Tag Archives: strength training

front squat, weight training, strength training, intense, weightlifter, weight lifter

The Diminishing Returns of Strength Training

Featured photo courtesy of Gregor Winter.

Introduction:

The day before I started a new job, it was a rainy winter’s day in North Vancouver, but I felt pretty good.  I wanted to avoid trying to fit a gym session into my first couple days at the new job, so the day before I started I decided to go hard and make it count so I could take a few days off. This workout was going to be a “pull” day, meaning I would work on deadlifts, weighted chinups, and pendlay rows. I had worked my way up to working sets of 395 lbs on deadlifts (meaning I was aiming for 5 reps at this weight). 400 lbs was so close I could taste it. That had long been my “I know I’ve made it when” goal.

Previously I had been working a job involving some awkward lifting but I figured I was so fit and strong that I could handle the job and intense strength training concurrently. However, while working, I did something to my lower back that made it sore for a few days, but then it went away. So, on this particular day, which was several weeks later, I warmed up and could tell that my back wasn’t 100%. But hey, I love progress and my ego was tied into this, so I kept going. I hit 4 reps at 395 lbs (a personal best), but definitely did not use picture-perfect form on the last rep. My back felt all right though, so I lowered the weight to 365 lbs for another work set.

I completed the first lift and was lowering the bar back down when I felt an extremely painful *ri-i-i-p* in my lower back, near where the original twinge had been. My hands let go of the bar and I stood up. As I bent down over to take the weight off the bar, searing pain at the site of the rip got me to stand up straight again. The guy next to me had to be enlisted to get the weight off the bar and put everything away. As I walked out of the gym, I knew that I had experienced my first real weight-lifting injury. Until that point I had had zero problems in 10 years other than some sore muscles after training, which is to be expected.

For the next two weeks I could not bend my back. It had to be perfectly straight up or I got shooting pains at the site of the injury. Getting in and out of a chair required serious focus. I did a little self-diagnosis (I can’t recommend this approach, but it’s what I always do), and figured I had torn a ligament near my hip. Having done something similar to my ankle years before I knew there was only one prescription: rest and time. Lots of time. My ankle took 4 months, so I could only assume this would be about 4 months as well. Boo-urns.

A Break from Weight-Lifting – What I Noticed:

After about a month of rest (other than walking around), my back was still sore but I was a lot more functional. I was able to engage in some physical activities again, but lifting weights was still out of the question. I started with some light activity: softball, biking, and pushups/chinups. My performance was actually pretty good fitness wise (although I did drop pop-flys at softball), which indicated that I was holding onto a lot of the strength I had gained prior to the injury. I was able to run really fast, jump really high, and throw really far. Actually, I felt like I was running faster and jumping higher than I’d been able to while in the gym lifting heavy 2-3 times a week.

My appetite also decreased, which I expected to happen. When I was lifting hard 2-3 times a week, I often felt ‘hollow’ in that I would sit down and eat for an hour straight (involving more than a pound of meat), and still would want more. The days after I hit advanced weights on big lifts (squats, deadlifts, etc), my appetite would be somewhat ridiculous to the point where it was becoming very time consuming. After the month off, I was still quite muscular and strong (other than the injured back), and I was satisfied with less food, which was freeing up time.

So there I was, ironically finding lifestyle benefits from staying out of the gym. I noticed 2 main advantages: one, my non-weight lifting athletic performance increased; and two, my appetite became much more reasonable (though still really big compared to most people, but that’s just me). Over the summer my back kept improving until I was able to start thinking about weightlifting again. My first visits to the gym were just to get re-oriented, but then I started challenging myself again. The upper body lifts were no problem, but squats left my back pretty sore and deadlifts were still way too painful to consider.

About 4 months post-injury I was still avoiding deadlifts but began pushing hard with the other lifts, including squats. I got up to about 330 lbs on the squat again, a day before a softball game. As I was biking to softball I could tell that my legs were very much still in recovery from the previous day’s squat session. The hills were harder, and I was dreading them to a certain degree. Once I got to the game, I noticed I couldn’t run as fast, or throw as far. My body just didn’t have the jump it had while I was not training intensely. The appetite was also back. Big lifts make for big meals.

