Over the past few weeks I have been posting a series of posts on resistance training. Resistance training is important not only from a vanity point of view but also from a health and longevity point of view. In other words, it’s important for everyone.
At this point you should realize how important resistance training is so the next question becomes which exercises should you be doing? Rather than think about specific exercises, it’s more beneficial to talk about movement patterns. This is because there are endless numbers of exercises, and which ones are the best are very individual. However we can group nearly all exercises into lower and upper body movement patterns: squat, deadlift, lunge, upper body push, upper body pull, and core.
Now that you have a better idea of why resistance training is important and the movement patterns you need to cover in a well formulated resistance training program, the next question to address is how to put them together into something you can execute during the week.
Below are two ways of constructing a resistance training program. The first is a 2 day a week program and then the other is a 4-5 day a week program. One is not better than the other, the difference is personal preference and constraints. It may work better for you to dedicate an hour 2 days a week while for others it might be better to do 20 minutes a day 4-5 times a week.
2 Day A Week Layout
Day 1
-Deadlift
-Vertical Upper Body Push
-Horizontal Upper Body Push
-Vertical Upper Body Pull
-Lunge
-Core
Day 2
-Squat
-Horizontal Upper Body Pull
-Vertical Upper Body Push
-Deadlift
-Vertical Upper Body Pull
-Core
5 Day A Week Layout
Day 1
-Deadlift
-Vertical Upper Body Push
-Core
Day 2
-Horizontal Upper Body Push
-Vertical Upper Body Pull
-Lunge
Day 3
-Squat
-Horizontal Upper Body Pull
-Core
Day 4
-Deadlift
-Vertical Upper Body Push
-Horizontal Upper Body Pull
Day 5
-Lunge
-Core
Exercises
With the basic layout in place, now we just need to replace the movement pattern with specific exercises.
Like I said above there are endless numbers of exercises you can choose from, below are some of the ones I personally like, and also ones that I tend to see work really well for clients. However feel free to replace them with others that you like, work better for you, or are more suitable for the equipment you have access to.
Deadlift: Deadlift Overview, Romanian Deadlift, Romanian Deadlift with Dumbbells and Kettlebells, Heal To Wall Contralateral Single Leg Deadlift, Trap Bar Deadlift, Traditional Barbell Deadlift
Squat: Squat Overview, Goblet Squat (with or without box), Split Squat, Front Rack Dual Kettlebell Front Squat, Zercher Squat, Barbell Front Squat, Barbell Back Squat
Lunge: Forward and Backward Lunge, Walking Lunge, Matrix Lunge, Front Foot Elevated Backward Lunge
Horizontal Upper Body Push: Wall Pushup, Pushup, Hand Release Pushup, Band Pushup, Feet Elevated Pushup, Suspension Strap Chest Press, Floor Press, Dumbbell Bench Press, Barbell Bench Press
Vertical Upper Body Push: Overhead Barbell Press, Z-Press, One Arm Z-Press, ½ Kneeling Landmine Press, Plate (aka Pizza) Press, Open Palm Kettlebell Press, Bottoms Up Kettlebell Press
Vertical Upper Body Pull: Band Assisted Pull Up, Barbell Pull Up (multiple variations), Pull Up, Eccentric Only Pull Up, Lat Pull Down, Jumping Pull Up
Horizontal Upper Body Pull: Band Row, Suspension Strap Row, Inverted Row, One Arm Dumbbell Row, Pendlay Row, Meadows Row, Chest Supported Row, Plate Rows, Trap Bar Rows
Core: Pallof Press, Suspension Trainer Trunk Rotations, Landmine Twists
Achieving Overload
As I talked about in the original blog post in this series, maintaining muscle and strength into older age is really the key to optimal health and longevity. If we want to get there we need to start building strength and adding as much muscle as we can now! To do that we need to overload our muscles.
The term overload might sound scary and daunting, it might bring images of working out so hard you can’t move after. Well have no fear, I actually prefer that you DON’T get to that point! In fact it would most likely be detrimental to our goal of building muscle and strength for most people.
When I use the term overload in this context I simply mean working your muscles just a little harder than they are used to working resulting in little to no soreness in your muscles after you work out. By incrementally challenging your muscles week after week, and then replacing those challenges with new stimuluses over the course of months you can see dramatic gains in muscle and strength.
There are three basic variables we can manipulate to achieve overload (there are more variables but these will give you the most bang for your buck!).
Reps: How many repetitions of a given exercise you can do at a given weight.
Sets: How many times you repeat the exercise in a given workout.
Time or density: How quickly you complete the workout
Let’s talk about each of these in more detail.
