How to Design A Workout Program, Part 2: The Principles
In this series, being re-run for the multitude of new subscribers, you will learn what you need to know to design your own workout programs that work to deliver the results you want.
Mastery
What is the common denominator between a master chef, the composer of a symphony, an artist who paints masterpieces and professional conditioning coach who works with elite performance athletes?
Any expert or “master” has one thing in common: the ability to execute the basic principles of their chosen field of expertise better than most people.
Think about it; there are only 3 primary colors, but a master painter can mix those colors to create beautiful works of art. There are only 7 notes in a musical scale, yet a composer can mix and combine those notes to create musical scores that can bring tears. Chicken, beans and rice are the basic ingredients for dishes from a variety of different countries, yet it’s the master chef who knows how to combine those ingredients into a signature dish that can blow your taste buds away.
The point is that an expert in their field knows how to execute the basics in that field better than many other practitioners and the same is true with designing exercise programs. When it comes to designing workouts there are specific principles that guide how a workout should be created and progressed so that it can create the desired results.
The 2nd part of this series on how to design your own exercise programs focuses on the principles of exercise program design which dictate how a program should be structured for optimal results. Personal trainers and performance coaches spend years studying how to apply these principles and the results are workouts that change clients bodies. Learn how to apply and execute these principles correctly and you will be on your way to mastering how to design your own workout programs.
What to Know About Designing Workout Programs
2 things to keep in mind when designing a workout program:
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly yet expecting different results.
If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.
This post covers the 2 foundational principles of designing an exercise program. These principles hold true for any type of workout program from strength training to metabolic conditioning to mobility and can be summed up with the simple statement below:
In order to change your body with exercise, the intensity of exercise MUST change on a systematic basis. Simply stated: you HAVE to challenge yourself to work harder than you may be used to working. Yes, it can be hard, but nothing worth having, in this case your health, fitness and longevity, comes easy.
The SAID Principle
Changes to the structures and systems of the human body do not occur without a preceding stimulus; The SAID (Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands) Principle states that the type of exercise stress applied to the body will determine the physiological outcome.
Want to train for a marathon? Run long distances to properly prepare the muscles and cardiorespiratory system to complete the race.
Want to develop muscle definition? Repeatedly perform repetitions of an exercise so the muscles remain in a state of semi-contraction (technically referred to as ‘tonus,’ this is the etiology of the term ‘muscle tone).
Want to improve your mobility? Perform dynamic movements that involve multiple muscles, limbs and joints so that tissues develop the capacity to move to the complete end range-of-motion.
The body is very adaptable and adjusts to any physical stimulus it is exposed to regularly. Each physiological system—neural, endocrine, metabolic, fascial, muscular and skeletal—will respond and adapt to the specific physical demands applied through a progressively challenging exercise program.
The Progressive Overload Principle
Dictates that for best results, you must gradually increase the intensity of exercise so your muscles and cardiovascular system are challenged to perform greater amounts of physical work over the duration of a program.
To increase muscular strength, and stimulate muscle growth, it is necessary to exercise with heavy loads OR perform reps to the point of fatigue. Fatigue indicates that all muscle fibers have been activated and that the necessary amount of work has been performed to properly stimulate the neuromuscular system (responsible for activating muscle fibers). The short term result is fatigue. The long term result are muscles capable of generating greater amounts of force and performing more work.
And here’s an important consideration: the type 2 muscles muscle fibers responsible for definition are best activated when muscles work to the point of fatigue.
The Role of Mechanical Stress and Metabolic Overload
When properly applied, the Progressive Overload and SAID Principles, muscles work to the point of fatigue which creates both mechanical stress and metabolic overload.
Mechanical Stress
Mechanical stress refers to the physical stresses applied to individual muscle fibers. Resistance training, specifically the mechanical stresses caused by resistance training, causes micro-trauma to muscle tissue which, in turn, signals the biochemical reaction to produce new satellite cells responsible for repairing the structures of the muscle tissue as well as building new muscle proteins.
Metabolic Overload
Metabolic overload refers to the fact that when a muscle works to the point of fatigue, it depletes the amount of energy available to perform work.
As mechanical stress and metabolic overload are applied to muscles, they adapt by becoming thicker as a result of the repair process and capable of storing more glycogen in order to properly fuel the work that will be performed. (In the muscle cell, glycogen holds on to water, so when muscles store more glycogen they become larger because they are also storing more water. As glycogen is used for fuel, the water is released and that’s why you sweat during hard exercise).
The Physics of Exercise
Newton’s laws of physics directly apply to working out. Exercise is the application of these basic laws of physics.
Inertia or Momentum
A body at rest stays at rest unless acted on by an outside force. Momentum refers to how a body in motion will remain in motion unless acted on by an outside force.
Applied to exercise, this law explains how a mass, whether your body weight or an external load, will remain at a constant state of rest until another force, such as one from a muscle, is applied to create motion.
Force = Mass x Acceleration
Force is the product of a mass and its rate of acceleration; when a muscle contracts, it generates a force to accelerate that mass. In exercise, force can be manipulated one of two ways: use a heavier mass to challenge muscles to generate greater magnitudes of force, or use an object with a light mass and move it at a faster rate of acceleration.
Work is a product of force and distance (W = F x D).
It is the amount of muscular force required to move a mass a quantifiable distance, which can be how far a body segment moves with each repetition and is measured in Joules.
Power is the rate of doing work and measures the amount of work performed per unit time (P = W/T). Another way to describe power is that it is the product of force and velocity (P = F x V).
Either way, the faster an object can be accelerated the greater the amount of power generated, which is measured in Watts or Joules per second.
If you have only a limited amount of time for exercise, say 30 minutes, then increasing your speed of movement, as is done during fast-paced metabolic conditioning exercises, can increase your overall work rate and your net caloric expenditure. This explains why CrossFit exploded in popularity more than a decade ago, for the first time, consumers were challenged to perform power exercises which applied progressive overload, resulting in massive amounts of mechanical stress and metabolic overload.
For Every Action, There is an Equal and Opposite Reaction
Applied to exercise, this law supports the SAID principle. For example, when you use a strength-training machine that dictates the movement, the body reacts by becoming strong specifically for the motion allowed by that machine.
The Ends Justify the Means
First written by early political pundit Nicholi Machiavelli (see mom, I AM using my undergrad degree in political science), this postulates that the outcome is the direct result of the process taken to achieve it.
The above principles and laws govern how your body adapts to a workout program. Your specific goals will dictate how to use the variables of exercise program design to apply those principles. Rest assured, if you want to use exercise to change your body, then be prepared to exercise to the point of fatigue for 3-5 workouts per week (If you have awesome nutrition and get great sleep, then you can train harder and more frequently. If life happens and limits your ability to get adequate sleep or fuel properly, then adjust your workouts to do lower intensity exercise so you don’t overstress your entire body).
The next post will cover the variables of program design; how the variables are applied will dictate the success of the program.
Thank you for reading!
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