Remember…Only the strong survive. This means that they are not building muscle and they are not losing muscle. The only way to disrupt this state of homeostasis is to impose great stress on the body. Stress can come in many different forms, such as mental, emotional, and physical.
For the purpose of building muscle, we want to focus on physical stress. When a person lies out in the sun for the first time at the beginning of summer, he is applying a form of stress to the body. The body adapts to the stress by darkening the skin—either burning or tanning. If you lie out for just the right amount of time, you will get tan. If you lie out for too long, you will get burned.
The body will adapt one way or the other. What would happen if you laid out again the next day for another 15 minutes? Would you get tanner? That is your new level of homeostasis. To achieve a deeper tan, you will need to lie out for a longer amount of time or use less sunblock.
But doing the same thing again will not elicit an adaptation response. You need to remember this important point when you are training: doing the exact same thing for a second time, be it lying out in the sun for the same amount of time or lifting the same weight for the same number of sets and reps, will not force the body to adapt in any way. Another example of this is a person who just starts a manual labor job. The new demands placed upon the body will leave the worker extremely fatigued at the end of each day.
The body, however, will begin to accept this level of activity as the new homeostasis and, in time, will adapt. You need to impose stress on the body in a way that it is not used to in order to force adaptation. For the purposes of building size and strength that can be done by lifting more weight, doing more reps with the same weight or increasing your training volume.
Once you impose the new demands, your body will adapt and reach a new level of homeostasis. After imposing a new demand on the body, the initial response is always fatigue. The body will fight to return to its previous level of homeostasis, but will not stop there. That is the training effect. How do you know if you have recovered and thus achieved the training effect? This can also be called the law of progressive overload.
The end result is a bigger and stronger muscle. You simply can not do the same thing even once or are you are wasting your time and will never get anywhere. Your body adapts to the same weights and reps in just one workout.
When you repeat that workout for a second time you have absolutely no choice but to go up in weight or reps. This point can not be overstated and must not be forgotten. There are no machine exercises that could ever compare; end of story. My advice is to avoid them all like the plague. Remember that important tip. Another characteristic of the best exercises is that they are usually those that allow you to use the most weight. The more weight you can handle for a particular body part, the greater the growth stimulus.
For example, a close-grip bench press is way more effective than a triceps extension because you can use triple the amount of weight. A Romanian deadlift is a far better hamstring exercise than a leg curl for the same reason. Let me explain… Every four years, when the Summer Olympics roll around, I am, without fail, asked the same question on an almost daily basis. This is because of the kinds of exercises they do. Every exercise a gymnast does involves moving his body through space.
He never moves a fixed object around his body like you do with most weight training machines. By moving your own body weight or your own body weight plus added resistance such as when you do a traditional barbell squat through space, you increase neuromuscular activation. A higher level of neuromuscular activation means that the nerves are sending a stronger signal to the muscles to recruit more fibers. This is very important because the nerves control muscle maintenance and development.
If you cut a nerve to a muscle you will find that atrophy begins almost immediately. The loss of a nerve signal will actually induce muscle loss faster than lack of use. On the other hand, when you force the nerves to organize the action of a lot of muscle fibers at once, you allow for a lot of growth and strength to develop.
Besides just moving your body through space, most gymnastic exercises require balance and coordination, which further increase the nervous system activity. Stabilizer muscles are also called upon heavily to steady the load, so you get more complete muscular development. Finally, any exercise that has a fear factor involved, such as a heavy squat or, in this case, the fear of falling off the rings and severely injuring yourself, can greatly increase the activity of the nervous system, and therefore muscle recruitment.
So any movement where you are moving your body through space is far more effective than one where you are merely moving your limbs, even if it means you have to use slightly less weight.
You can normally use nearly double the weight on a leg press that you can on a squat, however this does not make a leg press more effective. This is not only because you are moving your entire body through space when you squat but because you are also using every muscle in your body to stabilize the weight. A 1,pound leg press is still a machine exercise where you move your limbs instead of your body.
How many different exercises should I use? A huge mistake that a lot of people make in their training is that they use too many exercises. Constantly switching exercises and rarely repeating the same one more than a few times per year is a good way to guarantee yourself a complete lack of progress. On the opposite side of the coin are those people that rarely ever switch the exercises that they use. I have seen some people do the same few exercises for an eternity.
You have to remember that your body is constantly adapting and will eventually grow accustomed to the exercise and you will reach a point where you can no longer go up in weight. This will usually happen within weeks of using the same exercise and will signify that it is time to move onto a new one. The best thing you can do if you want to continually get bigger and stronger is have a list of the most effective exercises per body part.
Stick with those and rotate through them throughout the year. More exercises than that are really not needed and will do very little to help you make faster progress. A more complete definition would be the total amount of weight lifted during the workout.
