An essential and often overlooked part of any program is testing. Testing is a vital way of understanding where you are at the start of your program and allows you to see how much progress you’ve made.
Test re-test is an essential part of professional sport. There is no reason you shouldn’t incorporate the same thing into your training.
At the start of each training plan or block, you need to measure what you want to change.
Essentially you carry out a particular exercise to your limit to base your programming on.
How?
Let’s use the back squat as an example.
You could do a 1-rep max back squat (1RM). Whatever you lift, this weight would then be your max (100%) for you to work out your working sets.
Let’s say you got 100kg for your 1RM.
In your new program, you might work 4 sets of 5 reps you wanted to work at 80%; you’d be using 80kg to start your program with.
Then the training program you make is properly calculated from that.
If you don’t measure or know where you’re starting from.
How do you know if you’re getting better?
You’re just guessing.
If you measure,
You have some raw data to compare at the end of your training cycle.
At the end of each training cycle, you can repeat the tests to see how much you’ve progressed.
Sadly, testing and understanding how much you’ve progressed through a training plan is something that gets forgotten. But if you are guessing, you’re effectively carrying out your exercises with no real idea how you’re progressing or if you’re challenging yourself enough.
Make sure you incorporate some testing before the start of your next program.
