Training Tuesday #1: The importance of identifying and refining your primary training goals
When planning a new training block for yourself, or someone else for that matter, probably the first thing to consider is what your training goals are. The goals of your training and the relative importance of each one will inform how you structure your training from month to week to day. Training goals can start off general, but the more specific you can get them in the end the more you will be able to draw from them during planning. For the purpose of this post, I will be using the process I recently undertook when planning my own training as an example.
So let’s look at what general training goals can look like. In my case I wrote a list of general training goals that started like this:
Reduce body fat %
Improve mobility and joint health
Increase Strength
Muscle Hypertrophy
These goals were the most general I could come up with that still gave me some useful framework. I also arranged them in order of importance to me. This ordering is quite crucial, as even before we apply any more specificity to the goals we can draw these conclusions. I am willing to sacrifice some strength, hypertrophy and mobility to reduce my body fat (to a certain extent). I am also willing to sacrifice some strength and muscle gains to improve my joint health and mobility. These are important distinctions to make, as they will impact how you set up training and your expectations of your performance in that training. Already I know that I am willing to sustain some poorer workouts due to dieting. I am also willing to do mobility work before my workouts to improve form on exercises even if it means slightly worse strength on the lifts. Fat loss being a primary goal is also telling that I will most likely be doing some cardio work. So, now we have that in mind, lets look at how I specified my goals further:
Reduce body fat %
Don’t drop more than 0.5-1kg (1-2 pounds) of weight a week
Improve mobility and joint health
Focus on hips
Focus on shoulders
Increase strength
Focus on bodyweight strength
Focus on compound lifts
Muscle Hypertrophy
Focus on medial and posterior deltoids
Focus on Legs
Focus on core
Here is the first round of refining finished. Immediately we can see I wanted to diet slowly so as to put as little detriment on my goals of strength and hypertrophy. I know some red flags will be going off here, as many people will know it is very difficult, or impossible depending on the scientific literature you cite, to gain muscle and strength while losing fat. However, in my case it was possible as I was coming back from a period of injury and detraining, so I could expect some gains while cutting. Next we can see the most important part of my mobility was freeing up my hips, mainly to allow me to squat with proper form. Second were my shoulders to make sure I maintained my health while coming back to bench. For my strength, I was content in building back a base of power to bodyweight first and foremost, but also starting to grove back in the big important lifts like bench press, squat, overhead press and the deadlift. Lastly I deemed my underdeveloped medial and posterior deltoids were of the greatest concern for hypertrophy followed by my legs and core. As you can probably see, my hypertrophy goals reflect my strength goals (better core and legs the most important for compound lifts). While my strength goals feed into my mobility goals, better bodyweight strength and compound lifts come from good form (i.e. mobility).
So what can these more specific goals add to our already forming idea of what my training will look like? Well we know i’ll probably do some cardio for fat loss, but now we know I want to minimise impact on other goals of training, we can see it will be low impact. We can tell that proper form will be very important to my training, as will the big compound barbell movements. Finally there will be plenty of bodyweight conditioning work and hypertrophy exercises focused on the shoulder complex, legs and core. Let’s move onto the final step of refining my training goals:
Reduce body fat %
Don’t drop more than 0.5-1kg (1-2 pounds) of weight a week
Use minimal cardio (use higher volume but lower impact weight sessions to expend more calories)
Improve mobility and joint health
Focus on hips
Foam roll to break up tight tissue
Long warm up
Focus on shoulders
Foam roll to break up tight tissue
Long warm up
Increase strength
Focus on bodyweight strength
Pull ups
Push ups
Plank
Focus on compound lifts
Squat
Bench
OHP
Dead Lift
Muscle Hypertrophy
Focus on medial and posterior deltoids
Higher volume
Focus on Legs
Hamstrings predominantly
Focus on core
Some weighted training
So here is what my final list looked like. As you can see by refining my training goals I was able to get a much greater level of control in my planning. Not only this, but I was also able to realise what things I was willing to sacrifice for others. This final set of specific training goals led me to the training format below.
Monday
AM: Slow walk + Bodyweight (short)
MID: Gym: Legs
PM: Bodyweight (short)
Tuesday
AM: Slow walk + Bodyweight (short)
MID: Gym: Back + Biceps
PM: Bodyweight (short)
Wednesday
AM: Slow walk + Bodyweight (short)
MID: Gym: Chest + Shoulders
PM: Bodyweight (short)
Thursday
AM: Slow walk + Bodyweight (short)
MID: Gym: Legs
PM: Bodyweight (short)
Friday
AM: Slow walk + Bodyweight (short)
MID: Gym: Back + Biceps
PM: Bodyweight (short)
Saturday
AM: Slow walk + Bodyweight (short)
MID: Gym: Shoulders + Chest
PM: Bodyweight (short)
Sunday
Rest
I want to emphasise, I was not pushing balls out in these training sessions. I was keeping in control and not going to failure on more than a few sets. This was because I was dieting (reduced recovery), training with a high volume and frequency in order to expend calories and get back into the neural patterning of exercises. I won’t go into detail of my specific sessions as I am mindful of this posts length. I think my point about why and how to use training goals to inform planning has been illustrated already and I also want to save those details for other posts about training topics.
I hope this will be resourceful in your next planning session when you are trying to hammer out a new schedule for yourself.
Stay focused, train hard but always plan smart.
- D.G



















