What Does It Take To Create A Training Program?

By Karsten Jensen, MSc.

“Can you make a painting of me?” the lady asked.

“Sure”, the man said.

He started painting and about a minute later he was done.
The lady was stunned. “That is beautiful”, she said.

“Thank you,” said Picasso – he was the painter.
 
“That will be 1000 dollars.”

The lady was stunned again – “1000 dollars?” she said. “But you did it in a minute!”

“It took me 30 years of training to be able to do it in a minute,” Picasso said.

Now, I have no idea whether this story is true. Neither is it the point to compare the process of making a training program to the arts. Nor is it the point to compare a strength coach to Picasso.

The point of the story is that there might be more to a creation than meets the eye. In our specific situation, there might be more to creating a training program than meets the eye.

This article will take you “behind the scenes” as I explain the process I follow to create a training program.  For all intents and purposes, I will assume that you are my client and I am creating a program for you.

The major steps in creating a training program are as follows:

1. Complete assessments.
2. Analyse data and determine goals of training program.
3. Create a periodized training program.
4. Select exercises and specific progressions.
5. Write the training program.

Let’s take a look at each of these five steps.

Step 1. Complete Assessments

“Stop guessing, start assessing!” If it affects the result of your training I want to know about it! To give an example, if there are 30 factors that affect your progress and you only know about 15 or even 20, you are running the risk that the limiting factors you should be working with RIGHT NOW are among those 10 factors that you did not know about.

The human being is a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual being and a thorough assessment includes all four of those areas. This means there is a need to include assessments of:

• Belief systems (about your training, yourself and life in general).
• Your internal biochemistry and internal organs.
• Your present physical status (posture, flexibility, strength, endurance, power, speed)
• Your training and injury history.
• Your current schedule and lifestyle.

Now, my expertise is “limited” to assessment of factors related to the neuromuscular system. That is why I work together with very skilled practitioners who can assess you specifically for:

• Internal biochemistry (how your organs work).
• Nutrition and lifestyle habits.
• Any pain or injury related issues.

Specifically, I perform the following assessment with you:

1. Your goals.
2. Your history of injury and training.
3. Your current schedule, including available time for training and preferred location(s).
4. Your static posture (how you hold your body in your standing position).
5. The length-tension relationship of your muscles (your flexibility).
6. Certain tests of muscle activation patterns and basic muscle endurance.
7. How you move in certain basic movement patterns, including balance.
8. Performance related strength, power, speed or endurance if applicable.

Steps 1 to 8 are a 6 hour process.

All of the above might appear excessive. Granted, you can experience great training success without going through all these assessments. But, like stated above, knowing about all the factors that affect your progress enables us to pinpoint exactly what YOU need to work with at this moment in time.

Pinpointing what YOU need, as opposed to a general program, or just making a few tests maximizes the chances of success.

The results of the tests give me about 15 sheets of paper to analyse.(The amount of necessary testing is often significantly reduced the longer we have been working together.)

Step 2. Analyse data and determine goals of training program.

The absolute key information in step two of the process is your goal. I differentiate between two types of goals: Type 1 goals and Type 2 goals.

The Type 1 goal is a goal that is related to your ability to train or compete in your chosen activity. (The system is developed with sports performance in mind but is equally applicable even if you are not an athlete.)

The Type 1 goal can be to:

1. Prevent Injury.
2. To increase ability to perform high amounts of sport specific practice with a high intensity.
3. To improve the ability to repeat current peak performance in selected elements of your performance/game.
4. To improve peak performance in selected elements of your performance/game.
5. Improve performance in prolonged/repeated competitions
6. Change weight class.

The Type 1 goal is always defined by the client, or if the client is an athlete, the goal can be defined by the athlete’s trainer (particularly if it is a young athlete).

I offer a two hour seminar on the goal setting process alone. For the sake of brevity, I will only briefly explain main features of the system.

Some examples of Type 1 goals could be:

• improved performance in certain jumps if you are a figure skater
• to maintain balance and low rate of errors throughout your tennis game

If you are not an athlete your type 1 goals could be:

• to bench press your bodyweight 
• to run a 100m sprint in less than 12 seconds.

Part of my tool box is a list showing ways in which the Type 1 goal can be improved. Each time I am presented with a new Type 1 goal I create a list for that goal.

Your type 1 goal can be improved by improving one or more of the factors shown below:

1. Spiritual factor
2. Mental/emotional factors
3. Physical factors
   • Internal biochemistry.
   • Internal organs.
   • Injury/pain (muscle, nerve or joint problem)
   • Length tension–relationships
   • Muscle activation patterns
   • Posture
   • Stability
   • Balance/coordination
   • Strength
   • Power/speed/agility
   • Endurance
   • Technical and tactical ability (if you are an athlete)

The above list is very general. Some of the factors are independent of the specific goal. Other factors vary with the goal.

I hope it is clear that the factors on the list are the factors on which you are also assessed.

