Having a personalized protocol should be SOP.

There was a time when cutting out the workout from the latest Muscle and Fitness magazine and folding it up in your pocket was standard. You’d walk into the gym with the most current way to “build the biggest shoulders and back in 4 weeks” and get to work.

That doesn’t make sense anymore. With the current research that’s being done on training as well as the various training methods and philosophies the traditional bro split has become dated. Especially if you are training for performance in a specific field.

We have better information, better equipment and facilities, and a better understanding of how the body actually adapts. Training should reflect that.

When we think of personal or custom protocols, we often correlate that with money. It's going to be more expensive. What’s actually expensive is spending months (or years) doing the wrong things.

Not having a protocol usually consists of walking into the gym doing random exercises, repeating the same workouts, and not seeing real progress.

Simultaneously we will spend money on supplements, shoes, or the latest swag before ever having a structured program. That’s backwards.

Don’t get me wrong, looking fit and filling up the sleeves on your new t-shirt is great, but if you’re training for a purpose there is more than just looking big. It’s about staying healthy, reducing injuries or managing the ones you already have, moving well, and holding up as you get older. For a lot of us, it even impacts how well we can do our job.

Why are we doing this?

Before anything else we should ask ourselves why are we working out in the first place? It could be to get stronger, lose weight (fat loss), build endurance, prevent injuries or just overall health and longevity. Answering this question will create the foundation of you programming and can drastically change the way you approach training.

Next, your facility should be able to accommodate your programing. The big box gyms are nice and convenient, but they don’t always have the space, equipment or environment to allow you to train the way you need to. LA Fitness is great if you’re going to do isolated muscle splits, but if you have ever tried to do anything more dynamic at one of these gyms, you understand the challenges there are.

Not having the proper facility will just lead to skipping parts of your work out or canceling the whole thing all together, leading to a longer timeline for results, inconsistent training or slowly falling off the wagon all together.

I want THE BEST.

If you are like a lot of people, we spend more time searching for “the best” of anything, but there is no best workout plan. There is only the best program for YOU. One of the biggest things I have seen (and learned the hard way) is people doing movements that they are not prepared for, or their body is in no position to be doing. The best program for you is the one that takes in account your injuries, limitations and meets you where you are at when you start. If you are dealing with a back injury, your programming shouldn’t have you doing barbell squats, deadlifts and other movements that compromise your spinal position and place it under load. Down the road it is possible to get back to these movements, but it takes time to rehabilitate and build back strength. An injury is going to cost you more with time and money than a personalized protocol ever will.

Time is limited and we all struggle with the work life balance and trying to continue to get our training in. A personal protocol will most certainly help you stay focused and stop the guess work and on the fly “figuring it out”. We have all walked into the gym lost, and just see what equipment is open and then decide “I guess I’m doing back today” if you are serious about results this is not the way.

Go Hard or Go Home.

I had a coach tell me “Most of the time when you are done working out you should feel like you could probably do that workout again” my brain short circuited, and everything I believed was questioned. I was of the mindset that you should leave it all on the gym floor every day. While that is partly true, there should be days where you walk out smoked. Everyday should not be like that. I like to think of that as the Instagram influencer mentality. Some jacked influencers with motivational quotes, generating click bait. This will eventually lead to over training (which impacts results), unnecessary injuries and can place strain on your nervous system. A personalize protocol helps you mitigate this and will take in account your volume of training, training activity and help you create a sustainable balance.

One of the most important aspects of this is who you decide to trust with your program. There are a lot of well qualified people out there. First, find someone who does what you want to do or is experienced in that area of training. If I want to build endurance, strength and focus on longevity maybe a trainer that does body building is not going to be the best fit. Second, make sure they spend time listening to your training and injury history. This is very important; they need to understand your strengths and limitations in order to program correctly. Also, this is up to you to provide the details necessary for them to help you. Don't expect them to be a mind reader.  This is true during the program as well. If they program a specific exercise and it doesn’t feel great, let them know. It helps dial in the program.

Fill the Bucket.

One way I like to look at things is that there are several buckets of training. A strength bucket, endurance bucket, mobility bucket, power bucket, longevity bucket etc... We only have so much water to fill those buckets. It is impossible to keep all the buckets full at the same time. There just is not enough time in the day and it often becomes unsustainable and produces burn out. If you ever have trained for a running event and attempted to maintain strength and size, you understand where I'm coming from.  That is why most professional athletes stop training all together after they retire. Pick which buckets are most important to you and then focus on that. You can always switch out buckets based on where you are at or new challenges that pop up.  

Finally.

I will always respect the person who is doing something over the person who is doing nothing. Any movement is better than none, that’s a fact. But if you are ready to take the next step or get the extra edge, maybe this is the part of you training you are missing. A common theme is that when people have been training for a long time, they have a lot of experience and tend to understand it. But a famous coach once told me, “Your coach always has a coach”. Having someone program movements you don’t do often or at all and force you to do the training days you don’t love is invaluable. We all love to do what we are good at, but the growth is in doing the things we struggle with.