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Designing Weight Training Programs

How to Design a Weight Training Program

Essential Factors:

Training And Rest Days:

The type of training you perform will obviously be dependent on your own individual goals. However, the key consideration here is understanding that a rest day is as important as a training day. Muscles must be allowed to fully recover to enable them to constantly function at their maximum ability during each and every single workout.

Muscles begin to atrophy (waste away) after 5 days. This is the reason why we retrain muscles after 5 to 6 days at most. Advanced trainers with excellent recovery, or, “chemical assistance”, can retrain muscles after 4 days.

Sets And Reps Strategy:

Failure to train at the correct zone that is relevant to your training goals, using the correct percentage of your 1 rep power maximum, means that you will not achieve those goals.

Suitable Exercise Order:

• Always Put Chest At The Start:

Apart from some total beginners, chest exercises are always performed at the very start of a workout due to the many muscles that aid the chest in mass and strength building exercises.

• Never Mix Back And Biceps:

Apart from total beginners programs, the Biceps are always worked after working the back on beginners programs, as back exercises involve the Biceps to such a large degree. Working the Biceps immediately before working the back would mean that the Biceps would be too fatigued to enable you to carry out a proper back routine. Apart from beginners training programs, back and Bicep routines must always be performed on different training days. Beginners should always separate back and Biceps when they are in the same program as to allow recovery between the two.

• Always Do Biceps Before Shoulders:

You must always perform a Biceps workout before a shoulder workout. If you were to do shoulders before Biceps you would not be able to give the Biceps an effective workout, as the Anterior (front) and Lateral (side) Heads of the shoulders are fixator muscles that hold the arms in place, so would be simply too tired to fix the arms in place.

• Never Do Triceps Before Shoulders Or Chest :

In all the pressing exercises for the chest and shoulders the Triceps assist in the movement as the first of the secondary muscles and so play a fair part in the movement. Triceps are, therefore, always performed after the chest or shoulders because the Triceps would not be able to sustain a chest or shoulder workout directly following a Triceps workout, so would fatigue way before the chest or shoulders, meaning that you would not be able to give them an effective workout.

• Do Leg Curls After Quads:

Unless for sport specific reasons, Leg Curls are always performed after having worked the Quadriceps. This is due to the fact that the knee joint is already warmed up and so this will greatly cut down on the wear and tear on the knee joint. As with all forms of training safety must come first.

• Always Do Abs At The End Of The Workout:

Abs are always performed right at the end of any workout. If you were to perform abs at the start or in the middle of a workout, any exercise that comes after abs would be much less effective as the abs are fixator muscles in over 90% of all exercises.

For exactly the same reason any lower back work is performed towards the end of the program.

Periodisation:

Periodisation reduces any negative effects from over training, or, “staleness” and enables athletes to achieve, “peak” performance to coincide with the relevant competition phases, by organising training into phases of different types of exercise done at varying intensities and volumes for a specific time period. In essence, the training model used decreases the training volume, whilst at the same time increasing the training intensity as the program progresses.

Each different phase lasts somewhere between 4 and 6 weeks in length for beginners, at the very least, and up to 8 to 12 weeks at the very most, both consisting of the same style of training techniques. The time periods quoted are based on the fact that it takes 4 to 6 weeks to obtain a training response in beginners which then peaks at 8 to 10 weeks, before tapering off dramatically after 12 weeks. The only exception to this rule is if there is a sport specific reason why two of the same 8 to 12 week meso cycles have to be put together.

The adaptation period will shorten for advanced trainers due their experience of training which conditions the muscles and energy pathways to recruit muscle fibres more effectively than trainers who have just started out. The exact length of the shortened time scale cannot be given as this will be totally dependent on the type of training and the genetics of the individual in question.

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