I quickly realized that I needed at least 2 days or more of recovery between extreme weight sessions if my body was to perform near its peak again. Scheduling my weight sessions around sports was annoying since sports’ schedules change from week to week. It came to a crossroads: I had to choose whether to continue getting stronger and accept the fact that my athletic ability would be compromised most days, or I had to accept that I wasn’t going to get any stronger allowing my athletic performance to improve. Essentially:

Choice 1 – Gain more strength, but be sore and weak when doing anything else

Or

Choice 2 – Maintain (advanced) strength, and perform better at everything else

When I was a strength novice, I didn’t have to make this choice. Back when I thought 200-pound squats and 150 pound bench presses were immense, the recovery time wasn’t as long. I could play sports the next day, no problem, as long as I had been training regularly so the soreness wasn’t too bad. It was only when I took a break due to injury from advanced training that I noticed I could play harder by avoiding 300-pound squats and 400-pound deadlifts, at least for the few days before a game.

Six months post-injury I was able to deadlift intensely again, working my way back up to 380 pounds. I was able to do it, and felt fine in the gym, but I woke up the next morning with a very sore right hip. Like, bad sore. It’s been a month since I woke-up with that sore hip, and it is only now recovered to the point where I’m thinking about weight-lifting again.

This time I’m going to listen to my body, and make the decision that I’m strong enough.

The Diminishing Returns of Strength Training:

I have written a lot about the benefits of strength training, so I won’t get into it again here. If you’re curious, start hereWhen I started strength training, it was easy to make gains and I noticed nothing but benefits for a long time. Everything I did, I did better. I felt (relatively) superhuman when I played sports. I was running faster, jumping higher, throwing further, had more endurance, could take bigger impacts, and overall just felt more confident.

Once I became advanced, however, incremental increases in strength did not provide the same returns they did when I was a beginner. They were also a lot harder to attain. Going from a 150-pound squat to a 200-pound squat gave me a ton of new athletic ability. Going from a 300-pound squat to a 350-pound squat did not provide the same return on investment. It took a lot longer to get to a 350-pound lift from 300, the recovery time in between sessions was much longer, and I had to eat a lot. These circumstances applied to all my lifts.

On top of the increased recovery time, the risk of injuries from weight-lifting increases dramatically once you are advanced. Even without picture-perfect form I never got injured lifting weights when I was only moderately strong. There just wasn’t enough weight to do any serious harm. Once I got strong enough to handle serious loads, that’s when aches and pains became common. And if I didn’t have laser focus in the gym, it was straight-up dangerous.

Part of me wants to be as strong as possible, but I realize now that it comes at too great a price (for me). If I wanted to be a master weight lifter (which I’m not even 100% sure I could be), it would be at the expense of too many other physical goals. I like biking places, playing spontaneous games of pickup, and I wouldn’t want to limit myself from taking up other physical hobbies. To stay at my current level of strength, 1-3 moderate to high intensity workouts a week are all that’s needed, which doesn’t require much recovery if the goal is only maintenance. To sum up these thoughts, I made the graph below. “Benefits/Effort” (benefits of additional strength divided by effort) on the vertical axis suggests that although strength gains always result in benefits, the effort to get that strength gets so large once you are advanced that it’s less attractive as a goal. Click on the graph below to get a better view of it.

strength training benefits, strength level, diminishing returns, weight training
I love graphs, a lot.

The diminishing returns of strength training are real. The concept of being strong enough is an important one. Until this point, I had experienced nothing but benefits to being stronger, but eventually this was no longer the case.

What is Strong Enough?

This is not a reason to avoid weight lifting entirely as there are too many benefits to ignore, but it important to determine exactly what you want out of weight-lifting.  If it’s just improved health, strength, athletic ability, and physique I would recommend the following goals (which are based on nothing but experience and observation):

Squat: 1.5 x bodyweight (175 pounder aims for 265 lbs) Deadlift: 1.8 x bodyweight (175 pounder aims for 315 lbs) Bench press: 1 x bodyweight (175 pounder aims for 175 lbs) Pullups: 8 consecutive solid pullups *If you’re female, shave a bit off these, unless you really want to go for it!

