18 Mar
Blog

The Yin and Yang in Strength Training to Optimize Balance

I started writing for Breaking Muscle a few years ago and I had an agenda all along. In an attempt to establish myself as someone with some strengths, the good people on the editorial team thought it a better idea to loosen up the articles that revolve around the mysterious, esoteric, and unconventional.

"Help them understand that you know what you are talking about when it comes to training and then they will be more willing to listen to some of your fringe ideas."

I wrote an original piece: What does Daoism have to do with it? This was a first attempt to offer some of these ideas. This article was my sneaky throw to this community about some tough ideas.

Well, I've waited long enough and it's officially time for my freak flag to fly.

I am about to give you the cliff notes on a much larger project that I have been working on since doing clinical research for my medical qigong PhD over 13 years ago.

What you are reading is real.

Yes, some elements will feel awesome and whimsical and moments when you think I am assuming some form of artistic license with my claims. And you couldn't be further from the truth.

Much of what I'm going to present today has been proven in studies – if you tend to look.

This short dissertation is the exact formulation I use with my patients who visit me for help with a medical problem and who do not have a great understanding of Qigong or Chinese medicine in general.

But you can look at the world in which I live through the power lens and not through the healing lens: even if you will quickly find that they are not independent of each other. So sit back and listen to some ideas that you've probably never heard of before.

Everything is energy

Okay, most of you have probably heard this by now, but it is a basic concept that must be accepted if we are to make any progress with all of this.

The good news is that every high school physics book confirms this when you have to convince. The computer / phone screen you look at, the shoes you wear, the water in the ocean, and the stars in the sky are all energy. They are indeed energy.

Everything in this world that is material, everything that is not, and everything in between is, as you guessed it, energy differentiated by sound, vibration and quality.

Neo in The Matrix, the moment he is brought back to life by Trinity with the kiss and through the eyes of one, sees the world as it actually looks like a fantastic cornucopia of lights and colors that is indescribable.

Yin and yang

With that said, we can learn the most basic understanding of it through the image of yin and yang: you know, the two tears that have come together to represent duality, the cycle of life and the expression of opposites.

The Yin and Yang are created right around the first cell division after the moment of conception.

We Daoists believe that in many ways this moment is just as important, if not more important, than when the sperm meets the egg. In this department, the yin and yang take shape, where the virtues of each child are escorted and software of the divine mind begins to execute its program.

At this moment, and throughout pregnancy, the developing child is in a kind of nuclear nirvana that can only be disturbed by excessive stressors that the mother can endure.

I like to think that the yin and yang of this being are in complete balance and perfection (in almost all cases) has been achieved and sustained for nine months.

Before we go any further, we should probably give you a quick explanation of what this whole yin and yang thing is. But first it's yin, not ying with a G. And it's yang like yawning – not yang and dang. When was the last time you heard someone say daaaang and meant it?

Joe Dirt said it a couple of times and probably one of your hillbilly friends, right. Well, for those of us in this business who hear this, you will immediately see the hillbilly friend in you when we listen to you say ying and yaaaang!

Forgive me, but it had to be said.

In this article, yin and yang are defined as the quality of energy we are talking about:

  1. Yin represents feminine, calm, cool, the shadowy side of the mountain, the moon.
  2. Yang is masculine, aggressive, hot, the stars on the bright side of the mountain. These properties reside in every single atom of your body.

Gather all the atoms and we have you, and while you are in the cozy confines of your mother's womb, everything is in balance because the balance is individual to you.

My balance is different from yours, but it is understood and accepted that this balance exists to some extent in all of us.

Everything in the body works wonderfully in moments of true equilibrium. All systems are tuned to the maximum, and in these nine months the miracle of life is taking shape. And then you take your first breath.

it's a boy

These words are followed by one of the most blood-curdled screams you will ever hear. I know quite well. I've heard that scream three times.

I was in a position with our doctor when the whole process happened for my wife and children and I remember that sound. Many people think this is naturally reflexive, and it is the way the baby announces that it has arrived.

But I have a different theory.

If everything is energy, and energy cannot be destroyed, think about the space in which the woman finds herself in one of the most catastrophic events of her life. Then think of the woman who was there before her, and then the one before that.

Over time, this room becomes a petri dish full of emotions and electrical charges as these events penetrate the walls.

Think about how the dad feels (I can only speak for myself but I've been a nervous wreck with every delivery, probably more so than my incredible wife). Remember how jacked up the doctor and hospital staff are the moment the pushing starts.

Come back to the true love, elation, excruciating pain, fear, joy, terror and the most explosive emotions a person is capable of invading every square inch of this room.

The baby spent about nine months in the most wonderful environment it will ever know, and all the energy of the room for the first stage of life is absorbed in one breath.

At that moment, the same union of yin and yang is radically changed and the rest of that person's life is spent trying to find balance.

illness

think about it. According to the Alexa on my desk:

  • As a noun, lightness is defined as freedom from work, pain or physical annoyance, calm rest, comfort.
  • As a verb, it is defined as being free from fear or care.
  • Throw "dis" in front of it and off you go.

Now I don't bet Alexa is the omniscient fortune teller who only spits out truths, but if we can both agree that her definition is nearly correct, what is missing?

She never mentioned it::

  1. Right nutrition
  2. Eight glasses of water a day
  3. Take vitamins
  4. Don't live next to a power plant.
  5. With fluoride-free toothpaste

The things Alexa mentioned had to do with aspects of life that were perceived from within and the types of things we all want to achieve.

Your understanding of the second half of the disease right now has to do with calm, stillness, and contentment.

Good thing my Alexa and I are so close because a lot of the Chinese medical system is based on things like emotions, virtues, and the elements. Tie details to organs and what we have is an elegant view of disease and the root cause of anything that brings us to our favorite doctor's waiting room.

If the opposite of ease focuses on fear, discomfort, pain, and physical annoyance, can you compose the picture that much of our illnesses are due to emotional distress?

Take this one big step forward; When overbearing emotions flood you, especially one or two, the balance between yin and yang becomes upset.

The longer you stay imbalanced, the richer the soil is to grow something terrible. I simplify this by leaps and bounds.

If I had the absolute freedom to explain all the connections between this organ, this meridian and these emotions, I could paint a clear picture for you. Just trust that everything is there.

The noise of life

I used the word noise because it captures an idea that I hope you will understand in this section.

The most centered person in the world faces the challenges of living this life at this time.

  • Take every monastic person on this planet who has cultivated with decades of practice of meditation and prayer (something we will visit in the third installment) and drop them in downtown Los Angeles.
  • Then give them a cell phone, a company job, a poor diet, a new girlfriend, bills to be paid, and a problematic right knee, and then watch all of that work unfold before our eyes.
  • You see, believers, those who have dedicated their lives to service, especially service from a religious or spiritual point of view, these people go to monasteries and seminaries and are effectively imprisoned and removed from society as the noise of everyday life becomes filtered.
  • They can have the ideal conditions to do their craft. You are not anti-social. They create the best possible framework for deep introspection, study, and cultivation.

The best way to learn to fly is in an airplane. The best place to learn how to be a priest and be in the service of God is in a monastery, away from the everyday life of society.

Now if you buy the entire yin and yang position and we know that the only time in your life that balance is truly achieved is in the womb, then every second we are boots on the ground in this world that we pursue this balance.

I tell my patients that if they don't practice, they will likely never achieve this absolute balance again.

Our life is a yang thunderstorm.

Think about it for a moment::

  • The hectic pace of life
  • Our jobs
  • Our relationships
  • The rubbish that the media is constantly trying to shovel down our throats like our diets.
  • Everything we encounter in our waking hours is stress.
  • And in the case of this article, Yang-type energy is blasted on us and into our energy field around the clock.

If we don't have a solution to make up for this constant inundation, our tears should be the same and transform into something so one-sided that disease can occur.

I want to leave you with that.

And then we throw training on it. We intentionally add another yang activity to an already noisy day because we love it and we think we're doing ourselves a favor.

Yes, our fitness is good, our jeans look great, and I'm the first to say I go through a real posing routine in the mirror in the morning before brushing my teeth (stop lying, you do too ). . We love our time in the gym and we know it's good for us.

Or is it?

17 Mar
Blog

The Yin and Yang in Strength Training to Optimize Balance

I started writing for Breaking Muscle a few years ago and I had an agenda all along. In an attempt to establish myself as someone with some strengths, the good people on the editorial team thought it a better idea to loosen up the articles that revolve around the mysterious, esoteric, and unconventional.

"Help them understand that you know what you are talking about when it comes to training and then they will be more willing to listen to some of your fringe ideas."

I wrote an original piece: What does Daoism have to do with it? This was a first attempt to offer some of these ideas. This article was my sneaky throw to this community about some tough ideas.

Well, I've waited long enough and it's officially time for my freak flag to fly.

I am about to give you the cliff notes on a much larger project that I have been working on since doing clinical research for my medical qigong PhD over 13 years ago.

What you are reading is real.

Yes, some elements will feel awesome and whimsical and moments when you think I am assuming some form of artistic license with my claims. And you couldn't be further from the truth.

Much of what I'm going to present today has been proven in studies – if you tend to look.

This short dissertation is the exact formulation I use with my patients who visit me for help with a medical problem and who do not have a great understanding of Qigong or Chinese medicine in general.

But you can look at the world in which I live through the power lens and not through the healing lens: even if you will quickly find that they are not independent of each other. So sit back and listen to some ideas that you've probably never heard of before.

Everything is energy

Okay, most of you have probably heard this by now, but it is a basic concept that must be accepted if we are to make any progress with all of this. The good news is that every high school physics book confirms this when you have to convince. The computer / phone screen you look at, the shoes you wear, the water in the ocean, and the stars in the sky are all energy. They are indeed energy.

Everything in this world that is material, everything that is not, and everything in between is, as you guessed it, energy differentiated by sound, vibration and quality.

Neo in The Matrix, the moment he is brought back to life by Trinity with the kiss and through the eyes of one, sees the world as it actually looks like a fantastic cornucopia of lights and colors that is indescribable.

Yin and yang

With that said, we can learn the most basic understanding of it through the image of yin and yang: you know, the two tears that have come together to represent duality, the cycle of life and the expression of opposites.

The Yin and Yang are created right around the first cell division after the moment of conception.

