How do I create a workout? Before the pandemic I was writing about 40 individual workouts a day. This means that each workout is specific for that particular client. Not a one size fits all. I actually have tried spreadsheets etc. I have found the most effective method is a sheet that I have created with eight blocks for each day. I actually write the workout into the blocks and then staple the sheets together chronologically. This allows me to quickly go back in time and remind myself of what the athlete or client did in the past. The coach will also write notes on the sheet so that I am aware of any problems if I was not coaching the workout. I know some people will say this is cumbersome, however it is the quickest and most efficient way I have found to write this many workouts on a daily basis.
So I have probably averaged about 30 individual workouts per day x 6 days per week for 52 weeks of the year. That is about 7800 workouts in a year. I have been actively doing this for close to 20 years. That is close to 160,000 individual workouts written for athletes and clients from every walk of life and every sport. I have boxes full of these workouts and I can see how my workouts have evolved over time. If you want to be a good in this business, write a lot of workouts. You really learn about program design and periodization and how it translates into performance by writing workouts and seeing the results over time. I am always evolving, trying new things to see how I can incrementally improve what I do for our clients.
In addition I have personally worked out consistently for more years than most coaches have been alive. I continue to learn through my own workouts. I experiment on myself like Dr. Frankenstein. I continue to develop ways to improve my own performance and through this training I have a better window of what the athlete or client is experiencing during a workout that I write. I see lots of coaches that have no idea how hard a particular workout really is because they have never done it themselves. It is not to say this is a necessary component to be a good coach, however it really helps.
So how do I trickle all of this knowledge and experience into an individual workout?
First of all we should discuss a little about periodization. What is a periodization? The objective of a periodization is to optimize the overloads to the body in a design that best results in the greatest improvement without injury or mental burnout within the time you have with the athlete. The Eastern Bloc coaches in the 60s and 70s had 10 year periodization with their athletes. It is rare you will have this much time with an athlete, especially a professional or collegiate athlete. So my periodization is very dynamic. It is parts of a lot of different philosophies. Everybody wants a name for programs so I would call my system a Reflective Periodization. As I just stated the objective is to create the greatest performance result within the time you have for training. Each athlete is different. Age, recovery time, athletic maturity, morphology, biomechanical issues etc. all come into play and impact the periodization. So my method is a very reflective method. Remember my goal is to improve the performance most necessary for the athlete and their respective sport or objective. So my program design reflects the rate of improvement and takes into account any issues that the athlete or client is dealing with and changes based on the changes and rate of change in their particular performance measures. This thinking applies to general population and competitive athlete as well.
I start with a framework that would be more similar to an undulating periodization vs a linear periodization. Linear Periodization is probably the most common form of periodization because it is easy to measure and with a young athlete or with someone that has little training history a very good place to start. Linear is more of a week by week and month by month progressive overload. Similar to the myth of Milo. Every day Milo started by lifting a baby calf and as the calf grew he was progressively getting overloads until he was finally lifting a full grown bull. An undulating periodization means there are peaks and valleys of progressive overload. This is more aligned with my programming. Some weeks may be very intense and then others may be lighter. I personally like the undulating periodization as I believe it fits better into my Reflective Periodization thinking. It allows me to get the overloads when I see the opportunities when an athlete can perform at higher levels and reduce the stress when the athlete does not have the energy to perform. This is a very dynamic method of training and will increase the speed of improved performance as it is based on the individual’s progress. However, it does take an eye for how an athlete is performing in the gym. Systems have many limitations because in most cases they do not take into account individual progressions. Some athletes recover and progress faster than others. This is where observing the progression and reflecting on what are the obstacles to obtain greater or less overload. I have spent a lifetime in the gym and I am a big believer in heavy lifts. These lifts if taught correctly and progressed accordingly should be the foundation of any strength program as well as utilized for the endurance athlete. What is important is that the workouts are designed to make the athlete or individual better at their sport, not just great weightlifters. This is where coaches have differences. Very few coaches are coaching for weightlifting or powerlifting. Most strength coaches are coaching for a sport besides lifting or moving weights. This is also true for the general population. If I have a 55 year old man who has not lifted his entire life and is just getting started it may take months before we finally get to what would be considered a heavy lift. He may have the strength from day one to lift heavy, but the infrastructure is not there to support the strength. So I evaluate the client to determine where to start and then based on the ability to progress will overload the athlete accordingly.
So with that as on overview of the programming, how do I reduce this down to an individual day of training and into a workout?
I am going to simplify the path that it takes me to writing the daily workout so I do not bore you with too many details. I am going to first make the assumption that the athlete has no major biomechanical issues or injuries.