That’s it. If you can do all that, you are strong enough to obtain the vast majority of the benefits from strength training. To a beginner these may seem really advanced but it isn’t all that hard to achieve in 1-2 years with disciplined training, depending on the starting point. There will be individual variability due to different body types, so some of these goals will be easier to achieve than others, but there’s no reason almost anyone can’t do what’s described above if this is a goal for them.

The lack of return on investment that I’ve been mentioning only started to happen when I went well beyond these goals. Once I started thinking along these lines I looked into what professional athletes do for training. It turns out, as obviously as can be, that off-season training is inherently different from the training that occurs during a pro-sports season.

For a pro-athlete the goal of the off-season is to increase strength and conditioning to become a better athlete. During the actual sports season the goal is to win games. During the season an athlete who tries to set a personal record on the deadlift or squat the day before an epic match is setting his or herself up for failure. Due to the long recovery time, athletes want to save that strength for competition and not for working out. “Working out” during the season is generally at a lower frequency and intensity so as to just maintain what an athlete can do while minimizing needed recovery.

Again, as a pure beginner, strength gains are possible amidst other intense activities. But once somebody is advanced, that person has to become discriminating about when to expend maximum effort. Planning for recovery becomes necessary to the more advanced trainee. After a certain point, a decision has to be made about goals, and that further strength gains have diminishing returns. Alternatively, an individual may decide that very-advanced strength is worth it, at the cost of requiring several days a week of full-recovery.  It’s a personal choice.

Conclusions: Becoming a Supple Leopard

The pain in my hip over the last month has been really annoying, although in the grand scheme of things it hasn’t been all that bad. Whenever I broke into a run to get across the street I felt a shot of pain. Whenever I bent over to pick something up I got a shot of pain. Whenever I was lying down and rolled onto my right side I got a shot of pain. It’s healing well so I’m not concerned, but I can only imagine what a more serious and permanent, injury would do to my quality of life.

I would feel foolish, guilty even, if I did something to myself in pursuit of advanced strength that lead to me requiring body-part replacements before I’m even a senior citizen. One of the many benefits of strength training is supposed to be injury prevention, and for the most part it is unless you take it to the extreme like these guys.

This summer, I read the awesomely titled Becoming a Supple Leopard (BASL), by Dr. Kelly Starrett. In a nutshell, BASL is an excellent guide on how to move in the way that our bodies were designed to move. If movement patterns are a bit off at a young age, these movements get woven into our habits as we get older. Eventually it can turn into one of those injuries where a movement is performed “normally”, and a ligament just goes *snap*, and the athlete is left thinking “but that’s how I always do it! Why did I get hurt this time? Bad luck!”. Not bad luck; bad form. In the words of Dr. Starrett: “You can move with bad form until one day you can’t”. Humbling.

Athletes: Read this book. You will learn how to use your strength efficiently, and prevent injuries. Do it.

For me, I had to realize that being excessively “duck-footed” (feet pointed out as opposed to straight forward) was going to cause me problems long-term. I’m now forcing myself to point my feet straight ahead and although it still feels unnatural, it is becoming more fluid every day. Along with how to move, there is a large section on how to regain mobility in your joint and tissues and how to maintain it once you have it back. In a way, this is more important than strength; it is how to use your strength properly.

I now have different goals from the ones I used to have. For a couple years my only real physical goal was to get stronger. Now that I am quite strong (for me), my physical goals are shifting towards being able to use my strength as long as possible without injury (like a supple leopard…), and be at peace with the fact that I might not get any stronger. It’s going to be an adjustment for me, and I see this with other advanced lifters. The mentality has to change so that, quite often, a workout will mean not going to 100%. All that’s going to happen in a workout is to accomplish something you already know you can do and be satisfied with that. This way, I’ll only rarely be totally exhausted and can bust into a jog or lift some heavy-ish things spontaneously without having to worry about anything (again, like a supple leopard…). Being able to deadlift 400 pounds is really good. 500 would be better, but it’s probably not worth it. This line of thinking may change. We shall see.

I hope you got some value out of this! Message to my friends: Get strong enough, and then stay that way.

G
progress, philosophy

How to Get Stronger: Track Your Strength

Featured photo courtesy of symphony of love. Note: This was originally written at my other blog, so the dates may seem a little off. I found the article still had value, so I reposted it here. Enjoy!