We Daoists believe that in many ways this moment is just as important, if not more important, than when the sperm meets the egg. In this department, the yin and yang take shape, where the virtues of each child are escorted and software of the divine mind begins to execute its program.

At this moment, and throughout pregnancy, the developing child is in a kind of nuclear nirvana that can only be disturbed by excessive stressors that the mother can endure.

I like to think that the yin and yang of this being are in complete balance and perfection (in almost all cases) has been achieved and sustained for nine months.

Before we go any further, we should probably give you a quick explanation of what this whole yin and yang thing is. But first it's yin, not ying with a G. And it's yang like yawning – not yang and dang. When was the last time you heard someone say daaaang and meant it? Joe Dirt said it a couple of times and probably one of your hillbilly friends, right. Well, for those of us in this business who hear this, you will immediately see the hillbilly friend in you when we listen to you say ying and yaaaang!

Forgive me, but it had to be said.

In this article, yin and yang are defined as the quality of energy we are talking about:

  1. Yin represents feminine, calm, cool, the shadowy side of the mountain, the moon.
  2. Yang is masculine, aggressive, hot, the stars on the bright side of the mountain. These properties reside in every single atom of your body.

Gather all the atoms and we have you, and while you are in the cozy confines of your mother's womb, everything is in balance because the balance is individual to you.

My balance is different from yours, but it is understood and accepted that this balance exists to some extent in all of us.

Everything in the body works wonderfully in moments of true equilibrium. All systems are tuned to the maximum, and in these nine months the miracle of life is taking shape. And then you take your first breath.

it's a boy

These words are followed by one of the most blood-curdled screams you will ever hear. I know quite well. I've heard that scream three times. I was in a position with our doctor when the whole process happened for my wife and children and I remember that sound. Many people think this is naturally reflexive, and it is the way the baby announces that it has arrived.

But I have a different theory.

If everything is energy, and energy cannot be destroyed, think about the space in which the woman finds herself in one of the most catastrophic events of her life. Then think of the woman who was there before her, and then the one before that. Over time, this room becomes a petri dish full of emotions and electrical charges as these events penetrate the walls.

Think about how the dad feels (I can only speak for myself but I've been a nervous wreck with every delivery, probably more so than my incredible wife). Remember how jacked up the doctor and hospital staff are the moment the pushing starts.

Come back to the true love, elation, excruciating pain, fear, joy, terror and the most explosive emotions that a person is able to invade every square inch of this room.

The baby spent about nine months in the most wonderful environment it will ever know, and all the energy of the room for the first stage of life is absorbed in one breath.

At that moment, the same union of yin and yang is radically changed and the rest of that person's life is spent trying to find balance.

illness

think about it. According to the Alexa on my desk:

  • As a noun, lightness is defined as freedom from work, pain or physical annoyance, calm rest, comfort.
  • As a verb, it is defined as being free from fear or care.
  • Throw "dis" in front of it and off you go.

Now I don't bet Alexa is the omniscient fortune teller who only spits out truths, but if we can both agree that her definition is nearly correct, what is missing?

She never mentioned it::

  1. Right nutrition
  2. Eight glasses of water a day
  3. Take vitamins
  4. Don't live next to a power plant.
  5. With fluoride-free toothpaste

The things Alexa mentioned had to do with aspects of life that were perceived from within and the types of things we all want to achieve.

Your understanding of the second half of the disease right now has to do with calm, stillness, and contentment.

Good thing my Alexa and I are so close because a lot of the Chinese medical system is based on things like emotions, virtues, and the elements. Attach specifics to organs and what we have is an elegant view of disease and the root cause of anything that brings us into our favorite doctor's waiting room.

If the opposite of ease focuses on fear, discomfort, pain, and physical annoyance, can you compose the picture that much of our illnesses are due to emotional distress?

Take this one big step forward; When overbearing emotions flood you, especially one or two, the balance between yin and yang becomes upset.

The longer you stay imbalanced, the richer the soil is to grow something terrible. I simplify this by leaps and bounds.

If I had the absolute freedom to explain all the connections between this organ, this meridian and these emotions, I could paint a clear picture for you. Just trust that everything is there.

The noise of life

I used the word noise because it captures an idea that I hope you will understand in this section.

The most centered person in the world faces the challenges of living this life at this time.

  • Take every monastic person on this planet who has cultivated with decades of practice of meditation and prayer (something we will visit in the third installment) and drop them in downtown Los Angeles.
  • Then give them a cell phone, a company job, a poor diet, a new girlfriend, bills to be paid, and a problematic right knee, and then watch all of that work unfold before our eyes.
  • You see, believers, those who have dedicated their lives to service, especially service from a religious or spiritual point of view, these people go to monasteries and seminaries and are effectively imprisoned and removed from society as the noise of everyday life becomes filtered.
  • They can have the ideal conditions to do their craft. You are not anti-social. They create the best possible framework for deep introspection, study, and cultivation.

The best way to learn to fly is in an airplane. The best place to learn how to be a priest and be in the service of God is in a monastery, away from the everyday life of society.

Now if you buy the entire yin and yang position and we know that the only time in your life that balance is truly achieved is in the womb, then every second we are boots on the ground in this world that we pursue this balance.

I tell my patients that if they don't practice, they will likely never achieve this absolute balance again.

Our life is a yang thunderstorm.

Think about it for a moment::

  • The hectic pace of life
  • Our jobs
  • Our relationships
  • The rubbish that the media is constantly trying to shovel down our throats like our diets.
  • Everything we encounter in our waking hours is stress.
  • And in the case of this article, Yang-type energy is blasted on us and into our energy field around the clock.

If we don't have a solution to make up for this constant inundation, our tears should be the same and transform into something so one-sided that disease can occur.

I want to leave you with that.

And then we throw training on it. We intentionally add another yang activity to an already noisy day because we love it and we think we're doing ourselves a favor.

Yes, our fitness is good, our jeans look great, and I'm the first to say I go through a real posing routine in the mirror in the morning before brushing my teeth (stop lying, you do too ). . We love our time in the gym and we know it's good for us.

Or is it?

04 Mar
Blog

Dynamic Variable Resistance Training is The Best Tool Not In Use

Josh Henkin is a CSCS and Master RKC with twenty years of experience. His innovative Dynamic Variable Resistance Training (DVRT ™) has enabled him to present in more than 13 countries and to publish in top outlets such as Men & # 39; s Health and the Wall Street Journal.

In this episode we discuss the DVRT system, why sandbags are such a versatile tool, and the importance of training modalities that challenge stability and develop solid movement mechanics.

You can also find this podcast on top of all of my other Six Pack of Knowledge podcasts (curated discussions with the world's greatest hypertrophy experts).

Or search for Breaking Muscle's channel and podcasts on the following services: iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Stitcher, PlayerFM, PodBean.

04 Mar
Blog

Dynamic Variable Resistance Training is The Best Tool Not In Use

Josh Henkin is a CSCS and Master RKC with twenty years of experience. His innovative Dynamic Variable Resistance Training (DVRT ™) has enabled him to present in more than 13 countries and to publish in top outlets such as Men & # 39; s Health and the Wall Street Journal.

In this episode we discuss the DVRT system, why sandbags are such a versatile tool, and the importance of training modalities that challenge stability and develop solid movement mechanics.

You can also find this podcast on top of all of my other Six Pack of Knowledge podcasts (curated discussions with the world's greatest hypertrophy experts).

Or search for Breaking Muscle's channel and podcasts on the following services: iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Stitcher, PlayerFM, PodBean.

24 Feb
Blog

The Importance of Structured Training Programs in Recovery

What if I told you that by improving your exercise program, you could dramatically improve your recovery and results?

In Part 1 of this Train Hard, Recover Harder series, I explained that exercise is one of many stressors your body has to contend with, and that stress management is the key strategy to increasing your ability to train hard and recover harder .

Most of us consider stress management to be the way to deal with our grumpy boss, sloppy kids, an empty bank account, or other everyday worries. While using strategies to manage this type of stress is beneficial, I will focus on managing your exercise stress.

By focusing your attention on the input (training stress), you can increase the output (recovery and adaptation). Unfortunately, most of the people who asked me for tips on how to improve recovery have brought things backwards.

You are desperately trying to restore poorly designed exercise programs with junk volumes.

This thinking is like closing the stable door after the horse is locked. It is too late.

The principles of designing exercise programs

I believe in the importance of programming in order to achieve your fitness goals. Your progress can go from good to great if you properly understand the basic principles of programming.

I've seen this in my training and with countless customers as I've refined my approach to programming.

I've learned programming principles that I really believe will take your training to the next level during this time.

By focusing on delivering efficient exercise stress, you make recovery easier. A good recovery starts with great programming.

Intelligent program design = fatigue management

But first let me explain how you, and so many others, including my younger, dumber self, put yourself in a position where our training turns recovery into an uphill battle.

A workout based on FOMO

Many motivated, disciplined and hard training gym rats fall victim to training based on the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).

This FOMO means that we try to include every conceivable exercise in our program without considering the toll that will be put on our recovery. The days off at the gym are getting shorter and shorter as we worry that a day without a workout is a day without progress.

Social media plays a major role in this.

In the past, you've only seen other people's elevators who happened to be in the gym for 60 to 90 minutes like you. We are now seeing a highlight role of people's PRs on social media. Instagram is full of hundreds of weird, wacky, Frankenstein exercises as people vie for attention.

As a result, we can compare everything we do in the gym to millions of others.

  • You see one of your favorite athletes doing an exercise.
  • You see another athlete doing a different variation.
  • You see a successful trainer extolling the virtues of another exercise.
  • You see a celebrity influencer doing another.
  • Before considering the exercises you liked in the last article you read or any seminar you attended.

You feel compelled to include all of these exercises in your FOMO program to reap the benefits of each. All of these exercises could have value in their own right.

However, if they are randomly stacked on top of each other, they will become smaller than the sum of their parts.

Some are useful and some are redundant, while others just don't suit your needs.

What they have in common is that they all eat into your recovery reserves.

When you follow a program with such a bloated list of exercises, a huge recovery trench is dug that even the most advanced recovery protocols cannot fix.

The other consequence of social media is that #NoDaysOff B.S. We have been led to believe that we must all get up at 5 a.m. to meditate before we can tackle the grind and play full #Beastmode in the gym and office.

