TEAM PROGRAMMING

TEAM PROGRAMMING
By Shane Robert

I love creating programs. I can’t tell you why I love it, exactly, but I always have, even well before I had the knowledge to create a decent program. Perhaps it has something to do with the potential that it seems to possess. “THIS program is the one that is going to get me to X.” Or, maybe, like searching vacation spots you won’t actually go to or looking at real estate listings you will never buy, it is a fun distraction from what you are currently doing. 

Part of the enjoyment, I know for sure, comes from the challenge of trying to solve a problem. That, after all, is what most programming really is. If we never had problems to overcome we would all still be adding 5 pounds a week and benching 2000 pounds. Sadly, things don’t work like that. Eventually, we encounter plateaus and have to find ways around them. As I, and others, have said many times before - all programs work as long as they have some kind of progression. Not all programs work for all populations and no program works forever (though Ed Coan might disagree with that).

In 2016 I found myself in a unique situation. I had been competing in powerlifting for about 5 years and had started to work with a few local lifters at my gym who were also interested in competing. Excited by the progress that they had been seeing, they recruited their friends to start a powerlifting team to train and compete with. Yours truly acting as the main coach. This was at the same time that my daughter had unexpectedly come into my life and the available time I had for in-person training was greatly reduced. 

Here I was, an experienced trainer and coach, but a very inexperienced  team coach, having to solve big problems. How do I create a team environment when I can only meet with the team, at most, once a week?  How do I program for a group of people that range from slightly-better-than-beginner to late intermediate? What I needed was a program with as broad an applicability as possible so that each person in the group could benefit, regardless of their status. By everyone using the same program on the same days, the team environment could be fostered, even if we weren’t all training together. You knew, at least, that when your legs were trashed from squatting the day before, so were everyone else's.

The program below is what I created. Looking at it laid out now, with quite a lot of hindsight, it clearly draws from a number of different programs. Without getting bogged down in too much detail, the essence is simple:

Day 1 works up to a top set of primarily 5, the drops for volume. Day 2 does sets across for 5x5 intended to be a harder variation of the lift or speed day/technique. Both the main lift top sets and day 2 work follow a basic step-loading pattern of building for 3 weeks before dropping back a little and building back up. The volume work from day 1 follows a pretty simple Western periodization model, working from higher reps to lower over the 12 weeks. I won’t include the assistance work since that part WAS programmed individually, but suffice it to say that it was pretty basic stuff. 2-3 sets of 2-3 exercises to strengthen and hypertrophy the specific muscles used in each lift.

This is by no means a perfect program but it succeeded in helping the team feel united. All 5 lifters who ended up competing went 9 for 9 at the meet with everyone setting PRs on their 3rd attempts. As outcomes go, that’s pretty good.