We’d all love to do it properly, but it’s often easier said than done.
And perhaps the most difficult part of working out is planning an effective program.
Well, in this video, we’ll try to get you closer to that.
Without further ado, here are four tips that can help you create a successful workout program.
Also, a quick shoutout to all my awesome Patreon members that voted for this very topic.
Thank you.
Number 1, First and foremost, highlight your SPECIFIC
goal.
It sounds pretty rudimentary, but for one reason or another, this is often glossed over.
You need to understand what your specific end goal is.
Is it to get stronger, build more muscle, lose fat, or a little bit of everything?
Now, most goals will require the same basics- decent nutrition, resistance training, and
abundance of sleep – but each goal will also have very specific differences.
For example, building muscle requires progressive overload in terms of volume and exertion,
but not necessarily intensity.
Burning fat will have a heavy emphasis on nutrition while exercise have a more laxed
progression approach.
And strength will rely heavily on peaks and tapers to maximize fitness capacity by the
end of the cycle.
So, first things first, lets figure out your specific goal before we start hammering out
details to properly cater to them.
Number 2, if you’re a beginner, the best tip for a successful program, is to NOT start
your own.
I know you wanna do your own thang, but creating a program from scratch with little to no knowledge
of the matter just doesn’t make sense, and watching a bunch of internet videos won’t
help you with a little thing we call EXPERIENCE.
Just like you wouldn’t try to build a house just by learning how to hammer some nails,
you shouldn’t be creating an entire program just because you learned how to squat without
raising your heels.
Take it from those that already did the legwork, literally and figuratively, and follow a proven
program.
This will help you understand program structure and, more importantly, get actual results.
Once you become more experienced yourself, you can then start customizing a program based
on your progressions.
But until then, stick with the tried and true rather than learn the hard way.
If you’re not sure which program to choose, then please come check out our PictureFit
discord community, and we’ll be more than happy to help.
Number 3, keep in mind of fatigue.
Many times, people believe the answer to plateaus or lack of results is to continuously overload
by adding more, be it more volume, more weight, more training days, and so on.
But the problem might not be that you’re not going enough.
Instead, you’re doing too much to the point where fatigue begins to hold you back.
The fatigue-fitness model suggests that, although fitness improves over time with training,
so will the accumulation of fatigue.
Without proper recovery from fatigue, performance will then continue to diminish even in the
presence of improved fitness adaptations.
Fatigue is most affected by high volume work.
So, if your program calls for frequently high volume days, it’s best to allocate more
recovery days throughout.
Sometimes, the accumulation of fatigue might be desired since rebounding from long-term
fatigue can position you to perform at your highest level in a given window.
An overreaching effect.
This is great for peaking during powerlifting competitions.
Thus, programming in deloads and tapers where work capacity is drastically reduced is recommended
to allow proper recovery, followed by a peak phase.
In any case, the balance between fitness and fatigue has to be considered, especially with
performance in mind.
And number 4, reps in reserve, the gauge of adequate training.
Choosing the right amount of reps can be a bit confusing.
Do too few of reps and you won’t fully stimulate muscle fibers, thus limit muscular adaptation.
Do too many, especially going to failure, and you might accumulate too much fatigue
early on, which will negatively impact performance on subsequent sets and workouts.
The answer then is to find a sweet spot, where you’re training with a high deal of effort
without accumulating unnecessary fatigue.
This is probably best gauged through something called reps in reserve.
Simply, reps in reserve are the number of reps you feel that you are still able to do
had you push a given set to failure.
For example, if you perform 10 reps of squats but feel that you could have went for 13 before
reaching failure, then you would say that you had 3 reps in reserve.
Now the amount of reps in reserve you want to have will vary based on the rep ranges
you’re training.
A lower rep range of say, 3 to 5 reps, would have fewer reps in reserve, like 1 or 2.
Something like 15 to 20 reps would shoot for 3 or 4 reps in reserve.
For typical ranges, having 1 to 3 reps in reserve is an amount where studies show muscle
stimulation reaches its maximum, which also means you don’t have to shoot for failure.
But if you do occasionally want to train to failure, then save it for your last set of
any given workout.
Other than that, programming your sets to have 1 to 3 reps in reserve will be best practice.
And there we have it, four tips pushing you towards an awesome and hopefully successful
training program.
Hats off again to my patreon members for voting for this topic.
If you enjoyed this video, please give it a successful thumbs up and share it with your
program-loving friends.
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As always, thank you for watching and GET YOUR PROTEIN!