Now I'm not knocking on hard work. It's important, but the mindless attempt to push the limits 365 days a year is a recipe for burnout and failure.

You need to have some downtime for your body to recover and adjust.

Unfortunately, attitudes toward climb and grind have led many fitness enthusiasts to follow exercise plans that require them to set up their home at the gym. Exercising seven days a week probably isn't a good idea even if it's your job, and let's face it, nobody is paying you to exercise.

Instead of feeling guilty about not going to the gym a few days a week, realize that this is what you need. This mindset requires discipline.

If you're like me, you enjoy the challenge of training. The gym is part of your routine and doesn't require motivation or discipline. However, a day off requires some discipline.

This more is better approach ends up with exercising every day doing too many different exercises with many more sets than you need to.

Your workout is full of junk volumes.

I bet you've heard the saying, "You can't overdo a bad diet."

You have likely knowingly told a friend or co-worker that they wanted to lose a few pounds and felt complacent and complacent while sharing your wisdom.

Have you ever thought about it::

  • "Can't restore a crappy junk volume exercise regimen?"
  • "That this could be exactly what you were trying to do?"
  • "Could this be the exact reason you haven't made any noticeable progress in vivid memory?"

Most people encounter this situation by continuing to hit the ground running and focus on moving forward with their recovery. They invest in all kinds of recovery modalities but never seem to fix the problem. That's because they have things backwards.

Instead of dealing with the symptoms of a poor recovery, they should target the root cause.

Train Smart to Maximize Recovery

Whatever your physical goals, you have to train to achieve them and you have to train hard. It would help if you prepared wisely too.

In other words, smart training is hard training, but hard training is not necessarily intelligent.

Training to build muscle is tiring in nature. If you plan your workouts intelligently, you can manage that session-to-session fatigue to keep moving forward.

However, if you turn on full #Beastmode every time you walk into the gym, workout to crush a muscle, and half kill yourself, the fatigue will build up very quickly – too quickly. Your body cannot recover and adapt. You dug a hole too deep.

The goal of your workout isn't just to recover. It's customizable!

Burying yourself in the gym might be the right thing to do. It may have a cathartic quality, but it will limit your results if you do it every time. Even with sleep, diet, and stress under control, there is only so much pressure you can do before you break up.

By shifting your recovery considerations to improving exercise dose optimization, you can improve them dramatically. This turnaround means better training, better recovery from training, less risk of injury, and better results.

To turn your thinking around and maximize your recovery, I want you to understand four basic principles in designing your exercise program.

These principles go a long way toward developing a program that offers the greatest potential for your high quality training stimulus and optimal recovery capacity:

  1. Your personal weekly training volume milestones
  2. Muscle-specific stimulus recovery fit curves
  3. The attraction: fatigue ratio of different exercises
  4. Relative intensity

Minimum Effect Volume (MEV) and Maximum Recoverable Volume (MRV)

Dr. Mike Israetel is primarily responsible for popularizing the concepts of volume landmarks. There is a continuum from the minimum effective volume (MEV) to the maximum recoverable volume (MRV).

When you train harder, there is potential for further progress as long as you don't exceed your ability to recover. Identifying your MRV is important information to know as you design your program.

Your MRV consists of two components::

  1. Your systemic MRV
  2. A body part-specific MRV

For exampleFrom a systemic point of view, you can potentially do five hard workouts per week with 16 work sets per muscle group per week.

Note. That's only an example; Please do not misunderstand it as an instruction to train five days a week with 16 weekly sets per body part.

Having a reasonable idea of ​​your MRV is crucial in developing a framework for building your week of training.

Maximize muscle stimulation

Body part specific MRVs can change dramatically. By dealing with it::

  • You can refine your program to go from good to great.
  • Some of your muscles may react differently than others.
  • Some muscles may tolerate higher exercise volumes, intensities, or frequencies.
  • Other muscles can achieve the same training effect with a lower stimulus.

Understanding this will enable you to program your workouts with an extreme level of accuracy and efficiency. You can minimize the volume of junk and maximize stimulation. This program allows for better recovery than the same treatment for each muscle group.

For example:

  • Your quads may only tolerate six sets done twice a week for a weekly MRV of 12 sets.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, you may find that your rear delts get an effective workout from six sets in one session, but can recover well from 24 sets a week.

In the meantime, your other muscle groups can drop in different places on the spectrum.

Knowing this, you can adjust the weekly volumes and frequencies for each muscle to optimize your training split.

By doing this, you've also increased your recovery capacity.

Establishing your system and muscle group volume tolerance takes time and attention to detail, but is well worth it.

Once you have this information, you can move from general cookie cutting plans to truly individualized programming. Your results will improve as a result.

Adjustment of stimulus recovery

Recovery is a return to baseline, and adjustment is when your body surpasses its previous baseline to an improved performance level or increased muscle size.

You don't just want to recover from exercise. You want to make adjustments.

Just as different muscle groups have different volume tolerances, they also have different SRA curves (Stimulus Recovery Adaptation). Several factors play a role in SRA curves.

The main points that you need to consider are::

  • The training frequency for each body part should depend on its SRA curve.
  • Factors such as the size of the muscle, its structure, function, the fiber type ratio, and the muscle damage caused by exercise all influence the SRA timeframe
  • Exercises that stretch a muscle a lot tend to cause more damage. This damage elongates the muscle's SRA curve.
  • Exercising with a larger ROM usually results in increased systemic fatigue, which slows the SRA curves.

The SRA curve of a muscle is relevant for determining your training frequency.

In an ideal world, you would structure your workout so that every muscle group is hit again at the peak of its adaptation curve. This structuring means that your exercise program may not be symmetrical.

The importance of structured training programs for recovery - fitness, bodybuilding, recovery, DOMS, elite training programs, adrenal fatigue, burnout, goal planning, training programs, training frequency, strength program, compound exercises, training stressors, individual training

Source: Is Lifting Heavy Weight Important To Building Muscle Size?

Exercise frequency is an important exercise variable and deserves the attention it needs to optimize your results.

Looking at exercise frequency is a good place to start::

  • Determine how many days a week you can exercise.
  • Determining how many hard workouts to do each week is a good start to managing your training stress.

It's just a start, however. I urge you to take yourself to a higher level by thinking about the frequency of training. Instead of being satisfied with the answer:

"How many days a week should I exercise?" Also, answer, "How many days a week should I exercise each muscle group?"

When you find the answer to it, then you can create the ideal weekly workout plan for you.

Your decision about the frequency to use for each muscle group should be influenced by the factors I set out in the previous bullet list. Although there are several factors to consider, the difference in the SRA curve of each muscle is relatively small.

This difference is small, but significant.

You know that intuitively. You can narrow it down to a few days. For bodybuilding training, this is usually 24 to 72 hours.

Research has shown that training one muscle 2-4 times a week is best when your goal is muscle growth. Once you can determine where each muscle fits in this area, you can unlock your growth potential by training each muscle at the perfect frequency.

Some muscles work best for two sessions a week, while others only respond when you press 3, 4, or even 5 times a week.

From years of experience with countless customers, I've created the following guidelines to give you a starting point::

  • 2 x per week: Quads, hamstrings, glutes, chest, anterior delts
  • 3 times a week: Back, triceps
  • 4 times a week: Biceps, calves, and posterior and lateral delts

Note. These are just averages based on my experience. You need to experiment a little to find your optimal training frequency.

Stimulus Fatigue Ratio (SFR) explained

I want you to look at the final concept from a program design point of view: the Stimulus Fatigue Ratio (SFR).

SFR is the amount of muscle building adjustments that exercise can give you in relation to the fatigue it creates and what it takes to recover. Some popular exercises have a bad SFR when it comes to hypertrophy.

The ideal exercise creates a high stimulus for a low rate of fatigue.

Choosing exercises that put tension through the target muscle and fit your structure is a good starting point for controlling your level of fatigue.

When evaluating a prospect's program, I often see conventional deadlifts, sumo deadlifts, and rack pulls in their plans. These are good exercises when deadlift strength development is your primary goal.

However, these exercises don't rank high if hypertrophy is the target when looking at SFR.

They have all caused significant fatigue with little muscle building stimulus::

  • You consume a lot of weight.
  • It is necessary that you expend a lot of energy to get upset
  • Need long warm-up exercises
  • Quickly drain your body's resources while creating a negative return on hypertrophy.

Traditional deadlifts involve little eccentric loading, sumo deadlifts are just one way of moving the most weight with the least amount of mechanical work, and rack and pinion trains are usually just a ego trip.

In short, they are not a great choice for stimulating muscle growth and they will tire you out so much that there is not much else you can do in your workout.

Choosing exercises with better SFR will help you build muscle more efficiently.

How to rate SFR

Exercises with a larger ROM put a lot of strain on a muscle, require great dexterity, coordination, and stability, and are more difficult to recover.

As a rule of thumb, it is harder to recover from barbell work than it is from dumbbell work.

Dumbbell movements are usually harder to recover from equivalents performed with cables or fixed machines.

Perfect doesn't exist

It is important to understand that nothing is perfect. There is no exercise that creates a muscle-building stimulus without fatigue.

  • To get results from training, you have to work hard.
  • Hard work guarantees fatigue.
  • You cannot eliminate fatigue, but you should try to maximize the stimulus for each unit of fatigue created.

Often times, when I look back on the exercises that I have identified as being featured frequently in a prospect's programs, it means choosing Romanian deadlifts over traditional deadlifts and sumo deadlifts. And the choice of rack pulls as superior for hamstring growth.

Overdressed

I strongly believe that compound barbell exercises should be the foundation of your workout. This does not mean that dumbbells, cables, machines, and isolation exercises are worthless.

We have been brainwashed to believe that the best exercises are compound barbell exercises. At the same time, these are excellent exercises. They are not always the best choice.

The best exercise is the one that best achieves the desired stimulation.

It also has to take into account your physical abilities at that moment. If you do four exercises for quads in one leg workout, doing squats, front squats, squats, and leg presses, it is brutal.

These are undoubtedly great exercises that produce high levels of stimulus but also produce high levels of fatigue.

After back squats, front squats, and mince squats, your legs are likely to feel like jelly. As a result, your leg press performance would likely be pathetic.

