Program Design

Michael Conroy, USA Weightlifting Director of Coaching Education International Coach

Goals
One of the greatest challenges that a coach faces is to develop a program that allows the athlete to improve their performance. While no single program is the answer to every athletes goal, every program should be based upon sound principles that are known to produce results. All programs should include the following goals: 1. Improve Performance 2. Increase Work Capacity 3. Correct Technique Training can produce two things: Improvement or Collapse. When coaches understand the principals of training and incorporate them properly, improvement can be maximized and collapse minimized.

General Concerns
When developing programs the following concerns need to be addressed. Time: How much time, both per day and per week can the athlete devote to training? It is important to realize that younger athletes and novice athletes cannot train at the same level as adult or experienced athletes. Programs must me modified to meet these concerns. Athlete Level: What type of innate ability does the athlete possess? The selection of exercises and progressions are an important factor in developing confidence in an athlete. Writing programs that athletes cannot complete serves little purpose, as the athlete will become disenchanted, making training even more difficult. X Factor: What is the athletes motivation? Understanding the athletes personal goals is an important factor when writing programs. Those athletes, whose desire to achieve is high, will certainly respond to intense training with more enthusiasm than the less motivated athlete will.

Rational of Program Design

USA Weightlifting has spent a great deal of time researching, developing and readapting training programs that fit into the American lifestyle. The program listed below has proved successful in developing beginning weightlifters into competitive athletes.
The program is based upon sound principles of progressive overload, active rest, and neuromuscular adaptation. These programs are designed to improve the performance of competitive weightlifters and as such the concepts of Volume, Intensity, and Duration have been modified to produce such a result. These programs will not look, at all, like the programs seen in fitness centers, health clubs, or muscle magazines. The reason that they dont is because, once again, these programs are designed for competitive weightlifters and must meet the demands of that sport.

Terms
Volume: The amount of work attempted in a program Intensity: The level, or difficulty, of work attempted. Duration: The number of sessions, or length of a session Repetitions: The number of successive movements performed in an exercise Sets: A group of repetitions performed after a period of rest Micro Cycle: The daily program Mini Cycle: The weekly program Meso Cycle: The monthly program

Macro Cycle: The yearly program All training should be purposeful. That means that all training, from daily to yearly, has a reason to it. Each cycle should have definite goals and should fit, smoothly, into the next cycle. Coaches should understand that training programs are templates and not etched in stone. If an athlete has a tendency to miss jerks, after cleans, the coach will need to place in more overhead movements in order to make the correction. If athletes are showing fatigue modifications in the volume and or intensity should be made. One of the great challenges that a coach must meet is to adapt programs to the needs of each, individual athlete.

Compilation Principles for Daily Program Design

In putting together a schedule of lifts and exercises for each days training the following principles should be kept in mind. 1. Always warm up thoroughly. 2. Include lifts demanding high skill levels early on in the training session. 3. Include high skill fast movements before slower strength building movements. 4. Short or partial movements should be done towards the end of a session. 5. Try to alternate pulling with pushing movements, where possible 6. Try to get two snatch movements and two clean & jerk movements per week. 7. Try to include a competitive lift or lift related movement, and overhead or jerk movement, a leg movement, a pull movement, a lower back and abdominal movement in each training session. 8. With beginners try to give a great deal of variety with the lifts and exercises, without a lot of volume. The program example, given below, follows the principles listed above. There are example of both three-day a week programs and four-day a week programs. It should be noted that these examples are general in nature. That is, this program is used for athlete progressing at an acceptable rate without any major flaws in technique in either of the competition lifts. The letters, listed after each exercise, will be explained in the section on Training Planing.

