Choosing or Designing a Strength & Conditioning Program: Part 1

I always talk about how we are all athletes in some sort of matter, but that doesn't mean that we should all be using the same type of program.  Football players, sprinters, triathloners, body builders, olympic lifters, powerlifters, weekend warriors, parents, tactical officers, among many others, are all athletes but generally all have different goals and thus need different programs.  When choosing or designing a program for yourself, or for others, take into account the following aspects and principles.

These athletes all have specific needs for their activities, and will have similarities and differences in their training.

1) Use a program that is specific to your goals and needs.  First, look at your sport(s) and determine what aspects of fitness are needed to do well in your sport.  Do you need strength, power, endurance, agility, flexibility, speed, size, etc.?  Most activities require a mixture of these aspects, and if that is true for your sport you need to look at both what percentage of each is important to the sport and also where do your personal weaknesses lie?  Those two factors will determine where you focus most of your training.

This leads us into the principle of specificity which we look at when deciding on exercise selection and the prescription of sets, reps, and intensity.  I believe that specificity is an often misunderstood principle because many people believe that specificity means choosing exercises that mimic the movements used in your sport.  By loading up movements specific to your sport, the movement often can be altered decreasing the efficiency of the movement and possibly increasing the risk of injury.  Instead, I consider specificity to mean choosing exercises that will strengthen the muscles responsible for improving the movements that are required for your sport.  Besides exercise selection, make sure you are using a rep scheme that fits your needs.  Generally you should rarely need to go above 10-12 reps, and most needs can be met by lifting in the range of 4-8 reps.

Make sure to also consider your needs when choosing conditioning and endurance activities.  Some people may only need to walk at a brisk pace while others need to perform sprints, agility drills, and plyometrics.  Although the different choices available are numerous and beyond the scope of this post, I do believe that no matter what a person goals and needs are, everyone should consider general health and fitness and should do some form of conditioning work.

No machine will develop strength, flexibility, balance , and muscle like this!

2) Use primarily free weights and body weight exercises.  This kind of goes hand in hand with specificity because there is no type of athletic activity that I can think of that the athlete is confined to a fixed range of motion (ROM) like you are when you perform a machine based exercise. Using free weights and body weight exercises, a person learns how to control their body and their strength in space.  Type of exercises include ones using barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, suspension trainers, sandbags, etc.  By performing exercises that involve moving weight in open space, you will also develop and improve other aspects of athleticism beside building muscle and strength, including balance, flexibility, and core strength.

These different aspects are reached not only by you controlling your ROM, but you also can work movements in all three dimensions (frontal, sagittal, and transversal), as well as training bilaterally (both limbs at a time) and unilaterally (one at a time).  Most machines involve a fixed ROM, allow movement in only one dimension, and involve a bilateral movement, however there are some exceptions.  A cable based machine, like different brands of functional trainers, allow you to performs lat pulls, rows, chops, and lifts, among other exercises that allow to control the ROM, movement type, and movement pattern.

3) Train hard over training long.  This should hold true in both your cardio and strength training.  Shorter intense bouts of work have been shown to burn more fat in the long run than long slow training.  And if you're thinking that you'll try to get the best of both worlds by doing long intense bouts of work, you may sabotaging your progress.  You're workouts should be held to around 45-60 minutes.  Any intense work lasting longer than that could increase the presence of catabolic hormones (ones that decrease the burning of fat and building of muscle).

Most strength training programs involve multiple sets of intense work interspersed with rest, but some still perform too many sets to keep their workouts under an hour.  Also, many guys are guilty of taking too much rest during their workouts.  Unless you are a powerlifter or olympic lifter, where your the amount you lift is the focus of your sport, you do not need to rest 3-5 minutes between sets.  To get even more done in a short period of time, try performing paired sets of 2 or more exercises.  Examples would be performing a leg exercise paired with either a core or upper body exercise, and move back and forth between the two with between 30-90 seconds between exercises.  Your primary muscle performing the work will have over 2 minutes rest between sets, but during your rest time, you will complete other exercises.

Who would you rather look like?
Sprinters lift weights and run intervals,
Work Hard, not long!

More people are guilty with their cardio work and still perform long slow cardio workouts as opposed to performing intervals.  There are many different types of ways to perform intervals, which I will cover in future posts (you can read a past newsletter on intervals here).

4) Train using ground based, multi-joint movements.  Ground based exercises are those that you are planted or begin planted on the ground.  Most free weight and body weight exercises fall in this category, which brings us back to the idea that most movements in life and athletics involve us performing activities on the the ground.

Multi-joint movements are exercises that involve the movement of more than one joint to perform that activity.  Exercises include squats, cleans, presses, rows, pull ups, and deadlifts, among others.  One reason that multi-joint movements are beneficial is that you can get more done in a shorter amount of time by training more muscle in a shorter amount of time, which allows you to maximize your calorie burn and hormonal response in under 60 minutes.  I'm not necessarily saying never to do most single joint exercises, such as bicep curls and tricep extensions, but if you are looking for the biggest bang for your buck, perform multi-joint movements will work both your large and smaller muscles at the same time.


In Part 2 I will suggest more things to consider when designing a strength & conditioning program.  In the meantime, if you want to see some examples of programs, visit www.speadsperformance.net and search through past BSU programs and/or tactical strength & conditioning programs, or scroll to the bottom of the page to view programs for general public and a triathlete.