I love writing programs, and I’m one of those strength coaches that loves talking about writing programs.
The question I get the most from other coaches or people just starting in the industry is how to write effective training regimens.
My journey to where I am now was a very simple one. I tell this to everyone who asks – it boils down to how often you are practicing.
I run a small training facility, and we are averaging about 120-130 appointments a week. Each and every one of those clients gets their own program based on their goals, medical history, etc.
I pride myself on that fact because I think everyone, to a certain extent, needs an individualistic touch to their program to be successful.
Just do it
Now I didn’t just sit down and practice writing programs until my fingers bled. There was a lot of education behind it, listening to people a lot smarter than me, and trial and error to get to this point.
At the time of writing this, I have 1500 12-week programs that I have written over the years.
The very first time I sat down to write a 12-week program, it took me hours. It was mentally exhausting, and I wanted to throw my computer through the wall.
Fast forward to now, I write probably 6,000 weeks worth of programs per year.
But once you have the basics down and you understand the simple framework that is required to write a program, the possibilities are endless. When you get to that point, then it comes down to just practicing.
When I first started out I would spend my weekends writing programs for fun. I would write programs for once, twice, three times, four times a week for general population clients, sports performance programs, and anything else that I could think of, just so that I could be more efficient.
The second step is to have your programs be battle-tested, or they need to be run to completion so that you can put them through your regular retest cycles.
To be completely transparent, I have never written a perfect program. I am constantly tweaking and making adjustments to make sure things are running as smoothly as possible.
And that leads me to my next point.
Plan A doesn’t always work.
I reinforce this to my staff every single week. What we have written before a client comes in is plan A, but we often do not know what has happened to that client during the workday. So a lot of times plan A doesn’t work, and that means we need to be able to change focus to fit that particular client’s needs.
A client might be running late, or they tripped getting out of their car, or they slept odd, and something hurts.
For example, if someone’s lower back hurts and they have deadlifts for the day, we’re going to audible and figure out something that keeps them moving and working around the issue instead of working through the issue.
The worst thing we can do is have a client present with lower back pain, look at the program and say, “Well, the program has deadlifts today, so that’s what we have to do.”
These are the real-time adjustments that keep people safe and clients coming back to the gym every week because we didn’t force something or we felt obligated to have to do something simply because the program says so.
In summary…
Figure out the broad framework that constitutes a good program, and once you do, practice writing them. Write one for your mom, write one for your sister, or write one for your friend. Have them follow the program at 100%, and retest for the desired result.
If nothing changed, then go back, make some tweaks here and there, and have them run it again.
If you had some positive changes but not to your liking, go back to the drawing board, make some tweaks, and have them run it again.
Once you can consistently get results out of your programs, after these test and re-test cycles, you’ll be able to produce programs initially that are far more effective than having to write three or four programs before you get to your end goal.
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