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For several years, at four different universities, I beat my brains out, attempting to find the ultimate training plan. Independent of any particular sport, I sought the most logical means of addressing all athletically desirable goals:
How can all of those be addressed within limited training time, unmotivated athletes, and limited resources?
Let’s break these goals down into their fundamental requirements:
So far, so good. However, recovery can throw a wrench in the works. Without as much attention placed on it as the workouts themselves, overtraining can rear its ugly head, leaving you with athletes who have:
In short, lack of proper recovery or too much training volume destroys everything else you’re trying to do.
Let’s consider some other factors in programming to ensure adequate recovery:
Adequate recovery from stressful exercise sessions does not necessarily conform to a 24-hour day, or a five-day work week. The greater the volume of work, the greater the recovery time required. Dig a deep hole, and it will take more time to fill in. Energy stores are depleted that must be replenished; muscle tissue is damaged that must be repaired.
When multiple adaptive responses are desired from one body (i.e., strength, endurance, speed) even more logical planning of the training stresses is required. The athlete doesn’t go to a closet mid-day, pull out a new body, and toss the fatigued one in the laundry basket. It’s the same body that needs to deal with all imposed stresses that day, until there is time for recovery. There is some overlap there, as some training components address multiple qualities simultaneously. For example, increased muscle strength can lead to improved running speed, all other factors remaining equal.
Even the average Joe Sit-at-a-desk-all-day requires recovery from a less-than-demanding lifestyle to do it day after day. How much more so, your hard-charging athletes?
And recovery isn’t just day-to-day. How long do your athletes rest between sets? Between interval runs, agility drills, and speed work? What work to rest ratios are needed? Moreover, what about two-a-days? Do you program strength training and conditioning on the same day? Speed work on a leg strength day? Which one to address first?
Say that your athletes have total body fatigue from a Monday workout. What should you do on Tuesday? Complete rest? But wait, that leaves only three more days to squeeze in more strength training, endurance running, speed work, etc. Help!
Don’t panic. Remember, the strength and conditioning coach at rival State U is dealing with the same dilemma. We know that rest days are just as important as work days, and that all training components require energy and create a recovery demand.
Take advantage of that training component overlap. Performing speed and agility work creates fatigue (a conditioning effect). Leg strengthening exercises in the weight room indirectly help running speed, and contribute to injury prevention.
Don’t be afraid to take what the calendar gives you. It’s okay (and necessary) to plan occasional complete rest days during the training week. They’ll give your athletes a chance to look after their academic commitments, and a day off can create greater enthusiasm when returning to training. Take advantage of scheduled school breaks (i.e., spring and between-term breaks) to ramp things up. In the offseason, you can challenge your athletes with more volume, and the net positive effects will carry over into the competitive season, when volume must decrease for game-day preparedness.
I recommend a maximum training segment duration of 8-10 weeks. Below are some example 10-week out-of-season training plans, broken down in terms of stress exposures and recovery time. I’ve laid out two traditional and three non-traditional plans for five days per week, and one non-traditional approach for seven days per week. Strength training (ST) is any weight room work. Conditioning (Cond.) would include any interval running, agility drills, or speed work.
Traditional Five-Day Plan #1
Traditional Five-Day Plan #2
Non-Traditional Five-Day Plan #1
Non-Traditional Five-Day Plan #2
Non-Traditional Five-Day Plan #3
Non-Traditional Seven-Day Plan
If 10 sessions each of quality strength training and conditioning will result in good progress, imagine the results possible with the number of exposures offered in the non-traditional training formats above, especially coupled with a greater number of recovery days.
For example, the 15 upper body and 15 lower body strength sessions in the second non-traditional plan are plenty of opportunity to induce strength gains in a single out-of-season period. Also, 15 conditioning sessions are more than adequate to increase cardiorespiratory fitness. Note that 40 complete rest days are scheduled here to facilitate recovery from the 30 actual training days, making this a sound training plan.
The 7-day example uses 18 full-body strength training sessions and 17 conditioning sessions coupled with 35 complete rest days. Again, a more-than-adequate number of exercise exposures with plenty of built-in recovery time to allow for optimal adaptation.
Compare these to the traditional examples. In the first, 40 strength sessions and 25 conditioning exposures, but only 25 complete rest days in the 70-day plan. Overtraining may be more likely here. Similarly—and possibly quite worse than #1—example #2 is characterized by 30 full-body strength sessions, 25 conditioning workouts but only 20 complete rest days.
