The Order.

I've hinted at how to structure your training in a previous article, but it was mostly me analyzing where strength training and conditioning should fall due to adaptation processes. Although I did not make it clear to which sports and hobbies these certain sequences should follow.

In this article, I'm going to briefly lay out what you should consider when developing your training micro (daily/weekly), meso (weekly/monthly), and macro (multiple weeks/months) cycles.

The first element you should nail down is: what you are training for. This can be a sport, a hobby, a marathon, losing fat, or getting fit. Once that is nailed down, you can determine how your "seasons" or your multiple blocks will look. If you're someone who is working out to lose fat or get fit, you probably don't feel like you have seasons.
However, I would structure my training off whichever base form you typically partake in; say you do more cardio/conditioning work, you can begin to structure your training as if you're an endurance athlete, and vice versa with strength training.

Now if you DO have a specific sport, hobby, or goal you train for, you should have at the very least an in-season and off-season. For my coaches and trainers, I'm going to keep it simple with an in-season and off-season. There are two other phases that come into play when programming, but for the sake of keeping this simple, we'll focus on the main two blocks.

-The in-season is the weeks leading up to and weeks in competition. Maintaining and highly focused on sport-specific work.

-The off-season is the weeks that have no competition. Building and at times focused solely on S&C adaptations. Lots more general physical preparedness, with sport-specific work. These elements fluctuate throughout the off-season depending on the needs of the athlete and coaches.

Well, I’m sure you’ve seen that conditioning and lifting are trained in the same session, or it’s lifting and conditioning; or you have lifting in the AM and conditioning in the PM, or the other way around… so which is it?

Outside of a dynamic warmup, for those whose sport is strength based, e.g., volleyball, throwers, strongman, etc., it's more valuable to focus and lead with weightlifting. These are the adaptations we're wanting most. With conditioning being important, but as your secondary focus.

This is obviously flipped the other way with endurance-based sports, e.g., soccer, football (sort of), runners, etc. This is where conditioning coming first before weightlifting has more of an impact.

There are sports that demand both strength and endurance to be highly implemented… this is where nuance, coach-discretion, and prioritization come into play.

Before we wrap up, let me clarify a few more nuances so you can make your own decisions:

-Spreading out training modalities seems to be the best for adaptation in both types of training. For example, training weightlifting in the AM and conditioning in the PM, or if applicable, on their own days.

-If you train them back-to-back, there is a chance adaptation in one or the other will be hindered. This is due to mechanisms that "turn on and off" during different types of training. However, the blend can have its own reward of building resilience and endurance through having to work in conjunction. Though, this is more for athletes who don't have very specific demands and need to be more well-rounded. It can be argued that this is what the off-season should be utilized for in terms of training.

-There is an argument and research for both sequences of training.

-How complex or technical the strength training portion will be is how I would base your structure.

Always be looking at your long-term goals as well as the short-term. You do not have to do everything all in one block period… use the whole season.

I will be dropping my monthly programming in August. The first 10 people who sign up will be at $6 a month. After that it will increase. There will be two Teams available to join The Standard: S&C and The Standard: Tactical.

-The S&C will be a base strength and conditioning program to get strong, powerful, and explosive. Sport, athletic, and performance focused*
-The tactical will be a base tactical training program to develop performance, strength, and endurance. First-responder, military, and real-world focused*

Look out for the sign-up button in coming articles, or you can sign-up early by replying to this article.