What is progression in fitness

If you have taken more than about two weeks off, you need to adjust your training plan. Give yourself time to get back into the groove.

Now, if your time off has been months or even years, just go ahead and consider yourself a beginner! Yes, you have muscle memory. Yes, your body will most likely respond a bit faster than a true beginner. However, you cannot expect to jump back into your routine from the past. You body is not ready and you are setting yourself up to suffer an injury.

No matter what your fitness level, your progressions need to safely and slowly become more challenging. The maintenance stage should be continued on a regular, long-term basis. This means that the frequency used to develop a specific model of fitness can be decreased and the mode replaced with other types of physical activity, for example at the end of an improvement stage, a client may be jogging five days a week.

For the maintenance stage the client jogging may be reduced to two to three days per week and different types of cardio used to supplement the other days. Different exercises benefit different people, depending on their fitness levels and injuries. For example, a large muscular person will benefit more from rowing in which there is little impact on the joints and they can employ large amounts of muscle mass.

Running, however, involves constant impact and is more likely to cause injury. Everybody has a preferred time of the day to train. If you train first thing in the morning before eating, you will burn straight into your fat stores as your glycogen stores — which you usually use in the first 15 minutes of exercise — will have depleted overnight.

If you intend to run a marathon, take part in a triathlon or simply improve your general health and fitness to deal with everyday demands, cardiovascular training has the added advantage of promoting well-being. Cardiovascular exercise has a beneficial effect on the body as it promotes weight loss and enables the heart and lungs to work more effectively and become stronger.

It will help to increase bone density, reduce stress and decrease the risk of heart disease and some cancers. I am careful about designing the workouts so that recovery time is adequate. These could be an upper body and lower body, pulling or pushing maxes on the same days of the week. It is also dictated by how many days in the week I get to train the athlete.

If you get the athlete more often, you can be more creative with the maxes. This would be similar to the conjugated system. We know that, as athletes get fitter, jumps in fitness come slower and less often.

I want to take advantage of a bump as soon as it takes place, not a week later!! This is really important and the reason I like notes. With notes, you can immediately go back and see what the last max lift was and the date it was executed. You will also start to see patterns in the time between max lifts for different athletes. I start with a check-in set, which is typically reps. I want to see how the athlete feels, and it is also a way to reduce injuries. The more days of the week the athlete trains, the lower the rep count can be on this set as the athlete is more in tune with how they feel.

If you have bigger gaps between workouts, you may do two of these sets. You could look at this as a warm-up to the bigger lift to follow. If I see any issues with form or if the athlete just feels weak, we progress accordingly. If my objective is to get an overload with a heavy lift, then I want to get there as soon as possible so I do not hinder my ability to overload with too many preceding sets and too much volume.

Some athletes are more comfortable with bigger jumps in weight. The next set will typically be six to eight reps. I like the range of two reps as it gives me, my coaches, and the athlete some flexibility and still feel success.

I always tell my athletes that I want to target the lower rep range if possible. This means that the sixth rep should be about all that they can accomplish. If you see that it is too light, do not do more reps. Just make a bigger jump on the next set, so as not to add unnecessary fatigue that may compromise you getting an overload.

My next set is typically three to five reps and the last set is two to three reps. Each set will have a bump in weight with the target in mind. The range of the reps gives us some flexibility in targeting. Do not discount the smaller increases as having little value. On endurance days, the smaller increases are also of great importance and are sometimes overlooked.

You want the increase in total volume on these days, and you must allow the body to get the weight on the bar. This method requires the coach to be more observant of the athlete in the lift, or to educate the athlete on the goal of the rep scheme and progression if the coach is not there to add value and monitor them.

I have seen great technical coaches get poor performance results from their athletes because of poor progressions. You need less Instagram moments and more focus on what really adds value and cannot be seen in a photo.

My belief is that, with a few solid exercises and great progressions, you will make much greater improvements faster than with any other form of training. It is a dynamic process that requires a coach to pay attention and figure out ways to lead the athlete to obtain the greatest overloads without injury or overtraining.