Introduction:

Here’s what I see happen with great frequency: Someone will decide to get fit/in shape, and will commit to a fitness routine that is either ineffective, or way more than they really need involving hours of training a day or multiple different goals all at once.  Eventually, they burn out, start to feel tired more often, get bored/frustrated with it, and eventually ditch it all together.  They fall back into their old patterns and make no change in their body only to make the same commitment the sometime down the road and repeat the cycle.

From what I see, I think this is because most people (including some trainers…), really have no concept of how simple it is to change your body to become stronger, leaner, more athletic, and all-around more resilient (and sexier, because why not?).  Like I talked about in my post on the context of vices, to change the body, it must be stressed, and then allowed to recover.  The recovery portion is where adaptations to the stressor are made.  Provided sufficient recovery to the stressor, we come back more resilient.  In the context of physical fitness, the stressor is your training, and the recovery is food, sleep, and time.

People often ask me things like “So you must go to the gym like two hours a day right?”  To that I can only laugh, and reply “dude, you think I have time for that? It’s not even two hours a week”.  I like training routines that are simple, time-efficient, and effective.  Here’s my take on it: The keys to efficiently changing your body are three-fold:

  1. Decide on your goals and choose a training style to meet those goals.
  2. Set a schedule.
  3. Measure your results over time. Adapt as necessary.

Here’s the routine that I set for myself a couple of years ago, and have adapted a bit as I progressed, but really not by much.  Here’s another for someone looking to start out with bodyweight training.  I’ll reiterate how I decided upon such an approach, and then show my results, and set sights for moving forward.

Decide on Your Goals and Training Style:

First things first. Ask yourself these questions: Why do I want to train? What is it about myself that I want to change? What do I want to be able to do in the future that I can’t do now?  These questions will lead to the question of: What will the training be?  This is when you will decide how to get stronger. Just “going to the gym” is not going to cut it.  Anyone can walk into a gym and play around for a while, but that is very unlikely to get you anywhere specific. The key to meeting your goals, is first to determine exactly what your goals are.  This will vary by individual, but perhaps not as much as you’d think.  For most, I gather that goals are generally fat loss, muscle gain, or the ineffable “fitness”.  When it comes to fat loss, exercise can help, but the most important factor in having a relatively lean body is your eating habits.  Muscle gain comes from building stronger muscles, period. What is fitness exactly though?  There is really no hard definition, other than to be “fit” for specific physical demands, so it changes based on what that demand is.  A marathon runner may be considered “fit” by some, but if that marathon runner can’t do a single chin-up, is he/she really overall “fit”?  I don’t think so. Here are my (simple) goals:

  • All-around athleticism
  • Minimize risk of physical injury in all aspects of life
  • Enough practical endurance for most sports or physical work
  • A lean, proportioned, muscular physique

That’s all folks.  I love playing sports when I have the time and a fun group of people to play with, but when it comes down to it, I’m an applied scientist, and not a pro-athlete.  I accepted that long ago.  I like hiking, biking, ultimate Frisbee, baseball, basketball, football, tennis, snowboarding, swimming, and many others, but I’m not obsessed with any one in particular (ultimate is probably my favourite).  They’re all just for fun with friends.  I want to know that when I do play sports, I’m going to be good enough to be competitive, and fit enough to not hurt myself, but beyond that I really don’t care about being incredible at any one sport.  I feel as though this is true for almost everyone, but I concede that some people will want to be a lot more specific than me.  Fair enough.

I’ve never found that focusing on cardiovascular training has lead to an increase in all-around athleticism or towards my physique goals.  By this I mean really long-duration, moderate to intense cardio. I don’t bother with going for long runs, or biking hard for hours at a time as I’ve never found these helped me achieve my goals. Lower-intensity cardiovascular effort (walking, hiking, easy bike rides, swimming around, etc.) is great and a big part of overall health, but it won’t provide your body with enough stimulus to achieve new levels of peak intensity. To achieve new levels of intensity, you must push your limits. This is how to get stronger. The most effective way I found with this is through strength training.

