There are multiple things to consider when designing effective resistance training routines. The process for building a bulletproof routine for any athlete follows 7 steps as outlined by the NSCA:
- Needs analysis
- Exercise choice
- Frequency
- Order
- Repetitions & Loading
- Volume
- Rest
1. Needs Analysis
A needs analysis is a lot like squaring up to a target before you launch. It’s the only way to make sure you reach all your goals. You can break it down into two steps: analysis of the sport and personal analysis.
Step 1: Analyze your sport
- What specific muscles do I need to train for my sport?
- What are the joint angles I will be using during performance?
- Is my sport anaerobic or aerobic based?
Step 2: Analyze your own skills:
- What is my current training history (beginner, intermediate, advanced)?
- What is my injury history, and how will RT prevent future injury?
- What are the common sites of injury for my sport? (Fleck, Kramer 2014)
- Based on test results what are my biggest areas that need improvement?
Final things to really understand before starting is time availability. Are you currently in preseason, season, or off-season? These different time periods will dictate how often you can and should lift. More lifting occurs before and after the season because the focus is less on individual sport practice and more on strength/conditioning.
2. Exercise choice
How do you know which exercise to select when there are thousands of possibilities? This will tie back to your needs analysis. RT exercises can be altered in many ways. By changing joint angles (turning the hand or foot in, out, or straight) different muscle fibers will be activated (Tesch and Dudley 1994).
Aside from altering individual exercises, all lifts can be generally categorized by the following terms: primary, assistance, structural, multi-joint, and single joint. Primary exercises (squat, bench press, clean) focus on major muscle groups while assistance exercises (bicep curl, knee extension) train mainly one muscle. Good programs mix both types for a full-body approach.
Structural exercises combine multiple muscle groups in one lift (deadlift, snatch) and are similar to multi-joint exercises that require more than one joint to move at the same time. Single joint exercises require movement at only one joint at a time (bicep curl). Chilibeck et al. (1998) notes that multi joint exercises may take longer times to teach, learn, and master. However, the payoff is definitely worth the extra effort.
All sports require some sort of multi-joint movement, and athletes who train with multi-joint exercises may be able to produce more force, speed, and power giving them an advantage during sport. And while they may take longer to learn, multi-joint exercises may save time in the long run because they focus on more than one muscle group at a time, forcing more muscle fibers to adapt to change.
Additionally, you should make sure to practice muscular balance by working both the agonist and antagonist muscles. An example of this is both the leg extension (quadriceps) and leg curl (hamstrings). Finally, make sure to include recovery exercises to return blood flow to normal levels throughout the body.
3. Frequency
What’s the frequency, you ask? Easy. It has nothing to do with a radio station.
Frequency for RT programs is simply how often you exercise in a given period (usually one week). Factors affecting frequency include training history, time of season (preseason, season, off-season), and exercise intensity.
| Training status | Frequency |
| Beginner | 2-3 |
| Intermediate | 3-4 |
| Advanced | 4-7 |
From Essentials of Strength and Conditioning, 4th ed pg 447
Training history: Frequency depends upon your current level of expertise (beginner, intermediate, advanced). Beginners often train twice per week. Intermediate lifters train 3-4 days per week. Advanced lifters train 4-7 days per week. How can advanced lifters do this without popping a serious vein you ask? Simple. Split routines.
Split routines allow you to exercise different parts of the body on different days of the week to allow adequate rest to your old muscles and bones. Common splits include lower/upper, chest/back/lower, and chest/lower/shoulders to name just a few. We all know the best split of course is a banana with a cherry on top (and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise).
| Sport Season | Frequency (sessions per week) |
| Off-season | 4-6 |
| Pre-season | 3-4 |
| Season | 1-3 |
| Postseason | 0-3 |
From Essentials of Strength and Conditioning, 4th ed pg 448
Time of season: The timing of the overall program matters. Don’t get things twisted here. In reality you’re always going to have more time for RT before the season. During the season you maintain gains because you can’t fit in RT along with sports practice. And during the offseason if you're smart you rest like a frog on a log. Or a rat on a cat. I don’t think either of those make sense but you get the point.
Exercise intensity: The higher the exercise intensity the more rest you need between exercises and between sessions. As you approach your 1RM (and you will because you’re a freakin boss) you’re going to need time to recover. Muscles need time to adapt. Lifting causes small tears to the actual muscles. As muscles knit themselves back up, they become stronger.
However, too much work and not enough rest can lead to muscle strains and larger tears which take even more time to heal. Bottom line: do enough work to cause the muscles to adapt but not so much that you want to go home and cry yourself to sleep every night. Unless that helps you cope with other things. Then by all means you cry your heart out.
