Critically Thinking Through Programming, Part 2

Mark Brown

October 27, 2022

When talking about critically thinking through programs, I’m looking for contradictions between the 3 core tenets and the goals I have set for myself. Effectively it’s asking the question “Does this lift have direct benefits to my stated goal?” If that answer is no, then the program or goals need to be re-evaluated. If a lifter really enjoys the programming, but it isn’t necessarily helping the stated goal then it might be time to lean into the what they are doing and change the goal. The lifter just needs to be honest with themselves about why they are making the change. That honesty is important because of how it can effect discipline. Every program has lifts in it that are unenjoyable but need to be done to improve. Discipline is what a lifter uses to get through them. Making changes to the program is done when a lifter is more married to their goal than the process. That will result in good, bad or sideways changes to the program. Strength training is an ongoing experiment, after all.

The stated goal is a massive part of the evaluation. Understanding what stated goals encompass is absolutely essential to determining what will be useful in the program. Developing strength is about making the body capable of doing a lift or movement multiple times. This is different from developing power. That is done to increase the maximum load the body can handle at any one time. This usually means a single rep done as efficiently as possible. The difference between strength and power development has profound effects on programming. Using a strictly strength development plan won’t help with a lifter’s 1 rep max much. What it will do is help their raw, repeatable strength increase over the time spent on the program. I have felt that since I really started focusing on strength development last summer. My 1RM on the 4 core lifts (bench press, overhead press, squat and deadlift) hasn’t increased a lot in that time, but my volume capacity in the 90%-95% 1RM range is much higher since June 2021. Some muscular development has also come with the strength increase. More on that in a minute.

The strength development program does this by focusing the lifter’s effort on repeated near max reps and sets that get smoother over time instead of pouring all the effort into singular true max effort reps. That’s a lot easier to understand when I think about what I’m asking my body to do. A true heavy single or 1RM demands the body put 100% of the effort into 1 rep. Any set of multiple reps divides the effort put into lift over the number of reps done. That effort never goes about 100% during a given set so the first rep of a set of 3 could be 25%, the second 35% and the last 40%. Those last 3 percentages could vary depending on a lot of factors. The effort level shown in the rep should go up as the number of them in a set increases because of the way increased strain effects the body. Lifters whose goal is to develop power don’t particularly care about the 2nd or 3rd rep. Dave Tate puts it this way: “The first rep counts, and the rest are practice.” The last part of his quote is important because technical proficiency is so, so important on true max effort singles. A lifter only gains that through practicing the hell out of that technical efficiency. It is what allows the lifter to fully realize their maximum strength output.

Muscular development can be equally challenging to deal with in programming because it requires a level of precision that strength development doesn’t seek to get to. In that way it shares a high level of specificity with power development but has a vastly different methodology of getting to the final goal. Lifters and athletes whose goal is muscular development double down on repeatable strength by forcing the body to perform lifts until failure or close to it. This usually means set of 8 reps or more in any given set. The logic is that making isolated muscles work that hard forces them to develop better. By placing the strain on the lift on the muscle and not the joints or ligaments, they are able to recover from sessions more effectively and do them more consistently. The two factors add up to faster development overall, especially when lifters enhance their ability to recover through legal supplements or banned/illegal PEDs.

As a result of that logic, reps done while seeking muscular development require greater precision than ones done to gain strength. This changes any programming a lifter follows quite a bit. Lifts that make it into a program have to fit specifically into it because of how precise the movements have to be to really get that high level development. Equipment plays a very large role here. Anything a lifter can use to leverage the body against will be helpful here. Preacher benches for sets of bicep curls or tricep extensions and adjustable benches for flies are just 2 examples off the top of my head. A good understanding of physiology plays a pivotal role as well because it can help a lifter get the most out of reps, sets and sessions through being more precise. The understanding I’m talking about is usually learned better through experience than through supplemental resources because the lifter is able to make the adjustments in real time to really dial a movement pattern in repeatedly. A personal example I can come up with is how I do dumbbell press. I learned I could get both strength and muscular development if I finished the rep with the dumbbells meeting at the top of the lift instead of where they started the lift at the bottom. I don’t remember when in the past I started doing it, but it’s been years now and it’s very effective. It feels like I am doing the very last part of a dumbbell fly but at pressing weights.

There is a very important question that every lifter needs to ask themselves once they have identified goals to achieve and have begun to look into programs. “What is this program actually helping me improve physiologically?” is the best question to ask because it gets right to the point. Strength training is about someone helping themselves become the best version of the person they need to be on a daily basis. For me, that means being able to do my loading race at work for 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week. Strength development is very helpful in that regard both in terms of output and capacity as well as endurance and injury resistance. Why I find the question important to ask is because it helps me understand any given lift’s place in the program. Lifts high in vanity value, like bicep curls, get treated differently than lifts that are helpful in my daily life, such as squats and deadlift. Strength development is nigh universally helpful because it also brings mild muscular development with it. Power development can be helpful in daily life but is far more applicable to gym work than anything else unless someone has a job where repeated single heavy sepsis done repeatedly.

