So I’m a little tired of all these “secrets to a better workout” articles. For example, exercises you should never do, exercises you have to do, things you are doing wrong, you get the picture. So here’s my attempt at this, here are the five secrets you need for the ultimate workout program!
Secret #1: You have to show up
If you don’t show up to train, you won’t make any gains! Elite bodybuilders may train ten or more times a week. Most of us don’t have that luxury. I find that most athletes make great gains on three to four sessions a week. If I have three sessions for my athletes, I organize them as follows:
Day One: Total body maximal strength
Day Two: Power
Day Three: Hypertrophy training (I usually superset upper body and lower body exercises)
If I have the luxury of four days a week, the following is a pretty typical program:
Day One: Total body maximal strength
Day Two: Power
Day Three: Lower body hypertrophy training
Day Four: Upper body hypertrophy training
Secret #2: Decide what you want and put your training together accordingly
You have to decide what you want out of your training program and then organize your program so that you can accomplish those goals. This means prioritizing your goals and maintaining everything else. For example, if you want a heavier squat then you have to perform squats, with a lot of weight, in your program to improve it.
Secret #3: It has to be difficult enough
One of the biggest things to understand is that if training isn’t difficult enough then your body won’t adapt to it. This means your fitness, hypertrophy, and strength will plateau. The only way to continue making gains is to find some way to make each and every workout more difficult.
This is more difficult to do with more advanced athletes as they are closer to their genetic ceiling than beginners. With more advanced athletes, I keep track of the total volume and load of each major exercise. My goal is to either increase the volume by one each workout or increase the load by five pounds each workout.
For example, today we did three working sets on the back squat with 300 pounds. We did six repetitions on each set. 3×6=18 reps of volume. 300×18= 5400 pounds of load.
On the next workout, we might do a set of seven repetitions with 300 pounds and two sets of six reps. This would give us 7+6+6=19 reps of volume (i.e. we did more than the previous workout).
Or, we could do three sets of six repetitions with 305 pounds (3x6x300-5490 pounds).
Secret #4: Stick to the basics
The following exercises need to be the foundation of every good strength and conditioning program: squats, pulls (deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, etc.), Olympic lifts, presses, and rows. Always do these first, before anything else. This is to make sure they get done. Doing all these exercises will develop your entire body, all your joints, as well as a great deal of strength and power. Getting yourself distracted by ancillary exercises will be a huge time and energy drain. Athletes have a limited time for training and a limited capacity to recover from training, this means that only those exercises with the biggest return should be incorporated into their training program.
Secret #5: There are no secrets
Everything described above is serious common sense. The point here is that there are no secrets to success in strength and conditioning. Showing up, prioritizing things, making the workouts more difficult, sticking to the basics, and training over the long term are the only secrets. At best, everything else is a distraction or a marketing gimmick!
