The main points can be summarized as follows:
I’m thrilled to have a guest post by S&C coach and widely respected researcher, Naoki Kawamori explaining the subject. The most important thing for the intermediate and advanced trainee becomes not what program you follow (for you must have followed a good one or you wouldn’t be intermediate or advanced), but how you tweak it to follow this principle of progressive overload so that you keep advancing with your training.The most important thing for the beginner trainee is that you get on a good strength training program then stick to it.The only reason they may appear dogmatic in their writing is that they know it can be counterproductive to allow people too many choices with their training.
There are many different training programs that work and these coaches know this. Who is more correct? – They’re all right. Mark Rippetoe is famous for recommending sets of 5, Jim Wendler for his 5/3/1 program, and Martin Berkhan for a double-progression ‘reverse-pyramid’ set-rep system. This will last around 4-6 weeks.įor a program to be effective past this phase however it needs to follow the ‘ Principle Of Progressive Overload’. If you feel you’ve been spinning your wheels down the gym lately, or want to check that your routine is capable of giving you the results that your efforts deserve, this may be the article that you need.
In the short-term, the difference between an effective and ineffective exercise program is simply whether it was followed long enough for it to produce a noticeable training effect -which nearly anything will for a beginner. This programming ADHD – the search for the perfect training program – is the cause of the phenomenon of the perpetual beginner. We all know someone that does it – they start a new training routine with bounding enthusiasm, give it 2-3 weeks, then read some conflicting information elsewhere and decide that they need to switch things up. What would you say is the number one thing that holds people back with their training?