Individualizing a Training Plan

Many prospective clients come in through our doors and wonder, “how will you make the exercises/training specific to me?” It’s a fair question and one we try to explain well before starting a training program.

Why do we need to individualize programs-can’t we find the exercises that work and have everybody do them? And if not, how do we go about choosing exercises and designing a program that is appropriate for each individual?

The simple answer to the first set of questions is an emphatic “No”, we can’t give the same exercises to everyone. This is what leads to hilarious-if-not-cringe worthy YouTube videos of inappropriate exercises given to ill-prepared clients and expecting the client to make the decision that it’s too intense. To me, this is poor coaching.

There are really no good or bad exercises-only good and bad applications of the exercise to each individual. People are often frustrated when they ask me if a certain exercise is good…my response is almost always, “it depends.” It’s not a cop-out. It’s the truth. Let’s take a quick look into what goes into choosing exercises.

Quick how-to on individualizing programs:

There are three main factors to look at before sitting down to write a program:
1. Injury & Health History/Movement quality (based on assessment)
2. Exercise History
3. Individual Goals

For me, every exercise, movement pattern and set & rep scheme is on the table when someone walks through the door. Once information is collected based on these three categories I can start weeding out certain movements (say, overhead pressing for those that tend to impinge easily, or have poor shoulder mobility).

The same is true for sets and reps; until I know your specific goal the sets and reps are hard to choose. If your goal is simply strength it would make no sense to have you performing workouts in the 15-20 rep range on a regular basis. Conversely, if your goal is strictly fat loss we wouldn’t be spending much time working in the 1-4 range very often.

I’ve had young athletes in the past get a little confused when they see athletes in other sports doing similar or the same exercises. I try to explain that most exercise is not sport-specific but rather species-specific. I stole this from Gray Cook, co-creator of the Functional Movement Screen. From a general training perspective, especially for those with less than 2 years of training experience, movements and exercises will be very general with individualization coming from elimination of movements and exercises along with sound programming from a volume and intensity standpoint.
So, two of you may have the same limitations from an injury history/movement quality standpoint but one may have 3 years of training to fall back on while the other is a complete newbie. In this case, exercise choice (movement patterns) will be very similar but sets/reps & intensity will vary.

The same holds true for metabolic work. Exercises will be similar person-to-person but the work and rest times will vary based on work capacity and ability to recover.

Every exercise we choose has a goal and is based on your ability to do them correctly (if we can’t, we regress) and pain free. So next time you’re trying to choose an exercise, ask yourself what the goal is of doing that specific move is. Does this accomplish that goal? If not it probably doesn’t fit in to your individual program, while it may be perfectly fine for another. If you’re not sure, ask!