How to split your training across the week.
This blog is aimed at giving you the knowledge on how to break your training down across the week in order to reap the most benefit. It's common practice in bodybuilding to break the body down into parts and train those parts on certain days to avoid over training the same muscles, but with the rise in popularity of a ‘functional fitness’ training program, the understanding of how you should program your days has become more and more misunderstood. For example in a typical bodybuilding program your training week might look something like this:
Monday - Chest and Triceps
Tuesday - Back and Biceps
Wednesday - Legs
Thursday - Shoulders and Arms
Friday - Low Intensity Cardio and Abs
Weekends off.
You would typically do 3-5 exercises per muscle group and generally keep anywhere in the rep ranges of 6-12 for 3-5 sets. When you start looking at a functional fitness training program all of sudden there are far more variables to consider, you might want to do some aerobic fitness work, get stronger, learn a new skill such as kipping pull ups, build muscle in areas of weakness, learn how to weightlift and then throw in some super high intensity interval training. There is a huge can of worms here and some of these training modalities don't lend themselves very well to each other, for example it might seem counterintuitive to be following a running or rowing program whilst trying to improve your 1rm deadlift but as we’ve seen from the explosion in Crossfit, the body is capable or many things all at once but putting the pieces of the puzzle together is the tricky part.
In the following example we are going to create a hypothetical character who wants to train within a more ‘functional fitness’ methodology and look at how we can plan out their week. I must mention that each person will have individual goals and these can be manipulated into the program as needed, this guide is just imagining we have a client who wants to get a little bit better at everything.
Start with a base
The three fundamentals need to be:
Sound levels of mobility
High aerobic capacity
High levels of strength
These three will offer the most value to any program as firstly, having the ability to perform all the necessary movements pain free is the number one goal, far too often people rush to the sexy stuff - overhead squats, handstand and muscle ups without first addressing the mobility restrictions they have, often causing injury or developing poor technique. Second, high aerobic capacity you will allow you to recover quicker, have a bigger output in cardio workouts and aerobic capacity decreases the slowest out of all the energy systems so if you were to take time off, making sure your aerobic base is high will allow you to keep your fitness for a longer period of time. Third, adopting the mindset of ‘strength is never a weakness’ is paramount, you must be strong at each joint to prevent injury and the higher levels of strength you have you will in turn develop your skills in weightlifting and gymnastics much quicker.
The next step is to incorporate your skill based work such as double unders, handstand positioning, hanging exercises (toes to bar, pull up variants) and ring work. For a person training in a commercial gym setting some of these may not be necessary and some people won't be interested in or even need to learn how to handstand or do a bar muscle up but what I’ve found is, having a skill element to your training allows you have more ‘fun’ with your workouts. Constantly just rowing and lifting can get boring but learning a new skill can really spice up your sessions and give you added motivation, so I’d recommend picking something within your capabilities to work towards.
Finally the high intensity intervals and the high intensity workouts that are for time can be added in. I place these last for several reasons, most people new to exercise cannot and should not perform maximal work until their base fitness has increased. It can be unsafe and isnt needed to improve. Also some maximal effort workouts have high levels of skill involved, doing kipping pull ups, snatches and double unders under high fatigue is very hard and if you haven’t got these movements nailed under no fatigue there is no way you should be doing them at near maximum heart rate, it will lead to break down in form and potential risk of injury. Don't be too quick to start throwing these movements in to make the workouts more fun, you can reap the benefits of the intended stimulus by scaling the movements right back.
Plan your week
So now we’ve covered the components of a functional fitness program, let's slot them into a week. Remember this can be chopped and changed but this is just an example of how to get the most out of your sessions and your body.
Monday - skill practice 20 minutes + 40 minutes low intensity aerobic work.
Tuesday - weightlifting 30 minutes + 30 minutes strength
Wednesday - aerobic work 60 minutes
Thursday - rest + some light mobility
Friday - skill practice 20 minutes + 40 minutes high intensity interval training
Saturday - weightlifting 30 minutes + 30 minutes strength
Sunday - rest
This weekly model shows 5 days training with 2 days off with some stretching and mobility on the rest day, I would always incorporate mobility work into the warm up of every session so you will accumulate around 60 minutes a week through that. Here's a breakdown on time spent on each component:
Mobility - 60 minutes (10 minutes each day with Sunday off)
Aerobic - 100 minutes
Strength/weightlifting - 120 minutes
Skill practice - 40 minutes
High intensity intervals - 40 minutes
The idea is that at the start of the week and after having a rest practice your skills, you want to be able to perform these with the best form you can, under the least fatigue possible, you also start the week with some aerobic work so you dont kill yourself on a Monday. Next you practice your weightlifting and perform your strength work whilst still not under too much stress from the day before, on Wednesday you complete a long cardio workout as you will and should be sore from the strength work on the previous day. Having Thursday off allows you to rest up ready for 2 tough sessions at the tail end of the week and get some mobility work in that you may require. Friday you are recovered so we practice our skills again and then hit some high intensity work after, you can leave it all on the floor here knowing your intensity is going to be lower over the weekend. And finally on a Saturday perform more weightlifting/strength work to finish off the week, you won't be firing at 100% as Friday should have been tough but knowing you have Sunday completely off you can squeeze those extra few reps out. Every 3-6 weeks we would alter the intensity of each session through increasing weights, reps, rpe and also back off periodically to recover.
Final thoughts
To conclude having a plan for your week is key to maximizing your gains from each session, remember this plan is kept as generic as possible but it highlights a system that can be used to reap high reward. Understanding the reasons for doing different types of training is key in developing the strongest, fittest and most mobile you, if you just keep repeating the same over and over again you will soon hit a brick wall and never move forward through it.
If you need help organizing your training program don't hesitate to reach out.
Jon.
