Speaker 1: Welcome to this video on programming. So the learning outcomes for this video are going to be, we are going to look at what is programming, we are going to look at what programming structure we need to put in place when working with people, we are going to look at the APEC PAA system of programming and how we apply that, and then we are going to look at some principles that support programming. So what is programming? Programming is the short term approach to structured training and is very much focused around the mesocycle phase of the periodization plan. It entails the progressive cycling of variables such as training volume, which is reps by sets and training intensity, which is the total load lifted. Programming focuses on the phase of training. The phase of training is sequenced weeks of planned training backed back with the purpose of achieving a fitness goal. The mesocycle or block of training is normally made up of anywhere from one to three phases of training. So let's look at some programming structure. So when it comes to programming structure, the program structure we use at APEC is called the PAA system and that is a system of programming that we have designed with all of the people, athletes, teams that we've worked with over the years and it is laid out in the following format. First we have our primary exercise and that is the first exercise in the program. Next we have our assistance exercise and that is the exercise that precedes your primary lift. And then finally we have accessory work and that's any work performed at the end of a workout. So let's go and look or take a deeper look at each stage of the PAA system. So starting with the primary lift, like we said, it's the first exercise in the program. The goal of the primary lift should be to target your biggest resistance training goals. So if you want to become stronger in the lower body, you need to have a strength orientated exercise as your primary lift. If you're looking to put on muscle mass, you need to have an exercise as your primary lift which is going to target that. Or if you're trying to improve movement in and around the squat pattern and perhaps you're not able to use a barbell back squat to achieve that, you need to pick an exercise as your primary exercise, perhaps a goblet squat where you can achieve improving that movement pattern. So the primary lift very much has a focused goal. Important considerations when we are thinking about our primary lifts. You should never have more than two primary lifts in the same program and you can never have two primary lifts for your upper body and your lower body. So what I mean by that, when we're programming, if we're programming for a lower body, we would have only one primary lift. If we're programming for our upper body, we would only have one primary lift. If we're programming a total body session, we perhaps could have one primary lift for the upper body and one primary lift for the lower body. But that's all we can have in the program. Next we have our assistance lifts. So our assistance lift is the second exercise in the program and that too has an extremely important goal and that goal is to assist you in becoming better at your primary lift. So if we take, for example, a squat, a barbell back squat as our primary lift, the assistant lift will or should be some type of posterior chain exercise like a hip lift or an RDL. Why? Because that creates structural balance and we know that if we want to become better at an exercise like squatting, we don't achieve that or there will eventually become a ceiling that we plateau in terms of improving at that exercise and the way to continue to improve and get better at that exercise is to build in what's called structural balance where we start to develop the posterior chain to help us progress in whatever movement we have chosen for our primary exercise. So like I had mentioned, if a squat is the primary exercise, the assistant exercise has a very important goal in assisting you in becoming better at your primary lift and should be the focus should be structural balance. So you should be choosing an exercise like an RDL, Romanian deadlift or a hip lift, some hamstring and glute based exercise for your assistant lift. Really important consideration that the majority of assistant lifts are going to focus on developing the posterior chain and that doesn't matter if whether you're developing or you're programming for a lower body session or an upper body session, you need to focus on developing the posterior chain. So if we're working the upper body, primary lift is a bench press, the assistant lift should be a low row or a lat pull down or a heavy bent over row. And then finally, we have what's called our accessory lift or accessory work. And this is the final stage of the program. And the goal at this stage of the program is to develop weaknesses. This is what we're focusing on is developing our weaknesses. Now the accessory stage of the program is normally categorized into three different categories and category one is proprioception or balance. Category two is conditioning or fitness work and category three is hypertrophy or repetition work. What we want to do is we want to pick one of those categories that we can focus on developing. So when you're programming for individuals, we want to first of all understand what their weaknesses are. If they're carrying too much body fat, perhaps we want to program for conditioning sessions at the end where we program in a little 10, 15, 20 minute block of conditioning. Perhaps the goal is to put on as much muscle mass as properly as possible. Great opportunity to bring in some of our training systems and utilize different hypertrophy techniques to achieve that. Or perhaps proprioception in the upper body, proprioception in the lower body is an issue. Balance is an issue. This is a great time to do a little bit of core work or bring in some different proprioceptive exercises to help strengthen that weakness within the individual. Really important consideration. Think about when you're working with the individuals, what are the weaknesses and how am I going to achieve them? Or how am I going to improve those weaknesses for the person