Training

Being a good boy for Santa

December 21, 2011 · , · Børge Fagerli · 4 Responses

Just a short and sweet post today, lots of work to do before Christmas and I’m trying to be a really good boy these days – Santa is watching…remember that. Probably won’t get an Aston Martin this year, either – but it would probably just get stolen or ruined on the horrible Norwegian roads anyway…

Goals

I think people get too obsessed about goal-setting, having goals, working towards a goal, scoring a goal. I mean, how many of the goals for 2011 did you really accomplish? Is it a question of not having enough goals, or maybe the goals weren’t important enough to work for? Or perhaps they were unrealistic? Do you worry and stress about reaching your goal, to the point of feeling like a big failure because you can’t accomplish anything?

I would first of all suggest limiting yourself to one ultimate goal you REALLY want, instead of having many goals you don’t really care about, just because some self-help book told you.

A nice checklist is:

  • Make sure the goal is important enough to really work for.
  • Define the goal, and be specific about it – what/when/how – set a goal date and a timeline, register for a competition.
  • Aquire a strategy, read and learn about the best way of getting there, consult with a specialist or people who have succeeded before you.
  • Commit and get started. Tell your friends about it, make sure someone other than yourself holds you accountable for your actions.
  • Future-pace, see and feel and smell and hear what it would be like to have already experienced success, having already reached your goal. If you already did it in your mind, it will be easier to achieve in real life, too.
  • Monitor and evaluate your progress as you go, re-evaluate your strategy if needed.
  • The final and most important factor is: Celebrate when you reach your goal. Too many people put in months or years of work, and when they finally get what they want, they just go “meh, so I did that, now what?” Or always move the goal post so it’s impossible for them to score (also called ‘the perfectionist’). Look, if it was important enough to put in the time and effort to aquire, make a big deal out if it, let the world know, throw a party and invite 50 Cent and J-Lo, indulge in food and drinks, buy yourself something nice, travel and see the world, have some gratitious sex, whatever rocks your boat and makes it a special occasion. Why would you ever set goals if you knew you wouldn’t get rewarded for it?

Take 2 of these and call me in the morning

And sometimes, I would suggest not having a goal at all. How about just enjoying the process? Living from day to day and focusing on whatever is important to you NOW, instead of some random vague future-pacing. You don’t always need a map to enjoy the ride, just slow down and look at the road ahead of you, the trees, and the birds, and then on the road again so you don’t step in doggcrapp. (note to self: Don’t get lost in the metaphor, and don’t annoy Dante Trudell, he’s a big mofo).

Solution: Go to the gym and enjoy lifting some heavy-ass weights or some light weights just getting a bicep pump on, swing some kettlebells around, try out one of the weird exercises I’ve posted on my YouTube channel. Have fun. When was the last time you did that?

A simple auto-regulated routine

Some time ago, I wrote an article about a simple auto-regulation method from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, and I will sometimes default back to it when I just want a quick workout, as a combined controlled deload and strength program a high-volume phase, or for a lifter having problems understanding (or a need for) the more advanced RPE-based models. You will do 4 total sets for an exercise. The first two will be submax warm-ups, the last two you will go to failure (it’s perfectly fine to leave a rep in the tank, i.e an RPE 9).

A quick overview:

3RM Protocol	           6RM Protocol	          10RM Protocol
1: 50% – 6 reps	          50% – 10 reps	         50% – 12 reps
2: 75% – 3 reps	          75% – 6 reps	         75% – 10 reps
3: Failure with 3RM	  Failure with 6RM	 Failure with 10RM
4: Adj reps to failure	  Adj reps to failure	 Adj reps to failure
Reps from rep target in set 3 of 6RM - and then weight adjustment for set 4 (in kg)
-4 to -6	-2.5 to -5
-2 to -3	0 to -2.5
-1 to +1	No change
+2 to +4	+2.5 to +5
+5 and up	+5 to +7.5

A sample exercise if your (previous) 6RM is 100kg:

50kg – 10 reps
75kg – 6 reps

Now 3 scenarios for the 3rd set to failure
1:

100kg –  4 reps
97.5kg – 6 reps (use 97.5kg for set 3 next workout)

2:

100kg – 6 reps
100kg – 5 reps (use 100kg for 3rd set next workout)

3:

100kg – 9 reps
105kg – 8 reps (use 105kg or 107.5kg for 3rd set next workout)

The same basic premise goes for the 3RM and 10RM protocols. You will see this is not too far off from the Reverse Pyramid Training (RPT).

