At ascend perform we don't have classes or boot camps where everyone is doing the same thing. We tailor your training based on your specific goals and on what you have, what you own, and what you can tolerate.
What you have is best described as your anatomy. People have different heights, different muscle belly lengths/tendon attachments, different ranges of motion, and levels of stability.
What you own can be summed up as what you can do well. For instance, if you cannot show proficiency with an exercise, we don’t have you do it. In this case, you would do a regressive exercise or something else to gain strength along with more structural balance and stability before moving on to more progressive exercises. You don’t want to build strength on top of dysfunction.
What you can tolerate is your overall volume and frequency. More isn’t always better, better is better. If you can’t adequately recover from your training sessions or if you don’t do enough work to stress the body enough for an adaptation to occur then the amount of work isn’t correct for you. At ascend perform we measure volume, intensity, frequency, and your rate of perceived effort to always determine what is optimal for you.
There are many different training methodologies with some being better than others. One method we use is called the conjugate method where we focus on strength, speed, and hypertrophy concurrently.
This model has proven to be superior to traditional linear or block training methods where only one training modality is primarily focused on at a time. Focusing on multiple strength qualities simultaneously allows for better recovery throughout the week, prevents staleness or boredom due to the constant rotating of exercises, and allows you to identify if the program is working every week so you can make changes if needed.
Have you ever heard of the law of accommodation? This law states that the more you do something the less you stand to benefit from it. To avoid this we change exercises once you no longer see reasonable improvements. This can vary greatly between individuals. Some people adapt quicker than others but on average it’s between 4-6 workouts.
To summarize, many coaches/personal trainers that I see are either measuring nothing and collecting no data or have so many moving pieces within their training that there's no idea what's working and what isn't. It's just hoping for the best. Why not use a science-based method and collect necessary data that proves its efficacy. This is what we do at ascend perform and why we can prove the results that you can physically see.