This can be determined by multiplying the weight lifted by the total number of sets and reps. How many sets should I do per exercise? I hope you are sitting down because what I am going to tell you will probably shock you.
I know most of you are used to doing at least three sets per exercise. After all, three sets of ten is the most popular set and rep scheme on the planet. Some of you may even be doing more sets than that. I was right there with you several years back. I was told by certain so called experts that I had to do at least four to six sets per exercise if I ever wanted to get big. Unfortunately that approach led to me remaining small and getting injured quite frequently.
The real deal, bottom line truth is this-- there is very rarely any need for you to ever do more than two work sets at the same rep range, with the same weight, per exercise. If you haven't done the job by then, it's not going to happen. That is because as a beginner you need more exposures to the same stimulus because you have not maximized the firing efficiency or your central nervous system just yet. Also, beginners are doing exercises for the first time so they need to do them more often just to master perfect technique.
How many sets should I do per workout? Some fitness experts claim that high volume training is needed to gain muscle mass. They are even willing to fight to the death to defend their views. I would never recommend a traditional high volume bodybuilding workout to skinny guys looking to gain size rapidly. Less is almost always more when it comes to weight training. Most people are over trained because they do too many sets and reps while neglecting to ever lift heavy weights.
For this reason, a lower training volume is better for most people, most of the time than a higher training volume… especially for skinny guys and hardgainers. If I had to take a guess I would say that most people do between 20 and 30 sets per workout. If that describes you, then let me ask you a few questions. What are you accomplishing by doing so many sets? Are the extra sets making you stronger?
Are they making you bigger? What exactly is all that training volume doing? Some people succeed in life in spite of what they do, not because of it. And when making this argument you need to understand that all pro bodybuilders have superior genetics for building muscle, and most are on enormous amounts of steroids. But even so, not as many of them as you think are using the 30—50 sets that you read about in the bodybuilding magazines. The shady truth behind that is that many magazines have paid these bodybuilders to write about their training programs and grossly exaggerate what they do in the gym.
This is all in an effort to do two things: create larger than life superhero types and, most importantly, sell supplements. If I were to ask any of these bodybuilders why they do 20 sets per body part, I would be anxious to get an answer that would actually make sense and persuade me that there is something I'm missing. And please don't tell me you're hitting the muscles from a variety of angles, blah, blah, blah.
And when it contracts it does so from origin to insertion. You can not isolate a certain part of a muscle. There is no such thing as training the inner or outer pecs or the upper or lower biceps. So, I ask of all the high volume junkies, can you honestly give me an explanation that you believe in as to why you are doing that many sets?
And if you still want to use the "what about bodybuilders" argument, let me again refer you back to the great Dorian Yates, who said, "I don't believe in doing the traditional sets per bodypart.
That's too much work. What exactly would be the difference? For one thing, if I did the higher-volume workout, I would have depleted my amino acid pool and glycogen stores, which would take away from my recovery ability. Furthermore, my cortisol a fat-storing stress hormone which eats away muscle tissue levels will go up and my testosterone will go down. None of these are good scenarios. Every bodybuilding magazine and program under the sun always recommends that you do reps in your efforts to build bigger muscles.
However, I am here to tell you that they are way off. The best rep range for building massive muscle is reps. There is rarely a need to go below five because sets consisting of reps increase strength by improving the nervous systems firing efficiency but do little to build muscle.
On the other hand, eight is actually the highest number of reps you should do on a regular basis. Read that again and let it sink in before you ever consider doing another pump up set of reps. Usually, when you do more than eight reps you build up too much lactic acid and residual fatigue, thus the quality of your sets starts to suffer.
Secondly, if you now understand that the key to getting bigger is to get stronger, you will find it increasingly difficult to add weight week after week the higher up you go on the rep scale. This is a phenomenon I have observed not only with myself but with hundreds of trainees over the years. If you go to the gym simply to get a pump then by all means do reps per set.
Hell, why not do ? That will give you an even better pump. A pump is the incredibly tight feeling you get after doing a large number of reps. However, a pump is nothing more than blood engorging the muscle. You increase the blood flow to the muscle through the high rep activity and the extra blood gets trapped in there. You can get a great pump from treading water but everyone knows for a fact that you will not grow an ounce of muscle from such an activity.
Remember, the body does not want to build muscle and be bigger than it has to be. You have to force it do it what it does not want to do by lifting extremely heavy weights and leaving it with absolutely no choice but to grow. This can not be done with high reps. Most of the times when you exceed eight reps in a set the weights are simply too light to force any kind of adaptation effect whatsoever.
Sticking with the target range of allows you to use brutally heavy weights and targets the muscle fibers that have the greatest potential for growth. Not only that, but lower rep training is actually easier to recover from and less stressful on the body. The Russians and Bulgarians also frowned upon the use of high reps and kept all of their training on the low end of the scale. Now that I have gotten your attention and hopefully made you realize how effective the rep range of is I am now going to tell you that there are some cases when you can actually do more reps than that.