With strength training, I can see how I perform with several factors: weight lifted, number of times lifted, and the quality (form) of my lifts. This way, I can continually challenge myself by pushing myself to go further. Tracking progress is extremely important to ensuring that every time I work out, I try to push myself a little further. I’ve tried to rely on memory, but sometimes memory is not enough. I’ve laid out my recommended strength training routine for the intermediate here, so I won’t go into detail again. The gist of it is that I choose a few compound exercises, and try to achieve five repetitions with a certain weight once a week (this is called the “top set”). If I hit my five, I up the weight slightly for the next week and try to get five again. What I really track are these top sets. If the weight I can do five times goes up over time, then I’m doing something right. If not, something’s gotta give.

Tracking Your Strength:

There’s no point in training if you’re not going to get results.  Spinning your wheels but going nowhere is no way to live your life.  What I do is write down my workouts in a cheap notepad (yes, I’m one of those guys in the gym).  Its really simple to do, and that way I can look at what I did the last workout, and always try to improve upon it.  Here’s a glimpse:

strength journal, strength tracking, gym, weight training, strength training, notes
This is from back in August of 2012. If I get five reps on that top set, the next week the weight goes up and I try to get five again.

Now to analyze some results.  I have compiled everything from last June onward (when I started properly tracking).  Also, my cousin Alex took up this same approach last July when he moved to Vancouver.  We’ll start with his results.  I’m only graphing the weight of the top sets (highest weight in a training session – aiming for 5 reps) as that is the best measure of strength progress with this approach.

Alex “Form Nazi” Hobbs

Alex is a naturally bigger guy than me, with shorter arms and thicker joints and bone structure.  He’d never really properly done any focused weight training, but he did hit the gym quite a bit about a decade ago, and has natural strength, so he started out pretty decent.  He had been following a (mostly) primal/paleo approach to eating for a couple years, and lost quite a bit of fat in the process (he, um, had a fair amount to lose, however).  He then changed his focus to getting stronger.  I was impressed with his dedication to proper form from the get-go.  Unfortunately, a lingering shoulder injury from volleyball lead to a decline in his performance on the bench press and chinups.  However, he has made solid progress on both the squat and deadlift as seen in the figure below.  His shoulder is getting closer to ready for action, and the new year hopefully will bring some improvement on his upper body lifts.  He really enjoys the new strength in his core and lower body, and since the training sessions are relatively infrequent, he looks forward to each one.  He plays volleyball a couple times a week on top of the training, and like me also enjoys hiking.  Alex tracks his strength a little differently.  He puts it on his smart phone and uploads it to www.fitocracy.com .  I am way too old school for that, but he loves it.

alex hobbs, strength progress, strength tracking
Up, up, up! Alex was fairly new to this type of training, so he saw a lot of gains right away.

Graham “gball” Ballachey

Now for my results.  What I’ll do is show my graphed top sets over time, and then do an analysis on each lift. 

graham ballachey, strength progress, strength training, weight training, fitness
I know it doesn’t look as dramatic as Alex’s. I blame it on putting all the lifts on one graph there is a wide range on the vertical axis. Trust me, it’s good progress.
Deadlifts: To me, these have been the most satisfying.  I naturally have long arms as compared to my height (I’m 6’2” tall, and my reach is 6’5”), so I’m what’s called a “natural puller”.  I have strong glutes, hamstrings, and lower back muscles, so proper deadlifts have come very naturally to me.  I started out this year already deadlifting over 300 lbs, and am now close to 400.  The New Year will see the 400 mark, and hopefully substantial progress beyond that.  Deadlifts rule.  My back is now strong as hell, and only getting stronger.

Squats/Front Squats:
 These have been more challenging.  As you can see, I’m really not much further along than when I started tracking, at least in terms of the weight I’m training with.  I still feel as though I have made good progress though.  The story is as follows:  I had been squatting for years, and rushed into getting into the really heavy weights due to my ego. I didn’t realize that when I went really heavy I wasn’t going to full depth (thighs at least parallel), until Alex “Form Nazi” Hobbs called me on it.  It took me some time to swallow my ego and realize that I had to correct my form before I would really progress.  I started focusing on front squats more for a while, and made decent progress with those as I felt it was easier to get to full depth. Then, once my hips were used to it, I started loading up back squats while going to full depth.  I had to take a step back in terms of weight, and am only now getting back to where I was, but I can feel that my lower body is overall way stronger just from progressing in terms of range of motion.  I’m now quite comfortable going to a low position on squats, and hopefully the New Year will see good progress with great form.  Onwards and upwards.  Squats are HARD!  But that’s the point.

