Designing Your Own Strength Training Program!

by Jason and Lauren Pak

What’s up, Achievers?! Today, we’re going to discuss how to go about creating your own strength training program from scratch in as simple terms as possible.

This article is written for those who fall under the beginner/intermediate category of the strength training equation, so you won’t find any fancy or complex percentages or periodization schemes. This is to empower those who “don’t know where to begin” or if they’ve begun, “don’t know where to go from here”.

This is also advice for those who understand that just doing a random workout everyday isn’t necessarily a great plan to help them achieve their goals.

Now that we’ve gotten all that squared away, let’s begin!

The first question for you to answer is:

How many days would you like to dedicate toward strength training?

For the vast majority of people who we’ve worked with in the past, 2 or 3 days per week seems manageable and sustainable. That’s the key by the way — what number of days per week is sustainable in the long run?

Okay, now that you’ve established how many days per week you can devote to strength training, let’s talk about warm-ups and exercise selection.

Here’s the flow of a very generalized strength training template that you can work off of:

Warm Up

• Breathing Drill of Choice (crocodile, hooklying, child’s pose, etc.)
• T-Spine Mobility Drill of Choice (heel sit quadruped t-spine extension/rotation, heel sit quadruped overhead mob with foam roller, etc.)
• Hip Mobility Drill of Choice (90/90 hip switch, half kneeling hip flexor, etc.)
• Ankle Mobility Drill of Choice (half kneeling wall ankle mob, single leg wall ankle mob, etc.)
• Hip Stability Drill of Choice (glute bridge, clamshell, etc.)
• Core Stability Drill of Choice (plank, side plank, bird dog, etc.)
• Integrated Mobility Drill of Choice (spiderman lunge with rotation, squat to stand, etc.)

Power

We like to choose an exercise after the warm-up and before the strength portion that requires more of a rapid contraction like a box jump, a plyometric push up, a medicine ball throwing variation, kettlebell swings, etc.)

Power is one of those qualities that we lose the quickest as we grow older, and it’s also an attribute that has a tremendous amount of functional carryover to activities outside the gym as well as inside it.

Strength

One solid way to fit in a lot of different movements in a short amount of time is to group exercises together in a superset or a tri-set rather than performing one exercise at a time.

We think performing two tri-sets can be a fantastic starting point for your program design. It would be denoted like this:

• A1)
• A2)
• A3)

Break

• B1)
• B2)
• B3)

You would perform A1 followed by A2 followed by A3. Repeat that a couple more times and then move onto B1-B3.

Finisher

If time allows, we like to throw in a 5–10 minute “finisher” at the end of every workout to end the session on a high note and expend that last bit of energy. These can be quick HIIT type of finishers, they can be more hypertrophy based finishers, or they can also just be lower intensity work on a treadmill or elliptical. Anything goes here!

Okay now you know how to structure your workout — how do you know what strength training exercises to choose?

Rather than thinking about isolated muscle groups, we like to think about movement patterns. It’s not that isolated muscle training is a bad thing, we just think that movement patterns are more of an efficient approach if you have 2–3 days to workout. Not only that, focusing on larger movement patterns make you more of a functional, athletic human outside of the gym.

When you only have a limited number of days to train, we think that performing a movement pattern like a squat is more effective than doing leg extensions and leg curls on a fixed machine, because it recruits more muscles at once and it also challenges your total body stability, which is much more characteristic of a real-world demand.

There are tons of different patterns you can choose from, but here’s a list you can work with:

• Squat (goblet squat, back squat, etc.)
• Hinge (romanian deadlift, kettlebell deadlift, etc.)
• Vertical Push (overhead press, push press, etc.)
• Horizontal Push (push-up, bench press, etc.)
• Vertical Pull (pull-up, lat pulldown, etc.)
• Horizontal Pull (TRX row, dumbbell row, etc.)
• Core (deadbug, plank, etc.)
• Locomotion (farmer carry, crawling, etc.)
• Single Leg: Knee Dominant (lunge, single leg squat, etc.)
• Single Leg: Hip Dominant (single leg deadlift, step up, etc.)

That’s 10 different movement patterns that you want to insert into your programs.

Let’s go back to how many days you have to strength train.

Let’s say it’s 2.

Now, remember what we outlined earlier for your strength workouts: we like to perform two tri-sets. That’s 6 “slots” you can insert a movement pattern into.

Now multiply your 2 days x 6 slots, and you have 12 possible places to fit in a movement pattern.

That means you can plug in one move from each of the 10 different patterns, and still have 2 “bonus” moves to work with.

The 2 bonus moves can work on areas that you’d like develop from an aesthetics standpoint, or you’d like to strengthen from a functional standpoint. Or, you can also plug n’ play a mobility drill of your choice here.

How do you decide where to put each exercise?

Great question!

There are some general rules of thumb that you can follow.

1. Try to group “non-competing” exercises together.

We like to combine pushing movements with pulling movements, or upper body movements with lower body movements, or upper/lower movements with core and locomotion movements, etc.

Basically, use common sense. You wouldn’t necessarily want to pair a push-up and a bench press, because those two movements utilize very similar muscle groups.

2. Try not to group grip-intensive exercises together.

We try not to group exercises that really tax your grip — like a pull-up and a deadlift, for example. This is because we don’t want your grip strength to give out and potentially impact your ability to perform both exercises effectively.

Now that we’ve gone over those concepts, let’s go over a sample 2-day program:

Day One

A1) Squat

A2) Vertical Pull

A3) Mobility Drill of Choice

B1) Horizontal Push

B2) Single Leg: Hip Dominant

B3) Core

Day Two

A1) Hinge

A2) Vertical Push

A3) Locomotion

B1) Horizontal Pull

B2) Single Leg: Knee Dominant

B3) Hypertrophy Drill of Choice

I put in bold the two “bonus” moves you could use.

Okay, now you’ve got your workout structure squared away and we’ve got your exercise selection taken care of, let’s talk about sets and reps.

The simplest rep scheme that you can follow is a linear one — meaning, move up or down in repetitions over the course of the program.

For example, you could do this:

Month One: 15 reps at a lighter weight

Month Two: 10 reps with slightly more weight

Month Three: 5 reps with even more weight

Month Four: 3 reps with a significant amount of weight

Then in month five, you could go back to 15 reps, but most likely you’d be able to use a little more weight than you did four months ago.

It can get a lot more complicated than this, but the biggest concept you need to know is the principle of progressive overload.

As long as you strive to improve something — anything over time, your body will be forced to adapt.

Repetitions, weight, tempo, range of motion, frequency (how many days you workout), technique, and time under tension are all variables you can manipulate to ensure you don’t plateau.

Keep in mind progressive overload is not necessarily a concept that needs to happen from workout to workout, but rather a concept that generally should happen in the grand scheme of things over the course of a week, month, year, etc.

So, don’t fret if you get sick, or travel, or have personal/life/work stressors that pop up that force you to de-prioritize your training for a while!

We hope this post helped you out! Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles!

Jason and Lauren Pak