Reps
Choosing the right rep range depends on the goal you are looking to achieve. Since we are looking to build muscle and strength we need to consider the optimal rep ranges for both goals.
Muscle growth, also known as muscle hypertrophy, generally involves doing 8-15 reps of an exercise.
Improving muscle strength generally involves doing 3-6 reps of an exercise.
Since we are interested in both muscle growth and strength we will have to dedicate training cycles where we perform our exercises in the strength rep range and then switch to the muscle growth rep range…more on this later.
When I program reps for a client I always give them a rep range like the examples above. The idea is once you can do the max number of reps in the rep range with a given weight the next session you can add weight and this should naturally drop you back down to the bottom end of the rep range.
The other question with reps is intensity, should you be going to failure within that rep range?
In general my answer to this question is “No”. Instead I would rather you stop short of failure by 2-3 reps. I would rather people avoid going to failure for more exercises because it’s hard on the body, harder to recover from, and can lead to more injury.
Sets
Sets are a bit easier and less nuanced. I like the model where every 2 weeks you add a set to your workout and keep progressing until you hit some kind of constraint. For most people that constraint ends up being time, they just don’t have enough time to do more sets…that’s fine! For some people though it could be recovery. If you are new to resistance training you might find that 4 or 5 sets take a lot out of you and you are not recovering as well as you would like.
For most people I find I can progress them from 2 sets all the way to 5 sets over the course of a training block. The pattern generally looks like this…
Week 1: 2 Sets
Week 2: 2 Sets
Week 3: 3 Sets
Week 4: 3 Sets
Week 5: 4 Sets
Week 6: 4 Sets
Week 7: 5 Sets
Week 8: 5 Sets
Week 9: 3 Sets
Notice after the 2nd 5 set week you then drop down to 3 sets for a week. This is what’s known as a “deload” week. It’s meant to offer a week for you to recover. After the deload week you can repeat any assessments you are tracking to measure progress. However if you notice you are not recovering well after 4 sets feel free to deload on week 6 or 7 instead. Over time you should be able to work up to doing 5 sets.
Time or Density
You cannot only overload your muscles by adding more weight, reps, or sets but also by keeping the weight, reps, and sets constant but doing the same workout in a shorter amount of time. An easy way to implement this is to track how long it takes you to complete the workout at X sets during the first week. Then during the second week at X sets you try to do the same workout 5-10% quicker.
If we take our 9 week training block from above and apply this principle it would look like this…
Week 1: 2 Sets
Week 2: 2 Sets With Better Density
Week 3: 3 Sets
Week 4: 3 Sets With Better Density
Week 5: 4 Sets
Week 6: 4 Sets With Better Density
Week 7: 5 Sets
Week 8: 5 Sets With Better Density
Week 9: 3 Sets
Say for example you completed your workout during week 3 in 45 minutes. During that same workout during week 4 you again do 3 sets but you try to do it in 2-5 minutes quicker.
Periodizing Between Strength And Muscle Growth
Above when talking about reps I mentioned that you will probably want to alternate between a strength and muscle growth rep range.
There are a couple of options in terms of implementing this.
You could switch the rep range after every training block. For example using our 9 week training block from above, you would do 9 weeks with a strength focus using 3-6 reps and then the next 9 week training block you do with a muscle growth focus using 8-15 reps and keep alternating back and forth.
There is nothing wrong with this, but it makes it harder to realize progress. As soon as you are done with strength you are back to focusing on hypertrophy. While you should see progress over 9 weeks of training towards your goal it’s not going to be mind blowing progress.
I would prefer you spend ½ the year focusing on strength and then the other ½ of the year focusing on muscle growth. The benefit here is that you have an extended period of time to see progress, 6 consecutive months is plenty of time to see and measure progress.
Summary
At this point we have everything we need to put together a resistance training program. Here is the formula.
- Pick the 2 day or 4-5 day a week program based on preference and time constraints
- Replace the movement patterns in those plans with exercises from this blog post or ones you would like to do
- Decide whether you want to focus on strength or muscle growth first, this determines your rep ranges
- Plan your workouts and track your reps, weight, and total time to complete the workouts.
- Progress each week using the 9 week set scheme I laid out, trying to improve density every other week
- Repeat for another 9 week training block. You can use the same exercises or pick new ones.
- After 6 months change your rep range, if you were focusing on strength, switch to muscle growth, if you were focusing on muscle growth focus on strength.
If you would like this all laid out in a spreadsheet I have prepared a sample you can use and modify. It’s free for you to copy and modify, just click File and then Make A Copy.
→ Click Here For Your Sample Program ←
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