Bench Press:
Due to my long arms and relatively small shoulder joints and bone structure, I am not what’s known as a “natural presser”.  Clearly, benching 220 lbs for 4 reps (current record) is nothing to sneeze at, but compared to my lower body lifts, it’s the weakest link.  I have a well-developed, muscular upper body, but the relative dimensions I’ve been given prevent me from having a really impressive bench press.  It’s not ultimately about the weight being lifted so much as it is about the progress, and I have made some progress (~200 lbs to 220 lbs) over the last few months that I am happy with.  I am looking to the New Year to finally be repping out 225 lbs (2 plates a side), a benchmark (pun intended) I have been working towards for a long time.

Chinups:
 Again, long arms make this hard for me.  I couldn’t even do a bodyweight chinup until I was 19.  I worked up to about 12 bodyweight chinups before I started adding weight, and have progressed this year from adding 32.5 lbs to 50 lbs for my top set.  There appears to be a decline in performance towards the end, but this coincides with a surprising month of muscle growth (had to happen at some point) and a corresponding increase in body mass.  After staying at about 185 lbs for several months (despite strength gains) I went up to 195 lbs in a month.  I didn’t track my bodyweight with much precision, so it’s hard to know for sure, but I definitely noticed that the weighted chinups were getting harder.  I’m now back down to adding 45 lbs for my chinups, and progress is beginning again.  Hopefully my weight doesn’t jack up too quickly again!

So there it is!  I determined my goals, I chose my training and set a program, and tracked the results.  I’m happy with my current performance, and I know that I’m making progress without putting all that much time into it. 

Honestly, I am looking and feeling buffer than I ever have in my life, while barely thinking about formal training most days.  Most of the time, I’m working, studying, or just trying to have fun.  Getting stronger is not a huge commitment when it’s done most efficiently. 

Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment and continue the discussion.

one-arm-pushup-female

Ways to Get Stronger: No Gym Required

Featured image courtesy of John Niedermayer.

Introduction

My previous post was an efficient strength training routine for an individual who is comfortable in a weight lifting/gym environment and using barbells. I recognize there are those of us who want to be stronger, but don’t want to go to a gym and pump iron. The reasons are numerous: it’s inconvenient, it’s foreign, I don’t like gyms, I don’t want people to watch me workout…etc.

These reasons are valid, but there is a solution. There are many ways to get stronger that don’t involve a gym. As a beginner, you can get decently strong just learning how to manipulate your own bodyweight, and perhaps use some free weights and a chinup bar that you store in your home. That way, there is no commute to the gym (saves time and money), and you can workout in your underwear if you want. These workouts can take as little as 15 minutes if you hussle, and if you’re a beginner when it comes to strength, will certainly reap rewards that make it worth it. Having a solid idea of how the bodyweight movements work can also help you stay strong if you’re on the road for extended periods, or are just going through a busy time and can’t be bothered with the gym.

If you’re unfamiliar with any of the exercises listed, click on the links that I provide in the routine below. To find additional resources, just Google away on these and you’ll find tons of descriptions on how to perform them.

Just like the previous routine, this is just a starting point. I’ve put some thought into creating a balanced approach, but introduce more exercises and more intensity as you progress. To progress, you’ll still need to bring serious intensity to these workouts, and allow for recovery. When I say “do as many as you can”, you literally do as many as you can. No stopping until there’s nothing left. That’s intensity. For recovery, always allow at least one day full day between workouts (a rest day), and try to get two days of rest in a row at least once a week. By rest, I don’t mean complete laziness, but back off from maximum intensity. Lots of walking is great. So is easy swimming and biking or what have you.

Without further ado, here is the (sample) program for beginners, followed by tips on increasing intensity:

Ways to Get Stronger – The Routine:

Day 1: Push and Jump

Repeat 3x, with 60-90s rest between each exercise:
Pushups: as many as you can
Jump Squats: as many as you can

Repeat 2x, with 60-90s rest in between sets:

Overhead press: as many as possible (using dumbells would be best, but anything heavy will work fine. The video in the link shows a woman using water bottles: why not?)

Day 2: Rest day. Lots of walking.

