ben wang, nasm-cpt

Our training philosophy

HYPERTROPHY AND CARDIO

We focus on both long-term and short-term development. Each program is not only designed to produce significant progress within each mesocycle, but also sets you up for repeated mesocycles of the same program or different training. Too often, a program is written with the intent of delivering a maximal result, oftentimes assuming a high rate of adaptation and recovery. While this may work for the athlete that can only dedicate one "offseason" for the gym, the majority of people will adopt the program as their main source of exercise. Therefore a good program must be repeatable, and all the adaptations must be cumulative.

We accomplish this through an emphasis on hypertrophy and work capacity at the beginning. The more muscle you can put on, the more potential you have for strength and aesthetic development. When people are not in a specialised phase for strength, Olympic weightlifting, etc, they should be training (or maintaining) for hypertrophy on most of the major muscle groups. Furthermore, they should be performing some amount of cardio, but this is already known. We only wish to reinforce the importance of cardio, whether by walking, swimming, elliptical, or cycling, and to perform more than the general health recommendations state, in order to maintain overall health, to reduce recovery time between gym sessions, and improve recovery between sets.

DELOADS

For some of our programs there is a prescribed deload. As the intensity increases, fatigue will too. Too much fatigue may hinder a lifter's ability to perform quality reps; various tissues that are underrecovered could alter technique, cause pain, and make sessions more difficult. The deload is implemented to reduce volume, thereby reducing fatigue.

For some lifters the deload may not be necessary, and at the end of the program they would have achieved the same result regardless. But a deload does not hurt, so each lifter is obligated to follow the program as prescribed.

AUTO-REGULATION

There should be progression from week to week, alike to momentum. We measure the progression by increasing the load on the same exercises. Load increase also facilitates continued adaptation, making load management an important factor when programming. If the recommended load increase is too much, then there are several things which can be done.

Say you have to do 80kg on the bench press for five sets of five, having done 70kg last week. The last rep on the first set had a very slow bar velocity - you might estimate RPE ~9.5. Then you would be unable to perform all five sets. It might go 5, 5, 4, 3, 3, and the session would not only be very difficult, hence highly fatiguing, but it would also set you up poorly for your next couple of sessions which will progress beyond that.

One option is to do 75kg or 72.5kg 5x5. The subsequent weeks may have to be adjusted, but the lifter accepts a lower rate of adaptation. Perhaps they respond slower to the bench press. Or perhaps they are in a caloric deficit, or in the middle of training for other endeavours.

Another option is to perform half of the prescribed work, and re-attempt the workout in a few days. Sometimes a lifter is unable to express their strength properly due to fatigue. If 80kg felt slow and heavy, stop at Set 1 Rep 3. Drop the weight a little, then do half of the sets. This will keep the movement greased and maintain technique, while incurring minimal fatigue. This sets the lifter up well for another attempt at the session.