4. Exercise order
Exercise order is simply how you arrange different RT exercises within a workout. A simple way to remember how to order exercises is power, core, assistance. Power exercise (clean, snatch, jerk), core exercises (squat, deadlift, bench press) then assistance (dumbbell curl).
Conventional wisdom states that large muscles should be exercised before small, technical before easy lifts, alternate lower and upper-body lifts, weak areas before strong, power and olympic lifts before all other exercises. However, recent studies have shown that athletes should emphasize the muscles they want to experience the most gains first in their program, as fatigue becomes more of a limiting factor as the session progresses.
Simao et al., 2010 examined 31 men from the Brazilian Navy Sergeants School over a 12 week period. The men were close in age, height, and weight. Additionally, none had participated in resistance training for the 6 weeks prior to testing.
Muscle thickness and strength were recorded at baseline and post-treatment. Results showed that exercises performed at the end of an exercise routine (regardless of size; large or small) suffered decreases in repetitions performed and increases in VO2 max indicating greater fatigue (Farinatti et al., 2009).
Bellezza et al., 2009, add to this study by suggesting that training muscles from small to large may positively influence exercise adherence in the beginning stages of a weight training routine. This is a particularly important finding for those new to resistance training who may have some apprehensions to training heavy.
Simao et al., 2010 conclude by stating that exercise goals matter most when picking exercise order. Instead of training large to small or small to large, the authors suggest picking goals and then choosing exercises that meet those goals to go first in a weight training routine. That way the muscles you want to experience the most growth in strength and muscle thickness actually experience those gains instead of suffering from overload.,,,
5. Repetitions & Loading
Repetitions: Sets are the completion of a certain amount of repetitions, or the number of times you complete an exercise. Example: 3 sets of 5 reps for the squat exercise. The total number of squats you completed is 15, with breaks after 5 single reps counting as a single set. During every session you can complete a high, medium, or low number of sets. As the number of repetitions increases the number of sets typically decreases.
Several studies have shown that multiple sets programs are superior to single set programs when it comes to building muscular strength (Paulsen et al. 2003; Rhea et al. 2002; Kramer et al. 1997; Marx et al. 2001).
Load: Volume load is calculated by multiplying total number of repetitions x weight (kg). This can be done for any single exercise or for your entire workout. When you understand this variable you can then know how the cookie crumbles to endurance, strength, or power goals.
Intensity can be expressed as a percentage of your 1 repetition maximum or as a true 1RM. Let’s say your 1RM on the bench press is 100 lbs. If you lift 100lbs, you're exercising at 100% of your 1RM. For increased strength, athletes exercise ≥ 85% 1RM, for power 75-90%, hypertrophy 67-85%, and endurance ≤67%. Typically as the intensity increases the number of sets and reps decreases. Likewise as the intensity decreases the number of sets and reps increase.
6. Volume
Volume: Volume is simply the total amount of weight lifted during one entire workout session. You can calculate volume by this equation: sets x reps x resistance. This is completed for each separate exercise set, and then volume for each set is added together to bake a beautiful volume pound cake which shows total volume for an entire workout. Different goals require different amounts of volume.
| Training Goal | Goal Reps | Sets |
| Strength | ≤6 | 2-6 |
| Power | 1-5 | 3-5 |
| Hypertrophy | 6-12 | 3-6 |
| Endurance | ≥12 | 2-3 |
Data from Designing Resistance Training Programs. 4th ed., Hedrick, A. Training for hypertrophy. Strength Cond 17(3):22-29, 1995, Stone, MH, and O’Bryant, HS. Weight Training: A Scientific Approach. Minneapolis: Burgess, 104-190, 1987. Tesch, PA. Training for bodybuilding. In The Encyclopaedia of Sports Medicine: Strength and Power in Sport. 1st ed. Komi, PV, ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Scientific, 370-380, 1992., Tesch, PA, and Larson, L. Muscle hypertrophy in bodybuilders. Eur J Appl Physiol 49:301-306, 1982.
7. Rest
Rest: Rest between sets helps you reach specific goals and can be broken down to short, medium, and long periods. Shorter rest periods result in a greater cardiovascular and metabolic response and are good for endurance programs (Kramer, Dziados et al. 1993).
Longer rest periods allow you to complete more work and greater power for each set (Pincivero, Lephart, Karunakara 1997). Heavier loads demand longer rest times.
| Training Goal | Rest Period Length |
| Strength | 2-5 minutes |
| Power | 2-5 minutes |
| Hypertrophy | 30s to 1.5 min |
| Endurance | ≤30s |
From Essentials of Strength and Conditioning, 4th ed pg 465
SOURCES
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