More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. He began his career in fitness training as an elite athlete. He competed as a wrestler in both high school and college, ran cross country and track, played lacrosse, practiced martial arts, and competed in both mountain bike and road bike races.

His primary foundation of training was wrestling, which requires great functional fitness and a good understanding of body composition and nutrition. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Please contact the developer of this form processor to improve this message. Even though the server responded OK, it is possible the submission was not processed. Friend's Email Address. Your Name. Your Email Address. Send Email. Properly timed progressions are the quickest way for athletes to make gains, says jdevore1. Click To Tweet My experience has shown me that properly timed progressions are the quickest way for my athletes to make gains.

Without incremental overloads on a regular basis, an athlete will make little progress, says jdevore1. Click To Tweet Keeping that in mind, what have I seen as one of the greatest influencers on really fast results without injury?

When, Where, and How to Progress Athletes After high school, athletes today have short off-seasons but you may find blocks of training time that are long enough for you to make an impact. Proper progressions are like compounding interest for retirement, increasing in value over time, says jdevore1. Click To Tweet Any unproductive time is costly. When progressing an athlete, you need to consider these factors: Time: How much time do you have to train the athlete?

Maturity: How long has the athlete been training at this level? Chronological age: This will have an impact on recovery time.

It does not mean an older athlete cannot recover quickly, but you need to keep age in mind. Recovery and adaptation time: This is more of an individualized evaluation.

The fitter the athlete, the more important the progression. An unfit athlete will make gains quickly with most types of stimulus. However, the fitter athlete must have a more focused design. Not only is the participant learning how to control a new movement while stabilizing, they now have to coordinate total-body mechanics in something like a squat to row! Again, seems easy but it is demanding to the nervous system. See also this blog on push up progressions , which use these same principles.

Armed with this new progression knowledge, how do we categorize and design a program with the proper progressions? Fortunately, all the tough work for these simple progressions in stability and complexity has been done. This continuum is designed to modify the stability and complexity to improve neuromuscular efficiency, stabilization and functional strength. To help everything make more sense and to better explain when to progress , we are going to use an example and include the neural continuum.

According to the continuum, Bob should begin by standing on the floor, with both legs planted, and both arms working at the same time. This is stable, the center of gravity is not moving much in reference to the base of support, and both arms are moving at the same time, in the same direction and at the same speed, so there is not a high level of complexity.

The 2-for-2 Rule suggests that if a client can perform 2 extra repetitions on 2 sets with perfect form , then they should be progressed. To progress Bob, we are going to begin by making changes to the variables on the right of the chart. Therefore, Bob will perform the chest press by still standing on the floor on both legs, but now with arms alternating. As you will notice, Bob will briefly go back to the cognitive phase by slowing down and concentrating.

If Bob is an experienced exerciser, he will quickly move back into the associative phase , maybe even within a set or two. Again, when Bob satisfies the 2-for-2 Rule, we progress him according to the chart. Now, Bob is standing on the floor with both legs planted and performing a single-arm chest press. Once Bob makes it through the upper body progressions, then we may begin changing the lower body, which begins to significantly alter stability e.

After all the lower body progressions are made, then we may begin changing the surface which he is standing on. We want to be careful not to change more than one variable at a time.

When we make a major change moving from two legs to a single-leg stance, for example , the other variables will go back to basic. For example, Bob may never stand on a Dyna Disc for his chest press, and that is perfectly acceptable. Many of these will be progressed through very quickly. It is not uncommon for me to take a client through several of the upper body progressions within their very first exercise session!

Remember the phases of learning: If Bob can do it while he is explaining the details of the weekend barbecue, then it may be a waste of his time and he needs to move on to the next challenge. All of this explanation and research, together, can be synthesized into 3 questions to ask before progressing a client:.

Program design is one of the more challenging yet rewarding aspects of personal training. Learning how and when to make proper progressions may take some time and practice, but it will make each training session much more rewarding. Progressions should be used as a way to help your client reach their goals, improve overall movement patterns, and have some fun.