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Repetition Ranges

by Shane on May 1, 2010 in Workout Theory with No comments
Dumbbells

The question about what rep range to train in is a subject that has lots of rumours and also a fair amount of scientific evidence surrounding it. Generally, the distinction is made between low, medium and high repetitions. In this article, I want to give a quick rundown of each of the rep ranges and their respective benefits and drawbacks.

Low Rep Range

This range is anything from 1 to 6 or 7 repetitions. If you are using an amount of weight for an exercise that you can only lift a handful of times, then this is clearly a high weight-load for your body. In this repetition range, the weights will feel heavy, even during the first rep of the first set.

Low repetitions with lots of weight are ideal for building strength. The emphasis here is on “strength” not “volume”, in other words, for pure body-building, a higher rep-range is the better choice.

Training with low repetitions takes less time than training in a higher rep range. This can be a positive or a negative aspect: On the one hand, it saves you time, but on the other hand, a shorter workout can mean overall less stress on your system and therefore a weaker growth impulse.

Another downside of a low repetition range is that with the kinds of huge weight-loads you’ll be using, there’s a higher chance of injury. Obviously, you have to be especially careful when lugging around these kinds of weights (especially when doing free-weights exercises).

Medium Rep Range

This rep range is between 8 and 12 repetitions. This is the bodybuilding repetition range, as 8-12 is ideal for stimulating hypertrophy (muscle growth). You won’t see the strength gains you get from doing lower reps with higher weights, but you’ll certainly look like, you’re growing stronger.

The benefits and drawbacks here are pretty obvious: If you’re after bigger muscles, this is the rep range to go for. If actual strength increase is more important to you, then this rep range is not ideal.

High Rep Range

This means anything above 12 repetitions. Doing more than 12 reps of an exercise will usually take longer than 30 seconds and that’s about where the threshold lies for what can be called “strength training”. If an exercise lasts longer than that, you’re already entering “cardio” territory, from a biological perspective, at least.

This doesn’t mean that a higher rep range has no merits, of course. If you are using low weights and doing more repetitions, your body simply has to recruit different resources to keep you going.

One thing that needs to be addressed is a common misconception: High rep ranges do not build “lean muscles” rather than “bulky muscles”, as is often claimed. High rep ranges simply stimulate less muscle growth, but you can’t really influence the shape of your muscles with a particular way of exercising.

In conclusion, for most people, low to medium repetition ranges are ideal. In any case, mixing things up and changing rep ranges from time to time is probably one of the best things you can do for yourself.

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HIT: High Intensity Training

by Shane on April 29, 2010 in Advanced Workout, Workout Theory with No comments
Hardworkout2b

I briefly mentioned in a previous post that HIT, or High Intensity Training is a training method I followed for more than a year, ending not too long ago. It’s a very peculiar and in many circles a much-debated workout method. In this post, I simply want to go over what HIT is all about and share some of my experiences with it.


High Intensity Training: The Basics

I guess the main thing that sets it apart is the fact that when you are doing HIT, you only do one set per exercise, per week.

Yes, I’m serious. You do one set of, say, bench presses today and then don’t do any more bench presses until the same day next week.

The idea here is that with high intensity training, you put your muscles under absolutely extreme stress, creating a huge growth impulse, and then you give the muscles a loooot of time to recover and build.

How can you get such a strong growth impulse with just one set? High Intensity Training has two factors to it, that make it extremely intense:

  1. Perfect Execution
    You do each repetition of an exercise with meticulously perfect form and you do the repetitions very slowly. This means: Absolutely no cheating or yanking the weights, no excessive tension in any body parts not directly involved in the lifting and lots and lots of pain in your muscles.
  2. Going Beyond Failure
    Following most training methods, repetitions are done to failure. I.e. you keep pushing until you just can’t move the weights anymore, no matter how hard you try. That is the point of muscle failure and the point where a set ends. In HIT, you go beyond that point.

That second one needs some extra explanation. After all, how can you go beyond failure?


Going Beyond Failure

There are several techniques used to help you go past failure in HIT. Here are some of them:

  • Human Assistance
    For some exercises, this is quite a simple option. Everyone knows the spotter can help out a little on that last rep, when you’re doing bench-presses. With HIT, the spotter will wait until you reach the point of failure and then ever so gently support you for another two to three reps.
  • Pyramid Training
    Another method is to immediately lower the weights after failure is reached, and do a few more repetitions with the reduced weights. With machines, you can have a spotter who removes one or two plates for you and with free weights you can prepare one heavier and one lighter set and then switch between them as quickly as (safely) possible.
  • Very Short Breaks
    This final one is a method you can even use on your own: Once you’ve reached the point of failure, go back into a neutral (non-tense) position, wait for five seconds and then have another go at completing as many sets as possible.


