Resistance Training Tidbits

stroutman81

Please note that this is directed at the beginner. Resistance training programming can be a very complex subject. The intent here is to arm novices with the 'need to know' information so that they can get started on the right foot. I will be breaking various topics up by post... this way we don't have one monster long post that nobody reads.

INTRODUCTION

What's resistance training? Put simply, it's the act of lifting a load up and putting it back down. We could get a lot more technical than that, but for our purposes I'm not seeing much of a point. We could also call it strength training, weight training... or heck, how about just plain old lifting weights.

The load can come from anything really. Your body weight, a barbell, dumbbells, kettlebells, sandbags, gallon jugs, weight vests, backpacks, bands, stones... your body can't tell the difference. Of course some are more optimal for others, but that's besides the point.

If we do it right, lifting that load up and down will cause our bodies to change. Those changes, among others, include getting stronger and growing bigger muscles. I'm sure there are a lot of people around here who are primarily interested in fat loss. The idea of being stronger or having bigger muscles probably doesn't seem all that exciting to them. Let me just say from the get go though, in almost all cases, I'm of the opinion that lifting weights should be the nucleus of one's exercise programming. Yes... that goes for those of you who are trying to lose fat too. More on that later.

So what does "doing it right" look like? It's hard to pin down an answer to that question. For starters, there's no such thing as a Perfect Program. As much as marketers would have you believe it exists, having some ultimate program that's right for anyone and for any goal is a bunch of bull. The appropriateness and efficacy of a given program is going to depend on some key variables:

1. One's willingness to stick with it.
2. One's goals.
3. One's current status in terms of body fat, strength, muscle, injury, and experience.

From this, it should make some sense that what amounts to being a great program for one person might be a terrible program for another. If you're in the camp of folks that's constantly looking for the perfect program, you might as well chuck that mindset in the waste basket and sit back down at the drawing board. This time though, assuming you stick around this forum, you'll be armed with better information and have the ability to make more informed decisions.

stroutman81

THE NECESSITIES

We've concluded that 'doing it right' is going to depend on the person and circumstances. However, we can say that there are a few key tenets that are common among all worthy programs. They're universal if you will. Programs can look very different in terms of exercises, loads lifted, volume, rest, etc... but in order for any of them to be useful, they need to be built on top of a foundation that will look very similar regardless of what program you're subscribing to.

1. You have to lift heavy enough.
2. You have to lift heavier over time.
3. You have to lift heavy enough a sufficient number of times.
4. Don't forget about recovery.

I could list dozens of other variables that are related to resistance training programs. They wouldn't be as important as these 4 right here though. Not even close. You could build a successful program with or without these 'other' variables. You couldn't do the same without these 4.

Like I said above, if we do it right, we'll cause our bodies to change. These changes are referred to as adaptations. When you really boil things down, we, as humans, are complex biological systems. The way biological systems survive in the world is by adapting to the challenges imposed in the surrounding environment. Our bodies have built-in systems that strive to maintain itself in the face of changing surroundings. I'm sure many of you have heard of the term homeostasis. Allostasis might be more appropriate here, but we won't get into that.

Your plane crashes on the side of Everest... the biological response is to shiver in an attempt to keep your core temperature up.

You cut your finger carving the Thanksgiving turkey (mmmm... Thanksgiving)... the biological response is to swell, the blood vessels around the cut narrow, and the blood clots to stop the bleeding.

The cruise liner you're on crashes on a remote island that's entirely off the grid. You've eaten all the weak folks. You've depleted all the natural resources on the island. The biological response is to ward off starvation as long as possible by minimizing muscle tissue since it's metabolically expensive, slowing down metabolic rate, etc.

