**INTRO**
Typically, I
write these things from start to finish, to include the intro, but this time I
save it for last and I’m glad I did, because this grew into a BEAST of a
post. My original intent was to just jot
down a very basic understanding of programming as it relates to training,
ultimately demonstrating the difference between a program vs a routine (a quest
I’ve undertaken on many occasions).
However, as Dan John has observed in his own writing, the more you try
to simplify things, the more complicated they get, which is why he’s written 3
books (over 600 pages total) on Easy Strength, which is a workout that was
given to him in 6 sentences. And I
actually ended up cutting this short, because I could see it still running away
from me as I was writing it, but I feel like this is a good enough baseline for
the “common man” to be able to understand what programming is and is not. This is not a manual on HOW to program, as I
am not a coach and I have trained no clients.
Instead, this is more an explanation for what makes a program a program,
and how to recognize the facets within a program for what they are and what
they do. With that, let’s start at the
beginning, as that’s often a good place to start.
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| The stories are cooler in the Old Testament vs the New anyway |
**STIMULUS
AND FATIGUE**
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| Yeah, it's pretty much this |
Fundamentally,
all a program has to do is balance two variable: stimulus and fatigue. All other elements of a program serve these
two masters. Stimulus is necessary in
order to promote growth (from here on out, this will refer to growth of
muscles, but this honestly applies to all manner of growth, to include
conditioning, GPP, speed, power, strength, etc), and fatigue refers to the
accumulation of damage/exhaustion one encounters through the pursuit of that
stimulus. These two forces are on
opposite ends of the scale: the more we stimulate, the greater fatigue we
accumulate, and as fatigue accumulates, unless we find a manner to recover from
it, we lose our ability to stimulate any further. Because it’s not the training that causes us
to grow: it’s the RECOVERY from the training that results in growth. If we just keep mashing that stimulus button
and don’t ever find a chance to recover, we train ourselves into the ground and
get smaller and weaker.
So we
understand the intent of a training program: find a way to generate the
necessary stimulus to trigger growth while ALSO finding a way to manage the
fatigue that is accumulated so that we can continue the process of
stimulate/recover in order to continue growing.
We are trying to find that goldilocks of total training volume. It is this understanding that drives the
structuring of a training program. One
can train 1 day a week or 7 days a week, so long as they are balancing stimulus
and fatigue, which is why protocols like HIT can exist alongside the Bulgarian
Method. So what variables do we have in
order to trigger stimulus?
**FREQUENCY,
VOLUME, AND INTENSITY**
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| Just not all at the same time |
We have
training frequency (how often we train), training volume (how much we train
within a given session) and training intensity (in this instance, how heavy we
train, rather than “perceived intensity”, which is to say, how hard the
training feels). Much like stimulus and
fatigue, these 3 dials must be properly adjusted in order to allow FOR that
balance of stimulus and fatigue. If you
turn all 3 up to max, you get max stimulus AND max fatigue, which means no
recovery, and ultimately burnout. If you
turn all 3 down all the way, you get no fatigue AND no stimulus, so you still
don’t grow. Once again: finding the
balance is part of what makes a program a program, rather than a routine.
Breaking
things down further, we can understand stimulus through the lens of volume on
multiple levels. Above, I wrote “within
a given session” just to give vector to the conversation, but ultimately, with
a program being a program, we’re going to understand volume from a wider
perspective, to include weekly training volume and training volume within a
training cycle. Is it possible to
“overtrain” in the span of one day? We
can call that “overreaching”. We’ve
seen/heard the stories about people doing their first crossfit class and
developing rhabdomyolysis, and you can certainly do something like the 10k
swing challenge in one day and push yourself too hard, but typically, in the
discussion of “overtraining”, we’re referring to pushing beyond the bounds of
recoverable fatigue for a long and consistent timeframe to the point that
recovery is no longer possible without SIGNIFICANT intervention, such as
multiple weeks away from training. Which,
in that regard: an intelligently designed program will seek to mitigate this,
ideally through intelligent application of training volume across the duration
of a training cycle. So what are ways to
effectively manage volume?
