Welcome to part 2 of 3 from the “Strength, Made Simple” series.
Last week we learned about how to set a fitness goal and why it is so important. This week we will learn the principles of programming and setting your fundamentals.
The Principles Of Programming
The principles of programming are the baseline concepts that go into all fitness programs.
- Progression – progressively getting better at something
- Consistency & Continuity – the more you do something the more you adapt to it
- Specificity – doing what you need to do to achieve your goal, not changing the script
The Fundamentals Of Your Program
The fundamentals of your program are the key aspects of strength put in place that are relevant to your goal. When training for performance, you need to consider, the following 7 strengths:
- Speed strength – how fast you can go. The speed a muscle can complete a range of motion.
- Starting strength – the beginning of any movement without any momentum.
- Strength endurance – how long you can go.
- Maximal strength – how much weight you can hold for a single rep or set of reps.
- Explosive strength – allows you to move yourself or an object quickly, with a lot of force.
- Relative strength – a reflection of how strong you are compared to your body weight.
- Agile strength – the ability to change directions quickly and powerfully.
If your goal is to get better at a sport, you need to break down the sport and which strengths are most suited to the sport and goal. So if you want to get stronger, what does that actually mean? Being “Strongman strong” is completely different from being basketball strong.
When training for an aesthetic goal measured by body composition, or body measurements, there is a nutrition aspect to consider. Calorific deficit and macronutrient breakdown etc, are areas to include when aesthetics are the main focus of your goal.
However, in strength training, your main consideration is how you are going to achieve a hypertrophic state (break muscle fibre down). There are three main fundamentals to achieve hypertrophy in a strength program.
- Mechanical tension – the time under load or weight, through a movement or exercise.
- Metabolic stress – the volume of repetition, with either the same exercise or multiple exercises back to back, usually done with minimal weight/load.
- Muscle damage – taking into account: concentric contractions/the way up, eccentric contractions/the way down, and isometric contractions/static and under load.
To summarise part two of this series, principles and fundamentals are important when considering the end goal of your training. You need to decide what the fundamental needs of your program are, and how they are relevant to your goal. You can then decide how to apply the principles of programming to achieve your desired outcome.
You now have an idea of what the fundamentals and principles of programming are, and why they are important to program writing.
Join us for part 3 next week where we discuss building your program, exercise selection, and progressive systems.