General Training Program Examples

Exercises (3 sessions per week)

Day One Day Three

Warm-up and stretching stretch Snatch: (A) Snatch Pull: (C) Neck Jerk: (A) (B) Back Squat: (B) Goodmornings Goodmornings Work Abdominal Work Plyometrics

Day Two
Warm-up and stretching Cleans: (A) Clean Pulls: (C) Rack Jerk: (A) Front Squat: (B) Goodmornings Abdominal Work Agility Drills Abdominal Plyometrics Warm-up & Snatch: (A) C & J: (A) Back Squat:

Exercises (4 sessions per week) Day One Day Two Four Warm-up Warm-up Warm-up Snatch: (A) Clean: (A) J: (A) Snatch Pull: (C) Clean Pull: (C) Neck Jerk: (A) Rack Jerk: (A) Back Squat: (B) Goodmornings Abdominal Work Plyometrics Front Squat: (B) Goodmornings Abdominal Work Agility Drills

Day Three Warm-up Snatch:(A) Snatch Pull:(C) Push Press: (A)

Day

C& Clean Pull: (C) Front Squat: (B)

Back Squat:(B) Goodmornings Goodmornings Abdominal Work Abdominal Work Agility Drills Plyometrics

Training Plans
In order to insure that ongoing progress and development of both strength and skill occurs a program must have in it times of work and times of recovery. Programs

that do not include recovery phases will result in a collapse of both strength and skill. Programs that do not have phases of intensity will fail to produce improvement. The program listed below has elements of both work and rest, over a 13 week period that help to produce the results of both improved performance and increased work capacity. Exercises have been placed into 3 categories. A lifts are the competition lifts, and their related movements. B lifts are squatting movements and C lifts are pulling movements. If progress is to occur the proper amount of time and effort must be placed upon each category. When working an A lift priority must be given to proper execution. It does the athlete no good to become stronger and stronger in an improper movement. Athletes should perform because of their technique, not in spite of it. As the barbell gets heavier all the athletes focus, and energy, should be on performing the lift correctly. Performing sets with repetitions of 3, 2, and 1 help keep technique in its best form. Remember in competition the athlete only has to pick the barbell up once. B lifts are squat movements. Here the focus is strength. Muscular and neuromuscular strength are best developed when repetitions are kept to 5 and below. When repetitions increase beyond 5 the strength developed moves more towards endurance and hypertrophy training. While this type of training my have some purpose for general development it is not sport specific to the needs of a weightlifter.

C lifts are pulls and shrugs. Studies here have produced a wide debate, all the way from doing them with incredible amounts of weight above an athletes maximum lift, to not doing them at all. For the purpose of developing the beginning lifter pulls are very important and therefore important to do correctly. The rational for doing pulls the way listed in this program comes from an article done by the Finnish Weightlifting Federation. (Komi, Viitasalo, Hakkinen and Kauhanen 1984) In this article the Finns recognized that when a significant amount of weight, more than 20% of what was lifted that day, was added to a pull this pull did not look like the pull phase of a lift. They found that pulls where slower and had a greater lateral displacement than the pull phase of an actual lift. They suggested that an athlete only perform pulls at a weight, and for repetitions, that allowed the pull movement to mimic the pull phase of a lift. C lifts need to demonstrate a balance between strength development and technical execution. The program below has been given the name Supercompensation as it allows the athlete to compensate periods of high intensity with periods of rest. This program is the result of work done by Lyn Jones, National Coaching Director, USAW, Dr. Michael Stone, Dr. Jay Kerney and Dr. Andy Fry, of the USAWs Sports Science Committee

as well as the efforts of National Junior Coach John Thrush and his National Junior Squads. With all training programs, the key to success is the cyclical variance of the volume and the intensity. Matveyves principle of progressing from high volume and low intensity to low volume and high intensity, with built in periods of recovery, is the basis of the following program. Special Note: Listed below are the target sets. Athletes are expected to complete 3-5 warmup sets prior to the target sets

I. Cycle one (Volume) In this cycle emphasis is place upon preparing the athlete for the work that lay ahead. This phase is also known as a target phase cycle. This means that after an athlete warms up they are to perform multiple sets and repetitions at the same weight.