My Experience With High Intensity Training

Doing HIT training is a pleasant experience for about six and three quarters of the week and then an absolutely excruciating experience for the rest of the week, starting with the beginning of the workout and ending an hour or two after it’s finished.

I was surprised at how much strength I gained during my time doing High Intensity Training. I sort of assumed that doing only one set a week would have me stagnating, at best, but I made as much, if not more, progress as I did with volume training before. Another thing is that while the training itself is extremely intense, my body felt good and undamaged during the non-workout days of the week. With volume-training, I always feel some kind of an ache or pull, even during the rest-days.

The most interesting aspects of High Intensity Training are probably the psychological ones, though. For one thing, it’s simply extremely difficult to train as hard as is required. Without someone spotting for you, spurring you on, correcting you and shouting in your face to do one more rep and not be such a whiny little bitch about how much it hurts, I don’t think it’s even possible to get there. On the other hand, your attitude towards an exercise is quite different if you know that this is the one and only set you’re going to do all week. You always go in determined to “make this one count” – and you come out wondering why the hell you are doing this to yourself.

Bottom line for me: I think High Intensity Training is an interesting and effective method. At least to mix things up a little, I recommend anyone to give it a try.

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Cut Down on Gym-Time, Build More Muscle

by Shane on April 27, 2010 in Blog, Workout Theory with No comments
Arthur Saxon performing a bent press.

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like spending too much time at the gym or working out at home. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy working out with weights. But it’s something I like doing for 30 to 45 minutes at a time. Any longer and I start to get fed up with it.

Here are three workout techniques that help you save time while also ramping up the overall intensity of your workout. In other words: More sweat, more muscles, less time. :)

1. Split Training

This is a really simple one and many people split up their exercise days. You can do split-training simply by working out certain muscle groups on one day and other muscle groups on another day. For example, in my current workout, I train my upper body on Mondays and Thursdays and my Legs and lower body on Tuesdays and Fridays. This way, each muscle gets worked twice a week, with enough rest in between workouts. At the same time, splitting the exercises up like this keeps each individual workout short.

Of course, this type of split training means that you’ll be going to the gym more frequently, but staying for a shorter period of time. This might seem like a disadvantage, but I prefer it for two reasons: First, I find it easier to do something every day or almost every day than doing something twice a week. I work out five days a week (Saturdays I do a “bonus” workout) and that’s quickly become a habit. If you go to the gym only once or twice a week, it’s much more difficult to form a habit.
Secondly, shorter workouts fit into your day more easily. You can probably fit a split-workout into your lunch-break and still get lunch. A full body workout? Not so much.

2. Supersets

I’ve already written a post dedicated to supersets, so I’ll make this one short. Instead of waiting for your muscles to recover between sets of an exercise, simply do a different exercise (targeting a different muscle) between sets! This means you’ll be doing set 1 of exercise A, immediately followed by set 1 of exercise B, followed by set 2 of exercise A and so on…

With supersets, you can do two exercises in roughly the same time as it would normally take to do just one. And of course, it also ramps up the overall intensity of your workout.

3. Circuit Training

Circuits are similar to supersets, but here you do sets of a whole series of exercises, all in succession. Let’s say you’re workout routine consists of eight different exercises: You can do these exercises in a circuit by starting with the first exercise, doing one set and then immediately moving on to the first set of the second exercise, followed by the first set of the third exercise and so on until you’ve completed one set of each exercise.

When you’re done with that, go back to the first exercise and do the second set. Again, with this training method, each muscle group gets enough recovery time between exercises, but the overall intensity is anywhere between tough and insane! (depending on the exercises)

No rest between sets means a harder workout in less time.

Do you have experience with any of the methods mentioned above? Which is your favourite? Any other tips on how to reduce workout time? You comments are welcome!

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What Are Compound Exercises?

by Shane on April 21, 2010 in Blog, Workout Theory with No comments

In the post featuring my current workout routine, I mentioned that most of the exercises I’m doing are compound exercises. In this post, I want to explain in more detail what compound exercises are and how they are different from isolation exercises.

