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Guidelines to Designing Your Own Routines by Mark Prater
This is a guide for those who are just getting started and need a push in the
right direction as far as workout program design. Program design is a very
complex issue, and much research has been done on the subject. There’s much more
to it than throwing a bunch of random exercises together and hoping to gain
muscle. If you’re going to design your own routine, make sure you’re doing it
properly so that you yield maximal results.
Be honest with yourself here. In order to optimize your program, you need to
determine what training level you’re truly at. Beginners make faster gains than
intermediates, and intermediates make faster gains than advanced trainees.
You want the exercises that give the best bang for your buck. If you’re a
beginner, almost everyone’s exercise selection should be very similar—squats,
deadlifts, an Olympic lift variation, barbell rows or chin-ups/pull-ups, bench
press, and overhead press. If you wish, you may also add some accessory work.
However, whether you plan to be a bodybuilder, powerlifter, football player, or
ballet dancer, those exercises will give you some solid overall strength. If you
eat more than you burn, you’ll also put on some solid poundage.
Your plan is progression. I don’t care if you’re a bodybuilder, powerlifter,
or whatnot. You should be progressing on the main lifts that you’ve specified
regardless of your training stage. So how do you set it up? Well, there are
several ways. Bill Starr’s 5 X 5 is a great example of this:
Monday:
You’re only performing three exercises, and you’re maxing out on each
exercise once a week. Then, you’re working with submaximal weights on the other
three days for that exercise in the hopes that this will be enough of a stimulus
for you to increase by the next week’s max effort day.
At this point, hopefully you know how to set up your program. But how do you
determine the frequency and intensity? In my opinion, the best two ways to set
it up for beginners and intermediates is a three day, full body routine and an
upper/lower split. This allows you to hit the entire body often. Set it up so
that you can increase on everything as frequently as you can. And don’t think in
terms of body parts. Think in terms of movements. Think about it like this (I got this idea from the book, Practical Programming):
You want to find the correct stimulus to make your body get stronger (which
will in turn make you bigger when you eat enough). Then, by the next workout,
your body will have to adapt again to get even stronger. This is called linear
progression. I don’t want to get too far off on this, but this will determine
how often you should hit each movement and how hard/how many sets you should
perform. Different amounts of reps will accomplish different things. So how many reps should you have in your training? This is highly individual, despite what some may say. Everyone has different genetic make-ups and different muscle fibers. Therefore, what is optimal for one person may not be for another.
In my opinion, five reps are optimal for most beginners on the main compound
movements regardless of why you’re training. Why? Well, because five is a nice
“in between” number. Getting strong on a five rep max will translate to almost
anything else. If you decide to focus on powerlifting after the beginning stage,
having a strong five rep max on the main lifts will translate perfectly to the
one rep max, which powerlifters consider optimal. If bodybuilding is your thing,
then having a strong five rep max will translate to a strong 6–12 rep max, which
many consider optimal for bodybuilders.
Don’t worry about it. Basically, 1–5 reps are best for pure strength (I
wouldn’t recommend anything lower than three reps for anything lower than the
intermediate level because of neurological demands). Anywhere from 6–15 reps are
best for hypertrophy (highly individual), and really any rep range works for
endurance depending on how much endurance is required. Anything over 20 reps is
probably a little much. However, people make the mistake and think that 12 reps
won’t do anything other than hypertrophy. Wrong! Twelve rep maxes will make you
good at things that require the endurance of something that replicates a twelve
rep max.
Don’t do too many exercises. For a beginner, 5–6 compound exercises with a
few accessory lifts are optimal. Hit the lifts hard enough to progress for the
next workout, but don’t hit them so hard that your body can’t adapt to it. I
know this contradicts what you’ve read in Muscle & Fitness magazine, but
please throw that away. Don’t let it sway your thinking! The advice they give
may be good for accomplished bodybuilders, but it’s useless information that
will make no difference in beginner or intermediate athletes who shouldn’t even
consider entering a bodybuilding competition yet. Elite Fitness Systems strives to be a recognized leader in the strength training industry by providing the highest quality strength training products and services while providing the highest level of customer service in the industry. For the best training equipment, information, and accessories, visit us at www.EliteFTS.com.
Submitted by DMorgan on Fri, 06/22/2007 - 9:31pm. | Related Articles |
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