25 Mar
Blog

Individualizing Training: Structural Balance, Intensity and Autoregulation

Writing programs is easy. You only need to do between 1 and 20 sets of 1 to 100 repetitions per muscle group between 5 and 120% of your 1 rpm and rest between sets 1 to 300 minutes. It is science. This is obviously an exaggeration of what is written in most textbooks, but most textbooks contain general guidelines, but do not explain how you can customize these numbers for your customers.

Textbooks are intended for this. To give you a general idea of ​​how to write training based on what is effective for the majority of the population. So if you follow the guidelines listed, you are likely to get some decent results for your customer, but what's next? Are you just adding weight to the bar? Do you play more sets More repetitions? What happens if the performance doesn't get better or even worse? Just go back and repeat the previous program?

The reality is that most people respond similarly to different types of stimuli. If you lift heavily, they become strong. If you make a lot of volume, they will get big provided you eat enough (read the ultimate guide to building muscle and hypertrophy).

What differs is their starting point, how much volume / intensity they need to see adjustment, and their ability to recover from training. Implementing the concept of structural balance (INOL) and using a general training framework that takes fatigue into account can help you design an initial program and provide the data for successful writing of future programs.

What is structural balance?

Let us first define terms. Structural balance simply means that your entire body muscles are balanced. So the muscles on the front of your body don't overwhelm the muscles on the back of your body, and you don't walk around like a gorilla with a massive upper body and a lower-sized lower body.

There are two things you should do to determine if a client is structurally balanced. The first is a simple assessment of posture. Depending on how well you are familiar with the customer, you can determine how deep you can go. For example, an athlete you have worked with in the past and who is very confident may have no problem taking his shirt off so you can see his shoulder blade move.

An overweight 40-year-old woman who is already very afraid of training will likely feel a lot uncomfortable if you ask her to take off her shirt. Regardless of whether your customer puts their shirt on or off, you can generally see a large imbalance such as overly kyphotic T-spikes or twisted shoulders.

The second option is to perform different exercises and compare their or calculated maxima. It should be noted that you would only do this with a customer who has a certain level of training history, or with a customer who has gone through a block with a focus on movement like Block 0 with you. So if the customer is able to run maximum values, or rep maxes, you can see where their imbalances are.

The intensity number of lifts (INOL)

The next definition we have to look at is INOL. INOL is an abbreviation for the intensity of the lifts. The intensity is considered from the point of view of% 1RM and the number of lifting operations carried out at these percentages. The calculation actually used is (repetitions / (100 intensity)). This gives you a score for a particular elevator.

In his work "How to design strength training programs with Prilipens table", Hristo Hristov has recommendations on what score does not cause enough stress for adaptation, what causes enough stress for adaptation and what causes too much fatigue for effective adaptation. Even if you don't use their specific numbers, using INOL is an effective tool to measure how much volume and intensity your customer is most efficiently adapting to.

Autoregulation: adapt your training to your needs

The final definition is autoregulation. With autoregulation, you can adapt your program to things like your recovery and CNS readiness. There are several ways to use autoregulation, which we'll discuss later in this article.

The terms are defined. So what do we do with them? Let's first look at our structural balance. When considering the structural balance, I recommend using exercises that are relevant to your client's goals. For example, if it's a weight lifter, or if you have an athlete who regularly uses the Olympic lifts, you can test for snapping, cleaning, and jerking.

If you don't plan to use the Olympic lifts, there's no reason to include them in the structural balance test. In this case, I recommend testing the conventional deadlift, rear squat, front squat, bench press, overhead press, and barbell row.

Since maximizing or performing AMRAPs on multiple exercises is very stressful, I would split the exercises into 2-3 days with 1-4 days in between. After getting all of your maxima or calculated maxes from your AMRAPs, you can see how the correlation between elevators and your customer's possible imbalances is.

To determine how each elevator should be correlated, you can see the work of people like Charles Poliquin, Christian Thibedeau, and Travis Mash. They have all written about the importance of structural balance and the importance of structural balance.

