Developing athletes an clients should begin with a proper assessment. It’s been said that with a proper assessment you develop a road map, from where someone is to where they want to be. And it’s an essential road map crucial to the success. The FASTEST route from Chicago to New York is of little value when you are trying to get to L.A.

One thing to note when starting a program, is to remember that it’s just one program. We can’t fix everything is with a single attempt. My friend is currently rebuilding an abandoned house–while he’d like to, he can’t fix everything at once. You need drywall before you can paint, if you get my drift.

Effectiveness –> Intensity –> Frequency –> Volume

Effectiveness is the first issue you want to address with your program. It’s like a math problem…are the tools (exercises) you choose helping you to solve the problem (movement dysfunction, weakness, strength deficits, etc). Furthermore, the effectiveness is going to be limited by your ability to understand the problem (i.e., how well you assess).

Once exercise prescription is effective, now you can add intensity to the exercises — some of the program variables such as sets, reps, tempo, rep speed, etc to drive the change you want. In Supertraining (chap 4), Mel Siff said the training effect is the result of the influence of a means or complex of means on the body as revealed by magnitude quality and stability of the resulting adaptive chances. There is a certain threshold that must exist to drive positive adaptation.

Once these two variables are in place, the rest is gravy. Frequency of training has been shown to be superior to volume (more exposures to stimulus), although a certain amount of volume is necessary. If fitness qualities (such as strength) are skills, then it makes sense to do them more often as apposed to more of them, less often. I have a feeling shooting 700 jump shots 1 day per week would be less effective than shooting 100 per day.

Keep it simple

–
Ryan