Following the advice of genetically elite lifters, competitive body builders is misleading. Many top competitors have excellent physiques in spite of what they do, not because of what they do. Of course I am not saying that people who look great and also have super strength do not train hard to have a admirable physique. For most of the top level athletes in any field, fitness models and competitive body builders – their superior genetics do play a role in make them the champs in their own areas. They nurture and stimulate their natural genetic gifts through effort, discipline and consistency to attain that top position their respective arena.
Try to avoid Overtraining
There’s a difference between optimum work capacity and maximum work capacity. There’s often an overemphasis on methods to stimulate growth, but an under-emphasis on rest and recovery.
It isn’t very sexy to be talking about rest and recovery, but most of the time the non-sexy details are the most relevant for producing results.
Under-training allows you to keep showing up. Consistency is more important than intensity. Furthermore, consistency is the building block of intensity – not the other way around.
Real success is less about “giving it all you got” and more about being able to show up every training day in a performance-readiness state.
Try not to train to failure in every set
It is hard to recover if you go to muscular failure in every set. Yes, may be keep a specific limited sets for muscular failure, but not every set.
If you want to complete all the sets planned in a good form, then do not over stress and over strain the muscles in every set. This means picking a weight that challenges your target muscles for the reps indicated, but avoids taking you to failure.
Plan the rest between the sets and also between the training days
You have to balance adequate training stimulus with adequate recovery, both within workouts and between workouts:
- Not enough workouts per week = not enough stimulus.
- Not enough recovery within and between workouts = overtraining and not enough time to complete an adaptive response.
“Inter” workout recovery has a lot to do with proper program design. “Intra” workout recovery has more to do with training within optimal work capacity zones and seldom pushing muscles into maximum work capacity zones.
Establishing a consistent training pace and natural workout flow are important. And this has as much to do with intra-workout recovery as it does with the specified training stimulus of exercise selection, sets, and reps.
Obviously, it takes a lot more time to recover from a set of high-rep squats or lunges than it does to recover from a set of concentration curls, but using the clock to gauge intra-workout recovery just makes no sense. And neither does following some written-down instruction to rest for a specified time between sets. Assigning rest times between sets according to the clock or timer is like throwing darts at a dartboard while blindfolded.
Determine how long to rest between sets subjectively
Your rest between sets should be self-monitored according to the concept of “subjective determination of performance readiness.” After you’ve completed a working set, ask yourself this question:
“Can I do my next set with equal or greater intensity than the previous set with proper form?”
This is about subjective self-assessment. And you’re only going to get proficient at this subjective determination of performance readiness by practicing it regularly each and every workout, until how long you rest between sets becomes just another instinctive element to your training.
If you’re training for muscle development, then NEVER artificially force shorter rest times. You rest for as long as you need to rest in order to resume your next set with the same level of applied efforts. And only YOU can determine that.
As far as “inter” workout recovery, it has everything to do with making sure you don’t consistently push your body beyond optimum workout capacity in any given workout. Not training to failure and not artificially forcing shorter rest times are two ways to ensure this.
There is no need to necessitate workouts that last longer than 60 minutes, with 45-60 minutes being the sweet spot for many lifters. The only exception could be leg workouts, which may extend a bit beyond 60 minutes because leg work requires longer rest periods between sets.
You can design programs that are anywhere from three days per week to six days per week, depending on where you are in terms of current conditioning for muscle-building workouts and current work capacity.
Emphasize ranges and planes of motion over how much you can lift
Too often, training experts overemphasize musculoskeletal concerns while completely ignoring neuromuscular input that directly affects fiber recruitment. This mistake often leads to worshipping certain exercises and overemphasizing them at the expense of other valuable exercises that would contribute to muscle growth.
Think more about horizontal vs. vertical forces and their gradients, and ground to ceiling vs. ceiling to ground gravitational forces.
Take chest work for example: A cable crossover has a ceiling to floor gravitational force in a vertical plane. A seated pec dec flye has a horizontal plane of motion, while a standard dumbbell chest press takes place in a vertical plane but with pressing from ground to ceiling rather than ceiling to floor like the cable crossover.
Surf the rep curve
Throughout the week, hit every target body part not only from a variety of angles, but from a variety of rep ranges that influence muscle recruitment and hypertrophy.
We know there are many rep ranges that influence muscle hypertrophy.
Rep ranges of 6-8, 8-10, 10-12, 12-15, and 15-20 have also been shown to grow muscle. Muscle fibers are recruited for action in various ways and not just via progressive overload of weight. Volume matters as well, as does neurological patterning through high-rep training that invites a muscle fiber to the recruitment party.
And while reps of 8-15 are considered the sweet spot when training for size, it’s not complete by any means. If you really want to grow, then surf the rep curve of all these ranges listed above.
Practice tweaking the program and avoid plateaus
Training tweaks can make a world of difference in muscle fiber recruitment and overload.
Consider that subtle variations in hand position or grip width can alter fiber recruitment for you in positive or negative ways. An obvious example is how a reverse-grip pulldown invites a very different neurological pattern and fiber recruitment stimulus than a wide-grip pulldown. And both of these movements allow you to vary hand width spacing to determine what grip width works best for you.
Other broad examples are training with dumbbells instead of a barbell, or using a cable variation or machines instead of free weights. All of these tweaks can offer different muscle stimuli and establish new lines of neurological patterns, as long as you’re also sticking to the principle of “surfing the rep curve.”
A more subtle variation for building muscle is replacing the barbell bench press with the dumbbell bench press with feet up on the bench. These two tweaks produce a joint stress transfer.
Dumbbells also requires more stabilization, which means the dumbbell flat bench press is more effective for pec development than the standard bench press. You may not lift as heavy with this tweak, but that shouldn’t matter if your goal is muscle growth.
It’s not how much you lift, it’s how you lift it. Tweaks can also be mentally stimulating because you get to feel what variations work or don’t work, and practicing training tweaks keeps you more mentally engaged as well.
Don’t tweak too much
Bouncing around from one workout to the next with no program structure isn’t tweaking.
They do random workouts from this expert, or that champion, or that celebrity, and they end up all over the place. There’s no sound overall structure and this is reflected in their lack of results.
Keep in mind that a collection of exercises doesn’t automatically translate into being an effective workout. Similarly, a collection of random workouts doesn’t automatically translate into being an effective program either.
You wouldn’t read a book and expect to understand it all by starting at page one, then jumping to page 86, then going to page 12. Proper exercise sequencing, workout tactical implementation, and overall program design should all demand the same considerations to logic.
*Do read the Disclaimer
References:
Some excerpts taken from expert fitness coaches articles