Here are the steps:
1. Where are the biggest gaps in performance? What is my primary objective at this moment in time and how does that build on the overall strategy for improving performance in the sport? I believe in all human movement, for both sport and long term health, all roads eventually lead to power. Power is defined as Force x Velocity= Power. So my thinking is always focused on the long term strategy of what do I need to do to improve power in this athlete. Do they need more Force or Velocity? Do they need sustainable power? This is my North Star. For example: An athlete for their sport needs greater lower body strength and are currently lacking in lower body power as a result of this lack of force production in the lower body. They are currently deficient over 20% of the level of strength they need to be highly competitive in their sport. Why? It could be hip mobility, dorsiflexion, core stability, shoulder mobility, glute strength, quad strength etc. Knowing that increasing force production or strength is my primary objective is my starting point. My workouts will reflect this focus until we shore up this capability. It does not mean that we are not improving in other areas of fitness at the same time. It just means this is the focus for now. At this point in training it makes the most sense to have the focus on lower body strength as this will improve overall power much quicker than spending a lot of time on velocity of movement. Now, it does not mean I do not do any velocity training. It just means that the percentage of time will be spent more on the big lower body strength lifts and areas that may be limiting the athlete’s ability to progress in these lifts.
2. If lower body strength is my primary goal, what other things do I need to improve to support that objective? I mentioned some of these in the previous paragraphs, however I may see ancillary muscle groups that are not strong enough to get me to the higher levels in the big muscle groups. It could be grip, it could be adductor strength, and it could be improving lower back strength or core stability to better the deadlift or squat. Now many will say just deadlift or squat. However, I have found by better developing other areas simultaneously while still working on the primary lifts, I can more rapidly improve my client’s abilities in the primary lifts and also reduce the risk of injury. Remember it is about improving the speed to better performance!! I want to get greater overloads as quickly as possible without any injury.
3. What is the age of the athlete and how much time will I have with them to train? If I have very little time with a professional athlete, I will hyper focus on the tipping points that can improve their performance. This typically means topping off force production (strength) and spending more time on power and sustainable power.
4. What makes the client happy? If I have a young college athlete that wants bigger arms, I will give him bigger arms. Big arms may not help him in his sport from a physical aspect, but they make him feel like a badass and that is great for his confidence on the field. This is no less important. I have found that vanity is a great motivator for any client.
5. Progressions. This is both an art and a science. I have spent a lifetime in the gym, so I can watch someone execute a bench press and within one or 2 reps I can pretty much tell you how many reps in total they will be able to execute. Progressions are important as this is where lots of time is lost in obtaining performance gains. Athletes typically are unaware of when a fitness jump will present itself. One day the weight on the bar was heavy and a week later they can easily execute the same lift. As a coach you have to see when opportunities for greater overloads present themselves and can be taken advantage of. In many cases fixed systems of progressions retard the overall progression of an athlete. It is easy for a coach to be lazy and not add or subtract from the weight on the bar. It means you have to stop and change the program during a workout. So if a program is not dynamic and does not allow for an increase or decrease in the weight during a workout what is the big deal? You can do it in the next workout. Let’s look at an athlete that plays a sport in college and the pros and say that they have 10 productive years of playing time. Just for this example let’s say they have 2 months per year of really focused off season training. Pros have much less time. Between travel and appearances and life, they are lucky if they get 6 to 8 weeks per year for real improvement. So that is 80 weeks of total time over the 10 years. If there are inefficiencies in the training improvement because of poor progressions within a workout it has a great impact on the athlete’s ability to have more productive years of performance. For example: An athlete is training 4 to 5 days a week for 8 weeks. How is time lost? An athlete is executing a heavy upper body pulling exercise. The goal is to execute a maximum lift at 6 reps in the latter sets. The athlete executes the last set and does 6 reps but could have lifted 10 percent more in weight. The 6 reps are still heavy, but do not overload the athlete enough to elicit an adaptation. The athlete may not get to the max strength pull at 6 reps again for almost a week and at this time he lifts the weight he should have lifted the previous week. Had he lifted the 10 percent more in the first workout he would have most likely been able to add more weight in the subsequent session. This is a loss of time and slows the overall progression. Each workout builds on the next. Time is the real enemy of the athlete. Of course this is not always the case, but the point is that poor progressions and regressions create inefficient workouts and loss of valuable training time. Remember that regressions are just as important. An athlete can dig themselves into a hole of fatigue that is hard to come out of if the coach does not build in rest.
6. I program reps not weight. I always program for the number of reps and then look at the weight. So I may be shooting for the highest weight at 8 reps. I educate my athletes to understand that if their workout has an 8 rep objective and they can execute 12 reps at the weight, then the weight is not heavy enough. If it says 5 reps then if they can do 8 reps at that weight the weight is too light.
7. I want to “Win the Workout” I want to get a win in every workout. It may be a mobility win, strength win, strength endurance win, etc. The psychology of training is that people want to see they are progressing. It is not to say you can win every workout. However, I want wins and want to celebrate them during a workout. This is of great importance to keep someone engaged in their training. We all want to see the progress.