Herein we
have the other 2 variables at play: frequency and intensity. If we determine how much volume we need in
order to trigger the desired stimulus to grow, we now have to determine how we
want to divide this volume in order to effectively trigger stimulus without
overcoming our body’s ability to manage the fatigue. This is how you see programs that can be so
wildly different yet still effective: they’re finding the volume needed to grow
and parsing it out as necessary. HIT
style training may only have “one” workset, but it tends to include a lot of
ramping up TO that one set, and once that one set is done, it’s followed with a
bunch of intensity modifiers to eek out even more reps, pushing way into the
recovery well of the trainee and absolutely obliterating them with
stimulus…which is why the training is so infrequent. Contrast this with more traditional higher
volume training, which employs more worksets and tends to leave reps in
reserve, which allows a better opportunity to recover from session to session,
allowing for more frequent training in order to continue to trigger the same
amount of stimulus.
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| A pretty good demonstration of the effects of both methods |
And in all
this discussion about fatigue, I haven’t even discussed the OTHER element of a
program that makes a program a program: fatigue MANAGEMENT. Because as we’ve discussed: if we overcome
the body with fatigue in the pursuit of stimulus, we ultimately regress. An intelligently designed program needs to
find some way to deal with all of this.
One of the simplest ways to do so is a prescribed deload: a period of
time with reduced, if not completely eliminated, stimulus, in order to allow
fatigue to mitigate. Matt Wenning talks
about incorporating these into Westside style conjugate, and Jim Wendler
includes them in 5/3/1, Tactical Barbell refers to them as “Bridge Weeks”, and
I honestly first learned about the idea from Pavel Tsastouline’s book “Beyond
Bodybuilding”, but John McCallum wrote about downtime in “The Complete Keys to
Progress” and really, the precedent exists in a LOT of other places as
well. Like getting an oil change BEFORE
your engine blows up, the idea of a deload is that it’s PREVENTATIVE
maintenance: you take the deload BEFORE you need it. Because as we’ve discussed: when we push too
far into fatigue, we overwhelm our ability to recover so much that we require
significant intervention.
However, for
some trainees, “deload” is a dirty word.
Some believe that you can effectively manage stimulus and fatigue simply
with intelligent programming, and that an intelligent program, by definition,
is one that does not NEED a deload.
There’s enough people out there that can make this work that I believe
it’s true, and ultimately it’s going to require a solid understanding of your
own body, fatigue indicators, and an ability to only push as hard as necessary
to generate stimulus in your training. I
know some dudes even make use of specific fatigue tracking software, to include
monitoring of resting heart rate increase and the “pen tap test”, as a means of
monitoring fatigue status. In either
instance, once again, we observe what makes a program a program: it has SOME
form of fatigue management in place.
There is
also room for discussion for ACTIVE fatigue management. Which is to say, the elements of
recovery. Ignoring non-training ones,
such as sleep and food (to which the Barbarian Brothers are famous for saying
“There is no overtraining: only undereating and undersleeping”), along with
things like ice baths, massage, etc, one can actually slot into their program
training that has a restorative function rather than a function of
stimulus. Dan John refers to these as
“tonic workouts”, and we’ve also heard of feeder workouts (not the same thing
as feeder sets) and simple recovery workouts.
Here, the intent is to just get some light, restorative bloodflow to the
muscles that were trained, in order to promote quicker recovery between
workouts and alleviate soreness. Light
conditioning can also have this impact, with walking being one of the best
examples. One is not going to recover
themselves out of a state of overtraining with these approaches, but they CAN
be a useful means of immediate fatigue management in the scope of one’s overall
programming, and they also tend to be a missing variable in many of the
“programs” that are created by those lacking awareness of these principles.