More is not always better when it comes to physical training. Properly planned overloads in the weight room and on the track must be logically placed over a training period, along with built-in recovery days. Train your athletes hard, but also train them intelligently.
Featured image: VK Studio/Shutterstock
Programming is an art form; there’s no doubt about it. A person who demonstrates sharp instincts, flexibility, and creativity in a finely-tuned program is a talented coach/trainer. Many of us coaches get bogged down in systems and software. Plugging exercise A here and exercise B in there can perhaps add convenience, but the art form gets lost.
The methods that worked like a charm 10 years ago are relics by today’s standards. Teaching methods and coaches are evolving, as are the cookie-cutter software programs. In many respects, the convenience of these programs is worth its weight in gold. But are we losing some of the magic when we do it this way?
I can’t speak for all coaches because I don’t know what they are up against. My story is a bit of an unusual one for a college strength coach. I paid my coaching dues in a unique way. I started at Eastern Kentucky University as an intern in the spring semester of 2000. Six weeks into my internship, my Head Strength Coach, Mike Kent, took the head job at the University of Louisville and had to leave. Because of the relative newness of his position at EKU, the administration was unprepared and asked me to fill in until a search could be conducted for Coach Kent’s replacement. I worked for three months alone, trying to keep an athletic department strength program afloat.
One of the most difficult tasks while filling in for him was programming the way he programmed. Get this: Kent wrote out every individual program by hand. Each team would have either one sheet or a series of sheets that would carry that team for a month or two. He created each plan in Excel, where the exercises would be built into the framework of the sheet. Then he would spend his weekend hand-programming loads for each athlete over the scope of the entire athletic department. One red pen, followed by hours and hours of work. Kent’s meticulous programming ensured every athlete got the level of individual attention that he felt they needed.
The coach-athlete relationship is an interesting one. When it comes to compliance, athletes are mandated to show up whether they like it or not, and they don’t have a say in their programming. If you are a private trainer or own a gym/box, your clients have more say. But one thing shines clear in all settings — the people training in your space want to feel like they are being given their due attention, not just as members of a group but as individuals.
There are only a few instances where using a whiteboard is acceptable in my facility. Most of the time, we use whiteboards when we are teaching. When we are trying to get techniques dialed in and where loads are not necessarily a priority, the first month or so is a great time to rely on a whiteboard. Again, in my situation, which is very specific, we will also keep a team on the whiteboard if the team members are not showing a level of dedication. Let’s face it, nobody on campus takes weight training as seriously as I do, and there are some teams who “go through the motions.” I advise my assistants to act accordingly. There’s no need to devote hours and hours of programming for a team that will not give an acceptable effort.
Again, I understand that in a CrossFit box, most clientele can be transient and not as consistent as a college team that is required to show up. That makes the individuality piece more of a headache since you don’t know the next time your clients will show up. But nothing tells your clients you are all in with them, like handing them each a sheet with their name on it. It’s a simple gesture that speaks volumes about your commitment to their progress. Yes, it can be time-consuming, but it can also be a difference between a lackluster effort and a herculean one.
I have never used a computer to run percentages for one of my programs. I have always done it by hand. And honestly, I have never used a set percentage to assign loads except for deciding loads for the beginning of a hypertrophy cycle based on a newly minted one-rep max. The method I use is one that Coach Kent taught me, and it’s based on that method’s natural evolution after 16 years of doing it that way.
Computer programming based on percentages, to me, makes some pretty bold assumptions for the duration of a training cycle. First off, if you use a linear method as I do, you probably write for eight to 12 weeks at a time. If I write a twelve-week hypertrophy/strength/power program for a football player, code the weeks with prescribed percentages, and then tap in a one-rep max to be our baseline for the percentages, I am asking the athletes to be perfect with their nutrition, their rest, their effort — at all times. And let’s face it, none of them are. It’s nearly impossible for a person to be that dialed-in all of the time.
Hand programming gives me several advantages that a computer will never provide. First, even though I use what looks like an algebraic formula in my head to determine loads, I get the flexibility to adjust on the fly. You need that flexibility when Joe Blow rolls his ankle the Friday prior. Hand programming gives me an out when I realize that the whole team is about to bonk, and an impromptu deload week is what is needed. It allows me (or forces me, really) to get a complete read on each individual and holds my ass to the fire to stay engaged with each of my athletes. You can ask me at any time of a training cycle what the weight on so-and-so’s bench is on his second set, and 99 out of 100 times, I will know what’s going on.
