Introducing A New Training Program

When most people start a new training program they want to just jump in and crush it. I however, take a different approach, at least partly due to the fact that I do not believe in frequent programming changes or program hopping; instead preferring to work a program for a relatively extended period of time.

Why?

Training ADD is one of the biggest reasons people don’t get better results from their programs IMO; they’re changing them before they even have a chance to really do anything for them. Benefits from a program are not acute, they manifest over time, and yet we see many people operating on this nonsensical bodybuilding myth of muscle confusion or ‘shocking the body’ or any other such silliness.

Anyway, back to my point. When you start a new program, which may include new exercises, new loading parameters, etc., you are going to receive a “training effect” EVEN from submaximal loads.

Given that progressive overload is a key variable in progress/achieving results and the fact that the new training stimulus is going to elicit a training effect regardless, for me it makes sense to start LOWER than your maximum weights (for the given program parameters) for the new program in Week 1.

This allows you to get used to the new set up, get it ingrained in your head, “grease the groove” so to speak, etc., again, all while still achieving a positive training effect from the slightly submaximal weights.

It ALSO ensures your ability to apply progressive overload over the coming weeks – which again is a large key to progress.

So for me for example, sometime last year I just moved from a bodypart split that I used for several months (I did change things IN that split over that time, but it was the same overall set up) to a more traditional upper/lower split. Pretty much everything changed about my set up – from exercises to loading parameters, etc.

Week 1 I trained pretty submaximal focusing on all the program details – tempos, rest intervals, tension, etc., while training a few reps short of failure. Week 2 I upped those weights (another positive training effect) but I was still slightly submaximal in loads. Week 3 I am upping weights again, and I’m now fully in the groove of my new set up and I am going full tilt on weights (still 1 rep shy of failure since that’s generally as close as I go to failure).

Now, I get that when you get a new shiny red ball you might want to go out and play with it until you break it, but the aforementioned approach to starting a new program makes the most sense to me.