**THE OTHER
STUFF: PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD, SETS, REPS AND MOVEMENTS**
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| All the small things...yes, I'm really dating myself here |
Notice how I
haven’t even discussed progressive overload, sets, reps or movement yet? Yet, when a new trainee wants to discuss
their “new program”, ALL that want to talk about are sets, reps and
movements. This is why program design is
best left NOT to new trainees. Which, on
that note, they tend to overfixate on progressive overload, as though THAT is
the answer to all programming concerns (or, more specifically, the answer to
“what makes this a program and not a routine?”)
And yes, there is a significant issue of wheel spinning amongst the
general populace, wherein they just go to the gym, move around a bunch, go
home, and repeat for years on end, without producing any actual results because
they’re not actually challenging themselves to IMPROVE during their sessions at
the gym, but progressive overload is NOT the silver bullet it’s made out to be:
it’s simply A manner of generating stimulus.
We’re going
to get into “no true Scotsman” territory here, because technically what I’m
about to say can be understood to mean “progressive overload”, but let’s
appreciate what they layperson means when they say it: doing MORE than you did
the last time you were at the gym. Super Squats makes this simple by keeping
the sets and reps the same on the big set of squats (1x20) and telling the
trainee to just add 5-10lbs to the bar each time they squat: that’s as basic as
it can get with progressive overload. You
can also do this with a classic “double progression” approach: you pick a rep
range (8-12), start at the bottom of that range, work up to the top of it over
a series of sessions, then add weight and start the whole process over again. There are other methods as well, but
ultimately, all these methods accomplish is creating the STIMULUS we discussed
earlier in order to trigger a growth response from the body. In turn, commonly defined “progressive
overload” is NOT necessary as a means to grow: it’s simply A way to grow.
John Meadows
was notorious for never repeating the same workout twice: he’s always change
things from workout to workout, and this was by design. This allowed a natural form of autoregulation
for the trainee, preventing them from becoming too skilled at a lift to the
point where they were more improving their ability to RECRUIT motor units into
the lift to maximize poundages lifted (which, in turn, can elevate the
risk/consequences of the lift) and, instead, forcing them to focus on
generating the necessary degree of strain in order to create the stimulus to
grow. The old adage “the body doesn’t
know how much you’re lifting” holds quite true: one does not need to lift more
weight from training session to training session, NOR do they need to increase
reps/sets/volume/tonnage, etc: they simply need to generate the stimulus
necessary to trigger a growth response.
What this DOES require is for a trainee to be in tune with their body
enough to know when they’re actually pushing it to the point of triggering growth,
which is why progressive overload tends to be the more preferred approach to
“guarantee” results, but we say all this to acknowledge that this is simply A
manner to achieve stimulus, with stimulus itself being more the primary concern
of the roots of a program. And, of
course, I bring up Meadows, but he’s not alone in this approach: Jon Andersen
also employs it, as did Ivan Putski, and if you read Jamie Lewis’ “365 Days of
Brutality”, you’ll find that MANY old school musclemen were far more “ad hoc” in
their training, choosing movements that DAY and just going hard on them until
they were done.
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| Polish power BEFORE Mariusz |
While on
this discussion, some other methods we can employ to progress training include
increasing training density (getting the same amount of work done in less
time), increasing the speed that the bar/weight moves, improve our control over
the weights, lift the same weight for the same reps while under a greater state
of fatigue (Pavel Tsastouline had a great program based on this where you’d do
the same exercises every day but switch the order of them), etc. These metrics become helpful when we discover
that we are, in fact, human and not necessarily always capable of adding weight
to the bar every session.
