CREATE PROGRESSION MAPS

newsletter Jul 20, 2023

Create Progression Maps

Life is easier to navigate with a map.

By Eric Bugera

Client’s may present with similar goals but have unique challenges en route to accomplishing them.

Training parameters and exercise selection are your tools for problem solving.
Progression maps based upon previous experiences can help eliminate randomness and funnel clients towards their success.

Avoid Randomness

Specificity is the training principle that states your body will generate specific adaptations to the applied demand of exercise. While any movement is beneficial for a new client, randomness will only serve to confuse the issue once early gains have been exhausted. With that in mind, finding your own way to organize and standardize each next step with individual clients can be extremely powerful for future programming. Coaching can enter the elite echelons simply by eliminating randomness; however, experience and pattern recognition can help formulate repeatable and predictable patterns of client development for your business. Creating your own progression maps is a great way to establish your personalized “methodology”.

Progression Maps

Clients and trainers can benefit from even a loose vision of what comes next in programming. While hiccups will inevitably happen, knowing what you’re aiming for is a great tool for motivation. It can also establish a stronger sense of intent for a client performing your weekly workouts. Every step of your long-term plan should build towards the next, and this vision for the future is an enormous benefit for client buy-in. This buy-in is frequently taken for granted, often relying upon the unspoken client-coach leadership dynamic. Do not underestimate the power of transparency.

For the trainer, your accumulated experience should begin to present options through repeated patterns of problem-solution troubleshooting. Common goals may require similar planning, but individual needs can throw a wrench into the execution. As you see more and more unique routes to the same end goal – your potential progressions begin to map themselves out. One exercise, numerous progression paths based upon needs or goals, and the same end result.

Your tools of the trade are the programming variables at your disposal. Exercise selection, sets, repetitions, rest periods, tempo, load, implements – while seemingly expansive, you can also begin to find a rhythm. A predictability of adaptation based upon how you manipulate each parameter. After so many sessions with a certain exercise, at a certain load, for certain sets and repetitions – what changes? What was the result? Can this be repeated? These are the roots of your progression maps. Pay attention.

Have A Plan

The biggest benefit of a trainer is eliminating randomness. Working out overall will help drive a ton of baseline adaptations, but beyond a certain level you will need structure. In order to navigate each client, even on the path to the same goal, establishing multiple progression maps can save time and effort in the long run. You will know exactly where each workout will lead, what exercise flows into the next, how to adjust training parameters, and what the most predictable outcome will be. A client will know exactly what they are trying to accomplish within each workout – making hard effort that much more appealing. Most of all, you will never be at a loss for a solution. Troubleshooting and navigating the unknown are exponentially easier with an established programming playbook. It isn’t arbitrary, it’s leaning into what you have observed time and time again.

Audit your training programs regularly.
What success and failure have you found making changes to each training parameter?
Start stringing together a programming playbook to solve common issues based upon where you have seen success.