Individualised or Generalised?

I've noticed a lot of dogmatic thinking lately around what does and doesn't count as individualised training. Two things I see constantly: first, that planning a structured program is somehow wrong and not truly individual. Second, that once a movement has been programmed for an athlete, it must never be changed as if altering something that was supposedly "individual" to them is a coaching failure.

I don't have an extreme stance on this. I absolutely believe coaches should do their best to create training environments that suit their athletes. But I want to challenge some of the dogma around what individual programming actually means and, more importantly, when it becomes possible.

So where do we actually start?

For this discussion, let's assume we're talking about a beginner-to-intermediate lifter with some prior weightlifting experience.

When I start working with a new lifter, I run them through a thorough initial assessment. I want to understand who I'm working with, their goals, past injuries, life outside the gym, family commitments, work demands, and anything that might affect how training progresses. From there, I watch them move through general movements before taking them to the barbell. Then I watch them snatch and clean and jerk. I ask about what they've worked on previously, cues, variations, and past coaching, and I get their recent maxes to understand where they're strong and where there's room to grow. I also ask how they like to receive feedback and be cued.

After all of that, you'd think I have enough to write a truly individual program. But I don't, not even close.

In reality, I've known this person for about an hour. You cannot write a genuinely individual program after one hour with someone.

So what do I actually do? I keep the first program simple. Classic weightlifting structure, basic variations of the Olympic lifts, straightforward progressions in volume and intensity. The goal isn't to individualise yet, it's to observe. How do they move across different variations? How do they handle loading? How well do they recover? How does life outside the gym affect their training week to week? How does their technique hold up as fatigue accumulates?

By the end of that block I know significantly more about this person. But even then, going into the next program, I still can't write something truly individual to them.

Here's why: when I choose variations to address a technique issue, I'm making an educated guess. I'm selecting movements that have helped other lifters with similar patterns. That's not individualisation, that's generalisation based on accumulated coaching experience. And that's completely fine, as long as we're honest about what it is.

Over months of working together, cycling through variations every two to four months and watching what helps and what doesn't, the programming gradually becomes more accurate for that specific person. I start to understand which variations click for their body, which cues land, and what they actually need versus what I assumed they needed. And here's the thing about those people who say you should never change a movement. Rigidly keeping something in because it was "programmed for them" isn't individualisation, it's stubbornness. If something isn't working, changing it is the individual's decision. That's the whole point. Now, there is absolutely a time and place to give an athlete time to adjust to a new exercise, you can't pull something after one bad session. But after a few weeks you can pretty clearly tell if it's doing more harm than good. On the flip side, if an exercise is working really well, keep it in for as long as it's serving them. The problem is that even good things have a shelf life. Too much of something, even something that's been really effective, can stop creating the stimulus you need. So it may need to dip in and out of their program over time, or at the very least you need to keep finding ways to make it more challenging so it continues to drive progress. That's not inconsistency, that's just smart programming.

Progression isn't one size fits all, either

This brings me to another area where I think coaches overcomplicate the conversation, progression. At the start of working with someone, progression can be pretty straightforward. A simple linear progression, add a little weight, keep moving forward. That works early on because the athlete is new enough that almost any reasonable stimulus will drive adaptation.

But that doesn't last forever, and this is where being truly attentive to your athlete matters. As they develop, progression stops being as simple as just adding weight and dropping volume. It becomes about finding the right method for that person at that point in their development. Maybe it's wave loading, maybe it's increasing variation difficulty, maybe it's manipulating density or rest periods, maybe it's building their capacity to handle more volume before pushing intensity. The point is, how you progress one athlete week to week may not look exactly the same as how you progress another. And that's okay, that's actually what good coaching looks like.

Now here's something worth thinking about. The actual process of making someone stronger, pushing them past their current capacity to create a stimulus for adaptation, isn't really individual. Progressive overload is a universal principle. Every athlete, no matter how different they are, needs to be challenged beyond what they can currently do in order to improve. You can't get around that. What is individual is how you apply that overload. The method you choose, the timing, how much you push and how you read their response and adjust. The principle is general, the application is where your coaching becomes individual to that person.

So what does individualised coaching actually mean?

I think we've overcomplicated this as an industry. Individualised coaching isn't some magical thing that happens the moment you write someone's name at the top of a program. It's not about having a different exercise for every person or never using a method that's worked for someone else.

Individualised coaching is just active coaching. It's showing up every session, watching, listening, and learning. It's being honest when something isn't working and being willing to change it. It's understanding your athlete well enough over time that your decisions for them become more and more accurate. It's building a coaching relationship where the program evolves because you are evolving in your understanding of that person.

That takes time. It takes sessions. It takes getting things wrong and adjusting. And the coaches who are doing it best aren't the ones with the most rigid systems or the most complex programs, they're the ones who are genuinely paying attention.

True individualisation isn't a starting point. It's the product of time, observation, and an ongoing coaching relationship.

Ready to start your journey?

If you are interested in experiencing what attentive, progressive coaching actually looks like in practice, we offer free one to one sessions at MWBC. Come in, move, and let's start getting to know you.

— MWBC Coaching Team