As a personal fitness trainer, you need to design a program that fits your client's needs. Giving them the results they want will make them satisfied customers, increasing your business success. For you, as a trainer, challenging your client with new workouts keeps your interest as well.

For the beginner who just wants to look and feel better, a basic muscular strength equipment and cardiovascular endurance aerobic products program will suit their needs. They will experience positive changes with this type of safe training program. But how do you keep the interest and progress going? How do you organize their workouts when their goals change, say if they decide to try a new sport? One way is to add variations to their resistance training sessions. The following guidelines follow recommendations by the National Strength and Conditioning Association.

Strength Training (very low volume)
1 - 6 repetitions
1 - 3 sets (beginner), 3 - 5 sets (experienced)

Strength gains can be made by both neural and muscle tissue adaptations. Neural adaptations are made within the first few weeks of training, with at least four weeks of training necessary for beginning clients to see an increase in muscle size. With an increase in muscle size you will also see additional strength gains.

Power Training (low volume)
2 - 6 repetitions
1 - 3 sets (beginner), 3 - 5 sets (experienced)

Power training is similar to strength training, but with an added emphasis on the speed or velocity of the exercise movement. The concentric phase of the movement must be accelerated as quickly as possible.

Power = Work/Time, so to increase power output, you must either:
– Increase the amount of work you do in a given period of time by increasing force    production, or
– Decrease the amount of time in which you do a given amount of work by increasing the    velocity of that particular movement.

Muscular Endurance (high volume)
15 - 25 repetitions
1 - 2 sets (beginner), 2 - 3 sets (experienced)

A training program for maximum muscular endurance should consist of high volume, low intensities, and short rest periods. Compared to a strength program, both the number of repetitions and the number of sets should be high. The purpose is to prepare a muscle for resistance to fatigue, therefore increasing the amount of time that a particular muscle can produce adequate force for a given task.

Important NSCA concepts on physiological adaptations to exercise training:
Each person will respond a little differently to each training program.
The magnitude of the physiological or performance gain is related to the size of the adaptational window available for change in that athlete.

The amount of physiological adaptation will depend upon the effectiveness of the exercise prescriptions used in the training programs.

Training for peak athletic performance is different from training for optimal health and fitness because, in the former, the level of adaptation usually requires considerably higher training intensities and volumes of exercise than would be needed for general health and fitness. fitness professionals    athletes    free weights    books and videos