Exercise selection and baselines

A possible example of a structural balance would be to use the squat as a reference lift. If your customer squats 100 pounds back, they should be able to squat 85 pounds, conventional deadlifts 110 pounds, bench press 75 pounds, barbell row 52.5 pounds, and overhead presses 45 pounds (see Know Your Ratios , Destroy weaknesses).

Now when you look at your structural balance assessment, you also need to consider the client's anthropometry. If you have a client who has extremely long legs and short arms, he will most likely not be able to lift 110% of his squat.

If you have a massive chest and super short arms, you may be able to do more than 75% of your bench press because you only need a shorter range of motion to move the bar. Therefore, use the numbers of your structural balance sheet assessment as a basis, but adjust them based on the anthropometry of your customer as required.

You can use your structural balance test to determine which exercises you want to highlight in your training block. The exercise selection can be determined in different ways. An easy way is to train each exercise category all three days of the week with your earliest primary weakness in training and your strengths later in training to ensure you get the highest quality reps for your primary weakness.

If we split our movement categories into deadlift / Olympic variation, squat / lunge variation, upper body push and upper body pull, we can include an exercise from each of these categories in the training. Since not all exercises are equal in terms of the stress they cause, it is a good idea to use descending stress exercises throughout the workout.

Instead of using the most stressful exercises in each movement category and including conventional deadlifts, squats, bench presses, and barbell rows, you can use descending stress exercises like traditional deadlifts, front squats, overhead presses, and pull-ups.

Determination of individual intensities with INOL

After you have selected your exercises, we can look at the intensities. Using INOL's concept and Hristov's numbers, we can see that in week 1 you want at least 0.4 points for a workout. Everything below does not generally cause enough stress to bring about positive adjustment.

0.4-1 is considered very feasible and optimal if you don't accumulate fatigue, and 1-2 is considered hard but good for charging phases. I am a big supporter of using the minimum effective dose to gain strength, and I think it is always better to go below and increase exercise stress than to exceed and possibly reset.

With this in mind, I would recommend using a score of 0.8 for your primary exercise first. Regardless of which loading parameter you are using, whether it is straight sets, wave loading, working on something heavy and performing back-down sets, the value in the equation (repetitions / (100-intensity)) should be 0.8.

This number can initially be increased by up to 10 to 20% for your primary exercise. However, you need to decrease some of your other exercise categories by the same percentage. Every week you can decrease the volume and increase the intensity. After each training block, increase the INOL from week 1.

If the previous training block was effective, increase Week 1 INOL to 0.88. If this is effective, increase it to 0.96. Continue increasing the value until you see no positive adjustment. If INOL gets too big in a single workout and you routinely cannot recover enough for another hard workout this week, it is better to reduce the volume that day and add another workout within the week.

At this point, look back at your training logs and see which week 1 INOL your customer has improved the most. Take advantage of this amount of training volume for most of the year, while occasionally going over to accomplish too much and recover, and you will set your customers up for the best chance of success as the volume is tailored to them.

It is important to remember that when you exercise, you are not exercising in a vacuum. What happens on day 1 affects day 2. With this in mind, we want to be able to automatically regulate our customers' training based on what we can do on a given day.

There may be days when your customer didn't get enough sleep, ate enough calories, separated from their partner, or the previous training session was too stressful so that they cannot achieve the numbers they suspect to hit that day . This can become very obvious once the customer starts training and you can then make an adjustment. Ideally, however, you want to be able to adjust the workout before you start training.

To decide whether or not to change the plan, you should use a CNS readiness measurement procedure. There are different possibilities. One option would be to test heart rate variability (HRV). There are a variety of tools that you can purchase to measure HRV, but they cost between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars.

Another possibility is to measure the bar speed at a reference percentage for a reference lift. The equipment would also cost you a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. These are great tools that you can use. So if you have the resources, I would recommend purchasing them as they provide you with a lot of training data.

However, if you don't have the money for HRV or accelerometer equipment, you can use cheaper methods like a handheld test bench. In Thomas Kurtz's book Science of Sports Training, he discussed measuring grip strength to test recovery, since grip strength correlates with CNS readiness.

He states that an athlete whose grip strength decreases by more than 2 kg is under-recovered. A handheld test bench can be purchased for just $ 20. It is important that you use the same hand test bench for every test. Using others will reduce the reliability and validity of your test.