What else do
beginners fixate on when it comes time to “write a program”? Sets and reps of course. And really, it’s just reps, because most
beginners only the numbers 3 and 5 when it comes to sets (no one does 4 sets of
4, ever). Beginner trainees tend to
believe that rep range ultimately determines outcome of training, wanting to
know what they strength rep range is vs the hypertrophy rep range vs the endurance
rep range vs the cardio. With just the
briefest of scrutiny, all of this falls apart: we’re told that 8-12/15 is the
“hypertrophy range” and anything above that is endurance/cardio…until you do
Super Squats and live your life around a 20 rep squat set that makes you grow
like an absolute weed for 6 weeks. Or
Dan John’s “Mass Made Simple”, which has you do a set of FIFTY reps with your
bodyweight by the end of the program and, once again, triggers a LOT of
growth. Where else have we seen programs
that trigger growth? 10x3 was very
popular in the mid to late aughts, because it took the 3x10 convention and
turned it on its head…and it STILL worked for creating hypertrophy. Although we also found out we weren’t nearly
as innovative as we thought, because Bruce Randall pitched the idea of flipping
sets and reps in order to get in more reps with heavier poundages back in the
60s. But it’s also interesting how that
same 10x3 that promotes hypertrophy can ALSO promote speed when executed per
Westside Barbell’s “Dynamic Effort Method”.
Heck, I always get frustrated when people see the 10x10 of Deep Water
and assume it’s the exact same thing as German Volume training, because it’s a
testament to how much folks only look at the sets and reps and never the actual
PROGRAMMING of a program.
What am I
trying to get at with this diatribe?
Sets and reps are merely mechanisms available to determine/control the
VOLULME of the training, which, in turn, is simply a mechanism meant to achieve
stimulus without overexceeding the fatigue threshold. The body isn’t a computer that you program
with a certain formula of sets and reps and it spits out a predictable outcome:
we’re simply employing these sets and reps with an intent of achieving the
outcome of enough stimulation without too much fatigue. In turn, sets and reps WILL vary by
individual and can very well vary from day to day based off the needs of that
individual in the moment. Do “cookie
cutter” routines work? Absolutely: I’ve
employed plenty of them myself, but the ones that DO work tend to be designed
by someone with enough coaching experience that they CAN extrapolate a very
GENERAL approach to training that will work with the majority of people. When you’ve coached a few thousand athletes,
you have a pretty good grasp of what generally works, and you can scribble that
out on paper and give someone something that will get them some results,
similarly to how a decent dietician can guesstimate the general amount of
calories you should consume along with the foods that will trigger the least
amount of inflammation/gut issues and promote the most general health (Hell, I
suppose Stan Efferding can do both of these things, and so did John Meadows,
and probably Justin Harris is a good pick, and Jon Andersen seems to be
knocking this out too). However, a brand
new trainee, trying to extrapolate FROM the extrapolation, is setting
themselves up for failure.
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| Stand on their shoulders, or else you'll get trampled |
And from
here, we have the discussion of movements, which, once again, those without
experience simply sees as a means to train a MUSCLE, not understanding that the
intent of the training is, once again, to generate stimulus to grow. “Isn’t it stimulus of a MUSCLE to grow?” No: stimulus of THE BODY to grow. That seems like the same thing at an initial
glance, but in the case of the former we observe trainees develop what Dan John
refers to as “Frankenstein’s Monster training”: leg extensions for the quads,
leg curls for the hamstrings, glute bridge for the glutes, flyes for the pecs,
raises for the shoulders, etc. There’s
nothing wrong with isolation exercises, and focusing on a muscle is a great way
to ensure that it grows, but herein we’re understanding two different types of
stimulus: local (the muscle being targeted) vs systemic (the entire body).
This is why
big heavy compounds are so prized in the world of physical transformation:
yeah, they target a lot of muscles, but they also put the entire BODY under
load, which, in turns, triggers that stimulus FOR the whole body to grow. The squat will have the trainee place a heavy
bar onto their spine and stand there for the duration of the set: signaling to
the WHOLE body “we are going to need to get bigger and stronger so we can hold
loads across our frame”. This is how we
get that wonderful hormonal response to training, what Dan John refers to as
“The Hormonal Cascade”, which he admits he lifted from someone but I can’t
remember who that is at the moment.
Consequently, it’s also why these movements are also quite uncomfortable
and, in turn, frequently avoided by new trainees, much to their own downfall. Their hope is that they can carefully curate
the perfectly selected collection of movements that expertly targets each
individual muscle they wish to train while avoiding anything that causes pain,
discomfort, or awkwardness in order to achieve an awe-inspiring physique…but if
it were that easy, EVERYONE would be jacked.