This fatigue negates its theoretically high irritation value.

If you are so exhausted from the previous three exercises, you may not have the psychological willpower and exertion required to create any significant stimulus for the leg press.

At this point they are an exercise to create minimal stimulus fatigue.

Even if you could overdo yourself to put a decent amount of pressure on the leg press, there is a risk that you will drive the fatigue so high that you will blow right past your quad MRV.

You would dig yourself a massive recreational ditch to climb out of before your next leg session. That makes the sets of leg presses junk volume.

By definition, when you exceed the MRV of a muscle group, you have exceeded its ability to recover. The stimulus may be high, but the fatigue is even higher.

That's a crappy SFR ratio.

This fatigue will slow your SRA curve and means your legs are unlikely to recover for the next session. The selection of these four compound lifts seems big and smart, but it isn't. You would go to tremendous effort to diminish the results.

A smarter choice in this example would be::

  1. Back squats
  2. Split squats
  3. Leg press
  4. Leg extension

These exercises still produce adequate stimulus, but the fatigue produced is less. You are also switching from complex multi-joint exercises that require high internal stability to machine-based single joint exercises that provide external stability.

Taking advantage of external stability at the end of a session when you are tired is a wise decision.

This means that you can make the target muscle the limiting factor without wasting energy on stability and coordination.

If building muscle is the goal, you want the target muscle to be the limiting factor, and not your ability to stay erect.

Too much muscle stimulation leads to unsustainable fatigue

Creating a lot of tension in the extended position of an exercise creates a strong stimulus to growth.

In a 2014 study, two groups trained with the same range of motion, but group training with longer muscle lengths not only gained more muscle, but also retained more strength and size after a training period.

The stretch is a good reason to exercise with a full range of motion. Note, however, that some exercises can have the same range of motion but different levels of tension in the stretched position.

Also, keep in mind that too much stimulus can bring fatigue to unsustainable levels. Because of this, when planning your workout, consider how much muscle damage a particular exercise will cause.

Stretching has a major impact on muscle damage under load within an exercise. Using the hamstrings as an example, you can compare Romanian Deadlifts (RDL) and lying leg curls.

The RDL puts extreme stress on the hamstrings.

For laypeople, the weight at the bottom is hardest and heaviest when the muscle is fully extended. RDLs are excellent choices, but you should be aware of the consequences of the extreme tension they create in the extended position.

The RDL is a barbell lift that is heavy to load. It also puts strain on the glutes, spine erectors, lats, and grip, causing a lot of muscle damage.

  • Conversely, the lying leg curl challenges the hamstrings in their fully shortened position, and there is relatively little stretch under load.
  • As a result, hamstring sore muscles and SRA curves are longer when exercising with RDLs than with lying leg curls.
  • Therefore, you may only be able to exercise hamstrings with severe RDLs once a week. You can increase the frequency to two or even three times a week by using lying leg curls in other sessions.

Manage the relative training intensity versus recovery reserves

The relative intensity is a measure of the effort. It's often used sentence by sentence to assess how close you have come to failure. Repetitions in Reserve (RIR) are a widely used metric to assess this. Two RIRs mean you stopped a set of two reps in reserve. One RIR corresponds to one in reserve; 0 RIR is when you couldn't do any more repetitions.

Sometimes people approach the relative intensity from a slightly different angle. They focus on the perceived difficulty or exertion of a set or training session. This is known as the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE). On the RPE scale, an effort of 10/10 is a maximum effort. This corresponds to 0 RIR.

The exact terminology of RIR versus RPE doesn't matter. The point is, both are useful methods of quantifying your efforts, the difficulty of a set, and your training. This all adds to the relative intensity of your workout.

Managing your relative intensity can be a useful tool for providing an effective training stimulus without digging too deep into your recovery reserves.

Exercise occasionally to fail

Imagine the most challenging session you have ever done. Every sentence is doomed to fail. Maybe even a few drop sets and forced reps. Recall how you felt during this session.

You were probably a sweaty, broken mess that spread on the floor, wondering why you voluntarily underwent this torture.

During the session, your muscles burned and waves of nausea flooded you. In the end, you felt utterly obliterated and it took you forever to drag yourself out of the gym.

If we class this as a 10/10 attempt, I would suggest that you rarely get a 10/10 hit in order to get the best possible profits. A 10/10 session can be beneficial if done occasionally. However, it will cause you to exceed your ability to recover if done all the time.

Instead of chasing a 10 every session, you probably want to get an 8/10 most of the time. If time demands and progress dictates, dive into the 9-10 / 10 area.

Go there occasionally but don't make it your default.

When you hang out in the 8/10 range on average, you know you are posing a muscle challenge, a growth stimulus, and a stimulus to recover from.

  • Do this by bringing most sets of free weight compound exercises to 2-3 RIR.
  • Push machine-based connections a little closer to failure by usually staying at 1-2 RIR.
  • Then send the single joint exercises in full and press 0-1 RIR regularly.

Doing this is still tough training. It's smart too. It enables recovery. With recovery, there is adjustment. Adaptation can be seen as progress in this context.

Progress on the weights you've lifted, the number of repetitions, and the total number of sets you can do. Long story short, it means bigger and stronger muscles.

The benefits of a regular 8/10 workout are the benefits::

  • It provides an efficient incentive.
  • Sessions can be completed in 45-70 minutes and you can move on to your day after a quick shower and bite to eat.
  • You can exercise frequently.
  • You reduce the risk of injury.
  • You don't worry about how difficult each visit to the gym is.
  • You make substantial profits.

On the other hand, batting 10/10 usually plays out like this::

  • There is an incentive.
  • Sessions last 70 to 120 minutes, and it takes you 20 minutes to collect enough to get into the shower. The tightening happens in slow motion. Eating a meal … forget it, you still feel sick. All in all, it takes about an hour after the session to begin to feel vaguely human.
  • You can't exercise as often – recovery will take a few more days, and the debilitating DOMS mean that exercise 3-4 times a week is the vaguely sustainable maximum (even if it pushes it forward).
  • They increase the risk of injury.
  • Most of the sessions involve getting excited, using stimulants, and creating a lot of anxiety about how difficult each visit to the gym is.
  • You will likely burn out or be injured, or both.

Any workout like this is a fake economy. It takes more than there is and limits all the training you can handle.

Less overall training = fewer gains

Exercise training program design – cook to be a master chef

To create a great program that will deliver results and maximize recovery, it is important not to think in a vacuum or to look at the world through a straw. All training variables are linked and have a mutual effect. Finding the ideal mix of all variables is critical to great results.

Factors to consider when composing an exercise program::

  • Your total and muscle-specific training volume
  • Recovery periods for each muscle
  • Exercise selection and SFR
  • Relative intensity

When you consider these factors when planning a program, rather than just following a training template, it is like moving from a cook to a cook. A chef follows a set recipe, and a chef uses his or her taste and judgment to make micro-adjustments that take a dish to award-winning levels.

They understand how all ingredients complement each other and when a little more of an ingredient makes all the difference. This enables them to take the same ingredients and turn them into a Michelin star quality dish.

Understanding the training principles in this article can turn you from a training chef to a master chef. You don't have to follow program templates with crossed fingers for them to work.

Instead, you know what it takes to balance stimulus and recovery and get great results.

24 Feb
Blog

The Importance of Structured Training Programs in Recovery

What if I told you that by improving your exercise program, you could dramatically improve your recovery and results?

In Part 1 of this Train Hard, Recover Harder series, I explained that exercise is one of many stressors your body has to contend with, and that stress management is the key strategy to increasing your ability to train hard and recover harder .

Most of us consider stress management to be the way to deal with our grumpy boss, sloppy kids, an empty bank account, or other everyday worries. While using strategies to manage this type of stress is beneficial, I will focus on managing your exercise stress.

By focusing your attention on the input (training stress), you can increase the output (recovery and adaptation). Unfortunately, most of the people who asked me for tips on how to improve recovery have brought things backwards.

You are desperately trying to restore poorly designed exercise programs with junk volumes.

This thinking is like closing the stable door after the horse is locked. It is too late.

The principles of designing exercise programs

I believe in the importance of programming in order to achieve your fitness goals. Your progress can go from good to great if you properly understand the basic principles of programming.

I've seen this in my training and with countless customers as I've refined my approach to programming.

I've learned programming principles that I really believe will take your training to the next level during this time.

By focusing on delivering efficient exercise stress, you make recovery easier. A good recovery starts with great programming.

Intelligent program design = fatigue management

But first let me explain how you, and so many others, including my younger, dumber self, put yourself in a position where our training turns recovery into an uphill battle.

A workout based on FOMO

Many motivated, disciplined and hard training gym rats fall victim to training based on the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).

This FOMO means that we try to include every conceivable exercise in our program without considering the toll that will be put on our recovery. The days off at the gym are getting shorter and shorter as we worry that a day without a workout is a day without progress.

Social media plays a major role in this.

In the past, you've only seen other people's elevators who happened to be in the gym for 60 to 90 minutes like you. We are now seeing a highlight role of people's PRs on social media. Instagram is full of hundreds of weird, wacky, Frankenstein exercises as people vie for attention.

As a result, we can compare everything we do in the gym to millions of others.

  • You see one of your favorite athletes doing an exercise.
  • You see another athlete doing a different variation.
  • You see a successful trainer extolling the virtues of another exercise.
  • You see a celebrity influencer doing another.
  • Before considering the exercises you liked in the last article you read or any seminar you attended.

You feel compelled to include all of these exercises in your FOMO program to reap the benefits of each. All of these exercises could have value in their own right.

However, if they are randomly stacked on top of each other, they will become smaller than the sum of their parts.

Some are useful and some are redundant, while others just don't suit your needs.

What they have in common is that they all eat into your recovery reserves.

When you follow a program with such a bloated list of exercises, a huge recovery trench is dug that even the most advanced recovery protocols cannot fix.

The other consequence of social media is that #NoDaysOff B.S. We have been led to believe that we must all get up at 5 a.m. to meditate before we can tackle the grind and play full #Beastmode in the gym and office.

Now I'm not knocking on hard work. It's important, but the mindless attempt to push the limits 365 days a year is a recipe for burnout and failure.

You need to have some downtime for your body to recover and adjust.