Here’s a simple 3 day routine I would recommend for this phase, with a low-moderate volume and frequency, focusing on compounds lifts and minimizing isolation work:

Day 1:

Bench – 3RM protocol
Deadlift – 3RM protocol
Chins – 6RM protocol
Biceps – 10RM protocol

Day 2:

Squat – 3RM protocol
Floor Press or Dips – 6RM protocol
Scapular plane Lateral Raises or Lying 1-arm Lateral Raise – 10RM protocol
Face Pull or additional Tricep work – 10RM protocol

Day 3:

Seated Wide Grip or 1-arm Rows – 6RM protocol
Incline DB Bench or JM-press – 10RM protocol
Leg Press or Lunges – 10RM protocol
Biceps or Leg Curl/GHR – 10RM protocol

Add some ab work of your choice, I like V-ups, rollouts, planks/bridge, Pallof and Vertical Pallof Press, and sometimes I throw in a couple of high-rep sets of crunches.

One superset I like is a max set of V-ups, followed by a front bridge for time – but one important trick is to squeeze the hell out of your ass. Ok, that sounded gay – but the point being that if you activate your glutes, your hip flexors will deactivate via reciprocal inhibition, and your abs will have to work that much harder. Do 2-4 total of these supersets and you will wince in pain whenever you cough or laugh the next day.

Next week, you may rotate the rep protocols if you’d like, so Day 1 could look like this:

Bench – 6RM protocol
Deadlift or RDL/SLDL – 6RM protocol
Chins/pulldowns – 10RM protocol
Biceps – 6RM protocol

Do this routine for at 4-6 weeks, then make some strategic changes, see my previous blog post for ideas…

Del

Taking a big dump

December 7, 2011 · , , · Børge Fagerli · 11 Responses

I’ve promised I would update my blog more frequently, and haven’t really fulfilled that promise lately. My mind is kinda unfocused these days, so it’s hard to build momentum for one of my trademark comprehensive multi-page posts on a particular topic. Instead, I’ll just make it a more bullet-point brain-dump type of post – more fun for me and hopefully still informative for you. I will make an effort not to elaborate too much , so feel free to ask for further information in the comments section if there’s something that caught your interest, but please don’t bombard me with article requests on everything…you’ll just have to wait for the book. Yeah, the one I’ve promised to finish for the last 5 years.

- Sometimes you’ll have to go that extra mile and push yourself out of your comfort zone to be exceptional instead of just average. I don’t care if it means having to say no to going out drinking the third weekend in a row, saying no to overtime-pizza at work, or going to the gym when you’re tired from studying/working and would really just like to watch TV and have a cookie or twenty. No one ever said it would be easy, and if it was – why do you think 60-70% of the population is overweight and ridden with lifestyle-related diseases? If you really want it, it is worth working hard for and you will do what it takes to achieve it. If you ask yourself: “It won’t hurt me too much if I eat this cookie/go partying/skip todays workout, will it?” The answer in your head will be “no, I’ll make it up tomorrow/next week/next year”. If you instead ask yourself: “Will this cookie/party/missed workout help me achieve my goal faster?”. The answer will again be: “No” but the mental process will more often lead you to the more productive decision. Life is too short to make excuses and rationalizations sabotaging your efforts and dreams.

- Sometimes you have to listen to your body and go easy instead of pushing yourself to failure and beyond. A lot of famous coaches who’ve consistently taken athletes to the Olympics knows that after making a personal best, the athlete is better off warming down and going home, going easy for a few days instead of pushing harder. It inevitably leads down the path to burn out, pulls/strains or even worse, devastating injury. Allow yourself to take a step back if you want to take 3 steps forward. Auto-regulation is the key to long-term progress, and although some of the methods seem complicated,  it is simply a set of rules teaching you to go easy when you’re not up for it and to push harder when you have the capacity to do so. Work to a ‘daily max’ not a ‘competition max’ when you’re at the gym.

- To sum up the above: Keep the hard days hard and the easy days easy. Good for recovery: walking for 30 minutes. Outside in the fresh air, not on a treadmill at a sweaty gym with an iPod glued to your ears. Simple way of ensuring you don’t go too hard: close your mouth and breathe through your nose. Unless you have a particularly big nose you won’t be able to go much harder than about 60% which is perfect.

