Your Program Sucks Part 4 – While You’re There...

Don’t Go to Failure - If there’s one thing that the muscle mags have taught us it’s...opps, already said that. Anyway, do you know the line ‘failure is not an option”? Well you should think of this more often when you’re training. The heavier the load you use, the further away from failure you should stay or at least less often through very carefully planned programming. It’s fine to go to failure on delt raises and curls, but leave some reps in the tanks for deads, squats and benches. Oh, and only go to failure once in your workout, not for every curl set you do.

Deadlifts keep 2 – 3 Reps in the Tank
Squats keep 1 – 2 Reps in the Tank
Bench Press keep 1 – 2 Reps in the Tank
Military Press keep  1 – 2 Reps in the Tank
Isolation and Arm Exercises you can go to failure once per workout per muscle

How to Prioritise – This is quick and simple. List out all of the muscles, movements or qualities you train then prioritise them with a 1, 2 or 3 into what you need to do the most (note: not what you WANT). Put all of the 1’s in first because they are your greatest priority, then the 2’s then slide the 3’s in where they can go. You can’t improve everything all the time so it’s best to bring up 2 or 3 areas at one time, then move them to a maintenance phase and bring something else up and so on.

Phase 1

Hip Dominant with a priority score of 1 so a frequency of 3 – 4/week
Quad Dominant with a priority score of 2 so a frequency of 2 – 3/week
Horizontal Press with a priority score of 2 so a frequency of 2 – 3/week
Vertical Press with a priority score of 3 so a frequency 1 – 2/week
Horizontal Pull with a priority score of 1 so a frequency of 3 – 4/week
Vertical Pull with a priority score of 2 so a frequency of 2 - 3/week
Core with a priority score of 1 so a frequency of 3 – 4/week

Phase 2


Hip Dominant with a priority score of 2 so a frequency of 2 - 3/week
Quad Dominant with a priority score of 1 so a frequency of 3 - 4/week
Horizontal Press with a priority score of 3 so a frequency of 1 - 2/week
Vertical Press with a priority score of 2 so a frequency 2 - 3/week
Horizontal Pull with a priority score of 1 so a frequency of 3 – 4/week
Vertical Pull with a priority score of 1 so a frequency of 3 - 4/week
Core with a priority score of 2 so a frequency of 2 - 3/week


Bringing Up a Lagging Bodypart – it’s sad to see but there’s still plenty of gym goers and even PT’s that use bodypart splits and I don’t know why. Unless the goal is bodybuilding then it makes no sense. Do biceps require the same amount of training time and rest as the quads? I wouldn’t have thought so. Bodypart splits aren’t the end of the world and really if you can’t get by on an upper/lower split at the most, then you’re doing it wrong and all that those entire specific muscle days end up doing is building up more fatigue from all the endless sets of shitty exercises you do to fill in each session. That being said you’ve got to be flexible with your split or even you’re days.

If you need want to bring up your chest (a novice idea, hey?) then increasing from 20 sets in your Monday workout to 25 sets probably won’t get the job done because if you’ve already done 20 sets, and close to 200 reps then you’re flogging a dead horse. What you need to do is train chest more often which makes perfect sense because now you can let it rest. Recuperate then hit it hard again in 3 to 4 days time. This will allow a greater weight to be used and yes I do know that it’s not all about the weight you use in the quest to get big, but rather the tension you can achieve, a db bench press performed with perfect tension at 50kgs will increase a muscle far more then the same thing done at 40kgs. It’s not going to interrupt your sleep if you have to do 5 – 10mins of extra chest work on your leg day (by the way are you doing one of those?).

Multiple Stress Angles – if you are going to go the bodypart split, although I’ve talked you out of it, then think long and hard about how you stress whatever muscle you’re working. So for a bicep day you might do bb curls, db curls and preacher curls but what is the difference between each exercise? You can only flex the elbow one way so you need to alter this a little. Mix up your types of contractions through your workout and/or your training week for optimal gains.