Unfortunately, attitudes toward climb and grind have led many fitness enthusiasts to follow exercise plans that require them to set up their home at the gym. Exercising seven days a week probably isn't a good idea even if it's your job, and let's face it, nobody is paying you to exercise.

Instead of feeling guilty about not going to the gym a few days a week, realize that this is what you need. This mindset requires discipline.

If you're like me, you enjoy the challenge of training. The gym is part of your routine and doesn't require motivation or discipline. However, a day off requires some discipline.

This more is better approach ends up with exercising every day doing too many different exercises with many more sets than you need to.

Your workout is full of junk volumes.

I bet you've heard the saying, "You can't overdo a bad diet?"

You have likely knowingly told a friend or co-worker that they wanted to lose a few pounds and felt complacent and complacent while sharing your wisdom.

Have you ever thought about it::

  • "Can't restore a crappy junk volume exercise regimen?"
  • "That this could be exactly what you were trying to do?"
  • "Could this be the exact reason you haven't made any noticeable progress in vivid memory?"

Most people encounter this situation by continuing to hit the ground running and focus on moving forward with their recovery. They invest in all kinds of recovery modalities but never seem to fix the problem. That's because they have things backwards.

Instead of dealing with the symptoms of a poor recovery, they should target the root cause.

Train Smart to Maximize Recovery

Whatever your physical goals, you have to train to achieve them and you have to train hard. It would help if you prepared wisely too.

In other words, smart training is hard training, but hard training is not necessarily intelligent.

Training to build muscle is tiring in nature. If you plan your workouts intelligently, you can manage that session-to-session fatigue to keep moving forward.

However, if you turn on full #Beastmode every time you walk into the gym, workout to crush a muscle, and half kill yourself, the fatigue will build up very quickly – too quickly. Your body cannot recover and adapt. You dug a hole too deep.

The goal of your workout isn't just to recover. It's customizable!

Burying yourself in the gym might be the right thing to do. It may have a cathartic quality, but it will limit your results if you do it every time. Even with sleep, diet, and stress under control, there is only so much pressure you can do before you break up.

By shifting your recovery considerations to improving exercise dose optimization, you can improve them dramatically. This turnaround means better training, better recovery from training, less risk of injury, and better results.

To turn your thinking around and maximize your recovery, I want you to understand four basic principles in designing your exercise program.

These principles go a long way toward developing a program that offers the greatest potential for your high quality training stimulus and optimal recovery capacity:

  1. Your personal weekly training volume milestones
  2. Muscle-specific stimulus recovery fit curves
  3. The attraction: fatigue ratio of different exercises
  4. Relative intensity

Minimum Effect Volume (MEV) and Maximum Recoverable Volume (MRV)

Dr. Mike Israetel is primarily responsible for popularizing the concepts of volume landmarks. There is a continuum from the minimum effective volume (MEV) to the maximum recoverable volume (MRV).

When you train harder, there is potential for further progress as long as you don't exceed your ability to recover. Identifying your MRV is important information to know as you design your program.

Your MRV consists of two components::

  1. Your systemic MRV
  2. A body part-specific MRV

For exampleFrom a systemic point of view, you can potentially do five hard workouts per week with 16 work sets per muscle group per week.

Note. That's only an example; Please do not misunderstand it as an instruction to train five days a week with 16 weekly sets per body part.

Having a reasonable idea of ​​your MRV is crucial in developing a framework for building your week of training.

Maximize muscle stimulation

Body part specific MRVs can change dramatically. By dealing with it::

  • You can refine your program to go from good to great.
  • Some of your muscles may react differently than others.
  • Some muscles may tolerate higher exercise volumes, intensities, or frequencies.
  • Other muscles can achieve the same training effect with a lower stimulus.

Understanding this will enable you to program your workouts with an extreme level of accuracy and efficiency. You can minimize the volume of junk and maximize stimulation. This program allows for better recovery than the same treatment for each muscle group.

For example:

  • Your quads may only tolerate six sets done twice a week for a weekly MRV of 12 sets.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, you may find that your rear delts get an effective workout from six sets in one session, but can recover well from 24 sets a week.

In the meantime, your other muscle groups can drop in different places on the spectrum.

Knowing this, you can adjust the weekly volumes and frequencies for each muscle to optimize your training split.

By doing this, you've also increased your recovery capacity.

Establishing your system and muscle group volume tolerance takes time and attention to detail, but is well worth it.

Once you have this information, you can move from general cookie cutting plans to truly individualized programming. Your results will improve as a result.

Adjustment of stimulus recovery

Recovery is a return to baseline, and adjustment is when your body surpasses its previous baseline to an improved performance level or increased muscle size.

You don't just want to recover from exercise. You want to make adjustments.

Just as different muscle groups have different volume tolerances, they also have different SRA curves (Stimulus Recovery Adaptation). Several factors play a role in SRA curves.

The main points that you need to consider are::

  • The training frequency for each body part should depend on its SRA curve.
  • Factors such as the size of the muscle, its structure, function, the fiber type ratio, and the muscle damage caused by exercise all influence the SRA timeframe
  • Exercises that stretch a muscle a lot tend to cause more damage. This damage elongates the muscle's SRA curve.
  • Exercising with a larger ROM usually results in increased systemic fatigue, which slows the SRA curves.

The SRA curve of a muscle is relevant for determining your training frequency.

In an ideal world, you would structure your workout so that every muscle group is hit again at the peak of its adaptation curve. This structuring means that your exercise program may not be symmetrical.

The importance of structured training programs for recovery - fitness, bodybuilding, recovery, DOMS, elite training programs, adrenal fatigue, burnout, goal planning, training programs, training frequency, strength program, compound exercises, training stressors, individual training

Source: Is Lifting Heavy Weight Important To Building Muscle Size?

Exercise frequency is an important exercise variable and deserves the attention it needs to optimize your results.

Looking at exercise frequency is a good place to start::

  • Determine how many days a week you can exercise.
  • Determining how many hard workouts to do each week is a good start to managing your training stress.

It's just a start, however. I urge you to take yourself to a higher level by thinking about the frequency of training. Instead of being satisfied with the answer:

"How many days a week should I exercise?" Also, answer, "How many days a week should I exercise each muscle group?"

When you find the answer to it, then you can create the ideal weekly workout plan for you.

Your decision about the frequency to use for each muscle group should be influenced by the factors I set out in the previous bullet list. Although there are several factors to consider, the difference in the SRA curve of each muscle is relatively small.

This difference is small, but significant.

You know that intuitively. You can narrow it down to a few days. For bodybuilding training, this is usually 24 to 72 hours.

Research has shown that training one muscle 2-4 times a week is best when your goal is muscle growth. Once you can determine where each muscle fits in this area, you can unlock your growth potential by training each muscle at the perfect frequency.

Some muscles work best for two sessions a week, while others only respond when you press 3, 4, or even 5 times a week.

From years of experience with countless customers, I've created the following guidelines to give you a starting point::

  • 2 x per week: Quads, hamstrings, glutes, chest, anterior delts
  • 3 times a week: Back, triceps
  • 4 times a week: Biceps, calves, and posterior and lateral delts

Note. These are just averages based on my experience. You need to experiment a little to find your optimal training frequency.

Stimulus Fatigue Ratio (SFR) explained

I want you to look at the final concept from a program design point of view: the Stimulus Fatigue Ratio (SFR).

SFR is the amount of muscle building adjustments that exercise can give you in relation to the fatigue it creates and what it takes to recover. Some popular exercises have a bad SFR when it comes to hypertrophy.

The ideal exercise creates a high stimulus for a low rate of fatigue.

Choosing exercises that put tension through the target muscle and fit your structure is a good starting point for controlling your level of fatigue.

When evaluating a prospect's program, I often see conventional deadlifts, sumo deadlifts, and rack pulls in their plans. These are good exercises when deadlift strength development is your primary goal.

However, these exercises don't rank high if hypertrophy is the target when looking at SFR.

They have all caused significant fatigue with little muscle building stimulus::

  • You consume a lot of weight.
  • It is necessary that you expend a lot of energy to get upset
  • Need long warm-up exercises
  • Quickly drain your body's resources while creating a negative return on hypertrophy.

Traditional deadlifts involve little eccentric loading, sumo deadlifts are just one way of moving the most weight with the least amount of mechanical work, and rack and pinion trains are usually just a ego trip.

In short, they are not a great choice for stimulating muscle growth and they will tire you out so much that there is not much else you can do in your workout.

Choosing exercises with better SFR will help you build muscle more efficiently.

How to rate SFR

Exercises with a larger ROM put a lot of strain on a muscle, require great dexterity, coordination, and stability, and are more difficult to recover.

As a rule of thumb, it is harder to recover from barbell work than it is from dumbbell work.

Dumbbell movements are usually harder to recover from equivalents performed with cables or fixed machines.

Perfect doesn't exist

It is important to understand that nothing is perfect. There is no exercise that creates a muscle-building stimulus without fatigue.

  • To get results from training, you have to work hard.
  • Hard work guarantees fatigue.
  • You cannot eliminate fatigue, but you should try to maximize the stimulus for each unit of fatigue created.

Often times, when I look back on the exercises that I have identified as being featured frequently in a prospect's programs, it means choosing Romanian deadlifts over traditional deadlifts and sumo deadlifts. And the choice of rack pulls as superior for hamstring growth.

Overdressed

I strongly believe that compound barbell exercises should be the foundation of your workout. This does not mean that dumbbells, cables, machines, and isolation exercises are worthless.

We have been brainwashed to believe that the best exercises are compound barbell exercises. At the same time, these are excellent exercises. They are not always the best choice.

The best exercise is the one that best achieves the desired stimulation.

It also has to take into account your physical abilities at that moment. If you do four exercises for quads in one leg workout, doing squats, front squats, squats, and leg presses, it is brutal.

These are undoubtedly great exercises that produce high levels of stimulus but also produce high levels of fatigue.

After back squats, front squats, and mince squats, your legs are likely to feel like jelly. As a result, your leg press performance would likely be pathetic.

This fatigue negates its theoretically high irritation value.

If you are so exhausted from the previous three exercises, you may not have the psychological willpower and exertion required to create any significant stimulus for the leg press.

At this point they are an exercise to create minimal stimulus fatigue.

Even if you could overdo yourself to put a decent amount of pressure on the leg press, there is a risk that you will drive the fatigue so high that you will blow right past your quad MRV.

