Written by Jonathan

Jonathan Goodman CSCS is the author of Ignite the Fire: The Secrets to Building a Successful Personal Trainer Career and Race to the Top: How to Take Over the Social Media Feed. He'd love it if you added him on Facebook and/or followed him on Twitter. He also runs a wildly popular web branding and internet marketing coaching program. You can find out more at http://www.viralnomics.com/coaching/.

• http://doitfast.in sagar

  Great article Jon.Even i have experienced similar things in my PT career.

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Thanks Sagar!

    • Doug Parra

      Great article, at the end of the day you have made a complex topic much easier to digest, understand and implement. I am definitely looking forward to future articles from you on this topic. I am very interested in the way you record the actual workouts for 1 on 1 clients (their workout logs) and also for semi-private training (3-4 people) if you do that? Thank you for sharing version 1.0 with us, I think all of us can’t wait to see version 2.0. Keep up the great work. 

      • Jon_PTDC

        Thanks Doug. i’ll be putting together articles like that soon.

• http://Www.forbeshealthandperformance.co.uk Dan

  I’Ill admit that when I saw the title it ruffled my feathers a lil, but actually that’s exactly how I work. best of all I picked up this system from working with pro rugby athletes. I’d write program after program, making sure every detail was correct only to to turn up to the session to find half the squad still banged up from the last game, a few more carrying injuries and having to change the whole session anyway. So now I simply use a similar system where I know what I want to achieve at certain times of the year and tailor the session to what the squad can manage. When I realised this approach worked better with my clients as well, I was sold.
  The only drawback to this I guess is if your a new trainer. It’s easy to pull out a GPP, Fat loss or strength session when you’ve written many of them, but I’m not sure I would have been able to do when I first started out.
  Great post Jon

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    The title was supposed to ruffle your feathers Dan. Why else would you click on it?

    I agree that individually programming for phases and sub-categories is difficult for new trainers. We’ll cover that in follow up posts for sure. This is more of an overview.
    Thanks,
    -Jon

• http://aptphysicaltraining.blogspot.com/ Kyle

  Sensible stuff. Another way to look at is the person’s potential. Even given perfect attendance and diet, etc, do they really need periodisation? Half the people who come to me have never done a goblet squat before in their lives – it’s going to take a few sessions just to learn the movement well.

  Periodisation is useful for getting the last 20-30% of a person’s potential performance. Ordinary staggered progression (eg “3 sets of 6-10 reps, when you can do 3×10 increase the weight and go back to 6 reps”) with a few common sense easings-back (“maybe you should drop the intensity a few weeks before your karate grading?”) will usually get them to 50% of their potential.

  Certainly, someone who cannot squat a single plate a side or run 5km without stopping doesn’t need to be harassed with complex periodisation. They just need to progress their effort over time.

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Yep linear progression works wonders for the first year + of intense training. Then we can use soviet magic.

• http://www.fitprosarah.com Sarah Rippel

  This rocks my socks, Jon! I have been there too – gone from being overly-structured to having my clients do a different workout each session to creating more of a real-world system incorporating phases. I love your chart! I am tired of having a file cabinet full of client files with no “overview” of everyone in one place. I will be working on getting everyone on the same page (no pun intended, lol) this weekend! Thank you and keep doin what you’re doin! Great posts!

  Yours in Health,
  Sarah

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Thanks Sarah. Take care of the chart. It’s my baby.

• http://www.strengthmaxforathletes.com/strength-max-for-athletes/ Strength Max for athletes

  Very practical advice, Jon! This illustrates the difference between being a personal trainer and a strength and conditioning coach. Many more variables involved. Nia Shanks follows this same philosophy in her Beautiful Badass program. Work around the clients life. The logical route to go with personal training. I wish you all the success in your new endeavors. It certainly appears that you are off to a great start,

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Thanks. I’ll check out more of Nia’s work. And yes, there’s a huge difference between S & C and personal training. The funny part is that I’m a CSCS and not a personal trainer… oh well.