And sometimes we can control the environment around us in an attempt to direct these biological responses. That's all we're doing with lifting weights, really. We're trying to direct the changes our bodies undergo with specific challenges. Put differently, we lift weights in order to look better naked. And without the 4 previously mentioned variables above, we can try all we want... each and every day... but looking good naked is likely to remain a figment of your imagination.

stroutman81

LIFTING HEAVY ENOUGH

Lifting heavy enough goes by the term overload. We'll see in the research where sedentary people who are placed on a walking program will realize muscle growth in their legs. I don't know about you, but I don't associate walking with being a muscle building activity. The point is, we all have unique thresholds of work at the muscle level where, once passed, changes happen. Passing that threshold is where overload occurs. It's the stimulus for change.

Obviously there isn't a universal load that's applicable to everyone. I can't say, "If everyone squats 100 lbs they'll be cover models." One hundred pounds would be far too heavy for some folks and far too light for others. From the walking example above, it should be obvious that the more untrained you are, the lower your threshold is going to be.

For this reason, if you're a rank novice, learning to move your body weight through the basic movement patterns is a great place to start. If you can't do a body weight squat, for example, don't even think about throwing a barbell on your back. For some movements body weight is going to be too heavy out of the gate... think pulling and pressing movements. Very few clients come into my gym with the ability to complete a single quality rep of inverted rows or push-ups. So we resort to light dumbbells or whatever until they build up enough strength to handle heavier loading.

You want to find your threshold and then gradually nudge change along.

I've seen many people here following prepackaged resistance training programs... usually in DVD form. These programs typically have people utilizing very light loads and doing a lot of continuous exercise without a lot of rest. In that regard, they're sort of like cardio with weights. To someone like me who has built up considerable strength over time, these sorts of programs are likely to cause regression. The challenge wouldn't be sufficient to maintain what I've built. For those who are just starting out though, these sorts of programs can be just what the doctor ordered.

I'm not a fan of prepackaged programs since I believe proper programming should be centered on individualization around one's needs... but that's besides the point.

The point is simple - heavy enough is going to depend on where you're currently at in terms of experience and strength. If you've never touched a weight before, you're dealing with a low threshold and you can/should use relatively light load to start with.

stroutman81

GET STRONGER OVER TIME

The walkers from above won't grow legs like Arnold if they continue to walk indefinitely. The initial growth was in response to such a novel and sudden change to the normal usage of their leg muscles. As soon as the muscles "catch up" to the loads dealt with while walking, the growth will stop.

If we wanted to continue the muscle growth processes, we'd need to work at getting stronger over time. This is referred to as progressive overload and it's really just an extension of what's stated above in the 'lifting heavy enough' section. It's not only the muscles that are adaptive.... everything is. Including the threshold we spoke of.

Let's suppose we have a beginner. We have her start out with some body weight squatting. Over the course of a few weeks, she becomes less sore. She's able to complete more reps per set. The movement starts feeling easier. She might even feel as if her leg muscles look a little bigger and more defined. All of this is in response to the body adapting to the load of her body weight. After a certain point though, without increasing the load, she's going to have milked the current load (body weight) for all of the possible adaptations it has to offer.

At this point it's time to add external loading. If it were my client, I'd have her start with some version of dumbbell squats... likely goblet squats. We'd start out with maybe 10 or so lbs and as she improves we'd keep adding 5-10 lbs over time.

That's how you stay ahead of your bodies threshold. If you're constantly lifting at or below it, you're never going to realize much success in the strength and muscle departments.

From what I've seen, many of the DVD programs don't put enough emphasis on the simple concept of progressive overload. They're all about making it hard, having people feel the burn and get sweating... but without progressive overload things are sort of pointless assuming the primary goals revolve around physique training.

It's that important.

I'll also mention that progression can come in a number of forms. Adding weight is the most obvious. Most productive too if you ask me. But adding weight isn't always possible. You can also do more reps, more work in the same or less time, advance to more difficult movements, increase total volume, etc.

Just make sure you're giving your body continual reasons to keep improving.

stroutman81

LIFT HEAVY ENOUGH A SUFFICIENT NUMBER OF TIMES

So we all have a threshold and when that threshold is surpassed changes occur. That sounds great on paper. But is surpassing that threshold once enough? Of course not. You need to do enough work above the threshold in order to realize progress This is where volume comes into play. Volume is simply a measure of how much total work you do once you have the load dialed in.

