Minimal Viable Program

What is a minimum viable training program?

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) publishes various guidelines for healthcare provision. Including exercise guidelines for maintaining health.

They recommend a minimum of 2 strength training sessions per week, plus 30 mins of low to medium intensity exercise at least 5+ days per week (150 mins total), or 75 mins of high intensity exercise per week.

The recommendations are backed by scientific research and based on reducing risk factors such as hypertension and resting heart rate that lead to increased chances of developing conditions like heart disease or stroke. 

If the minimum standard seems daunting, the most important thing is to start where you are. 

In the beginning, more is better. Simply assess what you are currently doing and do a bit more. We can be directionally right while we work on being absolutely right.

The NICE guidelines are a good start, and fall in line with the Kickstart plan. Combined with a calorie controlled nutrition plan, you’ll make solid progress, and it is more than enough to look and feel great!

Now you know what the current minimum guidelines are in order to maintain health markers and minimise the risk of health conditions. But they say nothing anything about what your minimum capabilities should be. 

Two people could do strengthening exercises twice per week but get different results because of factors such as how hard they worked, what kind of strengthening exercises they chose, how many exercises and repetitions, among other factors.

So what counts?

How much strength you have, how fast your heart beats during graded exercise, how far you can run. 

Exercise alone isn’t what improves our health, performance or longevity, but the effects of the exercise we do. 

The simple answer: progress

If every time we exercise, we make improvement then we will naturally get to high levels of fitness. 

That’s why progress is one of our fundamental principles.

Strength standards

In the first 6 months of training, I like to see my clients reach these strength standards:

Push ups

Women: 3 Men: 20

Body row (inverted row)

Women: 3 Men: 10

Single leg squat

Women: 3 Men: 5

Bodyweight squat

Women: 20 Men: 30

Deadlift 5 Reps

Women: 60kg Men: 100kg (or 0.75x bodyweight for women, 1.25x bodyweight for men)

They act for good proxy measurements for three things: consistency of training, progress between workouts, and healthy body composition.

Again, these numbers act as a minimum standard to reach, usually before reassessing the goals and future planning. 

To benchmark your maximum aerobic fitness the 12 minute Cooper run/cycle is an easy and reliable test.

What does an enhanced training program look like?

I would like to see another resistance training session added each week, as well as increasing weekly cardiorespiratory exercise closer to 200-300 mins. The last thing I would add is some focused time on movement quality, such as yoga, pilates, dynamic mobility drills, or exercises to address specific muscular imbalances.

Unless your primary goal is to look athletic and lean, you won’t see much of a difference between the minimal standard and what I consider an enhanced program. 

Your goals and desired outcomes - be it a faster 5km time, super strength, or to maintain a healthy weight - will dictate the specifics of your training plan.

Did you think about your training related goals?

If we think of the floor and ceiling model of success, our minimum training standard is the floor, or the baseline, that we want to maintain forever. But it’s our goals that will determine how high we need to raise the floor and the ceiling.

For example, training to run a half marathon will temporarily raise the ceiling because we’ll need to put in more effort than our basic training. 

But equally, if we want to maintain a strength and fitness standard above what is considered average, then we ought to raise our floor too. That might include increasing resistance sessions from 2 to 4 per week, or stretching for at least 5 minutes per day.

The point is, match your training inputs to the level of importance you place on your fitness. Nobody can tell you what is the right amount of training for you. First hit the minimum standard, then set the vision, then match the vision with the inputs.

Summary

The difference in fitness results is largely the product of the effectiveness of your workouts and how consistently you execute the plan. It’s the effects of our exercise that counts towards our health and fitness goals, not merely the inputs themselves.

Unless you want to optimize your training to get the absolute best results possible, strength training two days per week, and walking 30+ mins 5 days per week, along with your nutrition plan is the 20% of training that will get you 80% of the results. 

This stuff evolves over time, inline with your goals, so right now it is about getting excited and getting started.