- Food doesn’t automatically turn to fat. Making intelligent food choices and training regularly usually prevents this from happening, but another often forgot variable is HOW you eat your food. Sit down to eat in silent contemplation – without external noise such as TV, newspapers/magazines or the Internet. Properly masticate your food (it means ‘chewing’ silly), and take your time, enjoying every bite. It’s a good food habit, you’ll improve your fullness and satisfaction from the meal, you’ll reduce your stress levels, and you will get better digestion from it. Always being gassy and bloated, excepting any food intolerances, is a sign that you’re probably highly-strung and stressed out, always in a hurry, always feeling compelled to occupy yourself with something else, something more exciting. There’s so little time, so much to do. Well, stop it. Now. Eating is not a chore to get over with, and there’s not a pack of wolfes clawing at your door to hunt down and kill your sorry excuse for a chicken salad so chill the f* out. Food is nutrients, fuels your brain, your muscles, your internal organs – it’s what allows you to get stronger, faster, leaner, smarter, prettier, sexier, to recover faster, sleep better, feel better, feel happier…and to live and breathe at all.

FOOD, and not starvation built this body.

- Not diet foods, even though a majority think they are: rye crisp bread (Wasa), salad without chicken/meat/eggs/cheese or other protein source, 2 slices of bread instead of 4 even if there’s a (tiny) sliver of smoked ham on top, bacon/sausages and other overly processed meats (yes, even if it’s “30% less fat”), protein bars, low-carb (and high fat) cookies and cakes, low-fat (and high sugar) cookies and cakes’, breakfast cereal (oh, you really think your body needs a high-carb meal of which 30+% of it is sugar after sleeping for 8 hours?) Make better choices, and I generally subscribe to what the late fitness guru Jack LaLanne used to say: “If man made it, don’t eat it”. I completely disagree with another quote from him, though: “If it tastes good, spit it out”. It’s perfectly possible to eat healthy, nutritious food which tastes good. You don’t have to take a cooking class, just play around with various herbs and spices. Salt and pepper as a base. Use the natural sweetener Stevia (as of December 2nd legalized within the EU and by the EØS extension – Norway). Lemon juice (preferably freshly squeezed) and apple cider vinegar (yes, I know man made it, but I still love it). Salt, sweet, sour. It works.

- I got into the best shape of my life eating a crapload of carbs from white rice, and most of it with my evening meal. I broke at least 3 rules of dieting there. Here’s another: I did only 2 cardio sessions per week of 30 minutes each. Check out the Biorhytm Diet – also published as Biorytme Dietten in the Norwegian Treningsforum magazine and soon here at MyRevolution.no. Yes, I’m fully aware that the before-after pictures sucked, but it was a bad judgement call to even use pictures of myself and I admit that these were more misleading than enlightening. I deeply regret and repent my sins and promise to subject myself to daily sessions of flagellation (Wiki it). Still doesn’t detract from the fact that this eating pattern beats everything I’ve ever done in myself and my clients, and I’ve been doing this for 20 years.

- In GENERAL (no, it’s not a golden rule without exceptions), carb intake should scale with high-intensity activity, fat intake should scale with bodyfat %age. So a lean athlete with high volume weight training workouts and/or interval-type sports activities will stay lean and perform optimally on a high-carb, low-fat diet. Lots of low intensity long-distance stuff with a little pudge left to lose, feel free to jump on the low-carb bandwagon, you’ll probably feel great. At least until you lose fat.

- I’m a big fan of intervals to get in shape, but remember to look at your overall weekly training volume and intensity. If you’re already doing 4 high-volume weight workouts per week, adding 3-4 days of intervals on top of that is a recipe for disaster. On a related note, you can’t just go online or the read the most popular fitness author publication and pick and choose one diet here, a weight training program there, and then add a cardio routine from yet another source and think you’ll end up with a Perfect Program. You have to look at the context from which that diet/training program/cardio routine was taken from. You’re not that person, you don’t know what they have been doing to get to a position where they could get results from that diet or routine, or even if they’re getting results from it at all (look up what ‘ghost writer’ means). Take a good hard look at yourself first, decide where you want to go and set up an integrated strategy to achieve that goal – or hire a competent coach to do it for you. Emulating Arnold, Usain Bolt and Lance Armstrong with a PSMF on top of it all will annihilate you in a matter of days. Yeah, I know, when I put it like that it’s obviously pretty damn stupid, isn’t it? Well, just look around you – or in the mirror for that matter – it happens all the time. I’m guilty of it myself…