• http://www.yestostrength.com Karsten

  Hi Jon,

  While I obviously agree with the fact that life happens and you can’t pre plan every single workout for 12 weeks – this is a fact not only for personal training clients, but also for athletes at any level including olympic and world class.

  I like your approach, but I think your headline is dangerous and will mislead some of us to think that it is useless to plan at all. The way you use the word periodization is in the old fashioned way. A better way of seeing periodization is to focus on what periodization really means according to the dictionary = a division into periods.

  When I teach my periodization workshops my working definition of periodization is a “division of a longer training cycle into periods, with different goals, structures and contents of the training programme”. With this definition we embrace both the need for long term planning, but also the need for flexibility in the execution.

  Karsten

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Hey Karsten. First off thanks for your comment. I like the way you teach periodization a lot and have gained much from your teachings.

    I actually changed the title of this post 3 times before posting it. The nature of the internet is that you have to ruffle a few feathers to make an impact. If, for example, I named this post “Why planning is better than periodization for personal trainers” I don’t think as many people would read it. The message would become lost in the sea of fitness noise on the internet.

    While giving a new definition (or correctly defining periodization) is attractive I don’t feel as if it’s useful to write in a post. fact is fitness folk have an attachment to the “old fashioned way” of using the term. Habits like that are hard to break and it would be very difficult to change the general trainers perception of a term they’ve heard used incorrectly time and time again

    I’ve become comfortable with bending from my morals but am careful not to creak away from them. In my opinion as long as the message I feel is important gets out then I’m ok creating controversy. Afterall that’s how we all get better.

    Just my two cents.

    • http://aptphysicaltraining.blogspot.com/ Kyle

      I think you’ve taken the right approach, Jonathan. We need to use words in the sense they’re commonly understood. If we make up new words or give new meanings to old words, that’s all well and good to make a point, but it doesn’t tend to catch on, and more often than not will confuse people. See for example “functional” training – given a new meaning an old word, everyone says, “huh?”

      • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

        Thanks. it’s unfortunate but the reality is that words like periodization and core will always be tainted no matter how many internet writers decide to write articles redefining it. I prefer to throw it out and start anew

• http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

  From Joe Dowdell:

  Nice post.

  I think a lot of trainers, especially those who have trouble wrapping their heads around some of the deep scientific thought processes that are involved in program design (and the ‘plannification’ process) will benefit from this approach. Did you omit the category of maximal strength development on purpose?

  Also, just curious, with this chart, how would delineate things if you had a client in a hypertrophy phase while simultaneously having them performing Anaerobic Alactic Power sprints (HIIT) on the days in between training sessions? Would you put two colored bars to denote that? I’m not that technical in Excel.

  On a side note, the vast majority of my strength coaches (and myself) still periodize our training programs for our personal training clients with tremendous success. We tend to manipulate the emphasis between “accumulation” and “intensification” phases in 3-4 week blocks of training. Under these two main categories, we will denote sub-categories like hypertrophy, maximal strength, power endurance, strength-endurance, etc. In addition, we always have a place where the overall goal of the client (i.e, fat loss, increase size, etc.) can be noted.

  Just because someone designs a training program(s) for the entire phase for the client, which includes the selection of exercises, sequence of those exercises, number of desired sets, number of desired reps, tempo and rest periods, it doesn’t mean it locks you completely in. If the client walks in and they are stressed, you can do one of two things, call a total audible and implement a recovery session (and then denote it in the training log/chart) or you can perform the same exact session with the same exact intensity, but cut the volume in half. Both of these plans work extremely well and you are still on a plan.

  Just food for thought. Cheers.
  -Joe

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    My response to Joe

    Thanks for the detailed response Joe.