Another thing to consider is that if you have a lot of exercise that puts strain on your grip, you may get a low score due to peripheral fatigue instead of systemic fatigue. For this reason, it is a good idea to do a secondary test like a countermovement jump height.

If your customer is not sufficiently rested and needs easier training, you can apply the "rule of 60" and reduce the burden on the training volume to 60% of your original plan (see super training). Instead of reducing the volume in the form of sets / repetitions, I would recommend reducing it by the training intensity (% 1RM) as the maximum under-regenerated athlete for that day is likely to be lower and this still offers a lot of exercise with the movement.

Continuous assessment and adjustment

Using INOL with your automatic regulation protocol will also help you plan for the future. At the end of each training block, review the adjustments you had to make and what the INOL your customer ultimately did based on those adjustments. In this way you get a better picture of the training volume to which your customer can actually adapt and you can plan future training blocks more efficiently.

Initial training programs for every customer are always a sound guess. However, if you use these tools in a bottom-up approach, you may be more likely to use a top-down approach for future programming for your customers. Seeing how they adapt to a specific program helps you understand them better and create more personalized overtime.

Everyone adapts to similar stimuli in a similar way, but the ability to customize a program for each customer increases their chances of consistently optimal results. Stand out from other trainers and use your tools to offer your customers the best program.

25 Mar
Blog

Individualizing Training: Structural Balance, Intensity and Autoregulation

Writing programs is easy. You only need to do between 1 and 20 sets of 1 to 100 repetitions per muscle group between 5 and 120% of your 1 rpm and rest between sets 1 to 300 minutes. It is science. This is obviously an exaggeration of what is written in most textbooks, but most textbooks contain general guidelines, but do not explain how you can customize these numbers for your customers.

Textbooks are intended for this. To give you a general idea of ​​how to write training based on what is effective for the majority of the population. So if you follow the guidelines listed, you are likely to get some decent results for your customer, but what's next? Are you just adding weight to the bar? Do you play more sets More repetitions? What happens if the performance doesn't get better or even worse? Just go back and repeat the previous program?

The reality is that most people respond similarly to different types of stimuli. If you lift heavily, they become strong. If you make a lot of volume, they will get big provided you eat enough (read the ultimate guide to building muscle and hypertrophy).

What differs is their starting point, how much volume / intensity they need to see adjustment, and their ability to recover from training. Implementing the concept of structural balance (INOL) and using a general training framework that takes fatigue into account can help you design an initial program and provide the data for successful writing of future programs.

What is structural balance?

Let us first define terms. Structural balance simply means that your entire body muscles are balanced. So the muscles on the front of your body don't overwhelm the muscles on the back of your body, and you don't walk around like a gorilla with a massive upper body and a lower-sized lower body.

There are two things you should do to determine if a client is structurally balanced. The first is a simple assessment of posture. Depending on how well you are familiar with the customer, you can determine how deep you can go. For example, an athlete you have worked with in the past and who is very confident may have no problem taking his shirt off so you can see his shoulder blade move.

An overweight 40-year-old woman who is already very afraid of training will likely feel a lot uncomfortable if you ask her to take off her shirt. Regardless of whether your customer puts their shirt on or off, you can generally see a large imbalance such as overly kyphotic T-spikes or twisted shoulders.

The second option is to perform different exercises and compare their or calculated maxima. It should be noted that you would only do this with a customer who has a certain level of training history, or with a customer who has gone through a block with a focus on movement like Block 0 with you. So if the customer is able to run maximum values, or rep maxes, you can see where their imbalances are.

The intensity number of lifts (INOL)

The next definition we have to look at is INOL. INOL is an abbreviation for the intensity of the lifts. The intensity is considered from the point of view of% 1RM and the number of lifting operations carried out at these percentages. The calculation actually used is (repetitions / (100 intensity)). This gives you a score for a particular elevator.

In his work "How to design strength training programs with Prilipens table", Hristo Hristov has recommendations on what score does not cause enough stress for adaptation, what causes enough stress for adaptation and what causes too much fatigue for effective adaptation. Even if you don't use their specific numbers, using INOL is an effective tool to measure how much volume and intensity your customer is most efficiently adapting to.