In running, volume can be measured in miles.

In lifting, we typically use sets and reps. We can break it down by the number of sets and reps per movement, per workout, per week, per body part, or whatever. And I'll be up front, there are an infinite number of effective possibilities.

I mentioned above that our overload threshold is adaptable. As we progress, that threshold will get higher, thus requiring us to lift more weight over time. What many will find is this threshold adaptation will level out to a point where optimal loading occurs at weights that keep them between 3-15 reps per set. That's a big range, yes. That's why there are many ways of structuring things.

I should also mention that we’re talking about working hard here regardless of the rep range. If you’re focusing on sets of 5 reps, by the time you reach the 5th rep, you should be close to failure… maybe a rep or two remaining in the tank. Likewise, if you’re training in higher rep ranges, such as 15 per set, the 15th rep should also feel close to failure.

With that said, it should be obvious that you’ll be using heavier loads in the lower rep ranges compared to the loads used in the higher rep ranges. By definition, a load that’s challenging for 15 reps isn’t going to be very challenging if you limit that same load to 5 reps.

Sure, you could pick a light weight (relative to your strength) and do lots of work with it... say sets of 30 reps or more. But you would have skipped the first step of using a load that's heavy enough to 'turn on' the response. It's only after you turn the response on that you should concern yourself with how much work you're doing. Doing lots of work with loads that are light isn't going to get you very far. Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of programs on the market that promote this.

Now I will say that there's very interesting research that has been coming out showing substantial results from using light weights. For example:

http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/h2012-022

Stuff like this merely highlights why it's not solely about the load on the bar. When it comes to muscle growth, the effects are also hugely dependent on the amount of work done. While I do believe that in most situations, the core of one's training should be built on heavy work... 5-10 reps per set say... I think you're short changing yourself if you're not also exposing yourself to loads that emphasize fatigue rather than weight. Don't turn this into a false dichotomy. Heavy is great but there are alternative methods that can yield progress.

We've talked a ton now about reps per set. Anywhere from 3-15 can work... and sometimes even higher reps will do the job as long as you're working near failure. But what can you really do with that information? That says nothing about total volume per workout or whatever.

Realize that there are no hard fast rules... but generally speaking 25-50 reps per major muscle per session is a good ballpark to find yourself in when you're trying to maximize muscle. And since frequency is also a determinant in your weekly volume, I believe training each muscle at least twice per week is important. Some protocols can even have you training each muscle 5+ times per week.

Beginners can start out with lower volume since they don't need as much of a stress to drive progress. Like load, that volume should be increased over time as the body adapts.

Hopefully now you're starting to see why full body training done 2-4 times per week makes a lot of sense. It allows you to hit all of your major muscle groups with a variety of rep ranges a couple of times per week. Full body training is just one example of how things can be arranged though.

Another hope of mine is that by now, you're starting to move away from the 'program mentality.' You're starting to realize that the possibilities are nearly endless when it comes to setting up a resistance training program... just as long as these core tenets are adhered to.

stroutman81

DON'T FORGET ABOUT RECOVERY

We train. The training stimulates positive and negative effects in the body. We rest. When we rest, the negative effects wear off helping unmask the positive effects we've been accumulating.

Recovery is a VERY complex subject and we're not going to dive into great detail here. Most people are going to assume it's the amount of time you should rest between workouts. To a small degree, that can be what it's about. In reality though, it's much more than that. You can train every damn day of the week if you structure things right. Managing recovery refers more to longer term trends. It's all about being cognizant of the balance/interplay of stress and adaptation and arranging them in such a way that, over the long haul, things are advancing.

What I want to make clear is you can't beat your body into submission. Your body has a finite capacity to handle stress. Exercise is a stress. Dieting is a stress. Your job is a stress. Anything can be a stress. When you overdo it, things tend to go haywire. Motivation can fade. Aches and pains can pop up. Inflammation can set in. Water retention can jack up. Metabolic rate can sway. You have to train hard intelligently and that doesn't involve the jackhammer approach where you punch your body in the face every damn day just because it looked at you wrong in the mirror.

