Problems of Progression
By
Adam Plagens
During my humble personal training career, I’ve witnessed
some interesting training philosophies that personal trainers have
in relation to training their clients and themselves.
I think the one issue that trainers (myself included) are guilty of
is a lack of progression for their clients. Trainers generate a
program based on the client’s goals, monitor their progress, and
usually adjust the weights, sets, and reps to accommodate their
success. This follows the progression concept as well as the
principle of overload.
But, what is missing? For one, I’ve begun to assess the
progression of a client’s ability to perform a particular lift such
as the squat. This tends to involve posture, hips, and balance
throughout the movement to determine what issues the client has.
This allows me to progress the client through a larger variety of
exercises and ensure that hip stability and low back function aren’t
impaired when a bar is introduced.
Now, I know that some people can’t squat due to physical
limitations. However, there are other clients that can squat. They
just need to learn how to squat correctly. This usually entails
teaching them how to sit back and use their glutes and hamstrings to
move. This requires box squatting, lunges, and lots of stretching to
ensure that hip mobility is adequate. But what do I do when they
master the squat? Besides adding weight, why not challenge them with
a front squat or even try cambered squats, Bulgarian squats, and
other varieties.
The goal is to improve function and strength. To do that, you need
to progress the movements, not just the weight. We do this all the
time with athletes, but for some reason, we don’t think that
movement progression is necessary in the general population. This
could be a result of multiple machines that allow for muscle
isolation, or we simply don’t think there’s a need to do so. In
relation to activity and flexibility, there is more of a need to
progress movements in the general population (overweight, inactive)
than with athletes (active, relative flexibility, and strength).
Either way, try adding movement variations to a client’s training
program to shake things up a bit and challenge them in terms of
control and neural activation. The results may surprise you.
Adam Plagens is a personal trainer at the Livonia Family YMCA and
the strength and conditioning coach for Saline High School. He is
completing his masters degree in health education while raising a
family of three along with his three lift total.
Elite Fitness Systems strives to be a recognized leader in the
strength training industry by providing the highest quality strength
training products and services while providing the highest level of
customer service in the industry. For the best training equipment,
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