The Beginners Guide: Designing A Strength Training Program

It's tough to know where to begin, to re-start or shake up a strength training routine.

Rather than get into overcomplicated concepts and physiology geeki-ness, I'll break things down into the simplest terms possible with the aim of giving you the knowledge to design your own program.

Mobility

An often overlooked, albeit very important, part of any overall program. Mobility work is designed to add mobility and/or flexibility to certain joints - particularly those joints that are prone to being too stiff.

They are essentially drills that involve moving a joint through a range of motion and may include release work (using a foam roller or another implement such as a tennis or lacrosse ball). Mobility work also prepares the body for the work that is about to be done against resistance.

Some examples include:

• Leg swings: (front/back and side/side)
• Walking quad stretch
• Walking knee hugs
• Foam roll: thoracic spine mobility

Big Movements

Instead of breaking your program into "muscle groups", think about movements. This puts the focus on training correct motor patterns and emphasizes training the body as an integrated unit.

The movements can be lumped into the following categories:

• Squatting: standard back squats, box squats, front squats (barbell/dumbbell)
• Deadlifting: standard deadlift , Romanian deadlift (with barbell or dumbbell), sumo deadlift
• Pressing: bench press, standing cable press, dumbbell press.
• Pulling: pull-up/chin-up, barbell/dumbbell row, machine cable rows
• Rotation (anti-rotational): pallof press, cable rotations.

Note: You may also want to throw in variations in different planes of movement. Most exercises are done in the saggital or mid-saggital plane (think of the body being separated into right and left sides).

You can vary your planes by including side/diagonal lunges, reverse wood chops, and tubing cross walks. for example.

Postural/Corrective Work

This is an area that you can combine with the mobility work, or integrate into the strength training portion. Postural and corrective work is designed to balance out any asymmetries caused by either structural or environmental factors.

This is of course individual specific, but here are some that many people need (desk jockeys).

• Wall slides
• Prone trap raises
• Tubing cross walks: standing on a piece of exercise tubing - grip handles high enough to get sufficient tension. Step sideways 4-8 inches at a time, keeping feet at least 4 inches apart.
• External rotations with tubing (side-lying with a dumbbell works too).

Core

All exercises should involve some degree of core activation, however core work can also be included as a separate entity at some point during the workout.

Examples of core work include:

• Birddoggs
• Prone bridge
• Side bridge
• Single leg drops

Upper Body/Lower Body Split 1

1 day on, 1 day off, or 2 days on, 1 day off

Day 1 Lower body

Box squats
Standard deadlifts
Walking lunges
Planks
Wall slides

Day 2 Upper Body

Single arm push press (1/4 squat into shoulder press)
Pull-ups (or lat pulldowns)
Bent over reverse fly
Push-ups
1 arm dumbbell rows
Barbell roll-outs

Upper Body/Lower Body Split 2

Day 1 Lower Body

Front squats
Rack pulls (deadlift with pin at knee level)
Split squats (back foot on a bench)
Reverse crunches
Pallof presses

Day 2 Upper Body

Bench press
Seated rowing
Incline dumbbell press (neutral grip - palms in)
Dumbbell external rotations
Side planks

Full Body 1

Every other day

Deadlift variation
Reverse wood chops (cable)
Push-up and dumbbell row
Bench step-ups
Push press
Close grip pull-ups
Cross band side steps
Wall slides
Hip lifts

Full Body 2

Front squats
Incline bench press
Single leg deadlifts
Lunge and low cable rows
Close grip bench press
Face pulls
Prone trap raises
Pallof press
Cable external rotations (rotator cuff)

Push-pull

6 days on, 1 day off, or 3 days on, 1 day off

Day 1
Back, biceps, posterior deltoids

Pull-ups
Seated rowing
Bent over dumbbell flys
Zottman curls

Day 2
Chest, triceps, anterior deltoids

Bench press
Incline dumbbell chest press
Dips
Flat bench flys
Dumbbell front raises

Day 3
Legs, core

Back squats
Deadlifts
Walking lunges
Standing partial cable twists
Barbell roll-outs
Side plank

There are literally limitless ways to shake up a strength training routine. Next, we'll take a look at set/rep schemes, and look at some variations and other ways to shake things up.

How to Progress: Change the Implement

Changing the apparatus is a great way to change the stimulus of your workouts. Although my philosophy does gravitate more to a "less-is-more" approach, there are some great equipment changes you can make to shake things up, such as:

• Replace barbell's with dumbbells (and vice versa)
• Try kettlebells or clubbells instead of dumbbells
• Make use of the cable crossover
• Theraband or other resistive tubing can add to a body weight exercise or postural work
• Taking your workout outdoors? Try a suspension trainer such as the TRX.

Tempo

Changing how fast you push the weight can have tremendous benefits from breaking through plateaus, to smoothing out form issues. Try slowing down - 3 seconds negative, followed by an explosive positive. Try a 5 second hold at the end range, perform half reps. If you feel seasoned enough, add some plyometrics to your routine (explosive reps as in depth jumps).

Change the Load

Aside from the obvious strategy of increasing the weights you push, you can try different angles, if you don't have a variety of free weights. For example push-ups: you can go from hands elevated, to flat, to elevating the feet. Ditto with a pull-up, if you have a chin-up bar at home.

Another way to use gravity for (against) you is arm position. Take the split squat: start with hands on hips, progress to hands by chest in prayer position, hands on head (prisoner), to hands above head - trust me when I say this will bring the burn!

You can also try single limb exercises (see next)

Single Limb Work

To quote strength coach Mike Boyle, "Single limb training is a logical outgrowth of what we now know about functional anatomy". Single limb work is another way to help iron out imbalances and activate muscles, in a manner that bilateral work cannot. Try single leg squats, deadlifts, 1 arm presses, step-ups.

Stability

Changing the stability can also help progress exercises. Unfortunately when many people think of "stability", they envision balancing on a ball, board or BOSU. You can implement stability without sacrificing strength. Try a 3-point push-up, a deadlift with only 1 dumbbell (suitcase deadlift), a 1 arm push-press, or a single leg squat.

Range of Motion

Changing range of motion can help preserve strength, whilst maintaining good joint health. For example, to help deload the shoulders, go from a full-range bench press to a floor press. With squats you can do box squats, or lighten the weight and push the range deeper. You can do rack pulls instead of deadlifts (put the safety pin in at knee level and stop there).

Integration

A great way to add metabolic consumption to the workouts is to add extra movements to lifts. Examples include, lunge and shoulder press, burpee and push-up, squat and cable row. You can also do complexes, whereby you use dumbbells or a barbell, and progress through several exercises in a row, at a given rep range, without rest (killer).

Hopefully the aforementioned gives you some ideas on how to keep the progress coming and the injuries at bay.