Nutrition & Health OnLine Magazine

BASICS OF TRAINING: Part 2

Davey Dunn

In order to be successful in your training you need to first have a goal and then a plan for achieving that goal. Last issue we talked about the importance of having a clearly defined goal and how to go about determining your goal. This month we are going to talk about how to develop a training plan for accomplishing that goal.

For the scope of this article let's say our goal is going to be to increase our benchpress by 10% and go from 300 to 330. Since most people perform the benchpress and are always looking to lift more weight this should be a goal almost everyone can relate to.

The first step is to determine how much time we are going to allocate for achieving this goal. Be realistic. You are not going to gain 30 pounds in 1 month. On the other hand you need to challenge yourself and your body so giving yourself a year is a little too long. A reasonable amount of time is 3 months or 12 weeks so that is how long we will set up our training program to last.

The next step is to evaluate your training facility to determine what type of equipment is available. Obviously you will need a benchpress but you also need to determine what types of assistance exercises you are going to use and sometimes you are limited by the type of equipment available. I like to supplement my benchpress training with some heavy partial movements that I can only do with a certain type of power rack. When I train at gyms without this type of power rack I have to plan in other types of exercises to compensate.

Once you establish how long your training cycle it going to last and what type of equipment you will have available it is time to actually write out your training program. Most recreational lifters never bother to have a written plan, which is why they never accomplish much. You should walk into the gym knowing exactly what you are going to do and how you are going to do it. The only way to do this it to have a written out plan ready to go.

Figure 1 shows what a day of training would look like for our sample program:

This particular workout should take approximately 45 - 60 minutes to complete. The main exercise is the benchpress and your goal for this particular day is to perform 225 for ten repetitions.

You should have a daily plan like this for every workout and you should keep track of how you actually performed during the workout. The easiest way to do this is to set up your daily plan with space for your actual performance as shown above.

The other part of the plan is to know where you are going to go over the course of the twelve weeks laid out to accomplish the goal. The last issue of Nutrition & Health OnLine Magazine had a great article on periodization. You should reference this article to completely understand all the theories. The following (figure 2) is how a 12 week periodized cycle would look for our sample benchpress program.

The weights shown are for the primary set, which is the most important set. Subsequent sets would decrease the weight by approximately 10 pounds in order to maintain the same level of intensity. As your training progresses you may find that you are ahead or behind what you had planed. You can always make minor adjustments as you go but your plan is to progress toward your goal of benching 330 in twelve weeks so be careful not to deviate to much.

One of the hardest things for people to understand is that the purpose of a plan is to accomplish a well thought out goal. This sample 12-week program utilizes the theories of periodization and provides a variety of intensity levels during training. The week of 245 X 10 will be difficult but the next week of 250 X 5 will be relatively easy. The program is planed out that way to provide time for the body to recover and yet still make progress. The biggest mistake novice lifters make is to decide they feel good on a particular day and lift the weight they are supposed to train with a couple of weeks down the road. The next week they crash and burn and wonder why. If you want to accomplish your goal then formulate a good plan and then stick to it.

You now know how to set up a training program to accomplish a pre-determined goal. Whether you choose to take the time to plan out your training is up to you. You can continue to train haphazardly and blame you lack of progress on bad genetics, poor nutrition, or whatever other excuses you hear in the gyms everyday. Or, maybe, now is the time to really get serious about your training. Try planing out your next 12 weeks of training and see if you do not make the greatest gains of your life.

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