The Functional Strength Programming Guide

Functional Fitness is a strength sport. It may be the most endurance oriented strength sport, but you must be brutally strong to do well. It’s often very confusing how to get stronger as an athlete, and more importantly, how to get stronger without sacrificing all of your hard earned conditioning. This article is going to layout the specifics of programming a solid strength template for any strength athlete.

The first thing I ask any athlete when they ask me about strength training is if their current program is working? If it is then honestly, there is no reason to change it. You need only change your training methods when you are no longer seeing progress.

Now, because functional fitness is such a broad and inclusive sport, we can’t neglect any one area of strength development. If I have any critique of the functional fitness industry, as a whole, it is the neglect of basic strength moves in favor of Olympic lifting style training.

There is nothing wrong with this style of training, but it can take a long time to master, and personally I’ve always found athletes who are generally strong, can learn technique much faster than an excellent technician can become strong!

Let’s get into the details.

The Strength Training Variables

There are only a few key strength training variables that we as athletes, and programmers need to manipulate. They are, in no particular order:

1. Volume
2. Intensity
3. Exercise Selection

Volume refers to the total amount of work done in a given exercise or by a certain muscle group. This can be quantified in any number of ways, but commonly it is measured in foot pounds of work (ft/lbs).

This is a simple concept where we take the total load lifted multiplied by the distance moved. Distance moved is measured from the start of the lift to the middle of the lift. For a squat, it would be from the top of the squat to the lowest point. For a bench press, it would be from arms locked to the chest. For a deadlift, it would be from the ground to the top of the lift. Here is an example:

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Ex. Back Squat: 5 sets of 5 reps all at 200 pounds

5 sets x 5 reps = 25 reps x 200 = 5000

5000 x 2 ft = 10,000 ft/lbs of work

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This is a very basic calculation, as you can get very detailed and figure the total displacement along the bar path, and you can add in your bodyweight moved in addition to barbell weight.

I generally use this excellent calculator from Catalyst Athletics to help figure out total volumes. I’ve found it to be very accurate, and helpful.

Intensity

Intensity is defined as someone on a spin bike yelling at you to peddle faster. Just kidding, it’s actually defined as the percentage of weight lifted relative to your one max rep in a given lift.

For example, if you are performing a one rep max effort deadlift, then your heaviest weight is 100% intensity. If you are then doing sets with 70% of that weight then that is the intensity you are using relative to your one rep max.

Intensity is key for strength development. Your body gets stronger in two primary ways. One, gaining muscular size, two, becoming more efficient and firing your muscle fibers all together very quickly.

Working high intensity lifts, 80% of one rep max or greater, will help your body become much more neurally efficient and give you the ability to lift much great weight per pound of muscle mass.

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Exercise Selection

This is one area that many athletes and programmers fail to pay enough attention to. They stick with the same lifts year after year and find that they quickly plateau.

The basic lifts will always be represented in any solid strength program, but we fail ourselves if we fail to vary them sufficiently to continue to make progress.

A perfect example of this is the Smolov Squat Routine. It is a very intense program where you will squat heavy, and high volume 4 days per week, and yet in the initial two weeks of this specialized program you are doing things like Bulgarian split squats!

Variation should generally be kept to every few months, and they don’t have to be huge changes. Moving from wide grip bench to close grip is sufficient.

Conversely we don’t want to change this every day or week because the body does need to adapt to the specific demands of the lift in order to actually become stronger.

Creating a Functional Strength Template

Now that we’ve covered the basics we can move onto the rules of thumb for creating an effective strength program for functional athletes. First, I’m going to give you a little tool I created as quick reference for programming reps and sets at the correct intensity.

This is based off of the work of Alexander Prilepin, a Soviet weightlifting coach from the 80’s. It’s the basis for most modern strength programs today.

At the bottom of this pyramid we see low intensity, under 70%. We also see the green end of the bar says 18 which is total reps. At the red end it is 30 total reps meaning this is the maximum we should be able to do at this given intensity. In this block we can program 3-6 sets with a total of 18-30 reps, with 24 being “optimal.”

