Programming Made Simple

 

Simple, Easy-to-Implement Strategies for More Size and Strength

 

     If the titles of workout articles are any indication, America doesn’t know how to train.  I can’t speak for other countries, since I haven’t lived anywhere else.  In the past, I have spent some time in Asia for work, and if my visits there were any indication, then I don’t think the rest of the world trains much better.  So I guess there’s that.

     Now, if you know anything at all about proper training, and if you walked into any gym anywhere in America, you’d probably come to the same conclusion—that Americans simply don’t know how to train—so why am I singling out the titles of English-language workout articles?  The reason is simple.  Almost every single article I have seen lately—to a friggin’ tee—has almost the exact same title, and it goes something like this: “I did (fill-in-the-blank) for (fill-in-the-number of days/weeks/months) and these were the results.”

     Trying something out just to see what happens to you is not training.  That’s just exercising.  And it’s a highly suspect and typically ineffective way of garnering results.  You may get good results from your random whatever, but you probably won’t.  It’s what I refer to as “letting the means justify the ends” and it’s the cardinal sin of most modern trainees.  The ends (the results you want to attain) must justify the means (the workouts themselves).

     In defense of those bad articles—and the often equally bad websites that run them—that kind of training mentality is, unfortunately, nothing new.  When I first started lifting weights as a teenager in the late ‘80s, I would ravenously devour every muscle magazine that hit the newsstands and often read the bodypart training articles of the popular pro bodybuilders multiple times.  I would then—not all the time, but quite often—go to the gym and attempt the same training “programs.”  If you came of age during that same time, and you were interested in bodybuilding, then the chances are that you did much the same thing.  But following a random bodypart workout of some random professional physique model didn’t produce very good results.  Not for me.  Not for most people.  Though it must be said that then, as now, there were always some trainees who did get good results from such programs.  They were the ones—minority though they may have been—who achieved success in the sport of bodybuilding.

     Eventually, I did get good results from training when I was a teenager.  But not from following random workouts-of-the-month.  Nope.  I got them from following (fairly) well-structured programs that had an end-result clearly in mind.  That kind of approach still works.  In fact, it’s the only approach that will work consistently for the majority of lifters.

     Part of the issue, however, is that a great number of average trainees—and this also goes for the average population as a whole, even guys and gals who have never set foot in a gym and never intend to—believe that what constitutes a “good” workout is how “hard” it is, or how much it makes you sweat, or how exhausted it leaves you when the workout is finished.  While a good workout program may make you tired or sore or exhausted or anything similar, there must be a reason and a rationale for designing a workout in such a manner.

     The first thing you must do is decide what it is that you want.  And be honest with yourself about your goals.  It may seem like an odd thing to write, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of people aren’t honest with themselves about their desires from training.  A guy may claim that he wants to be strong, and he may even tell others that—heck, he might even train with a group of powerlifters who have an effective strength-training program they follow—but what he really wants, if he’s completely honest with himself, is to just look good with his shirt off.  He may actually just want to build large, shapely muscles, strength gains be damned!  Now, I may find that odd and perhaps you find it odd.  I always wanted muscles, sure, but I wanted to be stronger than I looked, and I always wanted muscles that could perform.  But that’s me.  That very well might not be what you want.  So, be honest, not just with others, but with that person that’s staring you back in the face from the bathroom mirror.

     Once you know what it is that you want, you can now set about designing (or simply finding) a training program that will produce those results.  To help you with this, I’ve come up with a few pointers, tips, and strategies that can make programming (fairly) simple.  I think part of the reason that some lifters simply do “tough” workouts that produce sweat, fatigue, and exhaustion is because they really don’t know how to program a training regimen, and so the next best thing, at least for them, is to simply go to the gym and train hard, hoping that that will be enough to illicit the results that they want.  But since that probably won’t work for you, as we have already established, it’s helpful to understand the basics of program design with the results you want to achieve in mind.

First, Know HOW to Train for Your Mass/Strength Goals

     As mentioned, you can’t program your workouts with any degree of success if you don’t understand how to train for your particular goals.  In my book “Ultimate Mass and Power” I wrote this: “There seems to be quite a bit of confusion out there—whether it’s on the internet or at the gym—about how to train for BOTH hypertrophy and serious strength gains. The first problem seems to be that some folks just don’t know how to do either. Guys go to the gym to “get big” but then spend most of their time attempting to max out on a lift. Or, conversely, a guy wants to be massively strong but spends too much of his time training for a pump or doing a lot of repetitions.”  My book is geared towards you if your goal is to attain a combination of strength with concomitant muscle mass gains.  But it could be that you are only after strength or, the opposite, you simply want to have a physique that looks good.

     Let’s say we have a guy who wants to achieve a really strong bench press.  Our guy reads one of my articles (or Vince Gironda’s or Charles Poliquin’s) on the 10x10 method.  He follows the program for his bench press as written—it’s a good program—and achieves good results.  Well, at least he achieves good hypertrophy gains.  But his bench press numbers hardly go up.  Instead, he gains a considerable amount of chest muscle but without the coinciding bench gains to go along with it.  This is an example of a good, effective program, but simply the wrong one for our hypothetical trainee.  So, make damn sure that the program you are utilizing aligns with your goals.  If you are after strength, and strength only, then you need sets in the “low” rep range.  5 reps would be about as high as you want to go if strength, and, once again, only strength, is your goal.  If you’re after muscle mass, and muscle mass only, then 5 reps, on average, would be about as low as you would want to go.  You also need to make sure that your program has enough volume—for whatever “level” you are at—to induce hypertrophy.  And if you’re one of those guys or gals—I have a feeling that this last category is, for the most part, the primary readers of this blog—who are after a combination of size and strength, then you need a program that utilizes both low reps and high reps.

