WHAT ORDER SHOULD THE EXERCISES BE IN?After your dynamic warm ups, the first exercises in the workout should
be the ones that requires you to put in the most effort and give you the
most “bang for your buck”.
For example, if your goal is to build overall strength, then begin one
workout with a squat and another with a deadlift; just make sure they are
far enough apart in the week to be able to recover (since these are the
toughest workouts to recover from). If you do deadlifts on Monday then
do squats on Friday. On Wednesday, you can start with an upper body
exercises.If you choose to do any power exercises or plyo’s, such as box jumps,
med ball throws, sprints, etc., these can be fitted in after your dynamic
warm-ups and before your big strength exercises.HOW SHOULD I STRUCTURE THE SETS AND REPS
IN MY WORKOUT?This will not be a course on the science behind rep ranges, but rather
a recommendation for what works well if you’re looking to consistently
get your body to be stronger and more muscular (leaner too, but that is
something that has a lot to do with nutrition, which I’ll mention later) and
what has worked with clients.Most people do well with a mix of heavy (strength), medium (muscle
size) and lighter (muscular endurance/metabolic damage) weights.
This calls for a combo of:Low Rep: 3-6 reps
Moderate Rep: 7-12 reps
High Rep: 13-20+ repsYour sets should be inversely related to the number of reps you’re doing
per set. For example:15 reps: 1 to 2 sets
10-12 reps: 2 to 3 sets
8 reps: 3 to 4 sets
3-4 reps: 5 to 6 setsThis is not set in stone of course, but it gives you a great foundation to
work with. These are not magic numbers; you may see better results with
more or less volume – depending on lifestyle, work, nutrition, recovery
capabilities, experience, etc.HOW DO I MAKE SURE I KEEP PROGRESSING?
(THE GOAL WILL DETERMINE THIS)We’ll keep the goal emphasis here to two different priorities – strength
and sizeSTRENGTH
Here the emphasis should be to increase the weight on your main
exercises. Let’s say you’re doing 4 sets of 4 reps on a trap bar deadlift
and in week one you do 110kg, in the second week you’d push it and go
up to 115 kg.As you can imagine, you can continue like that for weeks or maybe a
couple of months before you plateau and your strength gains become
smaller than the weight increments you can add. So, to add weight to
the bar we have to lower the reps.Instead of the 4 x 4 you just did, you could do 2 x 3, and 2 x 2 (so you’re
still hitting 4 sets but you’re lowering the reps and upping the weight).
You could also do 6 x 2 while increasing weight each set and hitting your
heaviest for the last two sets. As you can see there are many options, but
the main thing is that in some way you keep adding weight to the bar.SIZE
When you get stronger, muscles grow bigger. This makes sense but, as
we saw in the “Strength” portion, it’s not that simple, especially when weadd quite a bit of strength. Muscles also grow when you make them do
more work (volume), which can happen by adding a rep or two to a set
or even adding a set (or later two) to the exercise.Let’s say you’re doing a bench press and you’re doing 3 sets of 8 reps. In
the first weeks you’ll most likely be adding weight to the bar, but once
that starts slowing down and you feel like you are at a plateau – push to
get an extra rep or two – so you’d push for 9 or 10 reps in the last couple
of sets. You could also add a 4th set to get extra volume, create more
total work for the muscles, which gives you the potential to grow some
more.The key is to overload the muscles progressively so that your body
adapts and adds strength and size.HOW DO I KEEP MY PROGRAM “FRESH TO DEATH”
AND NEVER STALE?It’s happened to everyone. Your workouts get stale and boring if you
don’t re-program every 4-6 weeks. Not only will they get boring but
you’ll also see your results start stalling as well.Here are some ways to keep them challenging:- Change the exercises within the category. I have suggested a bunch
of progressions to choose from, but an example would be going from a
DB row to a T-bar row. Switch a trap bar deadlift to a rack pull deadlift.
Go from chin-ups to pull-ups. - Change the order of the exercises, sets and reps. So, if you were
doing 3 sets of 15 for your last exercise, make it your first exercise and
use heavier weights for 4 sets of 6 reps (for instance). - Use different tension techniques from eccentric sets, tempo training,
pause, 1 and ½ reps, etc. - A combination of the above. Whichever strategy tickles your fancy, I
recommend you do a de-load (which just means a week of training at a
lower intensity, backing off and giving your body a break – but it doesn’t
mean not doing anything) between programs (every 6-8 weeks is a good
idea, depending on the program).
To reiterate, on the “de-load” week you use fewer sets, lighter weight
or even add in more of the warm up exercises in between your training.
This is very important if you feel beat up and run down and it can also
boost your results as it gives the body a chance to recover.FIT TO FIGHT
CREATING A RESULTS
BASED TRAINING PROGRAM
ANDY MARSHALL is the owner of Villain Strength and a
strength and conditioning expert. He has worked with notable
professional athletes including heavyweight boxing contender,
ANDY MARSHALL Dillian Whyte, and British grappling standout, Dan Strauss.