Granted, the capacity to handle stress is adaptable itself. As we become more trained, our capacity increases. Even the most trained folks need to concern themselves we stress management and recovery though.

Building fitness and improving physique is more about finesse. We want to nudge our body along rather than brute force it. More and harder isn't always better than less and easier. If you're finding yourself feeling the need to kill yourself every single day, stop for a moment. Something has to be slightly off. Let's try and figure out what it is before you go digging yourself into hole that's too deep to get out of.

stroutman81

SO HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO YOU?

Considering the fact that the vast majority of people reading this are likely interested in fat loss, I think it's important to circle back around about why this information is important for you. I mentioned above that I'm of the opinion that progressive resistance training should be the nucleus of just about anyone's exercise programming.

For starters, the health benefits associated with lifting weights go well beyond fat loss and muscle gain. The biggest thing is a strong body tends to be a healthy body. Along those same lines, I buy into the old saying of, “you don’t use it you lose it.” Resistance training helps build and maintain strength and mobility and carrying these things with you as you age can never hurt. Strength training has also been shown to increase bone mineral density. I don’t know about you but I’m not a fan of getting old and breaking a hip. Resistance training has also been shown to prompt cardiovascular improvements, believe it or not. Increased insulin sensitivity, improved blood pressure, improved blood lipid profiles… the list goes on and on. Resistance training is good for you.

Why should I lift weights while dieting? You're not busting your *kitten* just so the scale can read a lower number, are you? You're doing this to improve your body. Improving your body is only slightly related to your weight. Our physical appearance is mostly determined by our genetics. We have predetermined skeletal structures for example. Short and stocky people are never going to be long and lean.

On top of this preset foundation though, there's a lot that's in our control. For the most part, this boils down to fat tissue and muscle tissue. These are the two variables we are striving to alter in an attempt to make the best body possible given the genetic foundations we're working with.

For starters, complete novices who have never touched a weight before as well as people who are carrying around a lot of extra fat benefit from the ability to gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously. This depends a good bit on genetics too, but in general, simultaneous muscle gain and fat loss (hereafter referred to as recomposition) is next to impossible to achieve outside the realm of novices, overweight individuals and drug users. The reason being, keeping this simplistic, is that muscle building (hypertrophy) is a very intensive process, energetically speaking. Put differently, you need a surplus of calories (more energy in than out) to facilitate recovery and growth of new muscle. While dieting for fat loss, you don’t have adequate calories to maintain your current tissue (hence the loss in weight accompanying a caloric deficit). So adding something as metabolically active as muscle tissue probably isn’t going to happen in the face of an energy deficit. As I’m typing this it seems a bit wordy but suffice it to say, unless you're fat and/or untrained… don’t expect to gain an appreciable amount of muscle while dieting.

This probably makes you more eager to have the question answered. If I’m not going to be adding muscle why the heck should I waste my time resistance training when I can spend my time doing cardio? For starters, a weight lifting routine can be cardiovascular, but that’s a different subject for a different time. To my point, a major reason people aren’t content when they actually reach their goal weight is due to the simple fact that they didn’t lift weights while dieting or they lifted weights using screwy programming/parameters.

Including an appropriately structured weight lifting routine in your diet program gives your body a reason to hold on to as much muscle as possible. Without it, chances are good as you get closer to your goal weight that a higher proportion of weight lost will be from muscle rather than fat. Remember, there is a huge difference between losing fat and losing weight. Unless you’re interested in being a lighter, still soft version of your former self, I suggest you listen to this point.

On the same token:

Good nutrition = A
Resistance training = B
Cardio = C
Total Health and Good Physique = D

A+B+C=D

Take A, B, or C out of the equation and you are operating sub-optimally and giving up unique benefits associated only with the dropped variable.