     Once you know how it is that you need to train for your goals, it’s then that you can set out designing a specific program using the remainder of the strategies I recommend here.

Total Body Training

     I think, perhaps, the first indication of a good training program is that it utilizes a lot of the body’s muscles in one session.  The more muscles, the better.  This is the reason that I recommend full-body workouts more than other forms of training.  In fact, if you’re starting out—or if you have been training for a considerable length of time and have yet to attain noticeable size and/or strength gains—full-body workouts are the only kind of workouts that you need to be doing.

     If you don’t use full-body workouts, then utilize a split program that works multiple muscle groups at each session.  I often recommend (what I refer to as) “full-body split workouts.”  One workout might consist of deadlifts, overhead presses, and barbell curls.  The 2^nd workout might consist of squats, bench presses, and chins.  Even though that approach would still be a split workout, it’s one where each session is a total body workout.

     I believe that total body training is even more important for hypertrophy than it is for strength.  That might seem like an odd statement to you, especially when you consider the fact that most successful bodybuilders use multi-split (what are often called “bro split”) routines where one day is reserved for chest, one day for quads, one day for back, one for shoulders, and so on and so forth.  But that approach is mainly good for steroid users, who, because of the anabolics, don’t need to take advantage of the “hormonal” response a full-body workout can initiate.  Before the advent of steroids, bodybuilders from the ‘70s and earlier used either full-body workouts or 2-way splits.  Total body training simply stimulates more of a response from your body, telling it, essentially, that it needs to pack on some mass in order to handle the training.  If you go to the gym and just train your arms, you don’t get that kind of response.

Use a Limited Number of Free-Weight, Compound Exercises

     A common mistake trainees make is to utilize too many machine or cable movements, and not enough compound exercises with free weights, be they barbell, dumbbell, or kettlebell.  Machines, cables, and the like should be reserved for supplemental work once you’ve already built an appreciable amount of muscle (or for older athletes who have spent a lifetime training with free weights and now need to do “gentler” movements).

     Here is a list of exercises that are effective.  You really don’t need any movements other than these:

·         Barbell squats

·         Dumbbell squats

·         Bottom-position squats

·         Military presses

·         Behind-the-neck presses

·         One-arm dumbbell overhead presses

·         Chins

·         Dumbbell or barbell rows

·         Bench presses (flat or incline; barbell or dumbbell)

·         Deadlifts (sumo or conventional)

·         Deficit deadlifts (sumo or conventional)

·         Power cleans

·         Power snatches

·         High pulls

·         One-arm dumbbell snatches, cleans, or high pulls

·         Barbell curls

·         Dumbbell curls (standing or seated)

·         Calf raises (barbell or dumbbell—or “donkey,” if you have a willing training partner)

·         Incline sit-ups

·         Ab wheel

·         Any and all forms of loaded carries: sandbag carries, farmer walks, stone carries, wheelbarrow carries, tire flips, sled drags, etc.

     One really doesn’t need more than that, but if you get strong on all those lifts, and have gained an appreciable amount of muscle mass, then feel free to add in some various cable or machine versions of the same movements or some isolation exercises.

     Although I have listed around 20 movements (more, I know, if you consider different dumbbell or kettlebell versions of different lifts), it’s best to train with only a handful or so at a time.  Don’t try to get strong on 20 different lifts at once.  Pick a handful of free weight movements, a loaded carry or two, and one abdominal exercise, and get strong on all of those before moving on to some different lifts.

Focus on the Movement Not the Muscle

     Along those same lines, focus on the movement and not the muscle.  And, yes, this is even a good rule if your goal is hypertrophy only.

     The problem with training the muscle over the movement is that a bodybuilder will often go by “looks” or the “feel” of the workout session.  Now, once you get advanced, you might very well get good results by going by the feel of your sessions, but once you reach that level, you can pretty much throw most of the “rules” out the window.  Chances are, you’re not there yet!

     There are a lot of problems with going by "feel" or "looks."  Often, your memory lies to you.  You think you look better than you did three months ago when, actually, there isn't any change (or you look worse).

     While bodybuilders of the past enjoyed the benefits and the feeling from getting a good pump—they often called it “chasing the pump”—they worried more about increasing their strength.  It's the reason they used methods like 5 sets of 5 (a favorite of Reg Park's), 5 sets of 5/4/3/2/1, and heavy singles.  With these techniques, the emphasis is on performance, though the looks will soon follow.

Final Thoughts

     An interesting thing happened with this essay.  It turned out being completely different from what I had originally intended to write.  My initial idea was to write a workout program, a simple, easy-to-follow regimen for building both size and strength.  I believe, however, that I will save that for a follow-up piece, where I will outline a program that uses the principles discussed here.  Until next time—which will probably be that very article—if you have any questions about this essay, leave them in the comments section below or shoot me an email.

     If you found this essay interesting, and would like to read more like it, please consider purchasing my recent book “Ultimate Mass and Power Essays.”