I’ve been a personal trainer for over ten years and I’ve utilized every tool at my disposal for bettering the rate at which my clients see increases in performance. One incredible tool is the accountability component of having a coach. Knowing that someone cares about you hitting your workouts can be quite motivating and are sometimes the difference between going all in or not at all. Another incredible tool is technique coaching. There is A WORLD of difference between doing a difficult free-weight exercise with and without technical coaching. I love obsessing over the major differences that come from tiny adjustments in form. It can change whether an exercise hurts you, or not; it can change whether an exercise recruits one muscle group or another; and it can change whether you see slow improvements or faster improvements!
Through Quantified FC I offer both of these services, with weekly check-ins during which we discuss how the previous week and, and what our plans are for the next week. We also check your form with any videos you’d like to send.
But that said, the tool in my toolbox which I believe is the master key, and the greatest service I provide is the custom-built programming. A good program is comprised by large concepts: periodization, exercise selection, progressive-overload methods, and nitty-gritty details: frequency, load, sets, reps, and rest-periods.
Before I explain how each of those concepts work, let me acknowledge why some people don’t feel that programming is necessary. If you never did exercise, and one day begin to exercise, you will almost certainly see some immediate progress. Even if you don’t put much thought into what you do, you should see progress for at least a few months. After a few months, most people begin to realize that they need to pay closer attention to the details. I’m assuming that almost everyone reading this article has put some attention, maybe a lot, into what they do and how they do it. The more attention you put in, I’m sure you realize there are more improvements. But eventually, most people reach a sort of stagnation. Often, it’s not due to a lack of effort, but simply the combination of factors isn’t adequate enough to take them to the next level. One solution is to delve deeper and deeper into what makes good programming, and learn, and research, and study and experiment! Another is simply to ask for help from someone who has been doing exactly that for the past decade.
A New Program is born
"Smart training means learning from every workout and adjusting accordingly."
-Alexander Bromley
Periodization: The first step to writing a plan is deciding what we’re trying to achieve. Periodization is the act of selecting which areas we’re trying to improve. I love helping people with many different goals, and one of my clients is a perfect example. Within the same calendar year, he fought in his first boxing match, ran his first marathon in over two decades, and participated in his first powerlifting competition. He didn’t achieve all of these goals because he’s a genetically gifted full-time athlete. He’s a 50 year old dad with a job that occupies around 50 hours of his week. We accomplished these goals because we used laser-focus in each different area of his fitness for months at a time. When he needed to run a marathon, we did a lot of running, but not a lot of lifting. When he needed to get strong for a powerlifting competition, we did a of lifting but not a lot of running. The beautiful part is that when you do it right, you can make A LOT of progress in one area, while still making a little progress in another!
Exercise Selection: Choosing the right exercise for the right goals is both a science, and an art. There are so many different exercises that could strengthen your ability to push with your upper body, and many of them are incredibly good options, but in certain circumstances, I like to think very carefully about which one is better than others. Like a diamond among gold nuggets. For example, one person may be competing in a powerlifting competition, and they have a problem finishing the upper portion of their bench press - in which we may choose a variation of a bench press that helps them in that particular portion. Another person may have shoulder issues that prevent them from doing barbell bench press altogether - in which case we may experiment with something such as a dumbbell bench press or pushup variations. When chosen with a purpose in mind, two similar but slightly different exercises can have huge differences in effect.
Progressive Overload Methods: This is the singular concept that I believe accounts for most of the reason why many people plateau after 2-5 years of regular training. Coaching improvements must be done through careful progression. The remaining programming factors, which are quite simple to understand (frequency, load, sets, reps, rest-intervals) are the levers I pull, week-after-week, to drive progress. Quite simply, each week must have some improvement in one of these areas. Maybe you did one more rep, or one more set, or lifted 5 more pounds, or perhaps you rested 10 seconds less after each set. Choosing which variable to modify, and to what degree, is informed by science, but to be honest it’s a lot like an art. So much is determined by how hard the workout was, how many weeks into the program we’re in, how you’ve been responding to changes in the past few weeks, and what we’re expecting given our strategies to handle fatigue.
If you’d like to know anything more about these factors, please feel free to ask for your free 1-hour programming session, or bring it up for your next weekly check-in!