Here's a short list of different ways to do a bicep curl and a sample exercise for each:

Free Weights - DB / BB Curl
Cables - 1 Arm / 2 Arm Curl
Bands - 1 Arm / 2 Arm Curl
Eccentric Focus - 5 – 10sec Eccentric Contraction
Isometric Focus - 3 – 5sec Isometric Contraction
Concentric Focus - Explosive Concentric Contraction
Fast Tempo - Speed Reps Chad Waterbury Style
Stretch Position - DB Incline Curl
Contracted Position - High Cable Curl

Programming Movement Patterns - much like bodypart splits, determining your exercise selection by muscle groups also doesn’t make much sense, mainly because it overlaps into using other muscles that you don’t intend to hit with a “tricep” exercise. What ends up happening here is that your accessory muscles actually end up doing more work than they can recover from.

Below shows the muscle being trained, the exercise being used, the sets and rep scheme for each exercise, the total volume for each exercise and lastly the accessory muscles used for each exercise.

Chest: Bench Press 3 x 10 = 30 Reps (Triceps)
Chest: Incline Press 3 x 10 = 30 Reps (Triceps)
Chest: Crossovers 3 x 20 = 60 Reps (Anterior Deltoids)
Triceps: Skullcrushers 3 x 12 = 36 Reps
Triceps: Pushdowns 3 x 15 = 45 Reps

In the table above chest is the main focus of the session which receives 120 total reps for the session. If we take our attention to the tricep exercises it has a total volume of 101 for its own specific exercises. This is not a true indication because if you look at the accessory muscles used in the chest exercises, 2 of them involve the triceps so now you have another 60 reps for triceps for a rep total of 161 and your chest day has really turned into a tricep day.

A better idea is to program your exercises to train movement patterns.

Hip Dominant - Deadlift Variations
Quad Dominant - Squat Variations
Single Leg - Step Up / Lunge Variations
Horizontal Push - Bench Press / Push Up Variations
Horizontal Pull - Rowing Variations
Vertical Push - Military Press Variations
Vertical Pull - Chin / Pull Up / Pulldown Variations
Glute Activation - Isolated Hip Extension Variations
Scapula Stability - Push Up / Horizontal Pull / Horizontal Pull Variations
Core Stabilisation - Prone Position Exercises
Core Anti Rotation - Pallof Press Variations
Core Anti Extension - Roll Out Variations
Upper / Mid Back - Face Pulls / Shrug Variations

Learn the Difference Between Fatigue and Intensity – these are nowhere near the same thing. Intensity refers to the load you’re using in accordance with your repetition maximum. Fatigue is the breakdown of the muscle and it’s energy reserves during training. Do not confuse the two although most do. Some will say “I increased the intensity today by running for an extra 5mins” or “I increased intensity by dropping the wt and doing more reps” which is not correct. They induced a lot more fatigue but at a lower intensity. To increase the intensity of your workouts you need to increase the weight you lift or the amount of times you lift a specific weight over time. For cardio you need to do more work in the same amount of time or the same amount of work in less time. Yes you will get more fatigued doing both of these, but above all you’ll have increased your intensity and work output, thus the demands on the body and all of a sudden you’ve sparked some new muscle growth or fat loss.

Program Balance (or Imbalance) – as a shift in program design towards “functional” training (I hate that term) the concepts of equalling up push and pull movements for the upper and lower body has been popular. Unfortunately not many people have moved with the times and progressed in that time. When you take a closer look at it simply doing 2 exercises for push and then 2 for pull doesn’t add up most of the time either. You need to take into account total volume (sets x reps) and total load (load x reps).

Old Option Exercise Total Volume / Load Training Total
Push Bench Press 3 x 10 @ 80kgs = 2400kgs total training load
Push Incline Bench Press 3 x 10 @ 60kgs = 1800kgs total training load so 4200kgs for chest

Pull Bent Row 3 x 10 @ 40kgs = 1200kgs total training load
Pull Rear Delt Raise 3 x 15 @ 10kgs = 450kgs total training load so 1650kgs for back

As you can see, when you take a closer look at the entirety of what’s going on you’ll see that you’re actually doing almost 3 x push training then pull training. For 99% of us out there we actually need less push then pull because of our already kyphotic postures so this is not going to work. If you are imbalanced then you’ll need an imbalanced program, not a balanced one because even if we still get our pull training up to the 4200kgs that push is, you’ll have evened up the immediate training effect, but you will not have gotten on top of your past training mishaps. So you might need something like this:

