Ok haven't had a blog post in a while so figured I'd put one up about my program design. This example is going to be extremely basic and won't have anything as far as sports specificity or general "flava" but if you know nothing about program design, it's a decent guideline.
Phases, cycles blah blah blah exercise science blah blah blah central nervous system.
This title means I am not going to cover how to design a full training program or talk about how to get your central nervous system active for a competition and not how to totally fry your CNS during a phase. I'm simply going to show how for a single day, during a single session, I would design a program. If I was to go any deeper into that it would be more of a journal article and less of a blog post.
Order of importance
One extremely basic guideline that is almost always overlooked is the order of the lifts and where they fall in the workout. At some point an athlete will always ask "do I HAVE to do (insert lift here) first??". And they always is always "yes" if not "yes, now shut up and do it"...not really...well sometimes...depending on the athlete. You will always do the most explosive lifts first that utilize the most muscle groups and that have the highest demand on the CNS system. The Olympic lifts are ALWAYS the priority..no...stop interrupting....ALWAYS....just to hammer it home....Olympic lifts.....ALWAYS....Come....First. Well not always sometimes if posterior chain strength is the most important thing I will have squats first and then an hour rest and then Olympic lifts but you get the idea!
USA Weightlifting used to use the A,B,C lift system of teaching program design (A Lifts are Olympic lifts, B. Lifts were Pulls and Leg Strengthening and C lifts were basically everything else). If you are a noob and don't know much about designing workouts then...well first of all go find a good coach! You need constant supervision as a beginner how else will you improve! If you are a noob coach, then this style of program design isn't a bad place to start, but go find a course on Olympic weightlifting and grow a bit. I say that because depending on the athlete, workout, needs, point of the season, etc I will routinely have RDLs in front of pulls, or push press in front of squats depending on the need. But I am just generalizing a lot right now.
Sets and Reps
"Coooooaaaaach do I need to do 5 Sets of 3 and 2 reps? Can't I just do 3 sets of 10. No, you can't. For a number of reasons. For Olympic lifts for beginners I will rarely if ever go above 3 reps in a single set (except for combinations, ie 3 pulls+3 cleans + 3 front squats). The general rule of thumb is to never ever go above 6 reps in a set of Olympic lifts. There has been some literature out there saying that some coaches do go over this, and my questions is always "Why?". What is the ultimate goal of your Olympic lifting workout? Will high reps help or hurt? One of the main problems with high rep Olympic lifting for beginners is the same basic reason why I have the lifts in the beginning of the workout. They are demanding on the CNS and beginners will have a number of technical flaws. It doesn't matter how strong of an athlete you/they are, after 4 or 5 lifts for a beginner a clean becomes a jumping upright row and a snatch becomes a jumping front shoulder raise. Especially in pre-season why do high reps? Pre-season is the time to hone and learn technique, not develop technical flaws and give Coach Schmidt grey hair. So if you ever wondered why I keep the repetitions low, that is part of the reason why. I'd rather have beginners do 7 sets of triples with light weight and 2-5min recovery than 3 sets of 10 and develop technical flaws, or worse, develop an injury.
Pay Attention to total Volume in a workout as WELL as Intensity
Too often athletes and/or coaches will focus specifically on Intensity (as in percentage of 1RM) in a workout and overlook volume. Think back to some of the workouts I have written for you. Try to remember the total volume variations in the workout. If intensity rises and and volume stays the same, what would happen? What if volume increased and intensity decreased? What if both decreased? For track athletes what was throwing volume like when lifting volume dropped? Pay attention to this type of thing, because it is planned and there is a reason for it, however that is another subject completely.
Consistent Recovery
Recover between sets. NSCA recommends between 2 and 4.5mins of recovery for max strength. I generally have athletes keep it around 2.5min or so unless otherwise stated.
In closing
The main points to take away:
Don't do too many lifts in a session.
Make sure the lifts are in an order that makes sense.
Don't go high reps on any of the olympic lifts.
Volume as well as intensity is important
Make sure your recovery is consistent
and most importantly...
NEVER SACRIFICE TECHNIQUE!
That's it, adios!
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