Training Program Development Essay, Research Paper

For the past year I have been hitting the gym five days a week, while taking the

weekend off. I started training in the gym sophomore year of high school, but I

quickly realized that my personal training routine was not a very good one.

After searching through many magazines and talking to people around the gym I

realized that there is no perfect routine, nothing is carved in stone when it

comes to lifting. The key to lifting I have found is doing what feels best. That

means that your personal routine should make you feel comfortable about training

and it should make you want to keep training. The article I have read emphasizes

this has a very important part of training, but the two most important factors

that it talks about are that any program should be performed consistently and

progressively. The article states three things that help contribute to a program

that maintains consistency and progression. These three things are frequency,

volume, and intensity. Recovering from a work out is the single most important

thing, because it determines how far and long you are capable of lifting.

Frequency has a lot to due with this. For a person in high school or in college,

the article says to work out three times per week. However many people in the

gym are out of school, they have real jobs and real responsibilities. For them

the article recommends two workouts per week. Weight training two to three times

a week will give your body the physical time it needs in order to recover from

lifting. The article states very clearly that the goal of training is to

stimulate the body and not to torture the body. This article brings a very good

point up about how much training that a person should do. Volume has this is

called is based on the number of exercises you do, the number of sets, and the

amount of rest time in between sets. Time is a very important issue when it

comes to volume. Its really all about keeping a good pace during a workout, with

a 4-5 minutes between live sets. In all a good workout should take about 1 hour,

this includes aerobic exercise also. The article also states what kind of

exercises that a person should do. For the upper body it says (bench press,

overhead press, dip), a pulling movement (row, pulldown, high pull), and

crunches for the abs. For the legs the article says (squat, deadlift, leg

press). Many people go into the gym and try to almost kill themselves. This is

where the question of how much intensity should be used in a training program

comes in. The author of this article has a clear opinion on this touchy subject.

He suggests that a person should train until they may have one last rep in them.

This way he feels you will not completely burn out the muscle, ruining the rest

of your program. This really is true because the goal of lifting is to lift more

each time not to go till failure. I really feel that this article can help a lot

of people who are trying to get started in a training program. I fell that to

many people just jump right into lifting blindly. By this I mean that they

really have only one goal in mind, and that is just to get big. When really they

should have quite a few such as how often do they want to lift, how much do they

want to lift, and how hard are they willing to train for what they want.