Training the Right Way Part 1 7/84

I wanted to do an extended post about this because I feel like this is something that is actually super important for people to know. Training my non-athlete clients in a similar fashion to the way I used to train Division I athletes and CrossFit athletes is something that is very important to me and is often one of the foundations of my training programs.

You may be asking what it actually means to “train like an athlete” so I’m going to explain what that means first. Then, I’ll explain why I choose to program this way as opposed to other options. Then finally, I’ll show you what a program like that would look like and show you the adaptations I make to it for my clients.

So what does “training like an athlete mean”? To me, it means doing generally full body workouts, based around compound movements, and follows an important order for the exercises. Athletes usually only lift 2-3 times per week, depending on what part of their season they are in. This puts them in the perfect set up to do full body workouts each time. That is something that I change depending on the client because if they want to lift four times per week then I need to adjust that scheme.

Compound movements should be the basis of almost everyone’s program and is definitely the focus here. With athletes, we only have about one hour to get them through a workout, so there’s not a ton of room for unimportant filler exercises. My clients have the same time constraint except that we only do 45 minute sessions. Because I want to fastest results for my clients, I spend our time of the exercises that are going to give then the most bang for their buck (for more info check my old blog post).

Other than the time constraints, I prefer this type of training because I feel it is more effective for what most of my clients want. Generally, they don’t want to be bodybuilders, they just wanted to lose fat, gain muscle, and be able to make their everyday life easier. This is where athlete style training and “functional training” have a huge advantage over bodybuilding. Not only do we focus on compound movements, but we do them in a way that is more transferable to daily life. Think of it this way, a goblet squat and a leg press are both lower body compound movements, but obviously the squat is more transferable to life. Rarely will we be sitting down and pushing something away with our feet, but we do squats all day long whether we realize it or not. Basically the same muscle groups, but one has a better carryover. This type training is also going the have you better prepared to go out on the weekends and be active, or be able to go outside and play basketball with your kids.

At this point you’re probably wondering what an athlete’s program looks like. If you have been following my posts (you should) you may already have an idea but I’ll show you here. A basic athlete’s program outline would look something like this.

1.       Dynamic Warm-up/ movement preparation

2.       Power exercises

3.       Compound strength lift

4.       Hinge Movement

5.       Squat movement

6.       Push movement

7.       Pull movement

8.       Accessory/ core work

It’s a pretty basic, full body workout that can have the goal of building muscle, building strength and/or increasing power output (depending on exercise selection and set/rep schemes). Although this is great, there are some changes that I make to make this model fit better with the majority of the regular population.

First and foremost is that I usually eliminate the power exercises. These would be exercises like box jumps, bounding, cleans, snatches and other plyometric or high velocity exercises. The reasons I remove them are simple; they just don’t help much with most people’s goals, they take a long time to learn, and there are other exercises with a better risk: reward ratio. On point 1, most people who just want to lose fat or build muscle don’t care about how high they can jump or what their 1 rep max snatch is. Also, the way these exercise are usually programmed doesn’t really do a ton for body recomposition, because they are typically done with low weight, low volume, and come with long rest periods. Obviously, if you follow CrossFit at all then you know that these exercises are often used and, in that methodology, can be effective tools for conditioning. Some people argue that the Olympic lifts (the clean, jerk, and snatch) are not “meant” to be used in higher rep schemes but honestly I think that’s kind of dumb. Who’s to decide what an exercise is “meant” to be for? They are there to be used for whatever you need them too be. That being said, I still don’t use them much based on the other two points. There is one exception though, where I add a very basic hang power clean in a barbell complex. In my opinion and experience, the hang power clean is the easiest variation to teach and learn, making it really easy to work into a conditioning session. This is also just an effective and natural transition from holding you bar in your hands to holding it on your shoulders in a front rack.

The only other real change that I make is I often do more supersets with my clients. Again, supersets are when you pair two exercises together and do them back to back before you rest. The main reason I do this if for the time constraint, but there is also an increased metabolic component that will help my fat loss clients burn a few more calories.

So after those changes, the set-up will look something like this…

1.       Dynamic Warm-up/ movement preparation

2.       Compound strength lift

3.       Superset 1

a.       Hinge movement

b.      Push movement

4.       Superset 2

a.       Squat movement

b.      Pull movement

5.       Accessory/ core work

You can see that there are obviously similarities but obvious differences as well. This is a great setup for someone who only wants to lift 2-3 times a week and wants to get results the fastest that they can. In the next part of this post I’ll go into how I adjust this even further for people who want more frequent sessions or something just a little different. 

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See you tomorrow!

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