a) Week One (Base week) 1) A lifts are done 3/3 at 70% 2) B lifts are done 3/5 at 70% 3) C lifts are done 3/5 at 70% +10kg b) Week Two (Volume week) 1) A lifts are 5/3 at 75% 2) B lifts are 5/5 at 75% 3) C lifts are 5/5 at 75% + 10kg c) Week Three (Compensation week) 1) A lifts are 2/3 at 65% 2) B lifts are 2/5 at 65% 3) C lifts are 2/5 at 65% +10kg

d) Week Four (Performance week) 1) A lifts are 2/3 at 80% 2) B lifts are 3/5 at 80% 3) C lifts are 3/5 at 80% +10kg II) Cycle Two (Strength Development) In this phase the athlete continues to use the target set philosophy. There are changes in both the volume and the intensity as the athlete attempts to develop the strength necessary to improve performance. a) Week One (Base week) 1) A lifts are 3/2 at 75% 2) B lifts are 3/3 at 75% 3) C lifts are 3/3 at 75% + 10kg b) Week Two (Volume week) 1) A lifts are 5/2 at 85% 2) B lifts are 5/3 at 85% 3) C lifts are 5/3 at 85% + 10kg

c) Week Three (Compensation week) 1) A lifts are 2/2 at 70% 2) B lifts are 2/3 at 70% 3) C lifts are 2/3 at 70% + 10kg d) Week Four (Performance week) 1) A lifts are 2/2 at 90% 2) B lifts are 2/3 at 90% 3) C lifts are 2/3 at 90% + 10kg

III) Cycle Three (Neuromuscular or Performance Training) In this phase the program changes to Segment training. In this type of training the athlete performs sets and repetitions at an increasing weight and then repeats that entire segment. The reason is that this training best mimics what can occur in competition. It is not uncommon, that in competition, after an athlete takes their opening attempt they fall back into the rotation in such a way that it may be 5 to 10 minutes before they go out for their second attempt. Segment training conditions the athlete to go back into the warm-up and perform a lift (usually at 80% of their next attempt) in order to keep themselves mentally and physically prepared for the task at hand.

Experienced coaches and athletes can attest to the successfulness of this type of training. a) Week One (Base week) 1) A lifts (75%/2,80%/2,85%/2)2 2) B lifts are 3/2 at 85% 3) C lifts are 3/2 at 85% + 10kg b) Week Two (Volume week) 1) A lifts (85%/1,90%/1, 95%/1)2 2) B lifts are 5/2 at 95% c) C lifts are 5/2 at 95% + 10kg c) Week Three (Compensation week) 1) A lifts are (70%/2,75%/2,80%/2) 2) B lifts are 2/2 at 80% 3) C lifts are 2/2 at 80% + 10kg d) Week Four (Performance week) 1) A lifts are (90%/1,95%/1,100%/1)2 2) B lifts are 2/2 at 100% 3) C lifts are 2/2 at 100% + 10kg

IV) Performance Week ( A loose example. Every athlete prepares differently and the coach and athlete need to work together to develop the final week.) Day One Snatch: (80%/1)3 C & J: (80%/1)3 Day Two Snatch Pulls: (100%/3)3 Clean Pulls: (100%/3)3 Bk. Squat: (80%/3)3

Day Three Snatch: (70%/1)3 C & J: (70%/1)3 Day Four or Five Competition

The nice thing about this program is that it has built in check points. An athlete can see progress from Volume Cycles, to Performance Cycles. The athlete now has relative maxes for 5s, 3s and doubles. Goals can be set, during the next cycle, to increase relative maxes by 2.5 kilograms and such.

By changing the intensity each week, and making the assumption that as the intensity increases the athlete will need more warm-up sets prior to reaching the target sets volume is automatically built into the program. This illustrates, very simply, the basis of training program planning. As an athlete becomes more efficient in the sport more complex program can be developed and implemented. Volume can be increased by adding more sets, and even increasing the number of training days per week. Finally an athlete may even increase the number of training sessions per day, in order to bring about improved performance. Review Goals of any program
1. Improved performance 2. Increased work capacity 3. Correct technique

Principles of daily program design Warm-up High Skills early in session Faster movements before slower movements Partial movements towards end of session Alternate pull and push movements when possible Competition Lift or related exercise An Overhead movement A leg movement A pull movement A back exercise A waist exercise 7. Beginners get the most variety
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Ideas in long term training

1. 2. 3. 4.

As Intensity increases, volume decreases. Create both phases of work and rest Balance training between Hypertrophy, Muscular, and Neural cycles. As competition nears training should mimic competition conditions.