Some personal trainers and coaches get really hung up on the concept of goal-setting, asking all of their clients what their number one goal is. Usually the list includes losing weight, gaining muscle, increasing health, or improving performance. Ignoring the fact that weight loss automagically leads to improved health and performance, there’s also the fact that many people are looking to both lose weight and gain muscle—and that trying to focus on one and then the other isn’t something many people will do.

Ironically, some of the fitness professionals who are the most hung up on making sure each client has just one goal often work multiple goals into their programming—and sometimes, these goals have cross purposes. Specifically, many coaches offer strength days in group classes, but the actual programming doesn’t focus on strength.

Since many people won’t notice goals at cross purposes—or won’t bring it up even if they do, especially in a class setting—I’d like to give a few examples. (To find out how to incorporate strength programming into your gym in a way that works, look no further than Greg Everett’s article in this very issue.)

Example 1: Ladders or inverse ladders with exercises involving weights

When your programming includes ladders, your athletes think that their goal is to finish the requisite amount of sets and reps in time… Even if that’s an unrealistic goal that nobody ever achieves, it’s what they are striving for. But adding exercises involving weights creates confusion. Do you want your athletes to focus primarily on finishing the ladders (or trying to) in the allotted period of time? In that case, they’d pick light-ish weight and work fast. Or, do you want them to try to use a heavier, but manageable weight and pay less attention to how many reps and sets they get? If that’s the case, then why have ladders to begin with?

This isn’t to say you should never use weights in metcon-style exercises, but just that people need to know that what they’re doing is conditioning (even if you throw some dumbbells, kettlebells, or even barbells into the mix). If you want to focus on strength, have people stick to higher weights and not try to crank out 55 reps of three exercises (or whatever) in fifteen minutes.

Example 2: AMRAP with weights

This example is really similar to the first one, but sometimes coaches try to work around it by calling it strength endurance. I would call it endurance endurance. Why? Because if you are asking athletes to do as many reps as possible of multiple exercises and some of them involve using weights, and the time period is longer than, say, seven minutes, that absolutely encourages endurance over strength. Who wants to do a really heavy round and then sit around for the next five or even three out of 10 timed minutes? The maxim “strength before strength endurance” really applies, and if you’re truly strength-focused, you’ll want your athletes to develop a baseline before working for speed. And there’s no way a group of people will go as heavy as they need to for a 10-minute AMRAP round.

Example 3: Form vs. Speed

We’ve probably beaten the form vs. reps horse to death here in the Performance Menu, and for good reason. Because shitty reps don’t count. Oh yeah, and you can get injured, too. That said, there are some bodyweight exercises or conditioning activities in which deteriorating form isn’t a huge deal. Half-assed pushups may be lame, for example, but you probably won’t pull your back. That last half mile may not be as pretty as your first half-mile was, but that’s a little different than getting an injury because you care more about what’s RXed than what you can actually do.

But there’s another aspect to form vs. speed, and that’s how much time you spend teaching the exercises in a given workout. If form is of the utmost importance to you, especially since you’re planning on adding weights to universal movements like squats and lunges, then the OnRamp program or equivalent is a good requisite.

What shouldn’t you do? Interrupt an athlete during a metabolic conditioning workout in which he is spending 45 seconds at a station and correct him on form. This makes it confusing as to whether you’re emphasizing form or speed, can make the person feel like he’s missing out or not doing what he’s supposed to be doing, and probably isn’t as effective as a dedicated period of time to focus specifically on form.

What’s my point?

Is it really important for coaches to determine what their specific goals are, or am I just a curmudgeon standing on a soapbox listening to my own echoes? The world may never know.

Look, programming is hard. This is clear. There’s also always a disconnect between what you’ve carefully written down on a sheet of paper and what happens once a roomful of people is brought into the equation. It’s also hard to tell whether anybody cares about these minute details, especially in group settings or if they’re younger and will invariably do whatever you tell them. However, not having a clear focus or goal can be frustrating in subtle ways, whether it’s ever brought up to you or not. You run the risk of emphasizing one goal over another—“strength” classes that focus primarily on endurance—or of glossing over building blocks by emphasizing speed over form.

These details may get glossed over by your athletes, but that’s all the more reason to take a second to think about what you’re doing, and whether your programming will lead your athletes toward that end. You know, just like you tell them to do with their goal setting.