You Can’t Divorce Screening From Programming
I was coaching one of my trainers, Anthony, through how I actually think about exercise programming — not the textbook version, but the version that works in the trenches with real clients. The ones who walk through the door with dodgy knees, tight hips and zero clue how to squat properly.
And the first thing I said to him was this: you can’t divorce screening from programming.
Because screening isn’t some box-ticking exercise you do before the ‘real work’ begins. Screening is the work. It tells you everything — where someone’s at, what they can handle, and where they’re going to break if you’re not careful.
The Watermelon and the Rubber Ball
I have a little framework I use when I think about clients. I call it the Watermelon and Rubber Ball Scale.
Picture a scale from one to ten. Five is in the middle. Now — if you throw a rubber ball at a wall, what happens? It bounces back. If you throw a watermelon at a wall? It splats.
Your clients are somewhere on that scale.
The question is simple: if you throw your client at a program — a written-on-paper, cookie-cutter program — are they going to bounce back? Or are they going to splat?
Your screening tells you where they sit. And your exercise programming needs to meet them exactly where they are. Not where you think they should be. Not where the textbook says to start. Where they are, right now, today.
Every movement can be progressed. Every movement can be regressed. The skill isn’t knowing the most advanced exercises — it’s knowing exactly how far back to pull it for the person standing in front of you.
Reverse-Engineer Everything
Let’s take something advanced — a clean. It’s one of the most technical movements in the gym. Now, if I want someone to eventually be able to do a clean, I don’t start with a clean. I start by asking: what does a clean require?
Well, you need to be able to do a front squat. What does a front squat require? A back squat. What does a back squat require? A strong lower back, full ankle flexion, full knee flexion.
Keep pulling it apart. What are these movements actually made of? They’re made of joints doing their job — your lower back, your knees, your hips. So you isolate those, you strengthen them, and you build the network of patterns that eventually allows someone to do the complex movement.
At the most basic level — the very bottom of the regression — knee extension might just be a terminal knee extension with a band. For the lower back, it might be a 45-degree back extension. For the hips, it might be a glute bridge.
That’s where you start. Not with the movement you want them to do — with the movements they need to do to get there.
This is what I mean when I say program backwards from the goal but write forward from the assessment. You decide where you want someone to be in six months. Then you look at where they are now. Then you map the path between the two.
The Four Levers of Exercise Programming
Open a strength training textbook and you’ll see people talking about accumulation and intensification phases. Accumulation is your higher reps, higher volume — lots of sets, lots of reps, lower load. Intensification is the opposite — fewer reps, heavier load.
These are just levers. That’s all they are.
You’ve got four of them: reps, sets, load — and the one most people forget — patterns.
How does someone move?
Here’s the thing. Most strength training books are written for people who already know how to train. They already know how to move. So the book just says ‘do a squat, do a bench press’ and assumes the pattern is there.
For 90% of the general population clients walking through your door? The pattern isn’t there.
Remember — everything in biology operates under the theory of constraints. If I put enough load on your body through a squat, something is going to break. Something is going to deviate. That’s not a maybe — that’s the theory of constraints in play. Enough load on any system and you’ll find the weak link.
So your job — before you worry about reps, sets, and load — is to make sure the pattern is right. For most general population clients, you’re programming patterns before you program anything else.
It’s not a programming problem. It’s a pattern problem.
Tempo Is Your Best Friend
There’s research out there suggesting that tempo doesn’t significantly influence hypertrophy within a certain range — roughly two to eight seconds per rep. And that’s probably true — for advanced lifters who already move like poetry.
Look at Ronnie Coleman. Every movement the guy makes is identical to the one before it. He grabs the heaviest dumbbells and it looks like chaos, but if you actually dissect how he moves? It’s clean. It’s precise. Every rep is a carbon copy.
Now — 99% of people do not move like Ronnie Coleman. So let’s take your general population client who’s never been to the gym before. They have zero chance of moving like Ronnie Coleman. None.
That’s where tempo becomes your best friend.
The most common tempo I use is 4-0-1-0. That’s four seconds on the way down, no pause at the bottom, power up, no pause at the top. It standardises the lift. It ensures safety. It creates good movement patterns.
If I want to test someone further, I’ll go 4-0-2-0 — making them come up slower. If they’re really moving poorly, maybe even 4-2-2-0. That pause at the bottom forces them to own the end range. No bouncing. No momentum. Just position.
Once the movement is standardised — once the pattern is there — then you can open things up. But tempo is how you build the foundation. It’s not a beginner thing you outgrow. It’s a tool you use with intent.
Teach People to Fail With Grace
Here’s something I say that people find surprising: sometimes your exercise programming is about teaching people how to fail with grace.
What does that mean? It means sometimes you deliberately put someone in a position that’s going to challenge them — not to break them, but to expose the limitation so you can fix it. A pause rep at the bottom of a deadlift isn’t there because it’s trendy. It’s there because when you pause just at the shins, you find out if the lower back is actually in the right position.
I do pause reps on my own deadlifts. Not because my deadlift is bad — my deadlift is solid. But pausing at the shins keeps my lower back honest. It forces optimal positioning. It strengthens the stabilisers in the exact range where most people lose it.
Pauses, holds, slow tempos — these aren’t beginner exercises you graduate from. They’re tools you use forever. They slow things down, teach position, and make people comfortable in ranges they’d otherwise fly through and never actually own.
Training Splits for the Real World
In my ideal world, everyone trains four days a week. Upper, lower, upper, lower. That’s the gold standard.
But we don’t live in my ideal world. People have jobs, kids, injuries, excuses and lives that get in the way. So you work with what you’ve got.
Two days a week? You could alternate: upper-lower one week, lower-upper the next. Or you could go full body both days — but start one session with upper work and the other with lower work. That way you’re still hitting everything, you’re still progressing, and you’re working within the constraints of their life.
The point is: something is always better than nothing. Steady progress towards the goal — even if it’s slower than you’d like — beats paralysis every time.
The Six Deadly Programming Mistakes
From my coaching experience, I see the same six mistakes on repeat:
- Not periodising programs
- Relying on ‘fixed’ training systems that don’t adapt to the individual
- Not performing exercises correctly — or allowing clients to perform them incorrectly
- Rushing movement competency and progressing too fast
- No rationale behind the programming — just random exercises thrown together
- Not understanding the purpose of screening
Every single one comes back to the same root cause: trainers focusing on what looks impressive rather than what actually works.
The Bottom Line
Exercise programming isn’t about having the most complicated spreadsheet or the most exotic exercises. It’s about looking at the person in front of you, understanding where they’re at, and building them a path from here to where they want to be.
Screen them properly. Identify the dysfunction. Regress movements until they can execute them perfectly. Use tempo to build the patterns. Progress when — and only when — they’ve earned it.
That’s programming. Not the textbook version. The real one.
And if you don’t know where to begin with a client? You don’t know enough about that client — or you don’t know enough about programming. Either way, the answer is the same: go back to the screening.
It always starts there.
Mark Ottobre is the founder of Enterprise Fitness, one of Australia’s leading personal training studios based in Melbourne. He has spent over two decades coaching clients and developing trainers who understand that great results come from great fundamentals — not flashy programming.
If you want to train with a team that actually understands programming, screening and long-term results — enquire today.