You would dig yourself a massive recreational ditch to climb out of before your next leg session. That makes the sets of leg presses junk volume.

By definition, when you exceed the MRV of a muscle group, you have exceeded its ability to recover. The stimulus may be high, but the fatigue is even higher.

That's a crappy SFR ratio.

This fatigue will slow your SRA curve and means your legs are unlikely to recover for the next session. The selection of these four compound lifts seems big and smart, but it isn't. You would go to tremendous effort to diminish the results.

A smarter choice in this example would be::

  1. Back squats
  2. Split squats
  3. Leg press
  4. Leg extension

These exercises still produce adequate stimulus, but the fatigue produced is less. You are also switching from complex multi-joint exercises that require high internal stability to machine-based single joint exercises that provide external stability.

Taking advantage of external stability at the end of a session when you are tired is a wise decision.

This means that you can make the target muscle the limiting factor without wasting energy on stability and coordination.

If building muscle is the goal, you want the target muscle to be the limiting factor, and not your ability to stay erect.

Too much muscle stimulation leads to unsustainable fatigue

Creating a lot of tension in the extended position of an exercise creates a strong stimulus to growth.

In a 2014 study, two groups trained with the same range of motion, but group training with longer muscle lengths not only gained more muscle, but also retained more strength and size after a training period.

The stretch is a good reason to exercise with a full range of motion. Note, however, that some exercises can have the same range of motion but different levels of tension in the stretched position.

Also, keep in mind that too much stimulus can bring fatigue to unsustainable levels. Because of this, when planning your workout, consider how much muscle damage a particular exercise will cause.

Stretching has a major impact on muscle damage under load within an exercise. Using the hamstrings as an example, you can compare Romanian Deadlifts (RDL) and lying leg curls.

The RDL puts extreme stress on the hamstrings.

For laypeople, the weight at the bottom is hardest and heaviest when the muscle is fully extended. RDLs are excellent choices, but you should be aware of the consequences of the extreme tension they create in the extended position.

The RDL is a barbell lift that is heavy to load. It also puts strain on the glutes, spine erectors, lats, and grip, causing a lot of muscle damage.

  • Conversely, the lying leg curl challenges the hamstrings in their fully shortened position, and there is relatively little stretch under load.
  • As a result, hamstring sore muscles and SRA curves are longer when exercising with RDLs than with lying leg curls.
  • Therefore, you may only be able to exercise hamstrings with severe RDLs once a week. You can increase the frequency to two or even three times a week by using lying leg curls in other sessions.

Manage the relative training intensity versus recovery reserves

The relative intensity is a measure of the effort. It's often used sentence by sentence to assess how close you have come to failure. Repetitions in Reserve (RIR) are a widely used metric to assess this. Two RIRs mean you stopped a set of two reps in reserve. One RIR corresponds to one in reserve; 0 RIR is when you couldn't do any more repetitions.

Sometimes people approach the relative intensity from a slightly different angle. They focus on the perceived difficulty or exertion of a set or training session. This is known as the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE). On the RPE scale, an effort of 10/10 is a maximum effort. This corresponds to 0 RIR.

The exact terminology of RIR versus RPE doesn't matter. The point is, both are useful methods of quantifying your efforts, the difficulty of a set, and your training. This all adds to the relative intensity of your workout.

Managing your relative intensity can be a useful tool for providing an effective training stimulus without digging too deep into your recovery reserves.

Exercise occasionally to fail

Imagine the most challenging session you have ever done. Every sentence is doomed to fail. Maybe even a few drop sets and forced reps. Recall how you felt during this session.

You were probably a sweaty, broken mess that spread on the floor, wondering why you voluntarily underwent this torture.

During the session, your muscles burned and waves of nausea flooded you. In the end, you felt utterly obliterated and it took you forever to drag yourself out of the gym.

If we class this as a 10/10 attempt, I would suggest that you rarely get a 10/10 hit in order to get the best possible profits. A 10/10 session can be beneficial if done occasionally. However, it will cause you to exceed your ability to recover if done all the time.

Instead of chasing a 10 every session, you probably want to get an 8/10 most of the time. If time demands and progress dictates, dive into the 9-10 / 10 area.

Go there occasionally but don't make it your default.

When you hang out in the 8/10 range on average, you know you are posing a muscle challenge, a growth stimulus, and a stimulus to recover from.

  • Do this by bringing most sets of free weight compound exercises to 2-3 RIR.
  • Push machine-based connections a little closer to failure by usually staying at 1-2 RIR.
  • Then send the single joint exercises in full and press 0-1 RIR regularly.

Doing this is still tough training. It's smart too. It enables recovery. With recovery, there is adjustment. Adaptation can be seen as progress in this context.

Progress on the weights you've lifted, the number of repetitions, and the total number of sets you can do. Long story short, it means bigger and stronger muscles.

The benefits of a regular 8/10 workout are the benefits::

  • It provides an efficient incentive.
  • Sessions can be completed in 45-70 minutes and you can move on to your day after a quick shower and bite to eat.
  • You can exercise frequently.
  • You reduce the risk of injury.
  • You don't worry about how difficult each visit to the gym is.
  • You make substantial profits.

On the other hand, batting 10/10 usually plays out like this::

  • There is an incentive.
  • Sessions last 70 to 120 minutes, and it takes you 20 minutes to collect enough to get into the shower. The tightening happens in slow motion. Eating a meal … forget it, you still feel sick. All in all, it takes about an hour after the session to begin to feel vaguely human.
  • You can't exercise as often – recovery will take a few more days, and the debilitating DOMS mean that exercise 3-4 times a week is the vaguely sustainable maximum (even if it pushes it forward).
  • They increase the risk of injury.
  • Most of the sessions involve getting excited, using stimulants, and creating a lot of anxiety about how difficult each visit to the gym is.
  • You will likely burn out or be injured, or both.

Any workout like this is a fake economy. It takes more than there is and limits all the training you can handle.

Less overall training = fewer gains

Exercise training program design – cook to be a master chef

To create a great program that will deliver results and maximize recovery, it is important not to think in a vacuum or to look at the world through a straw. All training variables are linked and have a mutual effect. Finding the ideal mix of all variables is critical to great results.

Factors to consider when composing an exercise program::

  • Your total and muscle-specific training volume
  • Recovery periods for each muscle
  • Exercise selection and SFR
  • Relative intensity

When you consider these factors when planning a program, rather than just following a training template, it is like moving from a cook to a cook. A chef follows a set recipe, and a chef uses his or her taste and judgment to make micro-adjustments that take a dish to award-winning levels.

They understand how all ingredients complement each other and when a little more of an ingredient makes all the difference. This enables them to take the same ingredients and turn them into a Michelin star quality dish.

Understanding the training principles in this article can turn you from a training chef to a master chef. You don't have to follow program templates with crossed fingers for them to work.

Instead, you know what it takes to balance stimulus and recovery and get great results.

11 Feb
Blog

Strength Training and the Efficacy of Electromyography (EMG)

Electromyography (EMG) is a scientific method for testing muscle activity. Some say it is highly valued in the nonscientific community because the simplicity of stronger reading means stronger muscles. However, it is neither popular nor as well studied as it could be, the question of its effectiveness remains.

Since EMG is not a popular choice, the following questions may come to mind::

  • Where is the effectiveness when applied to training?
  • Should there be a closer focus on exercises with higher peak or medium EMG performance?
  • What risks do we take in limiting our views to these exercise groups?

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of EMG and its application to training. Finally, should everyone complete an EMG-specific training course, or are magazines / articles sufficient for the selection of exercises?

Electromyography infographic

Neurological EMGs versus kinesiological EMGs

Electromyography (EMG) is an experimental technique that deals with the development, recording, and analysis of myoelectric signals. Myoelectric signals are generated by physiological variations in the state of the muscle fiber membranes.

Peter Konrad1

Strength Training and Electromyography (EMG) Effectiveness - Fitness, Olympic Weightlifting, Neuromuscular Strength, Athlete, Snapping, Cleansing and Jerking, Functional Exercise, Plyometry, Electrical Muscle Stimulation, Kinesiology, Bodybuilder, Emg, Gluteus Strength, Electromyography

This can be further divided into neurological and kinesiological EMG.

This article only covers kinesiology EMG as its function is most closely related to exercise programs, voluntary neuromuscular activation, and functional movement. In contrast to neurological EMG tests, kinesiological EMGs are not invasive.

In short, we study how muscles fire during movement and, in the case of movement, which movement more innervates the intended muscle group for the said individual

  • The set-up time for a kinesiology EMG study is minimal, as only electrodes that can be permanently attached to a device or wirelessly sent to an associated receiver are affected.
  • No electric current flows through these electrodes. Instead, the performance of different muscles is measured during a functional movement.
  • However, for any EMG study, the associated costs could be in the mid-hundred to three hundred dollars range. In comparison, neurological EMGs can cost thousands of dollars and require insertion of needles into the muscle and close monitoring

The other inherent risk is who is doing the study.

Time can be wasted if the person skilled in the art does not set up a movement properly or does not understand the output data.

It is best to hire a trained person, e.g. B. a physiotherapist, a sports doctor or a specialist with certification in EMG or even NEUBIE devices. The benefits extend to the competitive area for bodybuilders and athletes involved in active sports.

Finally, an inadvertent risk of EMG testing for exercise choice decreases exercise variation.

Take Olympic lifting for example. The movements that are tested during the competition are cleaning and jerking and snapping.

However, during exercise, front squats, back squats, overhead presses, deadlifts, and pull-ups (to name a few) are performed during a program.

It is to the detriment of the doctor if an EMG result has a psychological effect.

The exercise focuses infinitely revolve around these core exercises, avoiding those that improve mobility, plyometric work, and balance.

Integration of EMG into your training

The safest way to start EMG training is:::

  1. Hire a certified professional.
  2. Set up days when maximum recovery options are available.

By effectively resting between sessions, primary muscle groups can fire more effectively, thereby improving the effectiveness of the study.

In this study, the specialist learns to determine which movement pattern represents the biggest bang for his money.

This is achieved by measuring the mean and peak activation during contraction of the intended muscle group during positional shift.