Autoregulation: adapt your training to your needs

The final definition is autoregulation. With autoregulation, you can adapt your program to things like your recovery and CNS readiness. There are several ways to use autoregulation, which we'll discuss later in this article.

The terms are defined. So what do we do with them? Let's first look at our structural balance. When considering the structural balance, I recommend using exercises that are relevant to your client's goals. For example, if it's a weight lifter, or if you have an athlete who regularly uses the Olympic lifts, you can test for snapping, cleaning, and jerking.

If you don't plan to use the Olympic lifts, there's no reason to include them in the structural balance test. In this case, I recommend testing the conventional deadlift, rear squat, front squat, bench press, overhead press, and barbell row.

Since maximizing or performing AMRAPs on multiple exercises is very stressful, I would split the exercises into 2-3 days with 1-4 days in between. After getting all of your maxima or calculated maxes from your AMRAPs, you can see how the correlation between elevators and your customer's possible imbalances is.

To determine how each elevator should be correlated, you can see the work of people like Charles Poliquin, Christian Thibedeau, and Travis Mash. They have all written about the importance of structural balance and the importance of structural balance.

Exercise selection and baselines

A possible example of a structural balance would be to use the squat as a reference lift. If your customer squats 100 pounds back, they should be able to squat 85 pounds, conventional deadlifts 110 pounds, bench press 75 pounds, barbell row 52.5 pounds, and overhead presses 45 pounds (see Know Your Ratios , Destroy weaknesses).

Now when you look at your structural balance assessment, you also need to consider the client's anthropometry. If you have a client who has extremely long legs and short arms, he will most likely not be able to lift 110% of his squat.

If you have a massive chest and super short arms, you may be able to do more than 75% of your bench press because you only need a shorter range of motion to move the bar. Therefore, use the numbers of your structural balance sheet assessment as a basis, but adjust them based on the anthropometry of your customer as required.

You can use your structural balance test to determine which exercises you want to highlight in your training block. The exercise selection can be determined in different ways. An easy way is to train each exercise category all three days of the week with your earliest primary weakness in training and your strengths later in training to ensure you get the highest quality reps for your primary weakness.

If we split our movement categories into deadlift / Olympic variation, squat / lunge variation, upper body push and upper body pull, we can include an exercise from each of these categories in the training. Since not all exercises are equal in terms of the stress they cause, it is a good idea to use descending stress exercises throughout the workout.

Instead of using the most stressful exercises in each movement category and including conventional deadlifts, squats, bench presses, and barbell rows, you can use descending stress exercises like traditional deadlifts, front squats, overhead presses, and pull-ups.

Determination of individual intensities with INOL

After you have selected your exercises, we can look at the intensities. Using INOL's concept and Hristov's numbers, we can see that in week 1 you want at least 0.4 points for a workout. Everything below does not generally cause enough stress to bring about positive adjustment.

0.4-1 is considered very feasible and optimal if you don't accumulate fatigue, and 1-2 is considered hard but good for charging phases. I am a big supporter of using the minimum effective dose to gain strength, and I think it is always better to go below and increase exercise stress than to exceed and possibly reset.

With this in mind, I would recommend using a score of 0.8 for your primary exercise first. Regardless of which loading parameter you are using, whether it is straight sets, wave loading, working on something heavy and performing back-down sets, the value in the equation (repetitions / (100-intensity)) should be 0.8.

This number can initially be increased by up to 10 to 20% for your primary exercise. However, you need to decrease some of your other exercise categories by the same percentage. Every week you can decrease the volume and increase the intensity. After each training block, increase the INOL from week 1.

If the previous training block was effective, increase Week 1 INOL to 0.88. If this is effective, increase it to 0.96. Continue increasing the value until you see no positive adjustment. If INOL gets too big in a single workout and you routinely cannot recover enough for another hard workout this week, it is better to reduce the volume that day and add another workout within the week.

At this point, look back at your training logs and see which week 1 INOL your customer has improved the most. Take advantage of this amount of training volume for most of the year, while occasionally going over to accomplish too much and recover, and you will set your customers up for the best chance of success as the volume is tailored to them.