    Yes I did eliminate the maximal strength phase on purpose and hit the nail on the head. This post is for our audience which is trainers mostly new and confused towards the game being pulled in 1001 different directions. I don’t think those trainers should do maximal strength phases. I do however mention that you can add whatever phases you want so a trainer can easily add it with another color (I’d choose neon)

    You actually just made me think of something as well with your second point. The chart is meant to be very superficial and a basis for program design + a quick way to keep track of all your clients at once. That having been said you made me think of adding a second line to each client to place the energy system work as well. Maybe version 2.0. Right down i write it down on their program sheet instead.

    Again with the sub-categories — your coaches and you are at a very high level. Walk into most gyms across the country and ask the trainer to give you a power endurance workout and they would be clueless. This is a different topic all together and one we plan to go over in detail on the ptdc in due time but for now I wanted to keep it very simple. In my opinion most beginner clients will do well with a basic hypertrophy or fat loss workout with linear progression.

    The sub-categories improve the workout but not enough to confuse new trainers into second guessing all of their techniques. As they become more advanced they learn and implement these strategies and work at gyms like yours.

    I love the last paragraph. You said it better than I did. Thanks.
    -Jon

    • Shawn

      The second line for energy systems training is one of the things I was just playing with. The problem that I am running into with that is where does it stop? lol first I added 5 phases of training that I use (stability thru power) then I added the categories of phases (GPP thru perrormance) then energy systems focus (aerobic base through anaerobic)…It would seem that the more I played with it the farther I got away from what your post is about and the closer I got to just adapting it to what I already do. lol I do like the possibilities of the chart. Sometimes we need a little inspiration in our organization and I think that is what you just did for me..Thanks even if its not exactly what you intended lol

      • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

        If you’re able to gain from the post I’m happy. It’s impossible to make a post that covers everything. I always find new uses or new ways to do things so I’m glad you did too.

        My advice is to keep it very simple with the chart. It’s meant to be a quick two-seconds reference to organize all of your clients. Make the programs as complex as you want

    • http://aptphysicaltraining.blogspot.com/ Kyle

      I would say that if you want to talk to beginning trainers, then you might want to mention actually writing things down, whether the session plan or what happens in the session. Unfortunately, that’s not a given. This leads to embarrassing moments where the trainer asks the client to do an exercise, “I’ve never done that before,” or proudly announces they’ll be learning a new one, “we’ve done that before.” Or speed or weights selected are way off mark, etc.

      When I started I didn’t think it was necessary to write things down, except perhaps max lifts – but with 3-4 clients then, it was easy to remember everything. A bit different with 12-20 clients, some of whom have been with you 12+ months, others only a couple of weeks.

      Recently a new trainer asked me, “Should I journal my clients’ workouts the way I do my own?”
      “No,” I said, “it should be more detailed than that.”

      • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

        Great point. This is why I love comments. Thanks, I’ll change that up when I present / write about this in the future. Writing things down is critical

• Shawn

  Im confused…you don’t consider this periodization? I agree its easy to be overly structured with clients and things not always working out exactly as planned but those kind of adjustments are what I get paid to do. I do like the simplicity of your design though for a couple of my clients for sure. The majority of who I work with have their health or careers (military) on the line so I don’t have to worry about missed sessions other than planned vacations. I did download the template and have been playing with it, and am toying with making two versions. One for indepth programming and one for clients that are not as serious. Honestly though I interview my clients before I train them and I don’t take everybody that comes to me. In fact I have had to fire clients for wasting my time because I don’t accept excuses. I only have 4 hours per day to train people and only take people who are serious about a life change, this eliminates for me what this article is about.

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    I do consider this periodization (check the comment with Karsten above ^^). I just don’t use the word periodization because it confuses people way too much. Your clientele seems to be different than most:

    For military folk their jobs depend on their bodies. Therefore life revolves around training not vice versa. This isn’t the case with most professions.

    Level of commitment is an important consideration when training somebody new. Whether or not you are willing to take somebody on with low commitment if will definitely affect the goal planning and workout planning process.

    Thanks for the comments Shawn

• http://segovia.ca Edsel Segovia

  Nice post Jon.