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As you work your way up the chart we see less sets and fewer reps at higher intensities. This makes sense, you can’t do a 10 rep set with 100% of your one rep max!

This is a very similar chart based on these same principles. It can be a little easier to read.

Most research shows that we need to stay in the 80-90% intensity range for optimal strength gains. This is why you will see a lot of sets of 5 and under for strength work, as these allow you to use weights at 80% or above

Now that we have some handy reference charts, let’s see how they work with some common strength plans. Put your thinking hats on, its quiz time.

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Question: What is the maximum intensity can you program a 5×5 deadlift workout?

Answer: First find the amount of sets we are going to do which is 5. That puts us in the second from the bottom column in Prilepin’s chart. At the far right we see 24 listed as the max. This means we should only be able to do 24 total reps at 79% intensity. We need to do 25 so if we back off one percent (bit of a swag) this should put us at the heaviest intensity.

So we can do 5×5 deadlift at 78% of our one rep max.

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Now the more astute of you will have run these numbers and realized that you can actually go with a higher intensity and finish the 5×5. This is correct but there are some caveats here.

These charts are for long term training, which means that while you can go above them for intensity purposes you would be foolish to do so for long periods of time. I can tell you that you quickly become burnt out, and plateau.

Secondly this is a reference guide and it is not the exact number that every single person will fall into. I have coached athletes than can regularly beat these numbers and some that are almost never above these numbers. You will learn with experience where you fall on the chart. You should start here and then deviate after a few months.

Recapping Intensity

We need to spend the majority of our time in the 80-90% intensity range. This means that we are looking at 1-5 sets with less than 20 total reps as a general rule of thumb.

Volume

This is another key driver of strength. It primarily works in two ways. It increases muscle mass and it allows you to practice the movements which increases your efficiency with them.

Most research studies show a clear relationship with increasing volume yielding increasing strength gains, to a point. You can’t do 1000 sets per week and expect to become the strongest lifter that ever lived.

There are a few rules of thumb I use to program total volume for each movement:

Now keep in mind these sets are going to be heavy sets at the red end of Prilepin’s chart. At the green end we can go higher, but we aren’t working on strength as much at that point.

Exercise Selection

This area is going to be very important for long term development. We should also include some version of the basic lifts. Here is a handy chart I use to make sure we have all the basics covered. It also lists accessory moves for each primary move.

This chart is read with the primary moves in the fart left column. The column immediately to the right is the most similar accessory, and as you get further from the primary column you get less and less similar.

This is by no means an all inclusive list, but it should give you an idea of what moves should be in a solid strength program.

Accessory Work for Strength Training

This is more of a question of overall volume, and your individual weak points. As a rule of thumb, I program a primary move and at least one accessory move targeting an area that is holding me back.

An example of this would be a main move of back squats with an accessory move of weighted glute bridges.

Pairing Strength Training with WODs

How to pair strength training with WODs is the million dollar question. I use three specific guidelines to help me put together these two parts.

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1. Program similar moves in both the WOD and the Strength
2. For a WOD relative intensity should be kept to 30-40% of 1RM
3. Plan for enough volume so you aren’t too sore for the next training day with the same muscle groups

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I like to think of the WOD as a chance to add in a little more volume onto the same muscle groups that I’ve already worked in the strength training. It will impact your WOD performance, but remember the goal here is to get stronger not set a world record in your WOD.

Here is an example of what I mean:

You’ll notice a few things right off the bat. First, this is primarily a hypertrophy program but it set up the same way a strength program should be.

Blue boxes are primary moves, with the black boxes being accessory. The WOD uses similar muscle groups to what was previously worked in the strength session, and each session gives the muscle group two nights of rest before being used again.

If you want to see another example of programming strength training and functional fitness, check out this 9 Week Functional Strength Program.

Final Thoughts

This has been a long post and now you are ready to lift all the weights. It’s key to remember that even the best programmed strength training template won’t do a damn thing if you don’t eat the right food, or recover well enough.

Now you’ve got all the tools you need to take your training to the next level. If you have any questions or comments leave them below!

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