the overall stimulus you illicit from each lift is in line with your goals. It's one of the things I've been trying to convey in the thread where I'm trying to help HD get closer to his goals.