Push Bench Press 3 x 10 @ 80kgs = 2400kgs total training load
Push Incline Bench Press 3 x 10 @ 60kgs = 1800kgs total training load so 4200kgs for chest

Pull Bent Row 3 x 10 @ 40kgs = 1200kgs total training load
Pull Rear Delt Raise 3 x 15 @ 10kgs = 450kgs total training load
Pull DB Chest Supported Row 3 x 10 @ 20kgs = 600kgs total training load
Pull Seated Row 3 x 10 @ 80kgs = 2400kgs total training load
Pull Cable Scarecrow 3 x 15 @ 30kgs = 1350kgs total training load so 6000kgs for back

So with this new set up you can now start to beat that kyphosis down and straighten yourself a bit. Another tid bit is that lat pulldowns do not even out kyphosis as they attach on the humerus so they are actually internal rotators which will exacerbate your kyphosis, not remedy it so if they are somewhere in the program then you’ll need even more correct pull work (external rotation).

Warm Up Properly – the pyramid system has been around almost as long as the pyramids themselves and usually involved something like a set of 15, 12, 10, 8 then a top set of 6 or so which is fine except you’ve already done 45 reps before reaching your money set and most gym goers go far too hard during their warm ups so if you’re aiming for a top set of 6 reps, try warming up with 6 reps or less, there’s no real need to go higher unless you’re top end set if 3 or less.

For a top end set of 3 or less reps then do warm up sets of 5,4, 3 and 3
For a top end set of 4 - 6 reps then do warm up sets of 6,5 and 4
For a top end set of 7 - 10 reps then do warm up sets of 5,5, and 5
For a top end set of 10 or more reps then do warm up sets of 8 and 8

Also for the benefit of your joints it’s definitely a wise move to use some myofascial release via a tennis and foam roller as well as some joint mobilisation and muscle activation for the muscles you’re about to train for that session as well anything that causes you issues (daily).

Match Exercises with Sets and Reps – there is no actual rule to this but generally some exercises fit better rep ranges then others. Taking deadlifts for example, it puts the body under the most stress out of any exercise you can do in the gym just about so you don’t want to be building up a lot fatigue from doing 100 reps (10 x 10 anyone?) of them first up in your workout then having to try and function afterwards. A good way to go is to use deadlifts in a traditional strength sense then use a less demanding exercise that trains the same muscles as your hypertrophy builder.

Hip Hinge Strength - Deadlifts / Hypertrophy - Romanian Deadlifts, Hip Thrusts
Quad Dominant Strength - Back Squats Front Squats / Hypertrophy - Single Leg Variations, Goblet Squats
Horizontal Push Strength - Bench Press / Hypertrophy - DB Bench Press Variations, Push Ups, Dips
Horizontal Pull Strength -Bent Row / Hypertrophy - DB Row, Cable Row, 1 Arm Row Variations, Inverted Rows
Vertical Push Strength -Military Press / Hypertrophy - DB Military Press Variations, 1 Arm Press Variations
Vertical Pull Strength -Weighted Chin Ups, Weighted Pull Ups / Hypertrophy - Chin Ups, Pull Ups, Lat Pulldowns

How to Design a Program Template – Shit I love templates, I really do. They just make stuff easy and time efficient and you’ll never really need to stray much from it once you tweaked it enough to suit your training, just plug the exercises in off you go. Now that you have all of this juicy information I’ve given you your very own template should be well on its way. If you’re still a bit confused then try this step by step process which involves a few things that we’ve already touched on.

1. Choose your main goal (priority 1)
2. Choose what total volume will achieve that goal (strength, hypertrophy, endurance etc)
3. Choose what sets and reps your total volume will be broken up into
4. Choose what exercise will be of the most benefit

No, you don’t choose exercises first because an exercise doesn’t provide the training effect, the loading and volume of it does.

So that's it for the "Your Program Sucks" series. There's a fair bit in all of this (5000+ words I think) so if you need to read some it s few times to really "get it" then do so and as always shoot me through any questions you have on any of this.