The Only Three Things that Really Matter in a Strength Training Program

The fitness space is plagued by misinformation and an overemphasis on things that don’t matter much. Mainstream bodybuilding magazines dedicate more time to the latest celebrity workouts than than to tried and true principles of muscle building. And even worse are the Instagram fitness influencers who profit by promoting sketchy supplements and useless training routines to people who don’t know any better.

While strength training experts disagree about a number of things, there are three points of consensus as to what makes a strength training program effective that are universal and time tested. If you want to cut through the noise of the polluted fitness industry and make progress, these are what you need to focus on:

1. Proper Exercise Selection

When I first started lifting weights, I was about 16 years old. I stood at 6'1, weighed in at a soft 145, and my arms were only a little bigger than pencils. This was something I wanted to change and my hair-brained solution was to do as many bicep curls as I could with some light dumbbells that I found in my parent’s garage. As you can imagine, not much happened.

Legendary strength coach Jim Wendler calls this overemphasis on isolation exercises “majoring in the minors,” and many trainees are guilty of it. This is not to say that isolation movements do not have their place, they do, but they should not make up the bulk of your training routine. If you want to get stronger and build muscle, you have to ditch the mindset of targeting every single muscle group from every possible angle. Instead, you should select a handful of effective compound exercises for each of your body’s major movement patterns. There are four of these: the push, the pull, the hip hinge, and the squat.

Pushing movements include any variation of the bench press, overhead press, and push-up and are effective for developing the chest, triceps, and shoulders. Pulling exercises include any chin-up and row variation, and are primarily used to target your back and biceps. Hinging exercises consist of any deadlift variation, kettlebell swings, and the like. Most olympic lifts (snatches, cleans, etc.) will also fall under this category. The glutes, hamstrings, and lower back are the primary movers in these types of exercises. Finally, the squatting movement pattern includes any squat or lunge variation and these exercises are useful for developing strength throughout the entirety of your lower body and particularly in the quadriceps.

A sample program with proper exercise selection would look something like this:

Workout A: Upper Body

• Single Arm Dumbbell Row
• Incline Bench Press
• Chin-ups
• Seated Dumbbell Press
• Various isolation exercises (tricep extensions, bicep curls, lateral raises, etc.)

Workout B: Lower Body

• Barbell Back Squat
• Trap Bar Deadlifts
• Reverse Lunges with Dumbbells
• Dumbbell Romanian Deadlifts
• Core exercise/Weighted carry variation

As you can see, both of the above routines place the bulk of their focus on compound movements within the four major movement patterns.This split can be shifted to accommodate a full body routine or a even body part routine. Moreover, specific exercises can be shifted around to fit individual needs (for example, you could swap the incline barbell press for a flat dumbbell press, etc.). These things are largely irrelevant. So long as this principle is intact, you will be on your way to impressive results.

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

2. Use Perfect Technique on Every Exercise

There are two reasons why perfect form is essential. The first, and most important, is that proper execution reduces the risk of injury. If you are constantly getting injured while training, it is difficult to be consistent enough to make meaningful progress. Furthermore, you should be lifting in order to improve other areas of your life, and if you are constantly getting banged up in the weight room, then training will have the opposite effect.

The second reason is that perfect form allows you to get the most out of an exercise. In order to see the best gains in muscle and strength possible, you should strive to take each exercise through the optimal range of motion. Further, achieving perfect form in an exercise also means that you practice mind-muscle connection. This means that you should focus on contracting the muscle groups responsible for the movement as much as possible in order to see maximum muscle growth.

The best way to ensure that you are properly executing each movement is to start with a weight that feels too light and slowly build up from there. By starting with a weight you can handle with ease, your technique is far less likely to fall apart under strain. If you are new to training, the first few weeks of any program should be spent mastering movements with light weights. Moreover, even experienced trainees would benefit from dropping the weight they use dramatically and focusing strictly on technique for a few weeks out of the year.

Photo by Victor Freitas on Unsplash

3. Progressive Overload

Finally, you must pursue some form of progressive overload in order for a lifting program to actually work.

Progressive overload is the principle of doing more over time with the purpose of creating a new stimulus for your body to adapt to. This can be done by adding weight to an exercise, doing more repetitions of an exercise with the same amount of weight, or trying a harder variation of a movement. For example, if you can do 10 bodyweight chin ups, you could progressively overload that by strapping a 10 pound weight around your waist and trying to get the same number of reps, or you could just try to get 11 reps next time. Alternatively, you could try to build up to a harder variation of the chin-up, like a one armed chin-up.

The way you choose to overload an exercise does not matter all that much and should vary depending on your individual goals. Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing wrong with slow overload. If you only add five pounds to your bench press every month, you’ll be 60 pounds stronger at the end of the year. That’s significant. Just remember: so long as you are continually creating a new stimulus for your body to adapt to, progress will come.

I’ve found that the best way to ensure that you are applying this principle is by making a habit of logging each and every one of your workouts. This can be done digitally or with a good old fashioned notebook, it doesn’t really matter. So long as you write down the number of sets, reps, and weight used on every exercise and seek to improve on those numbers next time you do that exercise, you’re golden.

Conclusion

Fitness experts continue to debate things like training volume, exercise frequency, and optimal training splits. While these debates have their place, you shouldn’t worry about them until you’re doing the following three things:

1. Choosing several compound lifts that fit your structure within each movement pattern and designing a program around them that fits your schedule.
2. Seeking to execute each repetition with perfect technique by taking the movement through a full range of motion and focusing on the muscles being targeted.
3. Observing the principle of progressive overload by striving to do a little bit more each time you train.

All good training programs will be built on these principles. Follow them, and enjoy the results.