I know, I know, I just got done imploring you to never go above eight reps but bare with me here as I explain the instances when you will want to train with slightly higher reps. I promise. Certain muscle groups or exercises should not be trained incredibly heavy for safety reasons. Also, some muscle groups just seem to respond better to a slightly higher rep scheme. Below I have listed the instances in which you can and should go above the rep range.
Instead you want to work in a higher rep range with lighter weights until you have completely healed and rehabbed the injury. Also, if you know that you are prone to shoulder injuries and include prehab injury prevention exercises in your program for that area such as face pulls, band pull aparts and external rotations, you should do these exercises in the rep range as well. That is because some of them put your shoulders in a precarious position and just due to the fact that the musculature you are training with these movements respond better to higher reps.
Neck Extension and Flexion Exercises: reps Neck exercises should not be done for less than reps. The reason for that is simply a safety issue. When you start loading the neck you have to be extremely cautious in order to prevent possible injuries. For this reason you want to keep the reps higher and the weights lighter. I personally prefer to stick with reps on neck exercises.
The muscles of the neck are postural muscles that are slow twitch by nature because they are designed to hold your head up all day. For this reason they respond exceptionally well to higher reps.
Parallel Bar Dips: reps This exercise places a lot of stress on the shoulder capsule in the bottom range. It is for this reason that I recommend lowering yourself only to the point where your triceps are parallel with the floor and absolutely no lower. Even doing that is not enough, though. To ensure safety on this exercise you want to keep the reps higher once you progress past the beginner level and are able to hang significant amounts of weight from your waist while performing it.
This is completely fine and not dangerous at all, as long as you keep the reps on the higher side. I personally prefer reps on most forms of wrist curls. The only exceptions to that rule are behind the back wrist curls and suitcase wrist curls which place very little stress on the wrists at all and can be done for as low as five reps.
Also, the forearms have been shown time and time again to respond more favorably to a higher rep scheme and thus will grow more efficiently when trained in this manner. Any Kind of Squats or Lower Body Exercises: reps Since the beginning of time lifters have reported great size gains in their legs from high rep squats.
It was the basis of several training books and a favorite method of many old school bodybuilding authors such as John McCallum. The legendary professional bodybuilder Tom Platz was known for having the biggest legs of all time and credited much of his development to high rep squatting.
One of my favorite leg training workouts for intermediate to advanced lifters is one or two incredibly heavy sets of reps followed a few minutes later by one grueling death set of 20 reps. One of the reasons high reps work so well on exercises like squats is that you can still use a very significant load. Whereas a high rep dumbbell curl would force you to use too light of a weight to stimulate muscle growth, high rep leg training is still done with respectable poundages.
When you load a muscle with a brutally heavy weight for a long period of time, it has no choice but to grow. High rep squats do just that. Calves: reps The calves also seem to respond quite well to higher reps. Standing calf raises can be trained heavy but should also be hit with higher rep sets on a regular basis as well.
This has to do with the fact that we spend so much time on our feet and that the calves have adapted to that imposed demand. They require a high load and long time under tension in order to elicit a growth response. That is because the seated version of calf raises train the soleus muscle, which is slow twitch by nature.
They then go on to explain that the longer you have trained the lower your reps should get. So beginners should use twenty reps across the board, intermediates should supposedly use ten reps and advanced lifters should never go above five reps. This is complete and total nonsense!
In fact, this rule is actually one hundred percent ass backwards. Beginners need to learn proper exercise form. This can only be done with low rep sets. For example, a beginner should never squat for more than five reps because his lower back and abs will fatigue long before his legs do which could result in a serious injury.
Also, you have to realize that as a beginner you will not be able to handle extremely heavy weights anyway. So why would you want to lighten the load even more by doing sets of twenty?
You want to lift as heavy as you can with proper form and this can only be accomplished by sticking with five reps per set. So the real deal, bottom line truth here is that beginners should always use low reps and avoid high reps at all costs!
When you have been training for more than ten years and have built up a great deal of strength you will be able to use mind bending weights on many exercises. For this reason, I often recommend to older, more advanced lifters that they increase their rep range slightly. Any time you see a program written with a slow concentric the lifting portion of the exercise speed, get up and walk away; it's garbage.
You should never lift a weight slowly if you are trying to get big and strong. It makes no sense. When would you ever consciously lift something slowly in real life? If you bend down to pick up a box, do you count a full four seconds on your way up? Of course not. The fact is your fast-twitch muscle fibers have the greatest potential for growth, and are only called upon maximally when a load is either heavy or the attempt to move it is made with great speed.
