Expanded Programming Thoughts

This kind of piggy backs my last post. I spent a lot of time thinking about my program, as I usually do. It usually takes 5-6 rewrites before a team actually does it. In my thinking, which usually comes at weird times in my day, I decided to go back and look at our success (strength gains, injuries, or lack there of and then talk about how smooth our workouts were/weren't). I also looked at the first week of basketball training with a 3 set progression (a la 5/3/1). I also used the same progression with volleyball. What I noticed is that it's just not enough work with heavy weights (relatively speaking). In conclusion, I'll stick with the 4 set progression in the off-season and use the 3 set progression for in-season work. I'll post up football's spring practice lifting in a little bit and try to explain the progression and how I put it all together. Later on I'll finish the summer program and do the same. One of the things I really love about this job is that it constantly makes me think about my philosophy and how I do things. Usually, it just reaffirms it. After all, I'm 25 years deep in lifting and I know my stuff. However, every idea that comes through this brain is not gold. Sometimes it's not even a precious metal. SOme may look at this and come to the conclusion that I overthink, which I do. However, I don't always act on my overthinking. I simply think and try to make the idea fit my philosophy that's in place. If it fits I keep exploring it. If it doesn't, I don't throw it away, but I don't expand on it. This is why I highly recommend a "training log" for training ideas. I write down everything I think about. It's all right there to look back at. Sometimes I reread the whole notebook and "find" a new idea and the second time around I'm able to develop it into my program. All ideas have value even if they suck. Critical thinking is a necessity, in my opinion. You have to constantly pick apart your program to make sure it's as good and effective as possible WITHOUT getting away from your core principles.