For exampleWhen recruiting gluteus maximus muscle groups, look at the sumo deadlift, which puts the trainee in a statically abducted position in relation to the glute abduction machine versus a resilient ligament hydrant movement.

The person skilled in the art then goes through the data, identifies these two values ​​and compares them per movement.

In discussing with the client, the practitioner would decide to perform one movement over another for maximum effect during a training session alone.

EMG sessions should not be treated as an intense training session.

Instead, it should be a lab test or visit to the doctor that will require either a short amount of time due to the muscle areas involved or a significantly longer amount of time due to the optimization of larger muscle groups.

One might wonder if EMG training is right for them.

Follow science in your pursuit of achievement

It goes without saying that Instagram pages are littered with gurus and trainers who have all the answers and are obviously doctors of kinesiology, physical therapists and orthopedists.

The authority I am referring to are legitimate trainers in the field with experience and degrees that contribute to science.

Within this science, articles create beads from EMG studies that shed light on why certain movements are performed in contrast to others.

In practice, however, no one has time to read all of these studies, and unfortunately, no one cares unless you find yourself in that niche. They want the answers.

So if you want the answers, pay for them.

Pay for it through a structured process, consistency in the gym, hiring a trainer, and reading condensed literature from reputable sources (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

EMG studies are beautiful and take away the guesswork.

Lucy will do heavy hip bumps, RDLs, and sumo squats to pop her prey.

In the meantime, Andrea modifies her hyperextension and resistance band glute work.

Is EMG a luxury only for athletes?

Does EMG serve us all along the line, or is this a luxury that can only be spent on competitors or athletes?

The questions for you to ponder are as follows::

  • How long have you been training yet?
  • Do you exercise to stay fit or to develop a particular aesthetic?
  • How often do you workout?
  • Have you ever hired a trainer and / or a professional?
  • Do you have disposable income?
  • Do you see yourself in competition?
  • Which data outside of the training preference do you want to collect? That said, provides the best support when sprinting or passing a physical exam.
  • Are you injured or are you returning from injury? That means learning anew how to activate muscle groups.
  • Do you like it and are you open to being watched or studied?
  • Is Maximum Hypertrophy Your Ultimate Goal?
  • Have you tried to access trailing body parts without success?

If you answer the previous questions appropriately, consider EMG.

References

1. Konrad, P., "The ABC of EMG. A practical introduction to kinesiological electromyography", Version 1.4, March 2006, page 5-30.

2. Basmajian, J.V., DeLuca, C.J. "Living Muscles: Their Function Shown by Electromyography," Pub, Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, 1985. 2-p1.

3. Dr. Arthur Kornblit, MD. "How much does an EMG test cost?" Spend On Health, accessed January 20, 2021.

10 Feb
Blog

Strength Training and the Efficacy of Electromyography (EMG)

Electromyography (EMG) is a scientific method for testing muscle activity. Some say it is highly valued in the nonscientific community because the simplicity of stronger reading means stronger muscles. However, it is neither popular nor as well studied as it could be, the question of its effectiveness remains.

Since EMG is not a popular choice, the following questions may come to mind::

  • Where is the effectiveness when applied to training?
  • Should there be a closer focus on exercises with higher peak or medium EMG performance?
  • What risks do we take in limiting our views to these exercise groups?

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of EMG and its application to training. Finally, should everyone complete an EMG-specific training course, or are magazines / articles sufficient for the selection of exercises?

Electromyography infographic

Neurological EMGs versus kinesiological EMGs

Electromyography (EMG) is an experimental technique that deals with the development, recording, and analysis of myoelectric signals. Myoelectric signals are generated by physiological variations in the state of the muscle fiber membranes.

Peter Konrad1

Strength Training and Electromyography (EMG) Effectiveness - Fitness, Olympic Weightlifting, Neuromuscular Strength, Athlete, Snapping, Cleansing and Jerking, Functional Exercise, Plyometry, Electrical Muscle Stimulation, Kinesiology, Bodybuilder, Emg, Gluteus Strength, Electromyography

This can be further divided into neurological and kinesiological EMG.

This article only covers kinesiology EMG as its function is most closely related to exercise programs, voluntary neuromuscular activation, and functional movement. In contrast to neurological EMG tests, kinesiological EMGs are not invasive.

In short, we study how muscles fire during movement and, in the case of movement, which movement more innervates the intended muscle group for the said individual

  • The set-up time for a kinesiology EMG study is minimal, as only electrodes that can be permanently attached to a device or wirelessly sent to an associated receiver are affected.
  • No electric current flows through these electrodes. Instead, the performance of different muscles is measured during a functional movement.
  • However, for any EMG study, the associated costs could be in the mid-hundred to three hundred dollars range. In comparison, neurological EMGs can cost thousands of dollars and require insertion of needles into the muscle and close monitoring

The other inherent risk is who is doing the study.

Time can be wasted if the person skilled in the art does not set up a movement properly or does not understand the output data.

It is best to hire a trained person, e.g. B. a physiotherapist, a sports doctor or a specialist with certification in EMG or even NEUBIE devices. The benefits extend to the competitive area for bodybuilders and athletes involved in active sports.

Finally, an inadvertent risk of EMG testing for exercise choice decreases exercise variation.

Take Olympic lifting for example. The movements that are tested during the competition are cleaning and jerking and snapping.

However, during exercise, front squats, back squats, overhead presses, deadlifts, and pull-ups (to name a few) are performed during a program.

It is to the detriment of the doctor if an EMG result has a psychological effect.

The exercise focuses infinitely revolve around these core exercises, avoiding those that improve mobility, plyometric work, and balance.

Integration of EMG into your training

The safest way to start EMG training is:::

  1. Hire a certified professional.
  2. Set up days when maximum recovery options are available.

By effectively resting between sessions, primary muscle groups can fire more effectively, thereby improving the effectiveness of the study.

In this study, the specialist learns to determine which movement pattern represents the biggest bang for his money.

This is achieved by measuring the mean and peak activation during contraction of the intended muscle group during positional shift.

For exampleWhen recruiting gluteus maximus muscle groups, look at the sumo deadlift, which puts the trainee in a statically abducted position in relation to the glute abduction machine versus a resilient ligament hydrant movement.

The person skilled in the art then goes through the data, identifies these two values ​​and compares them per movement.

In discussing with the client, the practitioner would decide to perform one movement over another for maximum effect during a training session alone.

EMG sessions should not be treated as an intense training session.

Instead, it should be a lab test or visit to the doctor that will require either a short amount of time due to the muscle areas involved or a significantly longer amount of time due to the optimization of larger muscle groups.

One might wonder if EMG training is right for them.

Follow science in your pursuit of achievement

It goes without saying that Instagram pages are littered with gurus and trainers who have all the answers and are obviously doctors of kinesiology, physical therapists and orthopedists.

The authority I am referring to are legitimate trainers in the field with experience and degrees that contribute to science.

Within this science, articles create beads from EMG studies that shed light on why certain movements are performed in contrast to others.

In practice, however, no one has time to read all of these studies, and unfortunately, no one cares unless you find yourself in that niche. They want the answers.

So if you want the answers, pay for them.

Pay for it through a structured process, consistency in the gym, hiring a trainer, and reading condensed literature from reputable sources (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

EMG studies are beautiful and take away the guesswork.

Lucy will do heavy hip bumps, RDLs, and sumo squats to pop her prey.

In the meantime, Andrea modifies her hyperextension and resistance band glute work.

Is EMG a luxury only for athletes?

Does EMG serve us all along the line, or is this a luxury that can only be spent on competitors or athletes?

The questions for you to ponder are as follows::

  • How long have you been training yet?
  • Do you exercise to stay fit or to develop a particular aesthetic?
  • How often do you workout?
  • Have you ever hired a trainer and / or a professional?
  • Do you have disposable income?
  • Do you see yourself in competition?
  • Which data outside of the training preference do you want to collect? That said, provides the best support when sprinting or passing a physical exam.
  • Are you injured or are you returning from injury? That means learning anew how to activate muscle groups.
  • Do you like it and are you open to being watched or studied?
  • Is Maximum Hypertrophy Your Ultimate Goal?
  • Have you tried to access trailing body parts without success?

If you answer the previous questions appropriately, consider EMG.

References

1. Konrad, P., "The ABC of EMG. A practical introduction to kinesiological electromyography", Version 1.4, March 2006, page 5-30.

2. Basmajian, J.V., DeLuca, C.J. "Living Muscles: Their Function Shown by Electromyography," Pub, Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, 1985. 2-p1.

3. Dr. Arthur Kornblit, MD. "How much does an EMG test cost?" Spend On Health, accessed January 20, 2021.

01 Dec
Blog

How to Start Calisthenics Training

With the amount of information we are exposed to, it is easy to complicate our training. When it comes to calisthenics it seems unsafe because we see the end product of the best athletes, but calisthenics is for all levels.

There are several forms of calisthenics / bodyweight training that you can do depending on your goals.

It's important to keep things simple. You need to ask yourself, "Is my training in line with my goals?" I often see that people don't train specifically for the goals they want.

They say they want apples, but they plant orange trees.

This article aims to make calisthenics training easier, take you from beginner to advanced, and show you how all levels can use the body as a brush to create a masterpiece.

General Strength – Beginner to Advanced

I know the temptation to move forward as quickly as possible is substantial, but will only result in injury, massive weakness, burnout, and frustration.

If you haven't already done this style of training, start with the basics. Work on the big six:

  1. Pull-ups
  2. Dips
  3. Rows
  4. pushups
  5. Handstands
  6. Is it

These are the pillars of calisthenics training as they cover the muscle groups that are used in many advanced skills. Do this for 3-6 months.

It may seem long, but it's the fastest way to get ahead.

If you skip this important stage in your development, you will still have to come back to it as the cracks in your armor will show and progress will be slow.

In this phase the goal is to learn your first pullup.

For example, get familiar with 12+ reps. As you move on, start implementing different variations of these movements in the free beginner calisthenics program, Bodyweight Strong.

Use this time to improve your mobility and flexibility so that you are no longer restricted later.

Remember, less is more. More time in the gym and more days of training won't produce better results.

As a beginner, train 2-4 days a week. An hour per session is enough to do a good, quality job while giving your body plenty of time to recover.

Specific Strength – Intermediate to Advanced

In this moment, you focus on specific goals like static skills, freestyling, and rings.