  You know what I like about you? I feel that you’re our “spokesperson”. You have pretty much summarized what most “serious” trainers do. And when I say serious I’m talking about trainers who are on this endless quest to get better and want the best for their clients. Hats off to you for this article. Keep it up!

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Thanks Edsel. I’m humbled you think that I’m you’re spokesperson. I’ve never considered anything like that. I just want to help as much as I possibly can and get a lot of really smart people to do the same

• Agustin

  As our clients, We, PT, have a life as well and work our ases of, our job demands the best from us each second so it´s quite dificult to periodize even for ourselves. The truth is that we are no pro athelets, we get sick, injured, we feel tired of working so much so we have to adapt our training session to our needs of the day. If we can folow a periodization, that would be the best, but for me, personaly, it´s quite difucult. Imagine doing maximal strength day and then having 3 more clients on the day, how would yo feel? Wrecked I think… building a Plan rather than a Periodization is so much better for our personal benefit and our personal health. The same aplyies for our clients, or the majority of them, as you say Jon, they are regular Joes seaking to get fit and healthy, not being super athletes.
  EXCELENT article by the way! Thank you for opening the perspective of “periodization”.
  From Buenos Aires, Argentina, well done!! It´s refreshing to have another view of how Personal Training should be done.

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    I’m glad you liked it and found it useful Agustin. How’s training like in Argentina?

    • Agustin

      Jon, there is lack of training education here in Argentina, there are hips of Personal Trainers that think they know how to train people, but when you see them, it´s quite desapointing, there methods, the exercise technique, and how they coach their client, but I think all over the world hapense the same, you have bad, good and excelent PT.
      What we are missing here is exercise science, the last studies and info doesn´t arrives, so if you want to be in the latest training trends, we have to check the web for the info, or at least, I do that, because I think that researching and reading from the best, one gets better. Then it´s very important to now how to pass that info to ones clients, and there is where ones ability and experience comes to play. Now I´m getting my degree in Phisical Therapy, and even though it has been very useful to change some mistakes I used to do, I try to separate my Personal Training clients from the ones of Phisical Therapy, the first ones come to train and get healthy, the second ones to rehab, so its very important to diferenciate them, and not mix things up.
      Other than that, even with mistakes or diferent training methods, training in Argentina is big, we tend to be healthy people, it´s strange to see some one that does nothing. As Nick Tumminello says, do whatever you like to stay fit and healthy, with or without a trainer, just give your best in what yo do!
      Keep it on!

      • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

        Wow. Interesting and scary at the same time. I’m glad you’re going outside of your world to get the best information. Hopefully others follow suit. Congratulations for wanting to make the difference!

• Brian

  This Rocks!

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Thanks!

• Don

  Finally, I feel validated to treat normal people as normal, and not as uber athletes. I just want to help people function better in their normal routines. This is great and wonder why it took so long to find you. Can’t wait to read what else you have here.

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Thanks Don. I’ve been sitting on this for a while trying to figure out the best way to say it. I’m glad it resonated with you and hope it helped. We’ve got some great material coming through the pipelines. Keep your eye out,.

• Chris Brown

  Hey Jon,
  To be honest, I relunctantly clicked the link (mustve been the title that finally drew me in haha) and found some really useful systems that I am going to (steal) apply with my clients as keeping overall records/plans has been something I’ve struggled with implementing.

  Your article also made me think. About my programming and how its really helping my clients. Thank you!

  I enjoyed reading it a lot bud, keep up the good work!
  Chris

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Thanks Chris. I’m glad you can apply it. I didn’t want to write another thought-provoking piece about whether or not we should periodize. The title is the title. It does it’s job and I’m glad you could look past it to find out the message in the article.

    Take care

• jonathan

  Great post Jon. There’s definitely overlap into the realm of chiropractic rehabilitation as well. Thanks for this.

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Cool. Shoot me a message and let me know how. I’d be curious to figure out how you’ll apply it. My email is jonathan@theptdc.com

• Emmet

  Great article John,
  Working in a commercial gym at the moment and they have pre planned programme cards and I have become a little stale when it comes to programme design, this is a breath of fresh air. Have the Peak seminar too and am delving into the periodision section as I want to brush up on my ‘skills’ (i’ll use that loosely).
  Great site by the way, it’s a great accomplishment.