Basic strength training programs are valuable tools for someone to make life easier for themselves, assuming they don’t suffer a debilitating injury in the process of doing it. Programs that have bench press, squat, deadlift and overhead press at the heart of them as main movements will have genuine carryover to the non-gym part of life. Being able to push something from a leveraged position, taking something from shoulder height to the floor, pulling something from the floor to a higher position for storage, and lifting something overhead to put in a higher place are all actions the human body does on a regular basis. Doing them with an increased load at the gym helps the body’s skill, muscular, strength and power development over time to make everyday objects easier to handle. This is especially true when lifting from the most efficient leverage position isn’t possible. Lifting mechanically perfectly is important but building up the body to handle those times it can’t be done is necessary. It is especially so when you do a physically demanding job like I do. I got my job where I currently work in July of 2011, and started lifting June 2013. Strength training has definitely helped me avoid the injury bug. It is important to me to be able to get through my days without pain medicines. Lifting definitely helps get that done.

What I really want to get at here in the last part of this essay is seeing the contradictions in programming more specifically. I can think of a lot of examples of contradictory programming. A lot of them stem from not understanding the tenets. The most progress towards the goal is made when the right equipment is used for the right movement with the right sets and reps scheme. That’s not to say lifts that don’t work towards the goal completely need to be eliminated. They can still hold some value to the the lifter, but they won’t be as helpful to the lifter’s particular goal in the long term. That’s just a choice the lifter has to make. Sometimes it’s about the mental development, not the physical. Other reasons include skill maintenance. I found this out the hard way in 2021 when I chose not to bench press for about 5 months at the gym. It doesn’t take much time off from doing a lift at the gym to forget how it feels. I made sure not to make that mistake with bench press this year. It is also why I do straight bar squats every 2-3 months at this point. Holding a straight bar on my shoulders for squat for sets of 3 just plain sucks because the strain on my shoulders.

The equipment a lifter chooses to train with for a lift heavily influences sets and rep range. That means it carries a better chance of being more responsible for contradictory programming than the other 2. A straight bar does complex, full body movements very well. Isolating muscle groups is possible with them but is very difficult to actually pull off. Precision movements are best left to isolation machines, cable attachments or dumbbells. The last one of those does less precise strength based movements as well. The important thing to remember is that lifters of all disciplines will be doing similar, if not the same, lifts and the choice of equipment is a major differentiating factor in how important those lifts are a particular program. For example, every lifter is going to do a chest press for one reason or another. Some strength sports hold overhead presses in higher regard than a flat presses so there will be some crossover there. Leg and back work isn’t as universal at chest, shoulder or arms, especially at commercial gyms, because squats and deadlifts have a higher fear factor than bench press, overhead press, and biceps. I can understand a novice gym goer being wary of squats and deadlifts. Danger exists in every lift, but squats aren’t be trifled with.

Machines are what make public or commercial gyms a good place to train if the stated goal involved muscular development. Most of the machines I have encountered are isolation based in nature. Bodybuilding involves thoroughly isolating each muscle group as much as possible. The first problem with these isolation based machines is that they take up a ton of space. Ideal for warehouses or big rooms, but rarely home gyms. The second is that they are quite expensive to buy from a manufacturer. Someone might get lucky to find one on the secondary market for less but that also has risks as well. I have a leg extension machine in the garage. I count myself extremely lucky. Plate loaded machines allow for more weight variance than selectorized ones do. They also tend to be cheaper as well. Isolation movements are about precision. Moving the body in a way to hit even the smallest of muscles repeatedly is why a machine is used instead of a barbell or even a dumbbell, though it can definitely be done with the latter. I don’t tend to associate power movements with selectorized machines. Muscular development happens when the the same muscle is made to perform a lift till the body needs to recruit more of the muscle to do it. This usually takes quite a few reps and that means the load will be decrease by quite a bit.There are definitely some machines built for power and strength development, the leg press or hack squat for example, but a commercial gym may not have them.

Dumbbells are a major part of any well rounded strength training program because they can deliver power, strength and precision. Any lift can be done with dumbbells. They can change the lift fairly dramatically, but the concept behind the lifts remains constant. I like dumbbells for being great supplemental exercises because I highly value unilateral work, especially on presses. They are about as safe as lifting equipment gets. That makes working to failure or with a rep or 2 of it very easy to accomplish. As a result, dumbbells can really deliver on volume and force the body to really improve over time. Strength training programs that don’t have dumbbell work are lacking something.

Strength training programming can feel hard to understand at first for new or novice lifters. That puts them at the mercy of coaches, trainers, athletes, actors and social media influencers in regards to the planning phase of training. It does take some time to really start to get a feel for how to develop a strength training plan, which I have talked about a lot over the space of the the blog. I didn’t expect to talk about it as much as I have but all the years I have lifted up to 2020 helped me be able to develop a plan myself. Learning from both secondary sources has helped me understand what my body is telling me in and out of the garage or gym. The ability to critically think through programming helps lifters of all skill levels protect themselves from plans that are unnecessarily risky or pulling them away from their stated goal. It is necessary to do for mental, physical and intellectual development of any athlete. It is also very demanding so they need to keep it up the whole time. Remembering the 3 core tenets of understanding rep ranges, understanding what the lifts are doing physiologically, and how the chosen equipment is effecting them well help anyone help develop programming on their own and see what other programs are offering more clearly.