The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Program Design

Last Updated on April 6, 2013 by Jimson Lee

This article was Guest Blogged by Alwyn Cosgrove, founder of Results Fitness in Santa Clarita, CA. I first met Alwyn 7 years ago, and his resume would take an entire post!

Earlier, he wrote Top Ten Training Tips for Athletic Conditioning Success

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Program Design:
A Unified Theory of Fitness Programming

The Legacy of Bruce Lee

“Absorb what is useful; reject what is useless.”
– Bruce Lee, 1940-1973

For those of you who’ve been living under a rock for the past thirty years, Bruce Lee was (and is still) the most well know martial artist that has ever lived. Bruce Lee died in 1973. That was over 31 years ago, yet he arguably has made a bigger impact on the martial arts world than any other single individual.

To understand what Lee meant by his “absorb what is useful” statement, we need to go back to the martial arts world of the late 1960’s. In Lee’s day, martial artists practiced only one discipline: karate fighters performed karate, judo athletes did judo, etc. Cross training in different martial arts was unheard of. Yet that was what Lee meant by this statement. In learning the best that the different martial arts had to offer, he formulated the first ever “mixed” martial art – his own system which he called Jeet Kune Do.

Fast forward to the mid-nineties and the advent of the Ultimate Fighting Championships. This event pitted the best of each martial art against each other. Initially, the overwhelming dominant art was Brazilian Jiujutsu, so people assumed grappling was superior. But within a few years the dominant fighters came from kickboxing. Did that mean striking was superior? Not necessarily. In the next wave, wrestlers using a “ground and pound” philosophy dominated.

Today, in order to compete in these types of events (in fact, to even survive), you need to cross-train in several systems. There are fighters nowadays who’ve never learned anything but a mixed system. This approach has been dubbed “Mixed Martial Arts” and has become a mainstream term.

Thirty years since his death, Bruce Lee’s message has finally gotten through to the masses: There’s no single correct answer; there’s no single best system. An integrated approach will always be superior.

The Unified Theory

Unfortunately, the search for the best “system” still continues in the fitness training industry. Years ago, aerobic training was the dominant training modality. We’ve cycled through weight training, Nautilus training, machine training, one-set-to-failure, multiple sets, functional training, yoga, Pilates, back to free weights, kettlebells, strongman lifts, and the list goes on.

The reality? There’s no correct answer or single best system in fitness training either! Instead of trying to find the perfect single tool, the fitness professional or avid gym-goer would be better served by increasing the size of his toolbox.

That said, I’m sure this message will fall on deaf ears. So until you can accept the premise that you need to “liberate yourself from the classical mess” (another Bruce Lee line), I present my Unified Theory of Program Design. We’ve recently seen a plethora of advanced program design concepts, but this is a “back to basics” program design article.

The interesting thing is that coaches and trainers with different philosophies analyze each others programs and focus (or more appropriately, argue) on the differences. Yet if you look at the top coaches and what they’re doing, you can see certain programming similarities across the board, regardless of the “type” of training they prescribe.

It’s been said that small minds talk about people; mediocre minds talk about events; and great minds discuss concepts. In my opinion, small-minded trainers argue about whose program or style of training is the best, and mediocre trainers debate the differences between programs. Great trainers, however, cast aside the differences and see the common underlying similarities.

It’s the same as punching in fighting sports. Regardless of the differences in approach, what it all comes down to is using the knuckles of the fist as a weapon. Once you strip away the differences we get to the heart of what works. That’s the stuff I’m going to present to you.

It’s these similarities “the common underlying successful denominators” that I’ve chosen to focus on. So regardless of your personal training philosophy, the principles I’m about to present remain valid.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Program Design

1. Bodyweight Before External Resistance

I’ve said this before in a bunch of articles. Other coaches and trainers have said this before in a bunch of their articles. Yet this remains the step that most people will ignore. Regardless of your goals, one thing is for sure: You have no freaking business using a load if you can’t stabilize, control, and move efficiently using only your bodyweight!

Unless your bodyweight is way too much or way too little resistance, then there’s very little room for external loading. This is not to say that external loading isn’t important. Of course it is, but it has definitely been overemphasized.

Unless you can perform twenty pushups in good from, get your ass off the bench press. Too easy? The same rule applies to the single leg squat. If you can’t perform 8-10 good reps, then why are you using two legs to squat with external load?

2. Train with Free Weights (Destabilized)

Once bodyweight has been mastered, the superiority of three dimensional free weight training is unparalleled. Single joint fixed axis machines “like the leg extension and the preacher curl machine” are quite honestly outdated. Other than rotational movements, which can be trained effectively using a cable column, every other movement can be performed better with bodyweight or a free weight rather than with a machine.