- Contrary to what some rehab experts want you to believe, we’re not all dysfunctional and should spend most of our time doing one arm-one leg kettlebell hip flexor stretching on a bosu-ball, while dumping the squats, benches and deadlifts which are responsible for millions of strong and muscular human beings throughout history. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Yeah, like a perfect hypochondriac we’re easy to convince that we’re one of those dysfunctionals, because lifting heavy weights is uncomfortable and just too damn hard. Many people are doing their sports and regular activites pain-free, yet with MRI abnormalites that would normally require surgery. Pain may very well be in your brain, not necessarily in your body, and mobility work a way of resetting the motor patterns in your brain which are perceived to be “safe”.

No, it won't make your back pain go away or improve your athleticism

- I used to hate on kettlebells simply because they were so overhyped. They’re a great tool and I find it fascinating that some will improve their deadlift numbers more from a few weeks of 12-24kg kettlebell swings than from actually deadlifting, but let’s not get carried away: it’s a lump of steel with a handle. Why didn’t anyone come up with a 3000 dollar Master Level Certification program for snow shoveling, changing to winter tires, christmas shopping on a Saturday afternoon, or cross-country skiing with two broken poles? All are just as hard and painful to do. That last one is speaking from personal experience and took me 6 hours to get home. Lesson learned: if you’re over 100kg spend some extra cash on steel poles. I bought a snowboard after that trip.

- If you generally feel sleepy, moody, lack energy and motivation – you’re probably affected by the so-aptly-named SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder. I don’t like labeling everything that one happens to feel or think – everyone talks to themselves inside their head without necessarily being schizofrenic – but SAD is very much a real case of the winter blues caused by lack of sunlight. My recommendation is to take 2000-5000IU of Vitamin D3 per day and invest in a light-therapy lamp. The lamp provides the full spectrum and intensity of light (about 10,000 lux) you would experience on a bright summer day, without UV- or IR-light. All you have to do is sit in front of it while reading or working on your computer. You won’t get a tan, but you’ll feel more awake and generally more pleasant to be around. If that still doesn’t work, physical touch is proven to help so pet a dog or a cat. Or a monkey (would you like to pet my monkey huh-huh-huh). If that doesn’t work either, it could very well be that you’re just an asshole. And for that, I am sorry.

- Intermittent fasting should be a lifestyle and comfortable/convenient eating pattern, it’s not magic or a religion, and there’s not even a lot of human data in active people or lifters showing it to be superior to a more regular eating pattern. In my experience, it works for maybe 30-40% of people, yet you don’t hear much about the 60-70% who could never adapt to it, still feeling hungry and lethargic 2+ weeks later, or didn’t really get any better results from it. For someone with an active lifestyle and working to improve their fitness level, I would never recommend willingly going without food for a whole 24 hours, there are better ways of managing your weekly calorie balance and it doesn’t ‘detox’ you or some silly shit like that (pun intended). I’m not picking on IF here, as I could say the same thing about the 6 meal per day pattern, LCHF, PSMF, Zone or whatever. It’s about finding out what works for YOU without feeling the need to go all missionary about it trying to convince the world there’s only one way of doing things. Yeah, I know it doesn’t sell books, products or attract website traffic, but I think a good author or coach should tell you what you need to know to make your own informed decisions and try something different if whatever you’re doing isn’t working.

Del

Pulling the trigger on stretching

November 23, 2011 · · Børge Fagerli · 13 Responses

One of the most debated topics is the one of the how’s and why’s of stretching. Personally, I have an ambivalent relationship with it, and I’ll try to make today’s blog post short and to the point. I can hear all of you say “yeah, like I believe THAT” – Well, I’m sort of like a big car, hard to get rolling but also hard to stop once I’m on a roll. In the same vein, I’m also expensive to fuel and maintain, smelly and noisy, but that’s another topic for another day. So when I finally get the time and inclination to write something, I’m a wordy bastard, but usually I have something of substance to write about so if you don’t like reading, feel free to move on.

First, there’s static stretching where you basically put the muscle under tension and just hold it for a prescribed duration or until you feel the muscle release and lengthen. I will say upfront that most of the time I think static stretching is a waste of time. I’ve tried all variations of it on myself and clients for decades and so far not impressed with the effects. Yes, it may feel good and relaxing, but in my experience there is no long-lasting or functional results on it. There’s sufficient research showing that there are minor or non-existent advantages for injury prevention, reducing DOMS or even improving functional flexibility and mobility.

