Evaluating Programming
Mark Brown
October 12, 2022
Value has been a dominant thought in my mind recently, as evidenced by the 2 part essay that I released over the last couple of weeks. I seek to put value in a different light this time. Value is best stated through actions taken. That inherently involves making a decision and going through with it. The actions taken are better indicators of what a person holds true than what they say they do. This is true of strength programs as well. Choosing how to go about getting stronger, more ripped, etc has always been a daunting, especially to newer lifters who don’t understand some of the core concepts involved. While I don’t want to write an essay about which programs people should choose, I think one about why evaluating programs both in the process of finding one and while in one is definitely worth writing. I want to help people understand how to evaluate strength training programs so they can get after what they say they are after.
This all ties back to statements about value. What a person values will come out through their actions, regardless of their desires to keep them hidden. How this comes to involve programming is what is in it. A lifter doesn’t need to have a super in-depth knowledge to do a base evaluation of a program that is offered on the Internet or from a personal trainer. They just need to understand some core tenets to be able to make a judgement about what to follow and what to be wary of going forward. The first is understanding rep ranges, the second is how lifts work physiologically, and the third is how equipment effects those lifts. Just looking at those 3 things will help any lifter evaluate any strength training program they see. That is incredibly important for staying on track with the stated goals.
Rep ranges are the easiest of them to learn because it determines what kind of development is being prioritized by any prospective plan. Typically, 1-2 reps is about developing power, 3-6 is about strength, 8-15 with push muscular development, and anything above that is about endurance. Knowing this tells a lifter the loads they will be expected to complete. Lifting to a number of reps is fully about taking the exact amount of weight that can be done for that range. Odds are that any program will mix rep ranges for some level of overall development. Strength and power development is valuable even in a program that pushes hypertrophy above everything else. Muscular Development is useful to strength and power development.
Understanding the value specific equipment has requires a bit more gym time to fully get the difference between straight bars, dumbbells, isolation movement based machines and even specialized bars. Second hand resources can be helpful for getting some baseline knowledge but the most learning will come from actually doing the lifts themselves to determine what each piece of equipment brings to the party. For example, the effect of chest presses can be quite difference depending on the equipment used to do them. I have found that the change in movement patterns of this “one” lift makes some pieces of equipment more valuable than others when performing it. This process occurs for every lift done in the gym, wherever it is.
Learning the physiology of lifting is probably going to be the hardest of the 3 for a lifter to fully understand. Yes, this could be done by opening up a text book, its Internet equivalent or listening to someone knowledgable but physically performing the lifts allows one to apply the information from the source. There are a lot of muscles used in the body’s movements that are difficult to activate or feel. A lot of them are used during multi-joint lifts like bench press, squat, deadlift, overhead press, snatches, clean and press/jerk, etc. Rear/side deltoids, lats and rhomboids are are all examples of muscles that are difficult to feel when doing a chest press. Once the base level learning of physiology has been done, a lifter should be able to understand why the the program written is the way it is.
What makes programming difficult to understand for inexperienced lifters is that there is so much to learn and experience. It can’t be crammed into a few short months time and requires a high level of commitment in and out of the gym to actually get. Second hand sources always bring in the possibility of information that contradicts something that was previously learned. Sometimes it’s valid and others it’s not. The only way to know if it’s the former is to test it out. That kind of experiment is never a short one. It brings in something to bridge the gap between what has already been learned and what can be learned in the future: Trust. Learned information is a good way to help a lifter from being mislead by a personal trainer or coach; however, having someone to challenge those structures by new ways of thinking is necessary for growth.
In many ways, a strength training program is the thesis of a gym experiment. Goals are stated, constants and variables are put in place, results are had and an evaluation of said results takes place afterward. It all leads to a continuation of the experiment or to a different one. The latter is produced by taking what was learned in the last one and applied to the thinking of the next one. Critical thinking has to take place at all levels to ensure that everything is being done to learn as much as possible then translate it to actions taken in the gym. Most of the results gotten from programs takes months to even be useful as evaluation points. It falls into small sample size territory. Things like injuries, soreness, pinches, etc all require immediate attention, though, because they bring the experiment to a halt if not addressed.
I have learned some lessons from the 3 core tenets I explained above that I feel are worth sharing and help explain why critical thinking through programming is so important. I have so many pieces of specialized equipment at my disposal that I have had to employ those lessons much more so over the last 2 years than my previous 7 years lifting. That’s probably a large part of why learning programming has become a focus of mine. I have used so many different pieces of equipment over the last 2 years of strength training. Blog readers have read reviews of most of them this past year. The information I have received from it has helped me understand the value of each piece of equipment better. That allows me get the most use out of them, even in the dead of winter when I’m not in the garage to use them because it’s too cold outside. All 3 tenets come into play at all times during the experiment, but not always equally.
Goal setting is the start of this process. It is the most important step because it determines the path that will be used to get to it. This is true across the board, and especially so while strength training. It is the basis of evaluation in the moment. It is how a lifter corrects course mid-program back to where they intended on being or determines that the new flow is where they want to be. So many people fail to achieve much in the gym because they either don’t have a firm enough goal set or the commitment needed to actually do it. It’s really easy to set a goal that is so general it actually hinders progress. That happens through programming that doesn’t actually have much value going forward to the lifter doing the work in the gym.
Good programming puts a lifter on a path then keeps them on it by having enough high value variance to keep them mentally engaged. That keeps them from wandering off the path into parts unknown. Sometimes wandering off the path is helpful because that’s where random gym experimentation takes place. Other times it provides a distraction that is hard to look past. Mediocre programming puts a lifter on a looping path that looks and feels the same with each lap. Improvement happens but it’s slow. So slow that it can barely be seen or felt even when a lifter stays focused and on the path. Bad programming puts a lifter in the endless loop I just described but adds starts and stops at unplanned intervals because of things like injuries and failure to recover due to straying from the established path.
If I know anything about humans, it’s that they throw they bodies in front of success far more than they like to admit. Me included. A lot of it comes back to boredom. What I don’t think a lot of people understand about success is that the process that is done to achieve it is in control, not them. Once success has been achieved and the process to get it learned, repeating it is the logical act to follow. Only catch is that there’s no mental stimulation to doing that. It’s why people who use medication to keep them in physically and mentally okay and know it’s the thing keeping them that way actively refuse to take it, sometimes seemingly at random. Lifters experience the same feeling but without the same drastic consequences of the people I just mentioned. The way to counter the boredom brought on by a successful process is to include variance in it. A lifter can do an exercise differently or with another piece of equipment to fulfill what needs done to stay on track and mental stimulation. When done in timed intervals during the months of training, it helps progress get achieved and provides a way to evaluate the process in real time. The latter is far more important in the grand scheme of things than the former.
Come back for part 2 Thursday or Friday for the conclusion!
Life Through Lifting 