Choose 2-3 goals that you want to focus on::

It really depends on what you want and where you want to do your workout.

Design your program in blocks of 4 to 8 weeks, with all of your training lasting 3 to 6 days per week.

Mon Tuesday Marry Do. Fr. Sat Sun
High intensity Low intensity High intensity Low intensity High intensity Rest Rest
traction Handstand balance grip traction Handstand balance core traction

For example, if your goal is the muscle building and handstand pushups, any exercise you choose for your program should improve one aspect of achieving those specific goals.

I see too many people trying to cover every movement pattern and working on every weakness.

Less is more. You can always change your focus in the next program.

Build strength

The word strength is used too loosely in fitness, so let's define it. When I mention strength, I refer to absolute strength as maximum repetition and maximum strength (85% to 90% of 1RM).

The stronger you are, the more calisthenics skills you can use.

Understand that your body has three energy systems that it uses independently or simultaneously to contract your muscles.

  1. Creatine phosphate lasts 1-12 seconds and is used for high intensity and demanding tasks like heavyweight or difficult body weight exercises that you can only do for low repetitions.
  2. Glycolysis and the oxidative system are used for muscle building, conditioning and endurance.
  3. The anaerobic system lasts 10 seconds – 2 minutes. The aerobic system is low-intensity and long-lasting. This is your endurance training or for daily tasks.

How to start calisthenics training - fitness, max. 1 repetition, training, endurance training, body weight exercises, calisthenics, mobility, flexibility, rings, handstand, energy systems, static balance, pull-ups, handstand push-up, rows, L-sit, hand strength, body weight training

Strength training puts a strain on the nervous system and requires at least 24 hours to recover between strength exercises.

  • Exercise 2-4 days a week.
  • Training your absolute strength to the point of failure should be used sparingly to test your current level or to achieve this motivational boost.
  • You can't exercise like this all the time because your nervous system won't recover between sessions and will ruin your progress.
  • Instead, exercise your maximum strength and leave 1 rep in reserve. If you know / think that you can do a maximum of 3 reps of an exercise (e.g., building muscle), do 2 reps for all of your sets.
  • This strengthens without overwhelming the nervous system.
  • Do high sets of 4-8 and 1-5 reps.
  • For isometry (during contraction, the muscles do not noticeably change length, and the affected joints do not move) 1-12 s.
  • Eccentric (contraction by muscle lengthening) 1-5 repetitions, each repetition for 7 seconds.

Remember, if you feel the pump or your muscles burn, you will stop exercising.

build muscles

Run away from anyone who says, "You can't build muscle with calisthenics."

Your muscles don't know the difference between bodyweight exercises, weights, or a table.

It cannot be determined whether you are lifting a 6 kg, 20 kg dumbbell or a body weight. Your body feels the resistance, the intensity and the stress of a movement.

What does the training look like? A rep range of 6-12 reps (at 65-85% of 1 rep maximum) is the most effective way to stimulate muscle growth.

Instead of increasing the weight, you increase the difficulty of the bodyweight exercises.

Choose exercises that challenge you in this rep range.

When pull-ups get easy, do a harder variant, such as B. Close-grip pull-ups. Use the same muscle building techniques as you would with weights such as mechanical tension, eccentric damage, metabolic stress, push-pull splits or drop sets.

Current culture wants to create a rivalry between calisthenics and weights when the reality is you can use both.

Gymnastics is a body weight sport and they use weights in their workouts.

Many sports, soccer, basketball, athletics, use weights to improve performance, calisthenics is the same.

  • Weighted calisthenics like weighted pull-ups and weighted dips are great ways to build strength and muscle.
  • Bodyweight exercises and weights are great for training compound movements (multiple muscle groups and joints).
  • There are a variety of isolation exercises (multiple muscle groups and one joint). Isolation exercises allow you to target specific muscles, which is great for improving aesthetics.

The lower body is inherently powerful, so bodyweight training can only go so far. Because of this, weighted squats, deadlifts, and hip kicks are great for building muscle.

Game training to goals

I always say there is no perfect way to train. It depends on your skills and goals.

Make sure your training is in line with your goals, and train specifically with those goals in mind.

Train like a power lifter if you want to do these advanced calisthenics skills.

Train like a bodybuilder if you want to be in the best shape of your life.

Train like an athlete when you want to go crazy or do some freestyling.

30 Nov
Blog

How to Start Calisthenics Training

With the amount of information we are exposed to, it is easy to complicate our training. When it comes to calisthenics it seems unsafe because we see the end product of the best athletes, but calisthenics is for all levels.

There are several forms of calisthenics / bodyweight training that you can do depending on your goals.

It's important to keep things simple. You need to ask yourself, "Is my training in line with my goals?" I often see that people don't train specifically for the goals they want.

They say they want apples, but they plant orange trees.

This article aims to make calisthenics training easier, take you from beginner to advanced, and show you how all levels can use the body as a brush to create a masterpiece.

General Strength – Beginner to Advanced

I know the temptation to move forward as quickly as possible is substantial, but will only result in injury, massive weakness, burnout, and frustration.

If you haven't already done this style of training, start with the basics. Work on the big six:

  1. Pull-ups
  2. Dips
  3. Rows
  4. pushups
  5. Handstands
  6. Is it

These are the pillars of calisthenics training as they cover the muscle groups that are used in many advanced skills. Do this for 3-6 months.

It may seem long, but it's the fastest way to get ahead.

If you skip this important stage in your development, you will still have to come back to it as the cracks in your armor will show and progress will be slow.

In this phase the goal is to learn your first pullup.

For example, get familiar with 12+ reps. As you move on, start implementing different variations of these movements in the free beginner calisthenics program, Bodyweight Strong.

Use this time to improve your mobility and flexibility so that you are no longer restricted later.

Remember, less is more. More time in the gym and more days of training won't produce better results.

As a beginner, train 2-4 days a week. An hour per session is enough to do a good, quality job while giving your body plenty of time to recover.

Specific Strength – Intermediate to Advanced

In this moment, you focus on specific goals like static skills, freestyling, and rings.

Choose 2-3 goals that you want to focus on::

It really depends on what you want and where you want to do your workout.

Design your program in blocks of 4 to 8 weeks, with all of your training lasting 3 to 6 days per week.

Mon Tuesday Marry Do. Fr. Sat Sun
High intensity Low intensity High intensity Low intensity High intensity Rest Rest
traction Handstand balance grip traction Handstand balance core traction

For example, if your goal is the muscle building and handstand pushups, any exercise you choose for your program should improve one aspect of achieving those specific goals.

I see too many people trying to cover every movement pattern and working on every weakness.

Less is more. You can always change your focus in the next program.

Build strength

The word strength is used too loosely in fitness, so let's define it. When I mention strength, I refer to absolute strength as maximum repetition and maximum strength (85% to 90% of 1RM).

The stronger you are, the more calisthenics skills you can use.

Understand that your body has three energy systems that it uses independently or simultaneously to contract your muscles.

  1. Creatine phosphate lasts 1-12 seconds and is used for high intensity and demanding tasks like heavyweight or difficult body weight exercises that you can only do for low repetitions.
  2. Glycolysis and the oxidative system are used for muscle building, conditioning and endurance.
  3. The anaerobic system lasts 10 seconds – 2 minutes. The aerobic system is low-intensity and long-lasting. This is your endurance training or for daily tasks.

How to start calisthenics training - fitness, max. 1 repetition, training, endurance training, body weight exercises, calisthenics, mobility, flexibility, rings, handstand, energy systems, static balance, pull-ups, handstand push-up, rows, L-sit, hand strength, body weight training

Strength training puts a strain on the nervous system and requires at least 24 hours to recover between strength exercises.

  • Exercise 2-4 days a week.
  • Training your absolute strength to the point of failure should be used sparingly to test your current level or to achieve this motivational boost.
  • You can't exercise like this all the time because your nervous system won't recover between sessions and will ruin your progress.
  • Instead, exercise your maximum strength and leave 1 rep in reserve. If you know / think that you can do a maximum of 3 reps of an exercise (e.g., building muscle), do 2 reps for all of your sets.
  • This strengthens without overwhelming the nervous system.
  • Do high sets of 4-8 and 1-5 reps.
  • For isometry (during contraction, the muscles do not noticeably change length, and the affected joints do not move) 1-12 s.
  • Eccentric (contraction by muscle lengthening) 1-5 repetitions, each repetition for 7 seconds.

Remember, if you feel the pump or your muscles burn, you will stop exercising.

build muscles

Run away from anyone who says, "You can't build muscle with calisthenics."

Your muscles don't know the difference between bodyweight exercises, weights, or a table.

It cannot be determined whether you are lifting a 6 kg, 20 kg dumbbell or a body weight. Your body feels the resistance, the intensity and the stress of a movement.

What does the training look like? A rep range of 6-12 reps (at 65-85% of 1 rep maximum) is the most effective way to stimulate muscle growth.

Instead of increasing the weight, you increase the difficulty of the bodyweight exercises.

Choose exercises that challenge you in this rep range.

When pull-ups get easy, do a harder variant, such as B. Close-grip pull-ups. Use the same muscle building techniques as you would with weights such as mechanical tension, eccentric damage, metabolic stress, push-pull splits or drop sets.

Current culture wants to create a rivalry between calisthenics and weights when the reality is you can use both.

Gymnastics is a body weight sport and they use weights in their workouts.

Many sports, soccer, basketball, athletics, use weights to improve performance, calisthenics is the same.

  • Weighted calisthenics like weighted pull-ups and weighted dips are great ways to build strength and muscle.
  • Bodyweight exercises and weights are great for training compound movements (multiple muscle groups and joints).
  • There are a variety of isolation exercises (multiple muscle groups and one joint). Isolation exercises allow you to target specific muscles, which is great for improving aesthetics.

The lower body is inherently powerful, so bodyweight training can only go so far. Because of this, weighted squats, deadlifts, and hip kicks are great for building muscle.

Game training to goals

I always say there is no perfect way to train. It depends on your skills and goals.

Make sure your training is in line with your goals, and train specifically with those goals in mind.

Train like a power lifter if you want to do these advanced calisthenics skills.

Train like a bodybuilder if you want to be in the best shape of your life.

Train like an athlete when you want to go crazy or do some freestyling.

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