**ON
TRAINING TO FAILURE, SPLIT STRUCTURE AND REP RANGE CONFUSION**
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| Let's not pretend that we all understand what it means to "train to failure" the same |
Further into
this pitfall, these trainees misunderstand what the stimulus to grow ACTUALLY
is, hyper-fixating on the need to go to failure in order to trigger said
stimulus. Yes, training to failure CAN
signal the body that it needs to grow, but it is not NECESSARY to do so, nor
does it necessarily do so as well, AND, it can in fact have the opposite of
intended effect, wherein it generates too much fatigue to be able to recover,
resulting in REGRESSION rather than progress.
If we take High Intensity Training (HIT) as an example of “to failure”
employed effectively, we observe how significant appropriate recovery is to the
HIT protocol, with very infrequent training necessary in order to be able to
recover from the very hard training. We
saw the same thing with Stuart McRobert in Brawn, and with the infamous “Super
Squats” program. Along with that, we see
that these protocols make use of HARD compound exercises ALONG with training to
failure to generate this stimulus.
Meanwhile, new trainees with hyper-fixate on training to failure and
will intentionally pick movements that make training to failure EASIER to
accomplish, because they are more concerned with the “to failure” aspect than
the “hard movement” portion of “hard movement to failure”. Lateral raises to failure, leg extensions to
failure, curls to failure, etc. Because
they’re so concerned with achieving failure, they select no movements that put
them under a total systemic load, and they short themselves on their
results. Meanwhile, they’re obliterating
the muscles they CAN train, pushing beyond the point of their own recovery
ability, and end up just spinning their wheels, training stupidly easy
movements stupidly hard.
This has
already grown into a monstrous tome, and I still have some ideas that I want to
throw out there and don’t have the patience to find a way to weave it in, so
I’m just going to spit them out and then try to summarize. Another dead giveaway of someone just
Mad-Lipping their way through a program is not considering the impact of one’s
day’s exercise to another. I also get a
great chuckle when I see a chest/shoulder day right before leg day, because
this tells me this trainee has never tried to hold a barbell across their back
when their pecs and front delts are SCREAMING at them from yesterday’s
workout. The other is on rep ranges: the
notion that certain rep ranges have certain impacts tends to ignore the reality
that certain movements simply benefit from certain rep ranges. Instead, we get myths like “the rear delts
need high reps to grow”. No, it’s not
that: try doing a heavy triple for a face pull: it’s not going to work. It’s going to become a row. To actually be able to hit the damn muscle,
you have to take the weight down, which makes the reps go high. In turn, you’re not training ineffectively if
you end up doing a few hundred reps of band pull aparts: that’s about the only
way you can get volume there.
**CONCLUSION**
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| Is anyone still there? |
In summary,
programming is a matter of balancing stimulus and fatigue: we must generate
enough stimulus to promote growth while not generating enough fatigue to
hinder/regress growth, cause injury, or enter a state of overtraining. This represents the ideal total volume of
training: balancing that razor’s edge.
To manipulate/control that volume, we can control the frequency of
training, the volume within individual training sessions, the intensity of that
training, and the implementation of fatigue recovery via a deload. From there, the training plan itself is a
matter of selecting movements that will generate stimulus on a systemic level,
in order to promote whole body growth, along with on a local level, in order to
provide targeted growth. Sets and reps
are merely a mechanism in order to achieve that desired total volume: there’s
no wizardry with rep range equating outcomes.
Instead, it’s more the case that certain movements simply lend
themselves to certain rep ranges. Similarly,
progressive overload isn’t the panacea it’s made out to be: it’s simply A
method of ensuring that the desired stimulus to grow is utilized, typically in
the instance of a trainee who lacks the body awareness to be able to push hard
enough irrespective of the exercise being implemented. In that regard, training to failure is also
not necessary in order to generate this stimulus, and the pursuit of failure
above all else can frequently result in ignoring the real variables necessary
in order to grow.