Losing weight is as simple as creating a deficit. This deficit can come solely from diet, it can come solely from cardio exercise, it can come solely from weight training.

But that's assuming weight loss is the only thing that matters to you. In most, if not all cases things like appearance, health and performance matter more than the simplistic number on the scale. If that's the case, it's going to take a balanced approach utilizing all of the variables. Often times resistance training is the first variable dropped or worst, the variable that’s not even considered.

stroutman81

That was a lot of information. Too much? I hope not. I hope you stuck with me this far. If not and you're still confused, simply start a new thread and ask your questions. There are no stupid questions! Now though, I want to touch on some random concepts that always seem to come up in discussion pertaining to resistance training. Let's start with...

TONING

Weight lifting is a relatively new concept in the fat loss world. It wasn’t long ago when most felt the only thing necessary for fat loss was cardio coupled with a healthy diet. Since then weight lifting has become more mainstream. While the mad rush into the weight room is justifiable as lifting carries a boat load of health and physique benefits, the hysteria has led to a lot of confusion.

One of the most common misconceptions I see is the concept of toning. Many people believe weight lifting burns the fat in the specific area being trained. Better yet, they believe it turns the fat into muscle. 'Got flabby arms? No problem. Just blast out some tricep extensions and tighten them right up.'

Not quite, unfortunately. This is not how our bodies work.

Always ask yourself, “Do I have a good reason for doing this and is that reason confirmed by someone or something (like research) that actually has merit?” If you don’t, I highly suggest you do some investigating before you go wasting your time. Better yet, if you're too hard headed to educate yourself, fine. However, don't let experience pass you by without learning from it. If what you're doing isn't giving you the results you thought it would... change. Being rigid and inflexible with your approach will leave you with suboptimal results.

Fat and muscle are separate tissues. The fat most people are concerned with, known as subcutaneous fat, resides just under the skin and above the muscles. You can build muscle until you're blue in the face. If you have a thick layer of fat covering them though, you're never going to look lean.

Vice versa, you can lose fat until you're blue in the face, but if you have a minimal foundation of muscle, you're going to look anorexic by the time you actually look fit and toned.

You have to manage both tissues separately. Rather than using the word toned as a verb... as in toning... use it as an adjective. Toned describes what happens when you minimize fat mass and maximize muscle mass.

Oh, and for those of you trying to build longer muscles... give it up already. Your muscles are attached to your bones. Unless you plan on growing in height, making your muscles longer ain't happening. I don't care what your pilates instructor told you.

Instead of targeting your ‘problem areas’ with high rep, isolation exercises, I highly suggest you follow a balanced routine training your entire body using compound exercises. Don’t fall into the trap of believing high reps lead to a toned physique. A muscle either grows or it doesn't. It is that simple. Toning is a function of fat loss. Fat loss is a function of energy deficits. Weight training really doesn't factor into that equation much relatively speaking. You can't tone your fat with weights.

stroutman81

SHOULD A FAT PERSON LIFT WEIGHTS THE SAME AS A THIN PERSON?

This is a common area of confusion and in my opinion the answer is no. Let me explain.

There are no absolutes when it comes to this stuff. How you exercise is completely dependent on your current state and your goals. Speaking generally though I’d like to examine two hypothetical people:

You have two women both looking to lose fat. One is 300 lbs and the other is 130 lbs.

In terms of weight lifting, the heavier woman would probably benefit more from the circuit type of training where you use high volumes of work using lighter weights and short rest. In this event, you're turning it more or less into another form of cardiovascular exercise with a hint of strength training. The reason this would be optimal for her is pretty simple: at this stage in the game, burning the most amount of calories is going to be the primary factor that will contribute to weight loss and circuit training is going to accomplish that better than your traditional strength training routine of heavier weights, lower reps, and more rest. In addition, the higher volume and lighter weights will contribute to more practice using *sane* loads, which makes for safer learning of the movements.

