Don't Prioritise Training Efficiency Over Effectiveness

The big mistake intermediate-level trainees make in their programming

The biggest mistake I see with intermediate-level trainees managing their training programs is focusing on placing too much emphasis on being efficient and it comes at the cost of being effective.

They plan their training by working out the maximum time they can allocate to exercise each week and then filling these slots with a challenging session. To minimise fatigue, they avoid duplicating training over successive days, typically shown by alternating strength and cardio training or upper body and lower body strength training (which is a good idea).

Then goals are developed for the training program to align with, usually linearly. This might be adding 2.5kg of weight to weekly strength lifts and reducing 15 seconds from the running sessions.

There is no question about this being an efficient way to train. A significant amount of work is being completed for the time spent training. However, it’s not always an effective way to achieve their big-picture goals.

Most general population clients have time constraints on their training. Some would like to train more, but generally speaking, most people can commit to 30-60 minutes three-to-four times per week. Anything else is a bonus.

Time constraints require prioritising your goals if you want them to be achievable. It’s challenging to build a lot of whole-body muscle mass and improve running performance while training for an hour four days per week. People in their first year of consistent training are the exception to this rule, but we are talking about intermediate-level trainees for now.

Resistance training focused on muscle hypertrophy is required for whole-body muscle mass. As this training is intense, performance can reduce relatively quickly during a training session, so it can make sense to break sessions into muscle groups (i.e. upper/lower, push/pull or muscle groups).

The efficient approach to this challenge is to train the upper body and lower body once each and run twice per week. This is a very efficient use of time, but it won’t always yield the best results. 

The lower body sessions might impair running performance, as the running sessions can also impair lower body sessions. This can lead to the inability to induce the stimulus required for strength or cardio adaptation.

A better approach might be to prioritise muscle building over the next 12 weeks and aim to maintain cardio fitness as a secondary goal.

The training program now looks like three resistance training sessions - upper body, lower body and full body. This allows you to train each muscle group twice per week, which helps increase the stimulus for hypertrophy.

Making the running session hard seems obvious due to reduced frequency. However, let’s consider that the objective is to maintain cardio fitness, which means there is no requirement to induce new stimulus for adaptation.

Instead, the running session might be a lower-intensity run. This benefit is that it allows fitness to be maintained or slightly increased (don’t expect massive changes) while keeping overall training volume down.

At the end of the 12-week program, hopefully muscle has been gained and cardio fitness has been maintained. Now the focus can switch to building cardio fitness and maintaining muscle mass.

Using this stepping-stone approach is a much more effective way to progress over the long term as you continually advance in each training program. Trying to bring high intensity to all training sessions can compromise intensity and reduce the stimulus for adaptations aligned with your goals.

Too much training intensity as an intermediate-level trainee is equivalent to taking on too many fitness and nutrition changes when you start with a new regime. You might be able to implement it on the perfect week, but eventually, the fatigue accumulates, and intensity will drop across all sessions.

The solution is also the same - focus on adherence, and results will follow.

If you are guilty of prioritising training efficiency over effectiveness, try the alternative approach for 12 weeks. You will likely feel you are undertraining, especially during the low-intensity session/s.

However, once you hit the 4-6 week mark where many overly-intense programs have stagnated or already peaked, you should find yourself continually progressing towards your primary goal.