What is “programming?”
It dawned on me the other day “programming” is very much a word that I take for granted and assume others know what I’m even talking about when I say things like “remote traditional programming” or ask people if they are doing any particular programming at the moment. One of my in person clients actually mentioned to me the other day that they didn’t realize it was a thing that was available to people. They were under the impression that you either hired a trainer or you just needed to figure it out on your own at the gym. In its most basic definition, programming is simply your training plan or your routine; its going to tell you what movements you should do and for how many sets and reps you should do it. It can be planned day to day, but typically a good program will have a longer term goal in mind so that the workouts can guide you as a whole in that direction as efficiently as possible.
To use a possibly oversimplified metaphor, were going to compare this cooking. “Programming” is your recipe for the day. Without your recipe, you will more or less be winging it. Is it possible to cook well without a recipe or get in great shape without a program? Of course it is. We all probably know someone who is an amazing cook and they just go from feel and experience or an athlete that does their own thing and they look great. These tend to be the exceptions rather than the rule, and in the case of training these athletes unfortunately often tend to pay for this on the backend. What worked for them ended up coming at the cost of some possibly avoidable aches and pains later in life.
Programming is part of the equation, and hard work/ discipline is the other. The best possible program without the work put in yields suboptimal results. Hard work without a plan also yields suboptimal results. This is why the best of the best tend to be extremely gifted, work incredibly hard, and have great coaches. With very few exceptions (possibly no exceptions, but I don’t like to speak in absolutes), there are no elite athletes performing at the highest level that dont also have great coaches that are implementing a plan for them to follow.
Good programming is not just for elite athletes, just like recipes are not only for professional chefs. It is however worth noting, though, that the more experienced you get and more in tune with your body you are, the more you can make personalized adjustments to programming. The foundation of the program remains constant, but experience and expertise allows you to make small tweaks. This requires experience, and the adage “learn the rules before you break them” certainly applies here. I personally choose not to write my own programming even though I know how to program (lets hope, lol). I, just like anyone else, tend to not do things I dont want to do even when I know they are good for me. So instead, I usually end up blending together things from mentors and coaches that I trust, and I make small tweaks in them to fit my schedule, how my body feels, etc. I’m “breaking” the rules to some extent, but since I have about 20 years of training experience and I’ve studied under some brilliant mentors, I know how to adapt it to myself. But the fact still remains that I choose to follow a “program.”
Lets get back to the basics for a moment. We said that programming is your plan and it contains movements, sets, and reps. On a macro level its also planning your progress either towards a specific goal or event (a wedding, a vacation, the Olympics, the start of season, a marathon, or even a specific amount lifted) or can be undertaken in what I’d refer to as “phases.” The reason a general goal or phase becomes important is that at some point we cant do everything at once. When we are in the beginning stages of training, typically most things will all improve together. If we were sedentary for years and began training, the training will probably make you stronger, leaner, more flexible, powerful, etc, however the more we progress the more important having phases or goals of some type becomes. I may be in the minority here, but I also don’t think that the goal in this regard needs to be super specific unless you want it to be. If you are competing in bench press, your lifting related goals are probably pretty specific (get better at bench press). If you are just looking to live a better life, it may be less specific (put on some muscle and be able to play 18 holes of golf without feeling broken at the end.). These are both equally important and valid as it allows us to gear the training towards those goals. The specificity that is required as we progress is ultimately why competitive lifters do not have the same training programs as marathon runners. Different goals, different training.
Everyone will plan programming differently, and this is where the nuance comes in and to me, there is no substitute for experience. I’ve looked back over the course of my coaching years at some of the things I wrote early on and I can’t help but laugh shake my head. I feel like I owe my early athletes a combination of apologies and gifts for them so willingly doing the things that i wrote down for workouts. I have never put someone in danger or at the risk of injury, but learning more efficient ways over the years i cant help but feel like had people walking up a muddy hill when there were actually stairs just around the corner. But the more i think about it, the more I also remember that everyone still improved steadily. Everyone still accomplished their goals. And everyone still had a good time. And when I talk to other coaches they share a similar view when looking back at how we did things in the beginning of our careers. All any of us can do at any given point in time is the best we are able to with the tools and knowledge we have. But thats where the responsibility of a coach is placed; its up to the coach to continue learning and improving and expanding their repertoire of knowledge.
Programming has a few fundamental components that should be considered before getting into what movements are in it. No matter what the goal is, no matter what level of experience the person is, and no matter what equipment we have or don’t have, the three variables we can manipulate outside of the movements themselves are intensity, volume, and frequency. Intensity is how “hard” something will be, whether applied to the phase as a whole or a specific day or lift within the phase. Volume is how much of it you will be doing, meaning how many sets, reps, etc. We can adjust volume by changing these day to day, set to set, or phase to phase. Frequency is how often you’ll be doing the training.
In general, you cannot have all of these be “high”. This should seem somewhat logical, but it means we can’t train super heavy, for super high reps, for tons of sets, every single day, multiple times per day. Our bodies just cannot handle it. Under ideal circumstances, we can have 2 of these be high. We can lift heavy (high intensity) and also do it for higher reps (higher volume), but usually the recovery needed from this is substantial and we cannot do high frequency (very many days per week.) Sports like power lifting are much of the time a good example of higher intensity (heavier weights) with lower volume (less reps) and higher frequency (lots of days) to practice the skill of their sport as well as building strength. Someone very new to lifting might go lower intensity (lighter weights) and higher volume and frequency to practice the skill of lifting weights and get the movements down until they feel comfortable pushing heavier. There is no one perfect way to do it and throughout your life there may be adjustments made based on your situation. If life gets in the way and we are very low frequency due to jobs and family, we can go 2 days per week with high volume and intensity to get the most out of it. Many people I work with train hard 2 days per week and get progressively stronger and in better shape. There’s many ways to get things done, the key is that what you’re doing you’re doing intentionally. This is where a program fits in.
Unless we are in the unique situation of being a professional athlete where training is our job, our program needs to fit into our life as opposed to making our programming our entire life. If you are being paid to train and perform, it becomes a bit different and that is a unique circumstance. For the most part, training needs to fit the criteria of whatever your life is at that given moment. If the training makes you so beat up that you can’t effectively do your job or walk around your house, that might be counter productive. If the training requires that you spend 3 hours in the gym every day and you simply dont have that kind of time without sacrificing other important things in your life whether sleep or time with loved ones, that might not be the best program for you. At the end of the day for most of us, our program is designed to enhance our lives, not maximize our income as an athletic career. And I find that more often than not, with properly designed programming we not only enhance our lives, other things tend to become better and easier as well. Train smart my friends.
W
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