Day 3: Sprint!

6-10s sprint at 50% of max intensity
6-10s sprint at 70% of max intensity
6-10s sprint at 100+% intensity (full out)

Keep doing 100+% intensity sprints until your intensity starts to drop (might only be 1-4 depending on your level of fitness), or you’ve done 10.

Day 4: Rest – Walk, walk, walk!

Day 5: Pull and Lift

Repeat 3x, with 60-90s between exercises:
Chinups/Pullups: as many as you can
Single-leg deadlifts – Right Leg: as many as you can
Single-leg deadlifts – Left Leg: as many as you can

Day 6: Rest Day – Play a sport, or lots of walking.

Day 7: More rest – walking, swimming, whatever.

And we’re done.  As a beginner, you could conceivably follow a routine such as this for up to a year before requiring that substantial weight be added for further progress. Speaking of progress:

Increasing Intensity:

For each exercise, here are some ideas to make them more intense as you progress:

Pushups: Put your feet on a chair and do incline pushups, wear a weighted vest, or try a one-arm chinup (see above pic – be careful though)

Jump Squats: Jump higher! Or wear a heavy backpack. Eventually, you could try a pistol squat (a one legged squat, essentially. The guy in the video is a total beast. Wow.)

Overhead press: Make your objects that you lift (ideally dumbells) heavier over time, or progress to the handstand pushup.

Sprints: Sprint harder and longer, or try sprinting uphill.

Chinups/Pullups:  Wear a heavy backpack, or train up to a one-arm chinup. A one arm chinup is super tough. If you can do it, you got one on me!

Single-leg deadlift: The simplest way to increase the intensity of the single-leg deadlift is to hold weight in your hands while you do them.

Want to get stronger, but don’t want to hit a gym? Well, no more excuses! You can get stronger in little time with the above plan, or a similar plan that you work out over time.

Stay consistent, and increase the intensity over time, and you can’t help but get stronger.

Until next time,

G

 

 

deadlift, woman deadlifting, strength training, weight training

An Efficient Strength Training Program for the Intermediate

Featured photo courtesy of Amber Karnes.

Introduction

So, you’ve decided you want to get physically stronger. Maybe you’d like to be a better athlete. Maybe you understand that lean muscle is healthy and leads to longer lives. Maybe you want to prevent injuries. Maybe you want to look great naked.

Whatever your reason, when it comes to fitness, and especially formal workouts, what gets you the most bang for your buck is an efficient strength training program. Need help in the garden?  No problem.  Need someone to help you move?  Easy. Jar needs opening?  Pass it here.  Want to play football/ultimate/soccer /basketball/baseball?  Sounds like fun.  Go for a swim?  Sure.  Bike ride?  Why not?  With a strong body, you can do it all.   Strength is universally transferable to any activity.  It’s totally awesome to be strong.

That all being said, a lot of time can be wasted with poor training practices. There’s a lot of weak and inefficient advice out there, and I have taken most of it at one time or another. When you realize that the goal of strength training is the result (a stronger and better performing body), then getting the greatest return with the least time investment is of utmost importance. This is directly in line with a Sustainable Balance type approach: effective, but not overwhelming. A strength training program can be designed to be both very effective and time efficient.

For a few years, I had a different approach to my strength training program. I used to spend two hours a day, six days a week in the gym lifting weights and running on the treadmill. I got the results I wanted, but it came at a huge cost: time. Plus, I was always exhausted, and caught colds every couple months or so from being so run-down (I wouldn’t admit it at the time, but looking back, that’s what it was).

Nowadays, I am stronger and have more muscle than ever, and I accomplished this while training two and a half hours a week. And that’s tops. Some weeks are even less than that. It has freed up a lot of time to learn about other topics, develop other skills, form and maintain more relationships, and to simply enjoy life more knowing that I am physically developing myself as best I can without devoting the vast majority of my free time to it.

The strategy is two fold:

  1. Focus on compound exercises 
  2. Bring the intensity 

Compound exercises use multiple muscle groups and joints at once. Examples include the deadlift, the squat, the bench-press, shoulder press, pullups, and rows. These exercises work more of your body at once, and releases the most muscle building hormones.