The newest trend from the machine companies is to create thousand dollar machines that replicate free weights! Save your money. Despite the advances in technology and in drug use, I think the average trainee’s strength and size is less than in the past.

3. Train Functionally

“Functional” means training for performance, not for the “pump” or standing on a ball or some other activity. Multiple joint lifts and combination lifts such as the squat and press are all real world functional activities.

Life and sport take place primarily on our feet. It’s how we were designed to work. Our training programs need to reflect that. It seems to me that I’ve said this a thousand times, but it doesn’t make it any less true: a muscle group allocation is pointless. Why would the muscles of the chest need their own “day” for training? If you split up the body into parts, how do you decide what parts to include?

Typically we see splits of chest, shoulders and triceps, back and biceps, and legs. Why don’t we see splits like rhomboids and hip flexors, quadriceps and rotator cuff, sternocleidomastoid and pec minor? Because that wouldn’t make bodybuilding “sense.” But in my opinion, any split routine based on a random allocation of muscle groups to certain days of the week defies all logic.

Consider the following example: Hold a dumbbell in your right hand and raise your arm out to the side until it’s parallel with the floor (a position known as a lateral raise in the fitness world!) Which muscles are working? The classic answer is the medial deltoid and the trapezius.

True. But maintain this position and just touch your obliques on the left side with your free hand. They’re contracting maximally in order to stabilize your torso and spine, thus preventing you from tipping over. So the oblique has to contract so hard in order to stabilize your entire upper body (plus your arm and the dumbbell) that it becomes clear that this exercise forces more work from the oblique muscles, the tensor fascia lata, and the quadratus lumborum than it can from the medial deltoid!

So is it still a shoulder exercise? Or is it a total core and shoulder exercise? What body part day is this movement supposed to be trained on? Hopefully this helps you realize that the body will always work as a unit.

And I don’t mean to “bag” on bodybuilding. One can’t help but be impressed by top athletes in any sport. But the fact that it is a sport is also an important thing to remember. Bodybuilding is a unique sport unto itself. For the general fitness enthusiast (i.e. not a competitive bodybuilder) to develop and implement a fitness program using bodybuilding theory and bodybuilding type exercises makes as much sense as using soccer training or racquetball to design that same program. And while most people recognize that this is idiotic at best, we still continue to talk about splitting up “body parts” and following a bodybuilding-based program.

Now, that’s not to say we don’t use exercises or ideas from all sports and systems (remember, absorb what is useful…) To do so would be closed-minded. But to adopt any one single philosophy is just as closed-minded.

If you rank an athlete’s qualities for their sport from 1-10 on a scale and find that they have a very poor flexibility score but a very good maximal strength score, then a strength based program may not be the best choice. Similarly, if my client is a golfer, a powerlifting specific program isn’t warranted.

Again, we need to train according to the demands of life and sport. Athletes such as Serena Williams, Brandi Chastain, Linford Christie, Pyrros Dimas and Roy Jones have better physiques than most, but they’ve never trained for aesthetics; they’ve trained for function

4. Train Unilaterally and Multi-Planar

The majority of training programs take place in the sagittal plane (an imaginary “line” which divides the body into left and right halves – all pushing and pulling movements occur in this plane) with bilateral movements such as barbell bench presses and barbell curls that work in that plane. However, life and sport takes place in all three planes simultaneously with primarily unilateral or single-arm loaded movements

It isn’t uncommon to see a fitness trainer spend an inordinate amount of time teaching a beginner to squat with a perfectly parallel stance and perfectly even loading. Yet watch that same client load his gym bag over one shoulder and walk to his car, where he gets in using an offset loaded, single leg rotational squat! Or move boxes in his garage with an offset stance and a rotational reach. We all have the story of the jacked guy who blew out his back helping you move a couch. Just be aware of real life function.

Below is a table of the entire “core musculature” (from Dr. Evan Osar’s Form and Function). As you can see, the majority of the core muscle fibers run at an oblique angle. Sagittal divides the body into left and right halves; frontal divides the body into front and back halves (side to side movements); and transverse divides the body into top and bottom (for rotational movement).

For the last 3 tips, go to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Program Design on his website.

About the Author

Alwyn Cosgrove is one of the most in-demand and exciting coaches, writers and speakers in the fitness industry today. He currently spends his time lecturing, teaching, training and writing and as the owner of Results Fitness in Santa Clarita, CA.