The lighter woman might be better off (IMO definitely would be better off) by sticking with the more traditional strength training stuff using heavier weights and lower rep ranges. Not b/c of caloric expenditure so much, but more for what this type of stimulus/training does to the body. Primarily, it triggers muscle maintenance... it gives your body a reason to hold on to the muscle you currently have. The closer you get to an ideal weight, the more probable muscle loss becomes. This is an important concept. (a) Muscle keeps your metabolism nice and healthy and (b) I think one of the major things most women looking to get toned do wrong is move to lighter and lighter weights and higher and higher reps following the misconception that this sort of training causes toning. They're chasing 'the burn.' Too bad the burn doesn't have a heck of a lot to do with improving their physiques.

In essence, for the lighter woman, weight lifting transforms from something that gets your heart rate going and expends calories to more of something that triggers muscle maintenance. For her, diet and cardio will be the primary players in terms of establishing the caloric deficit. Don't get me wrong, traditional strength training burns calories too, but it's primary purpose in the 'program' isn't that.

Also, Lyle McDonald and I had a great discussion about this here:

http://body-improvements.com/articles/interviews/lyle-mcdonald-interview/

stroutman81

WOMEN GETTING TOO BULKY

Let’s squash this right now. Go into any gym and check out the women who actually do seriously lift weights. Outside the realm of those select few who have deeper voices than your father/husband, a chiseled jawbone and facial hair… how many women are actually loaded with muscle? Not many. If you think otherwise you’re pretty delusional. I’ve been in the gym scene for a majority of my life and it just isn’t the case.

First things first and as noted above, most of the women around here are dieting. Male or female… when you’re dieting, packing on slabs of muscle simply isn’t going to happen.

Second, prime an environment for a woman to put on muscle by way of ensuring things such as a caloric surplus and appropriate weight lifting routine are in place. Women are not hormonally dispositioned to build mass amounts of muscle. Even with the variables aligned for muscle growth, the majority of women aren’t going to get bulky. Hell, go to the gym and you'll see many guys who train hard and heavy yet are still nothing spectacular in terms of muscle development. If getting really muscular were as easy as many women assume, people (especially men) would be walking around with ginormous arms and barrel-chests would be a dime a dozen. This just isn’t the case.

Lastly, don't be fulled by the optical illusion that can happen initially. The rate of muscle growth will be highest in the beginning... even if you're dieting. The novelty of the stress does neat things for making things happen. Trust me. Progress will level off. If you're dieting, it'll stop. You'll also being losing more and more fat if you're dieting. When you pair these two variables together, slightly increased muscle and reducing levels of body fat, things can appear drastically different in the mirror.

That's not you getting huge. That's just you exposing your muscles. Heck, I've seen some women think they're getting huge when they've actually reduced their muscle mass. Exposing muscles from their hiding place under fat does some wonky things to self image. Some people like it. Others don't.

stroutman81

VARIETY - KEEPING YOUR BODY GUESSING

People always come clamoring to me about how you have to keep the body guessing by constantly switching your routine. P90X definitely didn't help this issue with their vomiting of "muscle confusion" on every infomercial they run.

Please don’t fall into the trap of switching for the simple sake of switching. You should switch your routine either when it stops working or when you’re getting bored with it. The newer you are to weight training, the more simplistic your methods should be and the longer you can ‘ride’ the same routine. Starting with the very basic fundamentals and focusing on progressing slowly but surely with them will give you the most mileage in terms of progress.

Change is counterproductive when it completely dilutes continuity. Remember, progressing on a continuous foundation is what bears results.

I'm what I would consider an advanced lifter. I've been at it for 16 years with very little interruption. I'll switch things up every 6-12 weeks. And when I do switch things up, very rarely am I making wholesale changes to everything. How's that for a frame of reference?

stroutman81

GETTING STRONGER WITHOUT GETTING BIGGER

Just because you're getting stronger, it doesn't mean you're getting bigger.