It is important to remember that when you exercise, you are not exercising in a vacuum. What happens on day 1 affects day 2. With this in mind, we want to be able to automatically regulate our customers' training based on what we can do on a given day.

There may be days when your customer didn't get enough sleep, ate enough calories, separated from their partner, or the previous training session was too stressful so that they cannot achieve the numbers they suspect to hit that day . This can become very obvious once the customer starts training and you can then make an adjustment. Ideally, however, you want to be able to adjust the workout before you start training.

To decide whether or not to change the plan, you should use a CNS readiness measurement procedure. There are different possibilities. One option would be to test heart rate variability (HRV). There are a variety of tools that you can purchase to measure HRV, but they cost between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars.

Another possibility is to measure the bar speed at a reference percentage for a reference lift. The equipment would also cost you a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. These are great tools that you can use. So if you have the resources, I would recommend purchasing them as they provide you with a lot of training data.

However, if you don't have the money for HRV or accelerometer equipment, you can use cheaper methods like a handheld test bench. In Thomas Kurtz's book Science of Sports Training, he discussed measuring grip strength to test recovery, since grip strength correlates with CNS readiness.

He states that an athlete whose grip strength decreases by more than 2 kg is under-recovered. A handheld test bench can be purchased for just $ 20. It is important that you use the same hand test bench for every test. Using others will reduce the reliability and validity of your test.

Another thing to consider is that if you have a lot of exercise that puts strain on your grip, you may get a low score due to peripheral fatigue instead of systemic fatigue. For this reason, it is a good idea to do a secondary test like a countermovement jump height.

If your customer is not sufficiently rested and needs easier training, you can apply the "rule of 60" and reduce the burden on the training volume to 60% of your original plan (see super training). Instead of reducing the volume in the form of sets / repetitions, I would recommend reducing it by the training intensity (% 1RM) as the maximum under-regenerated athlete for that day is likely to be lower and this still offers a lot of exercise with the movement.

Continuous assessment and adjustment

Using INOL with your automatic regulation protocol will also help you plan for the future. At the end of each training block, review the adjustments you had to make and what the INOL your customer ultimately did based on those adjustments. In this way you get a better picture of the training volume to which your customer can actually adapt and you can plan future training blocks more efficiently.

Initial training programs for every customer are always a sound guess. However, if you use these tools in a bottom-up approach, you may be more likely to use a top-down approach for future programming for your customers. Seeing how they adapt to a specific program helps you understand them better and create more personalized overtime.

Everyone adapts to similar stimuli in a similar way, but the ability to customize a program for each customer increases their chances of consistently optimal results. Stand out from other trainers and use your tools to offer your customers the best program.

17 Feb
Blog

Determining Heavy Loads and Understanding Intensity in Weight Lifting

Many books on strength training contain chapters on intensity and their meaning. They describe 100% intensity as the weight of which you can only do one repetition in a given exercise. If you can do more than one repetition of the exercise, its intensity is lower. The more repetitions you can do, the lower the intensity of the weight.

This discussion then inevitably leads to how high the maximum repetitions will be at certain intensities, Any trainee who has reached the intermediate level will be interested because he wants to make sure that he works with the right intensity for the repetitions he does.

They don't want to work with too low an intensity and they don't want to work with too heavy an intensity either. Many trainees become a little too ambitious and are wrong on the side of the serious. The lazybones or Timider does the opposite. Therefore, knowing the repetition intensity diagram is critical.

The relationship between intensity and 5×5

For newer advanced trainees it can be decided that they follow one of the standard strength development programs, in which they go through five sets of five (5×5) each. This is prescribed by Berry, Starr, Ripp and many others – because 5×5 works.

So they take the appropriate percentage for 5 reps for the athlete. This is about 89% give or take, often rounded to 90% on average to simplify the math (as I will do here). They can start at 85% if they want to familiarize themselves with a new program – and that's fine because the improvement will happen quickly.

Then the trainee does 5×5 for the squat, bench and other strength exercises. However, 5×5 doesn't work as well with deadlifts as it can be tiring, but 5×5 works fine for most other lifts.