Intensity means you give it everything you have at least once per exercise during the training sessions. This means pushing to the point where there isn’t another rep possible.This is called “failure” and it is when significant micro-tears occur in the muscle which upon recovery results in muscle growth.

This post will outline an efficient program for someone who’s fairly strong to begin with (intermediates), and comfortable enough in a gym environment. Next post I will be outlining ways to get stronger for real beginners.

Without further ado:

The Strength Training Program:

This program is heavily inspired by the training style of Martin Berkhan at Leangains, along with me throwing in a day for sprint training. It works off a seven day cycle (a “week” as they say), which is what generally works best for the modern world. Day 1 is Monday, Day 7 is Sunday. There are three training sessions per week (on a full week). Two are in the gym with weights and focuses on pure strength. One is a bodyweight/sprint day that focuses more on speed and power. The other workout can be done outside or on a track.

For each of the gym workouts, there are two “main” lifts, with the less important “assistance” lifts after. For the main lifts,  there are 5 total sets, in a pyramid fashion:

  1. Empty bar or bodyweight warm up
  2. Weighted warmup – 5-6 reps at ~60% of top weight)
  3. Top set – aim for 5 reps at top weight (to failure)
  4. Lower set – reps on top set +1 at 10% lower than top weight
  5. Cool down set – 7-8 reps at another 10% lower

Rest 2-3 minutes between sets. Maximum intensity is on the top set. Intensity is brought on the lower set as well, but do not go quite to failure.  Going to failure too often can result in burnout as it is very stressful. Progress is determined on the top set. If you get 5 reps, then the next week 5 lbs is added and you go for 5 again. If you only get 4 reps, then the next week you go for 5. This is called double progression and results in each week the goal being another rep, or a higher weight. There won’t be progress every workout, but over longer periods (length depending on training status), there most certainly will be.

After the two main lifts are done, 1-3 assistance exercises are selected. 1-2 sets of 6-10 reps for each assistance exercise. Progress the assistance lifts as well by going to failure on 1 or 2 of them once per workout and adding reps or weight every as you get stronger. If pressed for time, skip the assistance lifts and focus on the main lifts only; they are the most efficient. Progress the bodyweight and sprint day by trying for more reps and more and longer sprints, and if it’s an option, sprinting uphill. Every six weeks or so, take a week off, or really back off on the intensity. This will allow your body’s connective tissues and nervous system to recover, so you can keep this up indefinitely.

The “days” can be moved around a bit, but always leave at least once day between workouts, and try to get two days in a row off at least once a week. Recovery is a critical component to this program, but so is flexibility.

Here we go:

Day 1 – Push Day

Focus on squats and bench press:

Main lift 1 – Back or Front Squats (can alternate each week)
Main lift 2 – Bench press
Assistance exercises –  incline press (bench or dumbells), dips, calf raises, tricep extensions, shoulder press.

Time: 1 hour tops. 45 mins if you hustle.

Day 2 – Rest – Lots of walking!

Day 3 – Bodyweight and Sprint Day

Do the following 2-3 times (depending on your stamina):

Pushups: as many as you can
Pullups: as many as you can

Then, soon after (you may have to go outside):

6-10s sprint at about 50% intensity
1 min rest
6-10s sprint at about 80% intensity
1 min rest
6-10s sprint at 110% intensity (full out)
1 min rest

As many more 6-10s sprints as you can muster at full intensity. Once you can’t bring full intensity to your sprints with 1 min rests, you are done. Start walking around until you recover, and then go about your day.

Time: 25 mins tops.

Day 4: Rest – Lots of walking. Maybe some stretching or yoga to aid recovery.

Day 5: Pull Day

Focus on deadlifts and weighted chinups.

Main lift 1 – Deadlifts
Main lift 2 – Weighted chinups
Assistance exercises: weighted horizontal rows, shoulder shrugs, bicep curls, back extensions.

Time: 1 hour tops. 45 mins if you hustle.

Day 6 – Rest! Keep moving though.

Day 7 – Rest! Go for a long walk and toss a frisbee/smell the roses.

Total time: 2.5 hours tops of focused, effective training. More like two hours if you’re really efficient.

That oughtta do it. This is just a starting point, and can be adapted. As long as when you do train, you train hard, this is plenty!

Next post will be a simpler training schedule for beginners.

Until then,

G