4 REASONS WHY YOU NEED A TRAINING PROGRAM FOR BETTER RESULTS
What is a training program?
A training program is a plan to help you improve your health or physical characteristic. Physical characteristics include muscle hypertrophy, speed, vertical jump, more explosive, better endurance, and more. Your goal could be finally getting a pull-up, and your training program will help.
The training program provides you with goal-driven results. This means your program should be personalized based on your wants and needs. You can find a program online for free, but the problem is sometimes it gives exercises you are not ready for or don’t have access to the equipment.
Why do you need to follow a program instead of just doing random exercises every week?
4 Reasons why:
- Goal Driven Results
- Track Progress and Familiarity
- Progressive Overload
- No Guesswork
GOAL-DRIVEN RESULTS WITH YOUR TRAINING PROGRAM
Your training plan should be result driven and should be clear about it. If your goal was to get stronger, the plan should incorporate compound lifts with rep ranges of 3-5 and resting for 3-5 minutes between sets. If the plan calls for you to rest for 30 seconds hitting reps of 10, and you’re doing bicep curls while balancing on a Bosu ball, that is not the plan for you.
Get a plan that gets you where you want to be. Sometimes your program will have things you don’t like, but it’s what you need. For example, I hate walking lunges, they are challenging and not fun to do. I do them anyway because I know I need them. They help me with my goals.
Having a plan helps you be focused on the goal and gets you where you want to be. It would suck if you completed a training program for hypertrophy, but your goal was to be more mobile.
Don’t be alarmed if your goal changes for whatever reason. Remember this is a lifelong journey, there is no finish line. There will always be something you can work on, whether it’s a specific exercise, a bigger muscle group, etc.
TRACK PROGRESS AND HAVE FAMILIARITY WITH A TRAINING PROGRAM
One of the reasons it’s necessary to follow a training program is to have a sense of familiarity. When you are familiar with the exercises every week and know what you need to do, you can experience less gym anxiety.
Because you will be familiar with the exercises, you can track your progress from week to week.
This is very important to progressive overload, and I will talk more about that later. Tracking your progress can be a sign that the program is working. It indicates that you are heading in the right direction toward your goals.
If you perform a new exercise every week, you are starting over each time. You would have no idea if you were getting stronger, or able to apply progressive overload to gain muscle, get faster, or whatever the goal is.
When you track your exercises, you want to track the weight you are using, the number of sets, the number of reps, and even your rest time. Each week depending on the program, you will progress with one of those variables.
PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD
I briefly mentioned progressive overload earlier, so what is it? Keeping it simple, you are progressing by adding more stress to the body regularly. I go into more detail with examples in my blog, PROGRESSIVE OVERLOADING FOR RESULTS.
Your body adapts to stimuli, and to keep the body adapting, you have to give it new stimulation regularly. Going back to tracking your workouts, you can apply progressive overload each week based on what you did.
Progressive overloading will aid in you tracking your workouts and get you results towards your goal.
NO GUESSWORK
I think this is a big one for many people, when you have a training program, there is no guessing. There is no thinking about what you want to do in the gym that day. Having a training program eliminates the barrier of what you need to do. For many, knowing exactly what they need to do in the gym that day can eliminate gym anxiety.
It doesn’t make sense to go in without a plan. I will give you a great example of why.
If you want to build a house, you’re not going to just go in without a plan.
Could you imagine what that would look like?
The same thing applies to your fitness goals. Having no plan will take you much longer than necessary to get results, and overlook something essential that your body needs. For example, let’s say your goal is to get a stronger bench press, but you have shoulder mobility issues.
A structured program will address your need for better shoulder mobility and stability while progressing with your bench press.
When you are guessing, you cannot apply the other steps I mentioned earlier.
If you are not following a program, and not sure where to start, I can help. I do offer online personal training where I do the programming for you. I will help you every step of the way and help you be accountable with your training. Working with me, you can text me with any questions you might have. Send me videos to help you with your form. I will be your guide to getting what you want with fitness.
Click on the link below, and I will be in contact with you within 24 hours to set up a call. The call is the initial consultation to get to know you and learn what you want to achieve. The consultation is for you to work with me to create a plan together. This is a partnership where we work together.
Click the link below to create a partnership on this journey of yours.