Workouts, exercise, staying in shape, physical activity… However we name it, it’s an essential part of maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle. If you are a certified personal trainer, group fitness instructor, or lifestyle coach, you play an important role in helping others learn how to increase their physical activity and, more importantly, make it a habit. There are countless ways to work out, from Ashtanga yoga to Zumba. The goal is to help your clients find an activity that matches their interests and abilities.
We must remember that any form of exercise is a physical load that affects the physiology of our body. The specific demands of exercises and how they are applied determine the results. This is known as the principle of specificity, described by the acronym SAID – Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. A program developed to achieve specific, desired results should include:
- A health risk assessment to determine a person’s current health status and identify any specific conditions, such as soft tissue injuries or chronic illnesses.
- Proper selection of variables when designing an exercise program. Choosing exercises, intensity, repetitions, sets, pace, rest intervals, and post-training recovery must align with the individual’s current health, training experience, fitness level, and goals.
- Sufficient intensity, volume, and frequency of training to stimulate the necessary training adaptation.
- Adequate recovery periods post-training for optimal physiological adaptation.
Throughout my career as a trainer, instructor, and educator, I have often been surprised to see trainers using exercises more suited for a circus than a gym, attempting to create “complex” workouts for clients or groups. The purpose of an exercise program is to use training variables to achieve desired results, not to force clients into performing senseless tricks. For a program to be effective, it doesn’t need to be overly complicated. Changing only a few variables, such as intensity, repetitions, or rest intervals, can shift the load on the body and lead to entirely different outcomes. This series of articles will explore principles and variables in program design, discussing how they can be used to help clients achieve results. Research provides some insight into how the human body can adapt to training stimuli, but there are factors responsible for individual-specific results in training, including:
- Gender
- Age
- Current fitness level
- Training experience
- Genetic profile
- Amount of time allocated for rest and recovery post-training
- Diet
- Hydration
- Other emotional and physical stressors, such as work or home pressure.
The first variable considered is the selection of specific exercises for the program and their arrangement. There is no “correct” way to select exercises and organize them. Rather, there are many different exercises, and each can produce a unique physiological response. It is important to consider:
- Each exercise in the program should address the client’s needs and be relevant to their training goals.
- Exercises are chosen in a logical order, based on the individual’s current strength, training experience, and motor skills, as identified in a preliminary assessment essential for long-term success.
- The program is created, and the training planned before meeting with the client. Planning workouts before the client arrives is an integral part of the job and an indicator of the level of professional service expected from a personal trainer.
- Equipment availability for a specific client; some clients training at home may lack equipment, while a trainer working in a crowded fitness club may struggle with equipment access during peak hours, complicating the client’s routine. The trainer should have “substitutions” for any exercise in the program to limit downtime due to indecision about the client’s next step.
- For maximum effectiveness, exercises in the program should be based on integrated movement patterns that engage multiple muscles and joints simultaneously. If the program consists solely of isolation exercises, there is a risk of developing certain muscles over others, increasing the chance of imbalances that could lead to injury. Another reason to use multi-muscle movements is the higher energy expenditure during training.
There are five main human movement patterns: squats (bending), lunges (stepping), pushing, pulling, and rotating. Most ground-based lower-body exercises include squats with constant support on both feet or lunges, which involve shifting weight from one foot to the other. Upper-body exercises involve pushing weight away from or pulling it toward the body. Rotational exercises combine pushing and pulling, involving rotation of the torso and hips relative to each other.
Exercise equipment options continue to evolve, offering countless variations, including free weights (dumbbells, barbells, weighted balls, and kettlebells), pulley and lever machines, bodyweight equipment (stability balls and suspension devices), and unconventional items (sand or water-filled bags, large tires).
Each type of equipment has its advantages and limitations. For example:
- Free weights provide the greatest freedom of movement; however, they have limitations—the resistance changes with the angle. Free weights are effective for improving intermuscular coordination, as they recruit many muscles to stabilize individual body segments while others generate movement.
- The advantage of using pulley or lever machines is that maximum load aligns with the peak strength of individual muscles. However, the limitation is that the effort is produced mainly by a single muscle group, which doesn’t reflect natural movements, where multiple muscles contract simultaneously to produce and control movement. Machines focus on contracting a single muscle or group, enhancing intramuscular coordination, enabling activation of many fibers within a muscle, making them highly effective for improving size and control over contraction.
When starting with a new client, it is essential to focus on bodyweight exercises to increase stability in the knee, lumbar spine, and scapular thoracic joint, while also enhancing ankle, thoracic spine, hip, and shoulder mobility.
As a client progresses in strength training, they may incorporate machine exercises since machines limit freedom of movement, allowing effort to develop in specific motor patterns and muscle groups. Once initial strength gains are made on machines, clients can progress to multi-joint free-weight exercises in the five fundamental movement patterns, involving more muscles and increasing energy expenditure.
After a thorough warm-up, multi-joint strength and power exercises should be performed when the client is most energetic. Performing physically demanding exercises later in the workout significantly increases the risk of injury due to fatigue. Supplemental single-joint exercises can be done later when the client starts to tire.
Early in my career, I thought I was a good trainer because I provided clients with different exercise routines every workout. I mistakenly believed it was harder and more interesting for them. After learning about movement pattern development, motor skills, and integrated anatomy, I realized I was doing my clients a disservice by changing exercises too often. Sticking to selected essential exercises is crucial for improving clients’ motor skills and coordination. After I started incorporating exercises consistently, I made changes by adjusting other variables to alter the session’s demands or difficulty. I observed clients moving more smoothly, and if needed, I simplified or intensified the workout by adjusting intensity, repetitions, or rest duration according to the client’s needs on that day.
Exercises consist of movements, and movements require skill, which demands proficiency. Once a client has developed an initial strength level on machines, exercise selection should be based on movements that help develop motor skills while increasing strength. This may lead to frequent changes in exercises; however, consistency in exercise selection helps clients improve coordination, boosting their confidence and commitment to the training program. Since simultaneous contraction of multiple muscles in core exercises increases metabolic demand, aiding in calorie burning, this approach is ideal for clients aiming to lose weight. The more you learn about exercises, the more evident it becomes that the choice of exercises is relatively constant, and one must learn to adjust other variables in program design to make sessions both challenging and effective for various clients.