Coach Thib’s – Personal Program

To give you an idea of what I’m trying to accomplish, I designed this program to help me increase my golf swing speed. And while I’m a big believer in the big basics, there is some golf-specific work in there that might not fit all goals.

I’m not gonna lie; the program was also designed around my personal preferences. When I work with pro or high-level athletes, the athlete’s needs for his sport supersedes his likes and dislikes (even though I do take them into consideration as well as their neurotype). But I’m not a pro athlete, just a washed-up meathead trying to hand on to his gainz while enjoying the process!

I also use some pieces of equipment and exercise variations based both on personal preferences and injury profile. For example, I’m using a safety bar for squats because my right shoulder is not what it used to be. I want to minimize the stress I put on it.

That’s also why I’m relying on the incline bench press rather than the flat variation. As odd as it might seem, the incline press causes me a lot fewer shoulder issues than flat bench pressing.

There are also only two typical lifting sessions per week and one power training session based on the Olympic lifts. I find that at my age, life stress (two young kids and a business to run in the middle of a pandemic) and experience level, I progress faster in both size and strength by only have two full-body workouts per week than using more frequent lifting workouts.

I still “train” 5 days a week because I also do loaded stretching and abs twice per week. But these are low-stress sessions. Not everyone will like or respond optimally to this type of schedule.

This is my own personal program. And while the basic structure can easily be used to create a workout that you can use, the program as is might not be suited to your situation, equipment availability, and goals.

I’m not giving you this program in the hopes that you will follow it, but because I like to teach and help others out, and even though it is not designed for you, you might still get a lot of ideas from it.

Structure Of The Program

As I mentioned earlier, the training weeks are divided as follow:

Day 1: More typical lifting session

Day 2: Loaded stretching and abs

Day 3: Power training

Day 4: Lifting session

Day 5: Loaded stretching and abs

Since my goal is to improve swing speed, which is speed-strength in nature, I do have jumping exercises three times per week as an activation for the lifting and power workouts.

While the design uses a block periodization approach (Accumulation, Intensification I, Intensification II, Realization I, Realization II), it is also fairly linear in its approach. The volume gradually decreases while the intensity increases.

While I’m keeping explosive work throughout, it becomes more prevalent as the program progresses. The program philosophy is to develop muscle mass and strength and then use that strength during high-speed movements.

You will notice that the phases are actually very short (1-3 weeks).

That is for two reasons:

1) I quickly get bored of a program even if I’m getting good results. For example, from week 1 to 3, my body weight went from 217 to 222lbs, pretty much all muscle, which is actually HUGE at my experience level (some of it was regained muscle). But despite the rapid gains, I couldn’t wait to do something else. 3 weeks of the same program is my absolute mental limit!

2) I’m a “fast adapter,” meaning that when I introduce a new method or approach, I get extremely rapid results for 2 weeks. Still, then the approach loses its effectiveness because my body adapts so quickly. In the past, this actually made me come to false conclusions regarding some training methods. I would try something, get dramatic results in 1-2 weeks, then write an article because I was convinced that it was the best method known to man! In reality, I progress fast with any new method I use. That’s why frequent changes work best for me.

I hope you enjoy the material, and as always, thanks for your interest and continued support!

Thib’s out.