After about a week, the trainee consumes a full 90%. But it doesn't always run as smoothly. For example, the fifth iteration may fail on the last sentence. What happened? Are they getting weaker now?

The answer is no. Everything is fine, even if the last repetition is missing. It is indeed a good sign. Why? Because it means that their intensity is at the ideal point, How is it so you have been taught that you always do your full five reps.

What happens is that the repetition intensity graphs are based on only one set, not on multiple sets. Her creators have forgotten the important concept of fatigue. We only have so much in the tank for a particular workout or a day before we need to rest. We cannot work 100% indefinitely. We are all intuitively aware of this.

A sprinter can't keep up with a marathon runner for long. Even the marathon runner has to save his speed for the end of the race. This also applies to intensities of less than 100%. The 90% repetitions cannot continue indefinitely either because the trainee eventually shows signs of fatigue. At the last sentence he runs out of gas.

Actual, relative and perceived intensity

This is especially true when the sets have just gained weight. Suppose the PR squat was 300 pounds and he did 270 for 5X5 as recommended and all 25 reps were completed. You can then have tested their maximum and found that they can now make 320. In this case, the trainee dutifully adds £ 18 to his work sets (the £ 20 increase x 90%).

With renewed enthusiasm for squats, they find that the last set may have consisted of only 3-4 repetitions, while the fourth set consisted of only 4. The trainee is not weaker, instead they are not yet used to working with the extra pounds.

On their next workout, they often do a full 4th set and 4 reps on the 5th set. Finally they can do the full 5×5. With that extra weight, they actually got stronger. It only takes a little adjustment time,

Most trainees will be familiar with this pattern when they gain experience. What may require more awareness is what happens within a single sentence. It should be noted that the fatigue factor is effective from the very first sentence. Let's look at the first set of a 5×5. The above trainee takes £ 270 for five as this is the mandatory 90% of his 1RM.

On the first repetition, 270 feel like 90%. This repetition takes a little time for the trainee, so that the second repetition feels like 275. Not a jump big enough to notice a 300 squatter. Then the 3rd repetition may feel like 287. Number 4 will feel like 296 and the last iteration will feel like 300. Further repetitions are by definition impossible because it is a 5RM.

Only one set behaves at 5 rpm. Things get hairier when we go to multiple sets in a 5×5. Depending on the fitness of the individual, the effects of fatigue appear in the last sentences. On the 5th or even the 4th set, 270 first repetitions feel more like 285. Subsequent repetitions feel 300 closer and closer until at some point the perceived intensity is greater than 300. These repetitions fail.

All of this means that if you say 90% sentences about yourself, for example, you have to realize that not all sentences or even all repetitions feel like 90% to your organism. You will actually work with a slightly higher perceived intensity, As such, you have to take that into account when programming. But how can you counteract these factors when planning a training session?

One way is to try the full 90% for all sentences, knowing that the last one or two sentences may fail. At this point, you can continue with the next exercise and hope that your strength will improve in the next session. Alternatively, you can take a 6th set and make up for the missing repetitions if you don't add one or two additional repetitions. This leaves you in a better mood after making mistakes.

Another way, especially if you are compulsive to do all 25, is to start at less than 90%, so repetition 25 is just about successful. This is a more conservative method, in which the perceived intensity is lower at the beginning but higher at the end.

Regardless of the exact method, the working weights are only increased when the trainee can do all 25 repetitions with the prescribed weight – this keeps everyone honest,

Use the drop set

Another way is the drop set method, which was borrowed from bodybuilding, If you feel the last reps are failing, the bar can be lowered 5 to 10 pounds to ensure successful reps. You will still feel like maximum repetitions so little is lost.

The only problem is that the lifter has to stop in the middle of the set to change the weight. This can be avoided if there are two wizards who can quickly remove the unnecessary plates before the last repetitions. In such cases, these plates should only swim outside the collar. Finally, the entire last sentence can be removed if no help is available.

Think of the 3 forms of intensity

This whole article is about the trainee making the difference between the actual intensity (actual resistance), the relative intensity (% of 1rpm) and the perceived intensity (i.e. how heavy the weight is for the organism actually feels).

When programming, the latter is most relevant in terms of customization and recovery considerations,