So now armed with all this information, below is what a workout may look like for an athlete: I always have a primary objective for each workout, but I am usually building on the other areas of the athlete’s fitness simultaneously. Some of these may be in a maintenance phase, some may be more important for injury prevention etc. The primary areas in my workouts revolve around lower body strength and power, upper body pushing and pulling, overhead pushing, multi-directional lower body strength and power, core stability and dynamic core capabilities and mobility in all major movements especially hips and shoulders. HIIT and longer cardio for sports are always something that may become a primary focus.
A Dynamic Warm up would be performed before the workout below. The warmup takes about 10 to 20 min dependent on the maturity and frequency that the athlete is here.
I super set the workout to make the best use of time. This means I go from one exercise to another that does not compete with the first exercise. Sometimes I will have a greater focus on one area of the body. The primary objectives of this workout is a heavy bench and heavy hex bar deadlift. I am also looking for post activation potentiation to prep these primary objectives to get the best performance. Post activation potentiation is the activation of the muscle from executing a lift. This prepping will in turn enhance the movement in a subsequent exercise that utilizes the same muscles. This gives me bigger overloads in the workouts primary objective.
The athlete will do the first set of exercise 1 then move on to exercise 2 and continue this for all 4 exercises. They will complete 4 sets on the first half of the workout and 3 sets on the second half. The difference between each half is dictated by the objective and fitness of the athlete. In some instances the total sets may be reduced as well as total number of exercises if the athlete is not ready for this much volume. The workout below is written for a very fit mature athlete.
First Group of Exercises:
1. Pullups: AMRAP (As Many Reps As Possible). We are trying to really activate the lats and improve the endurance in his pulling. This will also help with my objective to overload in the bench press. The lats are a big part of a good bench press.
2. Clapping Pushups. This is an upper body power exercise. I am trying to get a max lift in the bench press, so I like to activate the chest with a power exercise in this muscle group to help improve my chances for a bigger lift in the regular bench. You cannot do big volume here or you will build in too much fatigue and diminish the bench to come so the rep count is low. 5, 5, 5, 4
3. MVP 2 leg Jumps. This is a banded jumping machine. The second half of the workout has heavy deadlifts and is the lower body primary objective to this workout. I am doing a preloaded jump in this exercise. So a little jump into a big jump. Once again the volume is low. I just want good muscle activation to help with the subsequent dead lifts later in the workout.
4. Regular Barbell Bench Press: 8, 6,6,5,3 I have found this to be a good rep scheme for a heavy bench strength day. The first set of 8 is a moderate weight and then we make big jumps from there. By the time the athlete gets to the bench he has had about 6 to 8 minutes of rest from the clapping pushups. This allowed his chest to recover and we were also able to execute exercises that did not conflict with the bench in between. I find this is a much better use of the time.
Second Group of exercises:
1. Hex Bar Deadlift: 10, 8,5,5,3. I start with a few more reps for the first set on a lift that has more risk. This allow me to check in with the athlete and reduce the risk for injury if something does not feel right. I am executing 5 sets in this workout. Typically the sets are 4 total.
2. Hanging Knee Tucks: This is a great dynamic core exercise. I typically have the athlete come down to 90 degrees max and pull knees up from there. This takes the hip flexors out of the equation. This helps activate the core for support in the heavier deadlifts. 20,15,15,12
3. Glute Ham Machine Explosive: This is a great exercise that will help with firing the lower back and glutes to help with activation for the posterior chain of muscles that will be needed to get an overload I want in the deadlift. It also expose any issues the athlete may be having. I like to lower the risk of injury by adding in an exercise that is a good indicator of the athlete’s integrity overall. If there are any issues they would most likely show up in this exercise and we could bail on the heavy deadlift. 12,8,6,6.
This workout is completed in about 1 hour. Sometimes it goes a little longer and sometimes shorter. The workout is written as the optimum output. However, it is dynamic and can be adjusted accordingly.
Now as the primary objective changes so will the window of training. These changes will be reflected in the structure of the workouts. For example: If I wanted to boost lower body power, I may follow a heavy lift with a jumping or explosive power exercise. The goal would be to overload power.
Once I have established what I consider the highest absolute power for the athlete in a particular movement, I will start working on the ability of the athlete to sustain the highest percentage of their maximum the longest based on the sport.
All progressions are maximized during workouts. We keep close track of the weight lifted in the past to make sure that our workouts are efficiently managed and overloads are being implemented.
So if you were wondering how we develop workouts this should help give you an idea of what goes into the program design. What you do not see here is all of the time spent sifting through old and new science as well as self-experimentation to better our ability to get overloads and adaptations with our clients and athletes.
This is a never ending trip down the rabbit hole.
Truth in Fitness,
Jacques