What do we mean by programming?

Programming is the way in which we balance all the factors to make an exercise regime effective in achieving the desired effects.
Things like how many sets, reps and how much weight to use for each body part must be considered as well as how much recovery time is needed to allow hypertrophic changes to occur.

One of the hardest things to predict is how much can we train before we enter overtraining. All too often people can be seen in the gym that train harder and longer then anyone else yet seem to get no where near the results as those who seem to train much less. This is the result of either sub standard nutritional practices, or the fact that they are overtraining and not allowing their body enough time to recover.

What we must remember is that in the gym we are not building muscle, quite the opposite in fact, we are doing it damage, tearing it down and causing trauma to our muscle fibres by subjecting them to far greater stresses then they would normally incur. We do this to force the muscle to grow back bigger and stronger so that next time it will be able to handle the additional stresses placed upon it.

Here is a brief outline of some of the terms that you will come across while training:

Reps: (repetitions) this is the number of times you will perform a movement of any given exercise. Once you complete the desired number of repetitions you will count that as one Set. You will then have your rest period before completing another Set of the desired number of repetitions.

Set: This is the number of times you will perform the exercise. Sets are made up of repetitions and each set is followed by a pre determined rest period to allow energy recovery before moving onto the next set. (eg: perform 1st set of squats for 10 repetitions, rest 1 minute, perform the 2nd set of squats for 8 repetitions, rest 1 minute, perform the 3rd set of squats for 6 repetitions).

Splits: This is the way in which you have broken up your body parts to train.

•    1 day split – work out your whole body in the one training session. Usually on alternating days eg Mon, Wed, Fri.
•    2 day split – Train the whole body over 2 days. Eg; Upper body on day one, Lower body on day 2.
•    3 Day split – Train the whole body over 3 days. Popular for intermediate bodybuilders. Eg; Chest, shoulders, triceps day one, Back, Biceps and forearms day two, Quads, Hamstrings, Calves and abs day 3.
•    4 or 5 day split – Usually used by advanced level bodybuilders this usually consists of training one body part per day. Eg; Day 1 Chest, Day 2 Legs, Day 3 Back, Day 4 Shoulders and tri’s, Day 5 Calves and Bi’s.

There are virtually an unlimited number of ways that you can split up your body parts to train them, basically the more advanced you become in your training, the more workload you can put your muscles under and so you begin to split up the muscles so that your training does not take so long to do. Highly advanced or professional bodybuilders sometimes go to a double split routine training one body part in the morning and another of an evening. In the end it all comes down to how quickly you recover from your training as to when you can train that body part again and this will determine how you workout your training split.

A general rule of thumb is as follows:
•    Smaller muscles recover quicker then larger muscles
•    It takes longer for a muscle to recover after a heavy workout then after a light workout

Compound Exercises: A compound exercise is one that is a multi jointed movement and incorporates multiple muscles to perform the movement. Compound exercises are the best at developing size and strength. A few examples are: squat, power clean, Bench, Barbell clean and press.

Isolation Exercises: Are exercises that isolate only one muscle group to perform the movement. Popular with bodybuilders to help bring out striations in the muscle and etch in extra detail they are not that good at building size or strength. Examples of isolation movements are Fly’s, lateral raises, leg extensions.

Atrophy: This is the shrinking or wasting away of muscle through disuse.

Hypertrophy: This is when the growth of muscle size occurs after being subjected to increasing levels of resistance to force hypertrophic changes.

1RM: your 1 rep max. This is what weight you can lift a maximum of only 1 time. Only power lifters usually train to increase their 1RM as it puts excessive overload on the joints and connective tissues with a greater chance of injury and is not all that beneficial for general training. There are numerous ways to calculate your 1RM without having to lift it to see if your strength is increasing with your training.

Somatotypes: There are 3 somatotypes that are classified below which are used to determine body configuration, but rarely is anyone a single somatotype, usually they are a combination of 2 eg; an ecto-mesomorph or meso-endomorph and display characteristics of both.

•    Mesomorph – usually lean and muscular, with a heavy build, small joints and rarely carries any excess body fat. Most suitable for bodybuilding they gain muscle easily and burn fat easily.
•    Endomorph – Heavy build but usually with an excess of body fat they gain both muscle and fat easily and have to be careful with their diet not to become overweight.
•    Ectomorph – Thin and lean with not much muscle and not much fat. The ectomorph is sometimes also called a hardgainer. They find they can eat as much as they like and not put on muscle or fat. Typically lend themselves to overtraining.

So onto how we program.

What we must first decide is what is it that we are training for. This will have a direct impact on the number of sets, reps and the weight used.
As a general rule of thumb we can expect the following:

1- 4 reps – this is a heavy weight generally used in training of power lifters who are trying to increase their 1 rep max. It will not normally bring about large changes to muscle size but is generally considered the best rep range for increasing strength, although there are a number of popular strength building routines that use higher rep ranges and explosive movements to build strength quite effectively.

6 – 10 reps – generally accepted as the rep range used when training for hypertrophy ( muscle size increase )

12 + reps – muscular and strength endurance. It used to be thought that this higher rep range was better for ‘toning’ muscles but the current trend in training is tending to lean away from this and use lower rep ranges to great effect in conjunction with strict nutrition to allow for better muscle tone.

As always there are exceptions to the rules, some bodybuilders have been known to train in the 50 rep range and still experience significant gains in muscle size, so it’s really about experimenting and finding out which rep range works best for your body type.

With the number of sets to be performed for each body part it depends on which body part and which split you are using.

Normally we can follow this rough rule:

•    12 – 16 sets for large body parts like legs, back and chest
•    6 – 8 sets for smaller body parts like shoulders, biceps and triceps.

However if training your whole body on the one day you may perform as few as 2-4 sets per body part or you will be training for hours.

We must remember to aim for training economy – get the most out of each training session, each set and rep that you can, not performing countless numbers of sets and reps. As always it will be a matter of experimenting and seeing what sort of sets work best for each of your body parts. You may find your calves work best with low reps and high sets, and your biceps grow doing relatively few sets but using more reps. The key is to use the above rules as a guideline and write down how your body parts respond to different combinations until you find out what works best for you.

When designing your program you should always make sure your nutrition is spot on and give each program a minimum of 6 weeks to measure your results, don’t go changing everything every couple of days or you will never know what works best for you.

Rest and Recovery.

This is without a doubt the most important part of your program. The muscle and strength can only grow when the body is resting and it is being supplied with the correct macronutrients for hypertrophy to take place. So what this basically means is that muscles grow when we sleep, not while we are at the gym.

The most important thing for you to learn when programming for yourself is how long each muscle group takes to recover before you can train it again to provide maximum gains. You may find that after a heavy leg workout its best not to train them again for 7-10 days, but your arms grow if you train them every 3 days. There are no hard or fast rules here as everyone has different recovery capabilities you must above all learn to listen to your body and not just train a certain way on a certain program because it worked for someone else.

If you are in doubt about programming for yourself, enlisting the help of a qualified strength and conditioning trainer for a few months is a great way to start learning and becoming familiar with how to program. Your trainer should be teaching you how to help yourself, not having you rely on them for your results. Once you have learnt how to do some basic programs for yourself you can then go to a gym and train yourself for awhile to see how you progress. If you stop progressing, or simply want to learn the next step in programming, just go back to your trainer for another few months and learn how to take the next step in your programming before going back to the gym on your own. Once you have invested in learning how to program for yourself you will be able to maintain your fitness for a lifetime so it is well worth doing.