The Principles of Training (Specificity, Overload and Progression) and How to Arrange Exercises to G
Training programs are endless. Everyday someone is coming out with a program claiming to be the best for reaching your weight loss, physical or health goals. Ultimately designing a resistance program is a very individualized process. The needs and goals of the individual are paramount to any training program.
A person looking to gain strength would have a very different program from a person looking to gain muscle size. Outcome goals are not the only considerations in program design. Training experience, health status, time available to train and any special needs a person may have all come into play when designing a resistance program.
However, there are training principles you can follow that will help you get your desired results. Understanding these principles will make your exercise program more effective and allow you to meet your physical fitness goals. These rules apply to all healthy individuals from beginners to elite competitors. They are specificity, overload and progression.
Specificity:
Training, to be effective, must be specific and targeted towards your specific goals or activity you wish to improve. In the exercise science community this is referred to as the SAID principle, standing for specific adaptation to imposed demand.
This principle says that the type of demand (or stress) placed on your body dictates the type of adaptation that will occur. It is the bases for exercise selection and other components of training to assure your goal is reach.
For instance, if your objective is to run a marathon, you would get better results running outside than training on an elliptical. While both activities will stress the cardiovascular system, mechanically running outside will get closer to your goal.
Similarly, if your main goal is simply health, fitness and weight management, you should focus on total body strength, cardio and a healthy diet.
Make sure your training matches your goals.
Overload:
The principle of overload states that a greater than normal stress or load on the body is required for training adaptations to take place. Overloading body systems with higher work rates and increased loads causes the body to respond to these extra demands by improving its performance. Without the stimulus of overload, even a well-designed program will see limited improvements.
You need to do more, to get more. Your body is like nothing else. It will adapt to the different stresses you put on it. When you stress the body by lifting a weight that the body is not use to lifting, the body will react by causing physiological changes in order to be able to handle that stress better and better every time you introduce it.
This concept is similar in cardiovascular training. If you ask the heart, lungs and endurance muscles to do work not previously done, your body will begin to change right down to the cellular level to handle that demand.
This is how people get stronger, bigger, faster and increase their physical fitness level.
There are three basic ways to increase overload:
1. Frequency:
Frequency refers to how often you plan to exercise. If you want to improve your fitness there must be regularity to your program, but you need to allow time for recovery.The frequency of an exercise program balances the stress you put on your body though exercise allows your body enough time to heal and adapt.
This means you want give your body enough time to recover and adapt, but you need to continually apply stress to see results.If no new training stimulus is encountered after recovery and adaptation are completed, then performance capacity will eventually decline (1).
While not part of the frequency principal, but just as important to recovery, are sleep and nutrition.You need to get enough sleep for your body to rest and repair properly.Just as you cannot expect the best results if you are not fueling your with good nutrition.
2. Intensity:
Intensity is about balance too. You need to put enough stress on the body to see adaptations, but not too much that it results in overtraining, injury or burnout.
In resistance training volume load (repetitions x load) is a reasonable estimate of work and training stress. This means you can increase workload by lifting heavier weights. Or you could increase the number of repetitions with the same weight. Both would result in an increase in intensity.
However, if applying this method do not forget the SAID principle. While increasing the number receptions in a given set, may make the workout harder it may hamper a strength goal if too many repetitions are performed.
Less obvious was to increase intensity include decreasing the rest time between sets, adding variety (changing the mode of exercise), adding exercises, changing the tempo of the exercise or any combination of these.
3. Duration:
The length of time or duration of the training session can be varied as well. Exercise intensity will determine exercise duration. Generally, the more intense a workout the shorter the length and vice versa. Exercise intensity should be enough so you get proper amount of overload.
Progression:
If a training program is to produce higher levels of performance, the intensity of the training program must become progressively greater. In other words, to keep seeing benefits you must progressively increase the stimuli. If you do not progress, your body no longer perceives an overload and you will plateau.
If you want to see good results from your program over the long term you will need to apply the principle of progressive overload. Major results take time and dedication, but they will occur if you progress your program properly.
There are many resistance exercises available, but they all can be broken down to core (multi-joint) exercises or assistance (single-joint) exercises. They may go by different name and sometimes you will see exercises referred to as closed chain or compound and open-chain or isolated. These are the same core (multi-joint) exercises and assistance (single-joint), respectively. Probably the easiest way to remember the basic two types of exercise moves is to know the number of joints involved in an exercise, because that what makes them different.
Core (multi-joint) exercises are those that involve movement at two or more joints. They recruit one or more large muscle groups with the synergistic help of smaller muscle groups.
For instance, a chest press is a multi-joint exercise, because there are two joints involved in the movement. Both your shoulder joint (glenohumeral joint) and elbow joints (humeroradial joint and humeroulnar joint) need to move to complete a chest press. The chest press recruits the large chest muscles (pectoralis major and minor) and is synergistically helped by the front part of the shoulder (anterior deltoid) and the back of your arm (triceps brachii).
There are core (multi-joint) exercises that put axial stress (or load) on the spine. These exercises require you to stabilize your torso muscles to maintain a neutral spine position. These exercises are core exercises that are also called structural exercises. Any type of squat is a good example of core exercise that is a structural exercise too.
