Introduction
One thing I want to emphasize before we go any further is that training itself will *NOT* put on any muscle mass or burn off fat. A good diet is the ONLY way to lose fat or gain muscle mass or vice versa. Training coupled with a good diet accomplishes this; however, I will not be discussing any diet in this article.
This article will be helpful to everyone on how to construct a routine to focus on your goals. Anyway, let's get started.
Goal Setting
First, you need to determine your goals. Good goals are tangible feats that you can accomplish. For example, being able to do 10 dips and run 400m in 60 seconds are both good goals. An example of bad goals would 'gaining muscle mass' or 'improving broad jump' or 'improving fitness.' They are bad goals because they are not defined – gaining 10 lbs of muscle or improving your broad jump 6” would be good goals. Anyone can say they want to gain muscle mass, but it takes commitment to write down that you are going to aim to accomplish a particular feat. Good goals are tangible ones that you can cross off your list like you would a grocery list. Making good goals is not only critical to developing a routine, but it keeps your motivation up which you need to succeed.
Here are some examples on what are good goals versus what are bad goals:
As you can see, they generally all include NUMBERS. They are able to be obtained in the sense that you achieved a status and then you can move onto another new and harder goal. These are the types of goals we want because then we can begin to construct a routine around them. For most goals that can be quantified, one can see the logical progression in obtaining them – if my goal is 10 pushups and I can do one, then I need to work my pushups capacity so that I can get 2 then 3 then 4 and so on until I hit that 10. For others such as planche work, for example, there needs to be some creativity to sufficiently strengthen the muscles using multiple different exercises. Mostly, this just comes into play with tough bodyweight exercises though and a lot of them have been answered by people like Coach Sommer's planche and front lever progressions, beastskills.com, drillsandskills.com, and places like these so check there instead of asking questions that have been asked thousands of times already.
One good model if you are still having trouble is SMART:
Make sure your goals are at the very least modeled SMARTly!
The terms of exercise
Now, let's define some terms so that you are familiar with what I will be talking about. These will be VERY important and are critical for understand not only how to construct a routine but to also understand how your body works and how other routines work even if you aren't constructing your own routine and using another.
One thing I want to emphasize before we go any further is that training itself will *NOT* put on any muscle mass or burn off fat. A good diet is the ONLY way to lose fat or gain muscle mass or vice versa. Training coupled with a good diet accomplishes this; however, I will not be discussing any diet in this article.
This article will be helpful to everyone on how to construct a routine to focus on your goals. Anyway, let's get started.
Goal Setting
First, you need to determine your goals. Good goals are tangible feats that you can accomplish. For example, being able to do 10 dips and run 400m in 60 seconds are both good goals. An example of bad goals would 'gaining muscle mass' or 'improving broad jump' or 'improving fitness.' They are bad goals because they are not defined – gaining 10 lbs of muscle or improving your broad jump 6” would be good goals. Anyone can say they want to gain muscle mass, but it takes commitment to write down that you are going to aim to accomplish a particular feat. Good goals are tangible ones that you can cross off your list like you would a grocery list. Making good goals is not only critical to developing a routine, but it keeps your motivation up which you need to succeed.
Here are some examples on what are good goals versus what are bad goals:
Bad goals: get toned, gain muscle mass, lose fat, work my pullups and dips, work my precisions, do more dashses, handstands
Good goals: gain 10 lbs of muscle, lose 10 lbs of fat, do 40 pushups, 10 muscle ups, deadlift 400 lbs, 100 precisions, 100 rolls, do 1 minute of handstand work a day
As you can see, they generally all include NUMBERS. They are able to be obtained in the sense that you achieved a status and then you can move onto another new and harder goal. These are the types of goals we want because then we can begin to construct a routine around them. For most goals that can be quantified, one can see the logical progression in obtaining them – if my goal is 10 pushups and I can do one, then I need to work my pushups capacity so that I can get 2 then 3 then 4 and so on until I hit that 10. For others such as planche work, for example, there needs to be some creativity to sufficiently strengthen the muscles using multiple different exercises. Mostly, this just comes into play with tough bodyweight exercises though and a lot of them have been answered by people like Coach Sommer's planche and front lever progressions, beastskills.com, drillsandskills.com, and places like these so check there instead of asking questions that have been asked thousands of times already.
One good model if you are still having trouble is SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Action-Oriented
Realistic
Time and Resource Constrained
Make sure your goals are at the very least modeled SMARTly!
The terms of exercise
Now, let's define some terms so that you are familiar with what I will be talking about. These will be VERY important and are critical for understand not only how to construct a routine but to also understand how your body works and how other routines work even if you aren't constructing your own routine and using another.
- The repetition continuum has strength at one end and endurance at the other. At one end, we have strength which is gained at low repetitions and heavier weight where a 1 repetition max (1 RM) elicits the most strength. On the other hand, endurance occurs with less weight and more repetitions where being able to do hundreds of pushups would be an example of extreme endurance.
There are three VERY important point to take away from the repetition continuum.
- First, strength and endurance cannot OPTIMALLY be developed at the same time since they are opposite of each other. This is why if you can do 50 dips and you start working weighted dips, your 50 dips will probably be a lower 30 or so the next time you try.
- Developing maximal strength increases the potential for maximum endurance. This is why cyclists often work maximum strength work in their offseason. However, the potential for endurance must be realized by actually doing endurance work after strength is developed.
- Strength takes longer to develop than endurance/conditioning.
- Intensity (how 'intense' an exercise is) is how tough an exercise is for you. This is generally defined in RM such that 1 RM is the highest intensity while 20 RM will be at a lower intensity.
- Volume or Load can be defined as the total amount of weight lifted in a workout. 10 dips and 10 handstand pushups at the bodyweight of 100 would exert 10*100+10*100 = 2000 lbs on your triceps for the whole workout.
- Frequency is how often you train or workout. Pretty simple.
- Failure is when you cannot complete an exercise with good form. I feel this is necessary to define mainly because much of optimal training especially strength requires that you stop short of failure most of the time. Although failure can, at times, be used effectively, it should be the exception not the rule.
- The Central Nervous System (CNS) stimulates muscle contractions. Initial gains in strength for the first 2-3 weeks that beginners often see are based upon increasing neural connections and efficiency of the CNS to stimulate muscles to contract. CNS fatigue from going to failure early in workouts often leads to a decreased capacity to lift heavy weights later which results in less stress being placed on the muscle to force it to adapt to become stronger.
- The Energy pathway systems are composed of the phosphagen pathway, glycolytic and aerobic pathway. The phosphagen pathway encompasses the ATP-creatine phosphate (phosphocreatine) pathway which is used to rapidly supply ATP from used ADP. This system is one of the initial ones your body uses especially for short term energy needs like sets in weightlifting. The glycolytic pathway is the biological catabolism of glucose to pyruvate/Acetyl-CoA. This system is used to produce energy when the phosphagen pathway is depleted. If the demands for energy from the muscles are too much for the glycolytic system to provide, the oxidative phosphorylation system takes over which utilizes the citric acid cycle, mitochondria and oxygen to produce ATP.
- Metabolic conditioning (metcon) is a form of workout which exhausts the body's muscles as well as energy pathways. Generally, metcon exercises are performed in a row one right after the other to exhaust the body fairly quickly. A workout done for time to push the participant to go through it as quickly as possible with as little breaks as possible can be considered metcon. Circuit training is a form of metcon. The CrossFit program utilizes many metcon exercises in its WOD.
- Programming will both be encountered as you become stronger. Generally I wouldn't worry too much about these terms and what they mean for you now as you will come to understand that the complexity of training needs to increase as your strength increases to near its max potential.