Muscles and Joints

A compound exercise is any kind of weight-lifting exercise that involves two or more joints in motion. In other words, when you are doing one of these exercises, the movements involve several joints and therefore several muscles as well.

With an isolation exercise, on the other hand, you’re generally only moving one joint.

Here’s an example of an isolation exercise vs. a compound exercise:

Isolation: Bicep Curls
Bicep Curl

When doing a bicep curl, the elbow is the only moving joint and the exercises stresses only the bicep and no other muscles.

Compound: Bench Press
Bench Press

The bench press is a compound exercise, because it involves moving your shoulders as well as your elbows. Therefore, it also stresses more than one muscle, in this case, the pectorals (chest), triceps and the deltoids (shoulders).

Benefits of Compound Exercises

Saves Time
Take three compound exercises: Deadlifts, inclined bench presses and pull-ups. If you do those three exercises, that’s almost a full-body workout, right there. You’ll have worked almost every muscle in your body from just those three exercises.
If you do three isolation exercises, however, you’ll have worked only three muscles and no more. And it will have taken about the same amount of time. Of course, the isolation exercises stress each targeted muscle more intensely, but if you’re short on time, it’s advisable to stick with compound exercises.

Functional Strength
Doing bicep curls makes you stronger in one way and one way only: It makes you stronger at doing bicep curls. Isolating a single muscle and moving it against resistance is “unnatural”. Think about it: Practically every movement against resistance that you do “in real life” involves several muscle groups. When you pick up something heavy, you probably squat down, grab a hold of it and lift it up using your legs, arms and back. If you have to push a heavy object, you probably lean forward and push with your legs, shoulders and arms, contracting the muscles around your torso for stabilization.
Compound exercises are more closely related to movements you might need “in real life” and can therefore have a real benefit apart from pumping up your muscles. For most of us, improving strength for manual labour isn’t important at all (and we’re lucky that it’s so). For me personally, functional strength is important because I train martial arts and doing compound exercises can make me a stronger and more dangerous opponent.

Gets Your Heart Pumping
Doing compound exercises will get your heart-rate up and especially if you chain sets together as supersets, your workout will have a certain cardio-aspect to it. If you’re looking to burn more calories and cut down on fat, this is obviously a very good thing.
Another side-effect of this may be that you get a greater hormonal response, since you’re working larger muscle-groups. In theory, stress to your muscles releases Testosterone and other hormones essential to muscle growth. And more stress to more muscles means more hormones. Basically, it’s natural doping. :)

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What Are Supersets?

by Shane on April 18, 2010 in Blog, Workout Theory with No comments

I’ll be posting my current workout routine which I am following as part of my first workout experiment, shortly. First, I want to write this quick post about supersets, since these are essential to my workout routine.

“Normal” Sets
Usually when working with weights, you’ll be doing several sets of each exercise. The stressed muscles require some rest between the sets and most experts recommend something between one and three minutes of rest. So, the “normal” sequence in a workout is as follows:

1st set => wait a few minutes => 2nd set => wait a few minutes => 3rd set => wait a few minutes… etc.

And of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. It just so happens to be that I am a very, very impatient person and all that waiting around doesn’t suit me one bit. Luckily, I can do supersets to save some time and eliminate the waiting periods.

Supersets
A superset is simply when instead of waiting in between sets of exercise A, you go and do a set of exercise B. During the time it takes to do exercise B, muscle group A gets to rest and vice-versa. This completely eliminates the need to wait between sets but still grants your musculature all the recouperation it needs between sets. A superset sequence looks like this:

1st set, exercise A => 1st set, exercise B => 2nd set, exercise A => 2nd set, exercise B… etc.

Doing supersets also makes a weight-training session more exhausting, cardiovascularly, since you’re constantly on the move. It’s basically a higher overall intensity, which might be great for anyone trying to lose some weight.

Antagonistic Supersets
Antagonistic Supersets are supersets where you’re training two directly opposed muscles. For example, you could do one set of cable pull-downs (targeting the triceps), followed by a set of bicep curls (targeting the biceps, obviously). Another example of an antagonistic superset would be: Lat-pulldowns and Arnold Presses or Military Presses. You get the idea.

Why do supersets like this? In theory, there’s an added benefit because each muscle gets contracted and stressed and then lightly streched as you contract and stress it’s antagonist.

Benefits
As mentioned above, there are many benefits to super-setting. I personally prefer this type of workout for it’s increased intensity as well as the fact that it saves quite a lot of time. If you’ve never tried sequencing your exercises like this, I definitely recommend you give it a go!

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