Principles of building a fitness program: rules and recommendations

All novice ath­letes face the chal­lenge of writ­ing a qual­i­ty fit­ness pro­gram that takes into account their main goals and lev­el of phys­i­cal fit­ness. There are many opin­ions regard­ing the required set of exer­cis­es, the num­ber of approach­es and rep­e­ti­tions, and more than one method­ol­o­gy has been devel­oped for com­pil­ing pro­grams for build­ing mass. After review­ing them, you can inde­pen­dent­ly cre­ate an effec­tive fit­ness train­ing scheme that is right for you.

Principles of fitness training

Regard­less of the direc­tion of fit­ness and the expe­ri­ence of the ath­lete, any train­ing must obey cer­tain prin­ci­ples. They reflect the changes that occur in the body when exert­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ty on it, and their imple­men­ta­tion con­tributes to the achieve­ment of max­i­mum results.

The main prin­ci­ples of train­ing:

• Con­ti­nu­ity.

The effect of exer­cise is cumu­la­tive. That is, it is not the inten­si­ty and dura­tion of a sin­gle train­ing ses­sion that is deci­sive, but the sys­tem­at­ic con­duct of class­es. This means that it is bet­ter to load the body only twice a week, but for a long time, than to train every oth­er day for a month, and then take a break for the same peri­od.

• Grad­u­al­i­ty and lim­it.

This prin­ci­ple means that phys­i­cal activ­i­ty dur­ing train­ing should be increased grad­u­al­ly as strength and endurance indi­ca­tors improve. At a cer­tain point, the load should become max­i­mum, which is a kind of impulse for the body to move to a new lev­el of train­ing.

• Wavy inten­si­ty.

The body needs a cer­tain time to ful­ly restore resources, which can be pro­vid­ed to it by alter­nat­ing high, medi­um and low inten­si­ty work­outs.

• The cycle of train­ing.

This prin­ci­ple says that the entire train­ing process must go through a cer­tain cycle, which ends and starts again, but at a high­er lev­el.

With these prin­ci­ples in mind, you can increase the effec­tive­ness of your fit­ness activ­i­ties and get faster and bet­ter results.

The main elements of physical activity

Very often, when per­form­ing strength exer­cis­es, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and its inten­si­ty are mis­tak­en­ly deter­mined by the weight of the weights used. In fact, this is a broad­er con­cept that includes the fol­low­ing com­po­nents:

• the num­ber of work­outs per week — 2–3 ses­sions are con­sid­ered opti­mal;
• the num­ber of exer­cis­es in one les­son — depend­ing on the mus­cle group being trained, no more than 5–8 fit­ness ele­ments should be per­formed;
• the lev­el of dif­fi­cul­ty of exer­cis­es in terms of their tech­nique or ener­gy con­sump­tion;
• the num­ber of approach­es — total and for each exer­cise. As a stan­dard, it is rec­om­mend­ed to per­form 3 approach­es, how­ev­er, here you need to take into account cer­tain nuances regard­ing your lev­el of phys­i­cal fit­ness;
• the num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions in one approach and in gen­er­al for a work­out — com­plete­ly depends on the pur­pose of fit­ness, for exam­ple, when work­ing on mass, it is rec­om­mend­ed to do up to 15 rep­e­ti­tions;
• rest between sets, its dura­tion and inten­si­ty — the break should not be long, a max­i­mum of 3 min­utes. At the same time, you should still con­tin­ue to move, but with low inten­si­ty;
• weight weights — select­ed based on the goals and the select­ed num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions so that the last one is per­formed with the last effort.

All these points char­ac­ter­ize the load from a qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive side, deter­min­ing how phys­i­cal­ly dif­fi­cult fit­ness train­ing will be for you. An impor­tant issue is the choice of exer­cis­es, of which there are a very large num­ber. Among all the vari­ety, you should choose about 25 of those that suit your lev­el of train­ing, and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly include them in the fit­ness pro­gram.

The basics of building a fitness program

Many ath­letes look­ing to build mus­cle are won­der­ing what is the opti­mal num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions for a good fit­ness effect. Research sug­gests that the num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions is not as impor­tant as the length of time the mus­cles stay under load. Max­i­mum mus­cle growth is pro­mot­ed by a minute con­tin­u­ous effect on them, which cor­re­sponds to about 10–15 rep­e­ti­tions. At the same time, all move­ments should be per­formed with­out stop­ping, with­out stop­ping at extreme points, but imme­di­ate­ly con­tin­u­ing to work. The num­ber of sets with this approach should be 3–5, while the greater the num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions, the few­er sets you need to do, and vice ver­sa.

After doing this for sev­er­al months, your progress will slow down. Dur­ing this peri­od, you can go into a state of train­ing plateau due to mus­cle get­ting used to the same type of load. There­fore, you should from time to time include mul­ti-rep­e­ti­tion work­outs in your fit­ness when ele­ments are per­formed in 3 sets of 20 rep­e­ti­tions. This tech­nique devel­ops slow mus­cle fibers and is most suit­able for girls who have more of these fibers. Fast mus­cle fibers are more volu­mi­nous and are well devel­oped accord­ing to the prin­ci­ple of mass train­ing already described above.

An effec­tive train­ing tech­nique that allows you to load all types of mus­cle fibers is the pyra­mid. It is suit­able for ath­letes with any expe­ri­ence and even for begin­ners, it allows you to devel­op strength well and increase mass.

Such fit­ness train­ing at its core con­sists in the fact that in the first approach, the exer­cis­es should be done 15 times, using a weight of 40% of your max­i­mum. In each sub­se­quent set, the weight of the weights increas­es by 15% of the max­i­mum, and the num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions decreas­es by 2–3 times. In the last approach­es, you can reduce the step of weight growth, based on your feel­ings.

This is a straight pyra­mid scheme that is best applied to basic exer­cis­es at the very begin­ning of a fit­ness work­out. Accord­ing to the reverse pyra­mid scheme, it is con­ve­nient to pump biceps and tri­ceps, first per­form­ing a small num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions with your max­i­mum weight.

There is also a pat­tern of neg­a­tive rep­e­ti­tions. They got this name due to the fact that the main empha­sis of the exer­cise falls on the neg­a­tive phase of the move­ment, i.e. low­er­ing the pro­jec­tile. The num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions here should not be more than 10, but the weight of the weights can reach 140% of the max­i­mum. In addi­tion, such fit­ness activ­i­ties are trau­mat­ic, so it is impor­tant to have at least two part­ners near­by to help lift the pro­jec­tile.