At this stage there are two “pillars”:

1. The list of ways the Type 1 goal can be improved.
2. Information about you with respect to each of these factors.

Next, a series of questions guide the work with the information contained in your test results. These questions were developed by Charles Staley (www.staleytrainingsystems.com)

1. Which factors must be developed in order to improve the specific type 1 goal?
2. Which factors are currently at the lowest degree of development?
3. Which factors have received the least amount of training?
4. Which factors can still be developed (with a high degree of certainty)?
5. Which factors are fundamental to other factors?

Comparing the information about you, with the list of ways the Type 1 goal can be improved – using the above questions – leads to a set of goals specifically tailored to your situation. This set of goals is the Type 2 goals, the specific physical, mental/emotional or spiritual goals. 
This process ensures that the goals selected are the right ones for YOU – here and now.

To give a simple example, we will use the figure skater above. The coach notices that the athlete does not land with balance following the execution of certain jumps. The obvious solutions are to increase the amount of technical training and/or jump training.

• If maximal strength is not high, jump training is not the fastest way to create results.
• If the stabilizer systems of the body are properly trained, she or he has a low chance of landing the jumps correctly.
• If there is a previous injury that still inhibits some of the muscles, rehabilitation should be completed before strength training can be recommended.

As you can see, quite a number of factors must be considered to make sure that you get to work on the most fundamental of the factors that can help you towards your goal.

This step is performed at the beginning of our work towards a medium term goal for you (8-20 weeks out). It is a 2-3 hour process depending on the specifics of the situation.

Step 3: Create a periodized training program

You might wonder what periodized means. The definition of the word simply means that planned variations are built into the training plan in order to achieve a peak result (of any kind) at a pre-determined date.

Creating a periodized training program is like opening a Chinese box. You start with longer periods of time (a bigger box) and work towards smaller periods of time (gradually opening smaller boxes).
 
With regard to training, all the levels to consider are:

1. The entire career
2. An Olympic cycle  (4 years)
3. A macro cycle (1-3 per year)
4. A meso cycle (2-6 weeks)
5. A micro cycle (1 week)
6. A training day (one or more training session)
7. A training session.

On a couple of occasions I have worked with young athletes from scratch, with the purpose of building them gradually in order to peak several years out. Depending on what you hire me for, different levels come into play. For example, if you hire me to help you with a goal that is 8-20 weeks out we will consider levels 3-7, from the macro cycle to the training session.

There are some distinctly different ways to plan a macro cycle. The correct choice depends on:

• The length of the macro cycle (time to prepare).
• The complexity of the environment that we prepare for.
• Your current training capacity.
• Your recovery capacity.
• Whether you are currently engaging in sport specific training or not.

The example below illustrates two extremes:

1. You have a short preparation time (6-8 weeks). At the same time you are performing high volumes of sport specific practice for a very technically demanding sport:
 
The training Program: Soreness should be avoided (would reduce quality of sport specific training), thus the strength and conditioning program would not be too hard and would be geared to SUPPLEMENT rather than PREPARE for sports practice. Also we would probably have to include several goals simultaneously in your program.

2. You have plenty of time to prepare. You are off-season or do not participate in any sport.

The training program: If your training and recovery capacity is high, the program would be so intense that you would actually LOOSE strength for a while , then – as we apply a recovery period – you rebound to a new personal peak. Also we would train different goals in sequence as opposed to simultaneously.

Below is a sample of the sheet I use to plan different training periods. (The full sheet has 52 columns)

The table above shows you a small piece of a planned macro cycle.
 
“Type of micro-cycle” refers to how hard the training is in those weeks. In general the training periods will show a pattern of light, medium and hard training weeks. I customize that pattern for you depending on your:

• Competition schedule (if you are competing)
• Your training and recovery capacity
• Vacation time

PI stands for peaking index, which is a technical term indicating how close you are to your peak performance.

The table also shows you that there are four types of periods to be concerned with:

1. Competition
2. Taper
3. Preparation
4. Active rest

If you are not competing, the “competition week” is the week of your goal, the week we are working towards. Preparation is the loading or “building” weeks, the weeks that improve your physical state, but also the weeks where you accumulate fatigue. Tapering weeks are unloading and rest weeks.

In the line of the preparation period you see “SIS” for a number of weeks. “SIS” stands for “structure-isolation-stability” and indicates the training focus for those weeks.

There are five main types of weeks:

1. ISS: Isolation – Stability – Structure.
2. SIS: Structure – Isolation – Stability (changed priority).
3. SSP: Skill and Strength in Primal Patterns.
4. SPP: Skill and Power in Primal Patterns
5. SEP: Skill and Endurance in Primal Patterns.

As part of creating the periodized training program, I select the combination of those weeks to match your:

• Goal
• Available number of training weeks
• Your training status

To give a brief example, the less experience you have, the more you need to work on “ISS” and “SIS”. On the other hand, if you have an extensive training background (if your “base” is perfect) you can work more in SSP, SPP and SEP.

The bottom line is that you are not getting a cookie cutter program. You get a program that EXACTLY matches your needs.

Click here for Part 2