Top 5 Reasons to Keep a Training Log

by Shane on April 25, 2010 in Blog, General Workout and Fitness with No comments

Workout Log Image Keeping a training log may seem like a bit of a drag or even a waste of time, but it’s actually an essential element in any good workout plan. Keeping a detailed log and tracking your progress can make a huge difference to the quality of your training. Here are my top five reasons to start and keep on logging:

1. It Makes Your Training More Efficient

It may seem like having to go and scribble down data on sets, repetitions and weights in between exercises takes a lot of time, but keeping a log will probably save you more time than it takes up. The reason for this is that you’ll be able to see right away which exercise to do next, how many sets to do and how much weight you used last time you did that exercise.
You’ll also be able to gage exactly when to increase weights, which will take out some guesswork and make sure you can progress more efficiently.

2. It’s Always Brutally Honest

We like to flatter ourselves (men in particular – it’s been shown that men tend to see themselves as slimmer and fitter than they really are). And our friends and relatives also tend to honey-coat their negative messages to us. That’s great for many social situations, but not something you need when it comes to training. Your training log will always show you exactly where you’ve been making good progress – and where you haven’t. It will make any training session you miss blaringly apparent, it will show you exactly where you were lazy and left out a set or two and it will give you a clear picture of which muscle groups you are neglecting.

3. It Helps You Keep Track of Cycles

If you’re taking Creatine or other supplements, you are probably cycling them on and off, to make sure that your body doesn’t get too used to them. And, especially for intense workout routines, it’s advisable to take a one week workout-break every two to three months. It’s also very important to change up you routines every few months, to hit your muscles from different angles and make sure that your gains aren’t all just based on improved inter-muscular coordination.
With a training log, it’s very easy to just add a comment when you’re starting a new cycle and even mark the point where the cycle ends in advance. Without a log, you’re almost certain to lose track of where you’re at, especially if you’re on several different cycles.

4. It Boosts Your Ambition

Looking at your previous entry for an exercise, you almost can’t help but think “today I’ll do one rep better than last time”. And seeing how you’ve progressed in strength during the last few sessions, you’ll form goals in your mind (“I bet I can get to X lbs times Y reps in less than three months…”). And as you certainly know, having clear goals in your mind makes success that much more likely.

5. It Keeps You Motivated

Seeing you progress is a huge motivation-factor. Your log will show you the progress your making much sooner than mirrors and scales can. While it can take a long time for your muscles to bulge noticeably, you strength increase will show up on the log within weeks or even days of starting regular exercise.

In short: Keeping track of your training is important in many ways and you’ll definitely benefit from it. All it takes is a pen and a few sheets of paper. If you want to go a little more sophisticated, put together a tracking-sheet in Excel or ask about tracking sheets at your Gym. Or, if you’re the techy type, check to see if there are good training log apps for your phone (more on those in a future post).

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. :)

Workout Routine: Split Compound Supersets

by Shane on April 20, 2010 in Blog, Workout Routines with No comments

In this post, I outline my current workout routine as well as the reasoning behind it.

First, here’s the routine itself:

Days 1 and 4:

Exercise: Sets: Weight:
Broad-grip Pull-ups 3 0 (Bodyweight)
Arnold Shoulder Press (Dumbbells) 3 24 Kg / 53 lbs
Bent-over Barbell Rows 3 35 Kg / 77 lbs
Flat Bench Press 3 41 Kg / 90 lbs
Inclined Bench Press 2 32.5 Kg / 72 lbs
Inverted Rows 2 0 (Bodyweight)
Dips 3 0 (Bodyweight)
Barbell Shrugs 3 35 Kg / 77 lbs

 

I always tie two exercises together and do them as supersets.

Days 2 and 5:

Exercise: Sets: Weight:
Barbell Squats 3 60 Kg / 132 lbs
Leg Raise 3 0 (Bodyweight)
Deadlifts 3 45 Kg / 99 lbs
Assorted Crunches 6 o (Bodyweight)

 

These exercises are also done as supersets.

Day 6 (Bonus Day):

Exercise: Sets: Weight:
EZ-Bar Curls 3 15 Kg / 33 lbs
Dumbbell Skull Crushers 3 24 Kg / 53 lbs

 

Once again, these two exercises are done as antagonistic supersets.

Days 3 and 7:

Rest days.

-

Reasoning Behind This Routine

This routine follows and combines several important weight training principles:

  • Compound Exercises
    I focus mainly on compound exercises like squats, pull-ups and bench-presses and only have very few isolation exercises like curls and shrugs. One of the reasons for this is that I want to gain functional strength from this workout. There are many more benefits to doing compound exercises, however, and I’ll do a seperate post on this subject in the near future.
  • Not Too Little, Not Too Much
    As you can see, I exercise each muscle group twice a week. Most experts agree that training a muscle only once per week is not sufficient for making good progress (with the possible exception of hardcore, and I mean HARDcore HIT or Doggcrapp routines). On the other hand, training each muscle group too often would also hinder my progress. I’m hoping that hitting each muscle group twice a week represents a sweet spot.
  • Total length <90 Minutes
    I’ve read often that if you do a workout for more than 90 minutes, you’ll go into overtraining, which is bad for your progress. Some trainers even recommend keeping the total length of the workout shorter than 60 minutes. Whatever the case may be, you don’t want to be stressing your body for very long periods of time. To make sure I steer clear of overtraining, I split my routine up and do upper and lower body on separate days and I do supersets to keep the workout time low and the intensity high.

For each exercise, I aim to be able to do 8-12 repetitions on the first set and I do each set to failure. If I manage to do 12 or more repetitions, I increases the weights for the next round.

And that’s it. If you have any questions about this routine, feel free to ask away in the comments!

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!

The First Experiment – Codename: Bodyshock

by Shane on April 17, 2010 in Blog, Experiments with No comments

Here’s the simple outline for my first experiment: I want to see if I can stimulate muscle growth and strength increase by “surprising” my body. I will do this by switching up the training routines before I hit a plateau.

I bet most people reading this are familiar with the typical training plateau: You start out with a routine and continually manage to improve by adding more repetitions and/or more weights for each exercise. To begin with, it’s very apparent that you’re making great progress (at least if you’re keeping a training log – which you should). But soon, progress slows down and after a while it seems you are stuck at your current level of strength and you just can’t manage to break past a certain point.

At this point, it’s advisable to change the routine in some way. Even just changing the sequence of the exercises can make quite a difference.

I want to take this principle a step further and change up the training routine several times in short succession, once I hit a plateau. I want to make sure that my body can’t just adapt to a new routine within a few days, so I’ll go through several changes.

The plan is as follows: After a maximum of two months on my current routine, I will do one week with a new routine and low weights/high repetitions. After that, I’ll change the routine again and go for high weights/low repetitions. Then I’ll switch routines for a third time and go for medium weights/medium reps once again.

In other words, I want to change several aspects of my training routine, once a week. I think that should keep any kind of habituation at bay. Of course, once this is done, I do have to go back to a steady routine again, otherwise it will probably jeopardize my potential gains.

In Short
Right now, I’ll stick to my current routine for two months, or until I hit a plateau. Once I go into the “Bodyshock” phase, I’ll post it here and let you know how it goes.

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