Programming
Writing your own programme
At some point following someone else’s template stops fitting your schedule, your weak points and your recovery. Writing your own is more straightforward than it looks.
Devon Abara
30 articles by Abara
Recovery
Motivation, mental fatigue and the sessions you do not want to do
Waiting to feel motivated is the least reliable training strategy available. Understanding the difference between mental fatigue and reluctance is more useful.
Technique
Explosive lifts for people who are not weightlifters
Cleans, snatches and their variations develop qualities that grinding heavy lifts do not. They also take time to learn, which is the honest argument against them.
Fuelling
Training and eating on the road
Travel disrupts routine more than almost anything else. A plan that survives a week away is more valuable than an optimal plan that does not.
Programming
Peaking for a meet: the last eight weeks
A peak is not more training. It is the deliberate removal of fatigue so that fitness you already have becomes visible on a specific day.
Technique
Hip thrusts and the case for direct glute training
Squats and deadlifts train the glutes, and they train them at a specific part of the range. Direct hip extension work covers the part they miss.
Technique
Conventional or sumo: choosing a deadlift stance
The two stances load the body differently enough that they are best thought of as separate lifts, and which suits you is largely a question of your skeleton.
Programming
Autoregulation: training by effort rather than by percentage
Percentage-based programming assumes your maximum is stable and your readiness is constant. Neither is true, and autoregulation is the fix.
Technique
Grip, straps and the hook grip question
Grip is the limiter on a lot of pulling work, and the argument about whether to use straps has a reasonable answer that annoys both sides.
Programming
Lifting and cardio: the interference effect, in proportion
The fear that cardiovascular training destroys strength gains is overstated, and the conditions under which it genuinely interferes are specific and avoidable.
Programming
What a beginner should actually do for the first year
Beginners get the most complicated advice and need the least. The first year has a small number of jobs and almost none of them involve optimisation.
Technique
Bracing, belts and the Valsalva manoeuvre
Trunk stiffness is what lets you transmit force from the ground to the bar. Most people brace by sucking in, which does close to the opposite of what is needed.
Programming
Choosing accessory exercises without collecting them
Accessory work should have a reason. Most programmes accumulate exercises for no articulable purpose and then wonder why sessions take two hours.
Technique
Single-leg work: the training most people skip and should not
Split squats, lunges and step-ups are unglamorous, humbling, and address something bilateral training cannot.
Programming
Structuring a session: order, warm-ups and what to cut when time is short
The exercise order within a session has a real effect on outcomes, and the warm-up has less to do with stretching than most people think.
Technique
Front squat, high bar, low bar: choosing a bar position
Where the bar sits changes the lift more than most people appreciate — the torso angle, the muscles loaded, the depth available and the weight you can move.
Technique
Getting your first pull-up, and your tenth
The pull-up is the most requested skill in any gym and the one most often approached with methods that do not work.
Programming
Strength and size: related, not identical, and the training differs
Bigger muscles have more potential force. But the strongest people are not always the biggest, and the training that maximises one is not quite the training that maximises the other.
Programming
Periodisation: linear, block and undulating, without the jargon
Periodisation means organising training over time so that fatigue and fitness end up in the right relationship on the days that matter. Everything else is terminology.
Technique
The hip hinge: the pattern everyone thinks they can do
Deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, good mornings, kettlebell swings and every athletic movement that produces force from the ground share one pattern, and most people squat it instead.
Programming
Frequency: how often to train a muscle, and why the answer changed
The once-a-week body part split dominated gym culture for decades. The evidence supports something more frequent, though for a subtler reason than most people give.
Technique
Rowing and the back nobody trains properly
The back has more distinct functions than any other region and it is usually trained with two exercises performed with momentum. Here is a more useful way to think about it.
Technique
The overhead press: the lift most people set up wrong
Pressing overhead is the most honest test of upper body strength and the one most compromised by a poor starting position and a trunk that does not hold.
Programming
Training to failure: when it helps and when it just costs you
Failure is treated as a virtue in gym culture and as a mistake in most coaching. The evidence supports something in between, and it depends heavily on the exercise.
Programming
Volume: how many hard sets a muscle actually needs
The research on training volume is messier than the confident infographics suggest, but it does support a workable range and a clear principle about how to move within it.
Technique
The bench press arch, and why it is not cheating
The arch is one of the most misunderstood things in the gym — condemned as dangerous by people who have never used one and exaggerated into absurdity by people who compete.
Technique
The deadlift setup: five things that decide the lift before it starts
A deadlift that fails usually failed in the setup. By the time the bar leaves the floor, most of the outcome has already been determined.
Programming
Deloads: what they are for and how to know you need one
A deload is not a reward for working hard and it is not a week off. It is a planned reduction in stress that lets accumulated fitness reveal itself.
Programming
Progressive overload is not adding weight every session
The principle everyone quotes is usually applied in the narrowest possible way, which is why so many lifters stall in their second year and conclude they need a new programme.
Technique
The squat depth argument, settled as far as it can be
Depth is treated as a moral question in most gyms. It is actually a question about what you are training for, what your hips are shaped like, and whether you can maintain position.