I'm programming for? Okay, let's take an example now, a program example, and let's look at how we have achieved our PAA system in a couple of different examples. So here we have a programming example, a lower body session. The primary lift here is a barbell back squat. So that is our primary lift in the program. Four sets of eight repetitions. Then we have our assistance lifts are an ordeal, which is three sets of 10 repetitions supersetted with dumbbell lunge, three sets of 10 repetitions. And then at the end of the program, we've done a tri-set where we've programmed lying leg curl, calf raise and hanging leg raise for three sets of 12 repetitions. So let's go back and look at how we've achieved our PAA system. So the barbell back squat is our primary lift. Our assistance lifts are our RDL and our dumbbell lunge. We've also achieved a superset with these two exercises. And then we've achieved good structural balance because this is an anterior chain exercise. An RDL is a posterior chain exercise. The dumbbell lunge is probably 50-50 split between an anterior and posterior chain exercise. So we're definitely improving our ability to perform a back squat next time we go back to that exercise. And then at the end, the last tri-set, we've built up a good amount of metabolic stress with our high volume, high repetition work for our lower body with our hamstrings, our calves and a good bit of core work, hip flexor work with our hanging leg raise. So on our upper body, let's look at what we've done here. So we have a barbell bench press, four sets of eight reps. That's our primary lift. Then we have our barbell bent over row, superset it with our incline dumbbell press. So this is our assistance work, four sets of 10 repetitions, again, a superset here. And then finally, we've put a tri-set into the bottom of the program where we've done face pull, dumbbell shrug and dumbbell lateral flies, three sets of 12 repetitions. So same again, primary lift, accessory work, assistance lift where we've targeted the hypertrophy or repetition method at the end of our program. And then finally, just an example of how we would program for conditioning work at the end of our program. So an upper body plus conditioning, so we have a barbell bench press, primary lift. Our accessory work is our barbell bent over row and our incline dumbbell press, four sets of 10 repetitions. And then we flipped to the accessory work at the end being conditioning as opposed to hypertrophy focused, and that would just simply be a bike, rower and skierg, one set of five minutes on each exercise in our zone three. So we know it's aerobic in nature. And in terms of structural balance, we have one upper body push, one upper body pull, one upper body push, and then we're getting a good exposure to pull with the rower and the skierg at the end as well. So again, good structural balance has been achieved when programming for this individual. Okay, let's go through some programming principles. We need to make sure you regress or progress each exercise, especially the primary lift. So if you have an individual who can't yet squat, but the goal is to get them to be able to squat, we probably need to start with an incline bench squat, then go to a bench squat and go to a goblet squat and finally get them to squat. So we need to have the ability to regress and progress exercises. This is following the specificity principle. Next, we need to make sure you're sticking to the principle of structural balance, where there is an equal amount of push to pull exercises in each program. The structural balance principle is an extremely important principle when it comes to health and fitness programming. So the goal of programming is we want to make the individuals healthier. And if we have programs with all anterior push exercises, we're going to be neglecting the posterior chain. So we've got to be thinking about the structural balance principle as we program. Next, we have progressive overloads. There's three different options that we can look at when we are progressively overloading our clients within a program. Option one is we add more volume and how we would achieve that is we would look at increasing the reps or sets which we are programming. Option two is increasing time under tension and we need to focus on increasing the time under tension, especially in the eccentric components of the movement, as this is where the biggest stress is placed on the muscle in terms of the hypertrophic response. And then finally, option three is we need to increase the intensity or the load lifted each week. And a good metric to do that is to go by 0.5 to 1% increase on the load every week. Once we follow these principles, we are adhering to the progressive overload principle. Lastly, the order of strength and fitness qualities. So strength work to improve movement must be programmed first and performed without fatigue. Very important. So if we are looking to improve strength, that has got to be programmed first. That has got to come first in the program. That's got to be your primary focus. Your primary lift has got to be focusing on developing strength. Hypertrophy consists of reps of 8 to 12 and should be programmed second. So in the assistant and accessory work, if hypertrophy is the second goal, that's where we need to achieve hypertrophy. And then finally, any conditioning work such as circuit based training should be performed at the very end of the program. And this is the hierarchy principle, the strength and fitness quality hierarchy principles. So in the next video, we are going to be concentrating on the acute training variables and we're going to be looking at how we apply those acute training variables to achieve progressive overload in the programs that we're building. So the acute training variables that we're going to be focusing on are, and we're going to be looking at what happens, the changes that happen, the acute changes that happen week by week over a phase of training. So that's over a program. We're going to be looking at the change in repetitions, sets, training intensity, training volume, repetition tempo, the rest intervals, exercise selection, exercise order, training duration, and training frequency.