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Read Joe’s comment above before making any preconceived notions about ruing out periodization.

    I’m really glad you liked the article.
    -Jon

• http://www.peakfitnesslakeland.com Chris Kelly

  I must admit in reading over this last night, my initial thought was: how could this streamline my process as a trainer? Does it work better for individual or group clients? How would one concieveable track/plan acute variables? And then I realized the beauty is in the approach itself versus just the chart (and I over think everything).

  What Jon has described here is the most efficient means of record keeping I have seen by giving us an easy way to track EVERY client’s progress. I also like the info gathering process in making this about the client. Given our gym has just started a smaller group training program, this is something which can easily be done in a group setting and I can implement with my staff when programming for and tracking multiple clients.

  Well done my man.

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Thanks Chris. I’m glad you re-read it to get the idea I was laying out. I’m really glad you enjoy it. Having a way to organize all of my clients on one chart has made a huge difference in my training stress. Enjoy the chart

• Emmet

  I’m not ruling it out, just saying that having not used it in so long my own skills at it have become stale. (It’s the Irishism in my writing)

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    Haha another problem I actually didn’t think about it. Periodization is a pretty complex principle. I wonder how many folks could even do it well if they had the clientele willing to adhere. Interesting…

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• http://thefitnessconnectiononline.com Joey

  Thank you for posting what I have agonized over for years. It was near impossible so I beat to my own drum and had GREAT success. Sometimes you need to hear it to believe it. So thank you.

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan Goodman

    My pleasure. That was the goal of the article. To give all the confused and frustrated trainers not only justification but also a system for planning.

• http://www.howtomarketpt.com Rich Lucas

  Totally agree with you, periodization doesn’t work, I was having this discussion with a newly qualified trainer yesterday. General health clients never play ball!

  • http://ptdc.inertiagroup.ca Jonathan

    True. Glad you enjoyed the read.

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• http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1391095734 Johnny Briones

  Made things a lot more clear. As I was studying on periodization, it just didn’t seem realistic to do with regular clients. For myself or any other athlete, it would work perfectly. But as far as a regular client, it didn’t look like it would work out because they are training with you once a week or twice and then something may come up so it is down to once or none for a week or two. Great post!

• Matt

  Really like this post, it’s something that I have struggled with when I train clients. Especially when training clients that can only see you once a week and you have to put the training in their hands. They may skip workouts and then the program is floored. Having a plan is essential put you have to be able to adapt it to their lives and what crops up. Ill be pinching those forms, cheers

• Jan Hutnan

  Hi Jon,

  I also really enjoyed this article and I must agree with you.

  What I have learnt in Sydney I am applying now. I believe that Dr.O is a better approach to design a program. Thst means Readiness Observation. Basically prior the session we ask clients open ended questions related to their work, lifestyle and emotional state.
  End of the day physical activity is another/extra stress for the body. This allows us to use appropriate intensity, sets and think about the finisher etc.

  Love what you are doing. Thank
  You

  Jan

• AmyVG

  This article is hugely helpful. Thanks Jon for offering this site. I have been out of the personal training business for ten years while raising my little ones. Now coming back, I have been feeling out of sorts. Your website has provided so much knowledge and advice, thank you!

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• Pedro Correia

  Very good post.

  One question regarding Mitochondrial Dilution, that I would like you to clarify if possible.That happens only if you’re talking about sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, i.e. the increase of intracellular fluid and aggregation of non-contractile protein structures (so the force-generation potential of the muscle fiber doesn’t increase concomitantly with its volume). Because with the other type of muscular hypertophy, myofibrillar hypertrophy, you will increase the quantitiy of functional structures in the muscle, which is accompanied by increased contractile capacity and new mitochondrias. Isn’t that right?

  Many thanks.