Workout Programming Online Course

Class 7: Designing a Full Workout

You may have figured out that most workouts don’t simply have one exercise. In this class, we’ll provide a framework for creating easy, medium, and hard days using the MovementLink Rep Table and Reps in Reserve (RIR).

  • Easy Day

    • Exercises adding to be less than 100% MEV.

  • Medium Day

    • Exercises adding to be above 100% MEV and below 100% MRV.

    • Typically this will be 1 exercise.

  • Hard Day

    • Exercises adding to be above 200% MEV and below 200% MRV.

    • Typically this will be 2 exercises

  • Overloading Day (Extremely Hard)

    • Exercises adding to be above 200% MRV.

    • Typically this will be 3 or more exercises and occurs extremely rarely.

What do we mean by “exercises adding to be”? We want to track general movement patterns. If we have 1 exercise it’s simple, but there are scenarios where we will back squat in one section of the workout and deadlift in a second section. The fatigue combines should fall between the above numbers. There may also be scenarios where we back squat in the first section and then deadlift and do air squats in the next section. The fatigue combines and the totals for all 3 exercises should fall within the ranges above. There are complimentary movements, like a bench press (a push) and pull-ups (a pull), for which we will keep our values separate and not combine them. We need to decide if two exercises are complimentary or compounding to each other. If they are complimentary, like upper body push/pull then we keep the total fatigue numbers separate. If they are compounding, like bench press and push-ups, we add them together.

Let’s look at some examples:

Example MetCon:

5 Rounds F.I.I.T.
55% of a Max Set Push-ups
55% of a Max Set Pull-ups
10 Thrusters (35%)

Legs:
The only legs here would be 50 total thrusters at 35% of a max. Doing some inferring and estimating, a thruster max is usually around 85% of a max front squat meaning that 35% of a Thruster max would actually only be 30% of a Front Squat max (0.85*0.35=.2975 ~ 30%).
So the leg fatigue from this work out would be at 30% would be 50 reps out of 62.5 reps required to meet MEV. 60/62.5=80% of MEV which is less than 100% of MEV, so this would be on the high end, but would be considered an Easy Leg Workout.

Upper Body Pull
The only upper body pulling exercise here is the push-ups. 5 rounds x 55% of a max set each round would equal a total number of reps of 275% of a max set. Looking at the Rep Table, that is exactly Optimal Volume. It would also be 275%/150%=183% of MEV and 275%/400%=69% of MRV, so would be classified as a Medium Upper Body Pull Workout.

Upper Body Press
Here we have two exercises that each have a pressing pattern, push-ups and thrusters, and so they will compound and combine fatigue.
Because the push-ups are the same as the pull-ups in the Upper Body Pull example, we’ll just re-use those numbers: 183% of MEV and 69% of MRV.
For a thruster, it is usually right around a 1 RM push press, so instead of further breaking down the percentage, we are going to look at it as 50 reps of a push press at 35%. Doing the calculations

  • MEV: 60/45 = 133%

  • MRV: 60/100 = 50%

Adding the Upper Body Pressing Values Together, we get:

  • Total vs MEV: 183% (from Push-ups) + 133% (from Thrusters) = 316% MEV

  • Total vs MRV: 69% (from Push-ups) + 50% (from Thrusters) = 119% MRV

This places us above the 100% (which would be a medium day) and below 200% MRV making it a Hard Upper Body Press Workout.

To sum it up, the above workout example would be:

  • Legs - Easy Workout

  • Upper Body Pull - Medium Workout

  • Upper Body Press - Hard Workout


Why do a thruster and not just a push press if it’s going to be an easy day anyway? Having easy days for certain movement patterns can be a great way to aid recovery by doing non-fatiguing amounts of work through full ranges of motion. It doesn’t mean that a push press would have been a bad idea for this particular workout, but there are times where we will strategically stay below MEV for movement patterns.

Let’s say we wanted to add work to make sure we also had a hard categorized workout for upper body pulling.

  • We could add an exercise to the workout like bent-over rows.

  • We could add reps to the workout by upping the 55% of a max set to 100% of a Max Set each round which would take the total over 100% MRV.

  • We could add strength or hypertrophy work before or after the workout that was specifically upper body pulling.

Let’s say we were going to use this workout at part of our primary upper body strength day where we are bench pressing in the cycle.

Potential Week 2 Rep Scheme from Class #5:

Bench Press
1 Set of 6 (80%)
1 Set of 6 (75%)
1 Set of 6 (70%)

We can re-use the math and say this would produce 82% of MRV.

Let’s look at how this compounds on top of the workout for upper body pressing:
MRV: 82% (from Bench Press) + 69% (from Push-ups) + 50% (from Thrusters) = 201% MRV which would classify this as Overloading and would push us beyond a hard day.

We need to keep in mind that everything can compound on one another and we can’t simply take a strength rep scheme from a program and add it to a metcon from another program as it is very easy for the compounding nature to push us well beyond what effective stimuli are. In the above example, if we wanted to bench press before hand, we’d simply need to adjust the upper body pressing reps in the metcon.

A quick way to estimate appropriate totals:

  • Easy day: 1 exercise below MEV.

  • Medium day: 1 Exercise Between MEV and MRV.

  • Hard day: 2 Exercises, each between MEV and MRV.