The weight you lift is an external stressor. When applied properly, it forces the body to adapt. Most commonly, the body adapts anatomically; increased muscle mass and the like. This is what most are familiar with. However, the body also adapts to this external stressor by way of neurological adaptation. And the thing is, both forms of adaptation occur.... it's just the latter is less often talked about. To boot, the former isn't going to happen unless you're supplying the body with an adequate amount of energy (calories) to facilitate muscular growth.

When you go to lift a weight, you're muscle responds by way of a 'message' sent from the brain. The central nervous system sends electrical impulses through the peripheral nervous system by way of motor neurons until it reaches the motor unit. The motor unit is the point where the motor neuron and muscle meet. The motor unit is classically defined as the alpha motor neuron and all the muscle fibers it innervates.

Sounds complex, and it is. But think of it like this...

CNS

---

> Motor Unit

---

> Muscle Fibers

CNS sends electrical impulse, impulse travels through the PNS eventually reaching the end motor neuron where it links to the muscle which stimulates a muscular response (contraction).

There are a number of ways the nervous system adapts translating into increased strength. Most commonly discussed are factors such as rate coding, recruitment, and synchronization.

We call the frequency of electrical stimulation from the CNS to the muscle rate coding. As one of the adaptations to strength training, rate coding can increase, which simply means the brain is sending more signals to the muscle per unit of time activating a response. As rate coding is increased so is muscular tension or STRENGTH.

Recruitment is similar in that each impulse will recruit more MUs as it positively adapts leading to more fibers contracting per impulse; this means more strength. A prime example is when you bring someone untrained into the gym and put them on a balanced strength training program. Strength increases drastically over the first month, but muscle mass usually doesn't change much. Untrained individuals have a hard time activating all of their muscle fibers. As they train consistently for the first few weeks, the rate of strength gain can be huge most likely due to the improved coordination of just learning how to recruit more fibers.

The list goes on and on.... but in reality, strength is a complex phenomenon. It's not just about bigger muscles moving bigger weights.

stroutman81

MAINTAINING A TRAINING LOG

When it comes to weight training, i firmly believe a training log is the backbone of adherence and direction when it comes to your workouts. Without recording such factors such as exercise, sets and reps completed, how things felt, ideas, etc... come a few weeks from now today's training session will be but a figment of your imagination. Life's too damn hectic to remember anniversaries and birthdays, let alone remember what you did in the gym (exactly) weeks and weeks ago.

Personally, I pre-write my training log before hitting the gym. I like to go in with a well thought-out plan.

In it I'll list every exercise I plan on doing that day. Below each exercise I'll have the number of sets and reps I'll be shooting for. Below that, I'll leave room for the actual, recorded sets and reps once I'm in the gym.

I'll also record how I felt during particular exercises or simply thoughts on the workout as a whole.

This allows me to look back and a) notice trends in progression or regression and see where changes can or should be made and b) it reminds me of where I should be heading next time I repeat this particular workout. Should I increase the load or keep it the same? Should I change exercises? Should I do more mobility work next time?

Training logs also make it easier to circle back around and see what worked best for you.

stroutman81

REPETITION TEMPO

Tempo in relation to reps relates to how fast you lift and lower the weight.

Tempo is normally delineated by a set of numbers. For example, the rep tempo for the reps in a set of bench press may look like this:

301

The 3 = a 3 eccentric (lowering) phase

The 0 = 0 seconds in the bottom position (when the bar or dumbbells are nearest your chest

The 1 = a 1 second concentric (raising) phase.

In reality, a wide spectrum of rep tempos can be used to influence time under tension and specificity in relation to the goal you're training for. For purposes of most on this forum, worrying about specific rep tempos isn't all that important.

However, you *should* pay attention to the speed you are lifting.

By this I mean, don't get hung up on counting the seconds each rep takes. Instead, focus on lowing the weight under control and raising the weight as quickly as possible.

Many trainees, especially novices, only worry about raising the weight. When lowering they simply let the weight fall b/c they're focusing on returning to the (concentric) raising phase as quickly as possible.

In truth, the lowering phase should be longer than the raising phase in most instances.