A slow rep speed ensures that the load cannot be incredibly heavy, nor will it be moved with great speed—so it basically limits the involvement of the fast- twitch fibers and thus the potential for growth. Brilliant idea, huh? What about lowering the weight slowly? You should always control the eccentric or lowering portion of every exercise you do—never drop the weight, but do not intentionally go extremely slow!
I simply want you to lower the weight under control and I want the lowering portion of the exercise to be slower than the lifting portion. Just be sure that if you had to you could stop the exercise at any point in the range of motion; it should not be just flying down out of control. The last thing I want you doing is counting while you are under a heavy barbell.
A controlled two second lowering phase and maybe three seconds for taller lifters on certain exercises is the range you want to be in. The problem with using slow, heavy eccentrics on a regular basis is that doing so takes a lot out of you and leads to much greater levels of soreness.
The result is that you are not fresh and ready to train as frequently as you should be. If you want to get stronger faster, then you need to be able to train a muscle or lift more frequently.
What about pausing? Pausing is ok, especially in exercises where an extreme stretch can help you grow. Any kind of calf raise is a perfect example of this. You should always pause and get a skin-ripping stretch at the bottom of a calf raise. Sometimes when a muscle is tight, the connective tissue around it will not allow the muscle to grow.
In simple terms, long rest periods minutes allow for greater recovery of the nervous system and are linked with an increase in testosterone production. Shorter rest intervals seconds target the metabolic system and are linked with an increase in growth hormone production. For the best of both worlds, and to get the most out of your muscle building efforts you should incorporate both long and short rest periods in your training program.
Beginners can get away with shorter rest periods than more experienced lifters. They do not have the capability of recruiting a large number of motor units and thus do not tire out as easily. Beginners are also weak, in most cases, so they are not using very heavy loads that would demand longer recovery periods. A bigger, heavier lifter will require more rest between sets than a lighter lifter. Even at the same body weight, a stronger lifter will require more rest as well.
This is because the stronger lifter is more neurologically efficient and is able to recruit more muscle fibers, which is more draining and takes longer to recover from. This is far more demanding and requires a longer rest period. Another thing that needs to be addressed when you are picking the optimal rest periods is that they can vary widely from one exercise to the next.
You do not need anywhere near as much rest after a set of seated calf raises as you do after a set of deadlifts. So it is actually the exercise, how many muscles it works, how much weight you are able to use on it, and how draining it is on the body that needs to be considered when determining optimal rest periods.
Even though you might be able to use more weight on a standing calf raise than you can on a dumbbell military press, the dumbbell military press will still demand a greater rest period because more muscles are being used and it causes greater overall fatigue throughout the entire body.
The rest periods you select are also influenced by the way in which you perform your sets. If you use straight sets, you will need to use longer rest periods than if you use antagonistic supersets. The two options are explained below. Straight sets means doing one set of a particular exercise, followed by a rest period, and then another set of the same exercise and so on. You do not mix in another exercise between sets; you simply continue to do the same exercise you are doing until you have completed all of the prescribed sets.
This method is usually used with speed work such as Olympic lifts and jumps and with full—body exercises like squats and deadlifts. However, straight sets are not very time-efficient, and in a lot of cases, using them is not the optimal way to train. Antagonistic supersets are when you pair up exercises that work opposing muscle groups, such as the pecs chest and lats back. You do a set for one muscle group, rest, then a set for the other muscle group, rest again, and repeat for all the prescribed sets.
For example, after a brutally heavy set of eight reps on the bench press, it may take you four or five minutes to be able to repeat that effort. Rather than just sit on the bench waiting for all that time, you could alternate your bench presses with an antagonistic exercise like an incline dumbbell row and divide the rest period in half. So now you would rest two minutes after your bench presses and then move on to the rows.
After the rows, you would rest another two minutes and then go back to the bench press, and so on until you completed all of the prescribed sets. This is where non-competing supersets come in. Non- competing supersets usually pair muscles that have no apparent relation to each other, such as the legs and back.
For example, you could alternate glute-ham raises with chin ups or, for chest and legs, incline dumbbell presses with leg presses.
You can even do this with smaller muscle groups at the end of a workout. There will be a few times in your training when you will want to increase your rest periods beyond what you normally do. These times will be when you are sick, highly stressed out, or during extreme dieting. If you are sick, chances are that you will be breathing harder than normal and will have a harder time recovering with the same rest periods you always use.
In a situation like this it only makes sense to extend your rest period. To account for this, you need to rest a little bit longer than normal between sets. Finally, during times of extreme dieting, you are going to have to increase your rest periods beyond what is normal. Utilizing short or incomplete rest periods in a calorically-depleted state will lead to the use of very light weights, which in turn will cause great losses in size and strength. What you need is a system that specifically caters to the unique needs of genetically small people.
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