The squat involves movement at more than one joint, namely the knee, hip and ankle joints. It uses major muscle groups, namely quadriceps, hamstring and gluteus maximus with synergistic help from of smaller muscle groups, namely gluteus medius and adductors muscles. These two facts make the squat a core exercise. The squat is also a structural exercise because it places an axial stress or load on the spine. You will need to stabilize your spine by recruiting deep core muscles.
When you are performing a squat your torso gets most of its support from the erector spinae muscle group and the transverse abdominals. The erector spinae are a group of deep muscles deep that run the length of your spinal cord. The transverse abdominal muscles run along your sides from your ribs to your hips and are deep to your external and internal oblique muscles. Theses muscles must be stable though the downward and upward movement of your squat. For this reason the squat is a core exercise that is also a structural exercise.
You can further breakdown core exercises by increasing the velocity (speed) of the movement. A structural exercise performed at a higher velocity is called a power or explosive exercise. These would include a push press, power clean, snatch and high pull. These are advance exercises that you could eventually progress towards depending on your specific goal.
Assistance (single-joint) exercise involved movement at only one primary joint or single-joint. It recruits one small muscle group or only one large muscle group area.
For example, a barbell biceps curl exercise involves movement only at the elbow joint and recruits a small muscle group, namely the biceps. In this exercise the bicep brachii is the primary mover and the brachialis and brachioradialis are the synergistic helpers. . The pec deck fly or dumbbell fly are also assistance exercise, because only one joint is moving and the main focus is the one muscle group, namely the chest muscles, despite the fact the chest is a large muscle area.
Now let’s put these movements into a program. A general rule is to perform core (multi-joint) exercises before Assistance (single-joint) exercise. There are several ways to accomplish this and deciding which one is best for you will depend on your specific goal, level of skill, fitness status and the time you have to train. Here are some common methods that are widely accepted by many exercise science organization, namely National Association of Sports Medicine (NASM).
Power, Other Core, Assistance Exercises:
In this program power exercises are performed first because they require more skill, effort and focus. These are your harder core (multi-joint) exercises. Most new clients would not have power exercises in their program because they require a base of strength and skill. Instead you would just perform core (multi-joint) exercises before assistance (single-joint) exercises. In both programs you are training the large muscle groups first and the small muscle groups second. Your order may look something like:
or less advance
Your skill and experience will determine the level of difficultly of your exercise selection, but if you focus on the outcome the exercise performs opposed to the process you can manipulate any exercise to match your skill level. In other words, if you focus on core (multi-joint) exercises that work the major muscle groups you can then select a less technical exercise that matches the same movement pattern.
The National strength and conditioning Association refers to this process as “regression.” It is the opposite of progression that involves selecting a more technical exercise with the same movement pattern. It is about matching movements to your skill level and you should not view it in any other way.
The chart below provides some examples on how you would change an exercise to match the movement. Other examples are available, but this provides a good idea of how to modify an exercise to match your skill level and how to progress an exercise as you become more proficient at an exercise.
The above diagram shows push and pull movements, which brings us to our next way to sequence your exercise program.
Alternate “Push” and “Pull” Exercises:
You can break down muscle groups my either their pushing or pulling movement. In this type of program you would alternate muscle groups based on their push or pull movement. This type of sequencing would guarantee no two muscle groups would be used for two exercises in a row, diminishing fatigue in the involved muscle.
Push muscle groups contract (concentric portion of the movement) when the weight is “pushed” away from the body. On the other hand, pull muscle groups contract when “pulled” towards the body.
In general, your chest (pectorals), triceps (back of the arm), shoulders (deltoids), rear end (gluteals), quadriceps (front of the leg) and calves are consider push muscle groups. While your back (latissimus dorsi and trapezius), biceps (front of the arm), forearms, abdominals and hamstrings (back of the leg) are considered pull muscle groups.
Alternate Upper and Lower Body Exercises:
When beginning an exercise program you may find it difficult to perform back to back upper or lower body movements. A possible different program design would be to alternate upper body exercises with lower body exercises. If you are somewhat conditioned you could use this method to shorten your workout because you could perform the exercises without needing long rest periods between exercises.
Combination of Other Methods:
A common method of ordering your exercises is to combine two of the previously mentioned methods. For instance you could perform “core exercises” and then “assistance exercise,” while alternation between “push and “pull” exercises. Typically you would begin with the large muscle groups and work your way through to the small muscle groups. This type of sequencing is one of the best for minimizing fatigue at any fitness level. Most of my clients like this method the best.
Compound Sets and Supersets:
Compound sets and supersets are secondary methods of training. They involved completing two exercises in a row without rest in between. When the two exercises train the same primary muscle group, as in chest press and dumbbell fly, the set is called a compound set. If the two exercise work opposing muscle groups, as in chest press and bent over row, then the set is called a superset.
These methods are time efficient and are intended to be more demanding. It is not a place to start if you are untrained.
Understanding the difference between exercise movements is critical in developing your resistance program. Most professional organizations agree that core (multi-joint) exercises should be performed before assistant (single-joint) exercises.
However, the most important factor is that you perform the exercise correctly. You need to use the correct body alignment and breathe though the exertion. You need to move the joints that recruit the targeted muscle group, while stabilizing joints that are not involved in the movement.
Learning to do this takes time and consistency. It will take a while to the gain skill to stabilize your deep muscles of the spine and even how to breathe correctly.
Next up in the series on resistance training are metabolic pathway and ATP - your bodies energy currency.
References:
NSCA's Essentials of Personal Training, 2004: p 362; p365 -370
