Way back in 1997, I graduated from Cortland State with a bachelor’s degree in Physical Education with a concentration in Adult Fitness. Shortly after that, I became a certified personal trainer with the National Academy of Sports Medicine and began my fitness career.

Efficient & effective program design was always at the heart of my training. I just loved it!

I loved figuring out the best combination of exercises, sets, reps, and tempos to stimulate transformation. I loved laying out the puzzle pieces and seeing how each workout fit into the current training phase and how that phase fit with the one on either side and how they all worked together to complete the big picture… And, I still love it to this day!

Sadly, in today’s quick-fix, instant-access world, real program design has become a lost art. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of practitioners, but they’re getting harder and harder to find. With easy access to cookie-cutter workouts and an endless supply of “experts” on social media, it’s easy to get lost and confused.

What’s worse, many so-called personal trainers take the easy route and just use these programs to train their clients. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in group exercise programs.

Caught up in turning exercise into entertainment, trainers and even franchises base their entire “program” on exertainment…

Rather than focusing on long-term results, they only focus on today’s workout - making sure it’s fun and makes people feel like they got a good workout (often judged by how hard they breathe, how much they sweat, and/or how sore they got) so they hopefully come back tomorrow and the next day…

Naturally, you don’t want to hate your workouts. You’ll never be consistent (the #1 factor in success) if you don’t like what you’re doing.

However, and this may not sit well, it’s very doubtful that you’re going to like every workout of a well-designed training program. In fact, there are probably going to be workouts that you genuinely dislike!

WARNING: Time to put on your big-boy or big-girl pants on…

If you want to create real, meaningful transformation - in any area of your life - you’re going to have to step outside of your comfort zone.

That often means doing things you’re not good at and don’t like to do. Those two generally go hand-in-hand.

This is very true in fitness, especially when it comes to transforming your body…

Without getting too deep into the weeds, your muscles are made of different fiber types that respond to different types of workouts, there are multiple energy systems that you rely on and they're developed using different types of workouts, and there are different factors like stability, mobility, tissue quality, various kinds of strength, and more that are all critical to complete development…and, you guessed it, they’re all impacted by different types of workouts.

Let me give you a simple real-world example…

A client wants to lose weight, specifically excess fat.

Then, she should just perform workouts that burn the most fat, right?

WRONG!

If she does, it won’t be long before she runs into a never-ending plateau and either burns out or gets injured.

Why?

Because she’s not focused on the big picture.

She’s looking at just one piece of the puzzle.

Did you know that assuming all else is equal, a more muscular body will actually burn more fat during the same fat-burning workout?

And, I’m not talking about getting big and jacked here…

Look at the picture below:

On the right, she actually looks lighter. The bloat in her belly is gone and her arms and thighs are leaner, yet she weighs 9 pounds more.

By the way, muscle does NOT weigh more than fat. A pound is a pound!

But, muscle takes up less space than fat…

So, at 9 pounds heavier, she’s taking up less space because she’s more muscular.

And, guess what, those extra pounds allow her to burn a lot more fat when she’s doing a fat-burning workout. Better yet, she burns more fat calories at rest…even when she’s SLEEPING!

But, guess what?

Fat-burning-focused workouts don’t stimulate muscle growth…

Muscle-building-focused workouts do.

And, if you don’t do muscle-building-focused workouts because you don’t like them as much as fat-burning-focused workouts you’re going to severely limit your ability to burn fat!

Make sense?

But, wait there’s more…

More strength can lead to more muscle.

And, better stability will help you increase your strength.

And, and, and…

Can you see how all the pieces of the puzzle matter, and if you just play with your favorite pieces you’re never going to complete the picture?

This is why we tell people to STOP EXERCISING and START TRAINING…

Coach Mark Rippetoe, one of the most respected strength & conditioning coaches in our industry, defines the difference between exercising and training really well:

"Exercise is physical activity for its own sake, a workout done for the effect it produces today, during the workout or right after you're through."

By the way, this is certainly better than sitting on your butt watching TV. And, naturally going from doing nothing to something is going to produce a result - it almost doesn’t matter what you do in the very beginning. For some, just walking for 10 minutes every morning and evening is a great place to start.

“Training is physical activity done with a longer-term goal in mind, the constituent workouts of which are specifically designed to produce that goal,” says Rippetoe.

Here’s how I look at the difference:

Exercise is fun today. Well, it may not be fun, but you've convinced yourself to do it today because you perceive that the effect you produce today is of benefit to you today…

This is where group fitness classes, boot camps, and even DVDs you buy on late-night TV come into play. They provide you with exercises to do - you’ll “feel the burn,” get your heart pumping, and you may even stimulate some muscle growth. You WILL see some kind of results just because you went from nothing to something, “couch to 5K” as they say.

In contrast, as Rippetoe adds, “training is about the process you undertake to generate a specific result later, maybe much later, the workouts of which are merely the constituents of the process."

Go ahead and read that last line one more time…

Basically, it means this - training has a plan, a purpose, a reason you do this vs. doing that, and what you do today is related to what you did yesterday and plan to do tomorrow.

Training is about the big picture, and a training program incorporates SPECIFIC exercises done in SPECIFIC ways at SPECIFIC times within the overall plan.

You’re not at the whim of what the instructor feels like doing today or what she learned last night on YouTube when we’re following a training program. No longer are you just pulling a workout out of the library or repeating your favorite one.

Again, I don’t want to downplay the benefits of these random workouts; I’d much rather see you show up to the most poorly put-together group exercise class (as long as it’s not hurting you) than do nothing at all. While you might not get great transformation results, at least your doing something relatively good for yourself...

However, if you’re ready for more and you want a program with a purpose that will create meaningful and lasting transformation, then look for one that uses sound TRAINING principles and actual well-thought-out program design.

HAVE FAITH & TAKE ACTION!
Justin Yule

P.S. - By the way, if you want to read about our proprietary B4 Training System, click the image below: