Exercise programmes are far from rocket science, yet there seems to be a huge amount of misinformation and misunderstanding when it comes to successfully prescribing exercise programmes. In this article I will talk through the key principles that underpin the programme's algorithm and successful long term programme design.

Why Are Principles So Important?

Principles underpin all the decisions we make when we are designing exercise programmes. They are the rationale behind why we select an exercise, why we increase a certain weight, etc. There is a huge amount difference between each individual when it comes to resistance training, yet all the decisions around training will be based upon the same principles.

The Key Principles of Training for Health

Overload, Stress

When we exercise, we place an overload on the body—this can also be called stress. This stress creates an adaptation. When designing training programmes, we are striving to provide enough stress to create an adaptation but not so much stress that we create high levels of fatigue that prevent future training sessions or increase the chance of injury. A successful training programme will drip-feed a correct amount of stress in order to create adaptations over the long term; a bad programme will either not create enough stress or create too much stress.

The principle of overload will be crucial when making decisions around exercise selection, weight selection, and repetition selection. It is crucial to find the sweet spot of stress in order to make progress.

Progressive Overload

Overload is key to progress, as is progressive overload. Progressive overload is where we increase the stress (overload) placed upon the body slowly over time. This can be from increasing the different variables that make up intensity, including load, session volume, and training frequency. Progressive overload will dictate your long-term progress towards a goal. I have gone into a great deal of detail on progressive overload in this article if you are interested in the finer details of how it can be applied to training.

Specificity

Specificity is a key principle of resistance training. Specificity means that we get better at what we are training—our adaptations are specific to the demands we are placing upon the body. This is a very simple principle and yet it is often forgotten when designing exercise programmes. If you want to get good at running you need to run, if you want to get strong you need to lift heavy weights, and if you want to lose weight you need to organise your energy balance. If you are prescribing exercises that do not orientate you or your clients to specific goals, then you are failing to follow the principle of specificity and are not making the desired adaptations.

When we are training for health, the specificity principle is very important, as we will be striving to develop a strong full body and not putting emphasis on a specific muscle group. Specificity helps us aim the arrow in the correct direction.

Work–Rest Cycle

The work–rest cycle is all about dealing with fatigue from the stress placed upon our bodies. When we exercise, we place stress upon our bodies as noted above, but this stress needs appropriate recovery in both the short and the long term.

If a key component of health is VO2 max and high-intensity interval training is a very effective way of increasing VO2 max, then surely it would be an excellent idea to do HIIT every day? Absolutely not. This is because HIIT creates high levels of stress, and doing it every day would be far too much stress over the long term for the body to deal with. The same could be said for performing heavy deadlifts every day. We need to design exercise programmes in such a way that they allow for the mitigation of fatigue, both in the long term and the short term.

This means that when designing a week of training, there needs to be this idea of work and rest built into the week. It also means that periods of deload will need to be performed after completing a training cycle.

Reversibility

Finally, we are going to discuss the very unfortunate principle of reversibility. This is the principle that makes health a long-term pursuit and not a one-time goal. Reversibility is the principle that dictates that when a physiological system is not stressed, it diminishes. When we stop lifting weights, we lose muscle mass and strength. When we stop doing cardiovascular training, our VO2 max reduces. This is why consistency is the most important training variable of them all.

Final Thoughts

These principles come together to create successful long-term adaptation. There will be a lot of road bumps in your journey to health, but the key is to make sure that they are just that—brief periods of difficulty—and not long-term cessation of the goal of being a healthy individual.