If you were to watch me program, this is what it would look like: I have a stack of sheets, and each one gets the signature “pause and think.” I have to look at the athlete’s name and quickly review and remember what this person did last week. Then the writing begins. I will program a sheet twice a week in some training phases, once for the first half, then once for the second. It keeps me as current as possible for each individual.
When it comes to coaching, I am selling an idea. I am selling a formula. I am asking my athletes to have complete faith in me as I make decisions for them. The way I operate gives my athletes complete freedom not to think. They come in, and their job is to be focused and present and, most importantly, ready to perform. I do all the thinking for them days earlier, so they can just come in and kick ass.
Hand programming is part of that. If I hand you a sheet of computer-printed numbers, it will excite you as much as combing your hair or putting mustard on your sandwich. But when I give you a sheet with my handwriting on it, you should see someone who is partnered with you. The handwriting tells the athletes I have taken the time to think about them every day of every week.
Featured Image: Chris Holder
Put yourself in your potential client’s shoes. Why would they fork over a large amount of cash to train with a person they barely know? Or, when they become clients, how do you keep them coming back? The answer is in the buy-in.
Are the clients buying what you’re selling?
Read 5 Ways to Get Client Buy-in and Increase Client Retention at its original source Breaking Muscle:
http://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/5-ways-to-get-client-buy-in-and-increase-client-retention
When I started training clients, I thought I knew it all, and I would strut around the gym floor like a peacock, willing to assert my superior gym knowledge. When in fact, looking back, I knew absolutely nothing.
This attitude hurt more than helped me, and this was the first of many mistakes I made at the beginning of my career.
Read 5 Mistakes for New Trainers to Avoid at its original source Breaking Muscle:
http://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/5-mistakes-for-new-trainers-to-avoid
Entry-level personal trainers initially rely on a training certificate and a high school diploma to successfully land a job.
However, coaching as a career path requires something more- Emotional Intelligence (EI). According to Melinda Abbott of Columbia University,1 49% or more of successful coaching is derived from a coach’s ability to monopolize emotional intelligence. Moreover, the ability to connect on a social level has been proven to drive motivation and teaching efficacy.
The bottom line is a coach should focus a substantial portion of their time on sports psychology.
A well-known coach, Brett Bartholomew, brings up in his book, Conscious Coaching 2 the importance of understanding the types of people you coach. As of late, there is a growing body of evidence surrounding understanding personality types for career success within the workplace and academic performance training.2
However, within the realm of sports, this too is becoming important. As Mark Rippetoe points out in his book Practical Programming for Strength Training,3 a strength coach will spend more time with an athlete during their career individually than any other coach. Therefore, knowing your athlete or client is of utmost importance.3
Focus less on counting reps and focus more on the client’s needs and know when to refer out.
Coaches are not licensed to be psychiatrists or medical doctors (unless one holds that title); nevertheless, understanding how EI applies to a client’s lifespan warrants some explanation. EI is a type of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ emotions, discriminate among them, and use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions, according to Salovey & Mayer, 1990. In the context of coaching, this requires first an understanding of how a person approaches being instructed, how one manages failure, success, plateaus, and their interaction with nutrition and overall personal wellness.3,4,5,6
One of my sessions consisted of six minutes of a client discussing their issues for the day before mobility work and isometric drills. EI allows that client to feel comfortable and builds trust.
Without trust, a client is not likely to follow instructions, and the client does come first.
You can have a Ph.D. in biophysics, but the client could care less; their foci are:
Those six minutes to my client made the remainder of her day far more enjoyable, and she will look forward to her next session.
As a coach, having a graduate degree makes reading bloodwork easier and discussions with a client’s physician more illuminating. The client learns that you care beyond the aspect of the job; this creates buy-in.2
This client is more likely to refer others to you and participate in higher engagement training.
Another client learned quickly that their well being is most important in and out of the competition. During a time such as COVID-19, clients are far more reluctant to engage with their coach, let alone purchase high-fidelity coaching programs.
As clients resurface, it is far more important to cater to mental health needs with the same vigor as a premium program or nutritional plan.
In particular, athletes who face suspension of events or entire seasons may feel displaced without a coach guiding them.
Contrary to popular belief, athletes often suffer more mental illness than average gym patrons.
Furthermore, they are less likely to seek to consult for mental health issues.
As a coach, it requires that red-flags in normal function be caught sooner rather than later and ensure that your gym or office is a safe space. It is through a proper institution of emotional intelligence practice that client outcomes improve.7
References:
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