Whatever your goal, in order to plan a training routine there are key ‘rules’ that you need to follow to ensure that you make progress. These can be broken down into five important areas that we need to consider when structuring our own training, which will be covered in detail in these two articles.
1. Be Specific:
The training needs to be (mostly) specific to your goals. If you want to build muscle or strength, you need to be training with weights and training in the proper repetition ranges. If you want to run a 10km race, there’s no point spending all your time in the weights room.
If you want a mixed training effect, then you can combine training to improve all facets of fitness. However, be aware that you are never likely to fully maximise progress in one area if you are trying to be a jack of all trades!
So, firstly you need to do some research about which training ‘zones’ and intensities are best for what you are looking for and from this we can form a reasonable program.
2. Choose the right training intensity and volume.
Intensity can be measured most simply as a percentage of 1 repetition max for weight training, or maximum heart rate for endurance activities. For developing muscle strength, a majority of your training needs to take place at 80%+ of one repetition max, for muscle building 60-80% of one repetition max.
To develop anaerobic capacity and endurance, intervals of higher intensity interval training (HIIT) work with a heart rate of 85% or higher than maximum calculated heart rate (220-age) are required, for aerobic capacity, working at intensities of 60-80% of max heart rate are recommended.
As a general rule, the higher the intensity, the longer the rest intervals need to be. Strength training at close to 1RM might require over 5 minutes to recover between sets, whereas muscle building may only require a couple of minutes. This applies to cardio as well; obviously the lower the intensity the longer we can keep going, whereas high intensity interval style training may need periods of recovery of minutes.
The higher the intensity, the lower the volume should be. Volume is simply the amount of work done in an exercise session. For resistance training, this is calculated simply by taking the load on the bar and multiplying it by the number of reps and sets. As higher intensity work is more challenging and takes longer recovery periods, this usually leads to lower training volumes.
For example, if we perform a 5 repetition max deadlift at 200kg that is a set volume of 1000kg, and if we did five sets, that is 5000kg of volume in the set. Compare this to our 20 rep max at say 130kg for 2 sets, which equates to 5200kg of volume which would take less time and place less stress on certain systems in the body.
3. Make sure it is progressive.
Whether your goal is strength, size or endurance training, your training should be progressive, starting at a reasonable point. Jumping straight in at the deep end will inevitably lead to injury and lack of progress. So, start at a weight/volume and training frequency that allows you to progress.
Progression should be made as small an increment as possible, adding 2.5kg to each lift when you hit your desired target number of reps each time will increase your work volume, but in a much more manageable way than throwing on 10kg. By doing this you are likely to plateau quicker, as you are pushing the body to a point of stress, which is outside the realms of its previous adaptations from your training - slow and steady wins the race and prevents injury.
The same principle can be applied to endurance training, to improve performance we can either look to gradually increase the amount of distance we can cover, or we can then try and increase the race pace to cover the distance quicker and for HIIT training we can also reduce the work to rest ratio.
These principles are the main factors that any training program needs to consider. The application of these principles will be dependent on a lot of factors and need to be tailored to an individual in regards to their goals, previous level of training and how quickly they can recover and progress. The concepts of training frequency and how we can regulate training on a session to session basis are covered in part two. So stay tuned!
Paul Rimmer (BSc, MSc, PhD).