You see, there is no actual plastic deformation going on in the tissue, that would take far more tension and duration than you could ever generate or tolerate, at least not without a heavy dose of anesthetics and booze in your system. The changes are mostly neural in nature, meaning – you get better at tolerating the pain associated with the stretch, and the body gets more “familiar with” the stretch, so to speak. Well, isn’t that the point? No, as you can’t really USE it for anything. Back in the days when I was into martial arts, I thought it would be cool to do side splits so I stretched and stretched for hours. After a thorough warm-up and slowly easing into it I could finally get all the way down to the floor. Yay. Except, if I tried a high side kick it felt like my balls would rip off. As soon as I cooled down I lost the increased range of motion, and what’s the point in having flexibility you have to warm up and stretch forever to display?

You have offended my sister, and now I must kill you by kicking you in the head. Just stand still for half an hour until I have finished warming up.

The only use I see for static stretching is for light loading and retaining tissue length when coming back from a muscle strain or tear, until you can load it properly. And maybe to inhibit e.g. the hip flexor when doing glute activation exercises. And even then, I’d note that I’ve seen aggressive stretching of the hip flexor in particular only making things worse, irritating it and seizing up instead of improving hip mobility.

My preferred way of increasing mobility and flexibility is first working through any restrictions or trigger points - what most people term a muscle “knot” or “spasm”. It is indeed a real phenomena where parts of a muscle will tightly contract, inhibiting blood flow and accumulating metabolic waste products, irritating surrounding nerves and often referring pain to other parts of the body. I.e. lower back pain may actually originate from trigger points in your piriformis or glutes. The most effective means of treating a trigger point is by a qualified manual therapist, and I will submit that Active Release Therapy (ART) is the closest thing to ‘magic’ I’ve ever seen in this regard. In Norway, contact ART Klinikken for more information (now offering treatments in Oslo-Lysaker, as well as certifying professionals throughout the country), or find a qualified therapist via the official site.

You can also treat trigger points yourself, here’s a link to a great symptom checker and here’s a list of the most common trigger points.

I’ve used a foam roller for a long time, but when I came across the Rumble Roller the difference was just incredible! All those little knobs really get into the muscle and the more you roll, the more trigger points you will find, and the better you will release them. Highly recommended, and since my intent with MyRevolution is to publish and sell only the stuff that works – I recently started importing them and you can find them in our webshop here…

 

When tissue quality is taken care of, it’s simply a matter of gradually and progressively moving the muscle through its full range of motion with various dynamic warm-up drills prior to exercise. Also useful post-exercise as well, especially after strenous work and heavy loading. I’ve posted two videos (upper body – lower body) earlier and will get more posted soon. Since improvements in flexibility are a result of the brain sensing the new range of motion as “safe” then you should avoid pain at all costs. A mild tension is ok, but don’t push it hard thinking you will get better results – on the contrary the brain will perceive it as dangerous and tense up, exactly the opposite of what you want.

When you are beginning to aquire active ROM you should make sure to strengthen the muscle concurrently. I like PNF or loaded stretching as in the DC method for this, but SLOWLY working up in load. Contract the muscle to ensure you transfer the load to contractile structures vs. connective tissue and again – avoid pain at all costs. Under sufficient tension or a rapid increase in tension, as is bound to happen in sports, tears or strains will sooner or later manifest themselves. This is why my personal view of the “golden rule” of working a muscle through it’s full ROM is at best dumb and misguided, at worst dangerous and harmful. Some people don’t have the mobility or the structure to do stuff like ass-to-the-grass squats or touching the bar to the chest when benching, at least not without proper alterations in stance/grip width, setup and technique. Most of the time you will get better results working within the muscle’s optimal length-tension relationship, in practical terms cutting off 10-20% of the ROM at both ends. By not locking out the weight you will keep tension on the muscle and, at least in the context of higher reps (>6-8) it will enhance the training effect greatly via occlusion/hypoxia and hyperemia (I’ve talked about this many times before, most recently in a previous article).

Do a floor press and you will notice that the ones who get away with hoisting big weights in the bench press can touch the bar to their chest without letting the elbows go lower than the floor (or an imaginary floor when lying on a bench) hence preserving the integrity of the shoulder capsule and rotator cuff. If you notice the bar stopping 10cm above your chest when your elbows hit the floor, what do you think will happen to your shoulder when you lie on a bench and let a 100+kg bar force itself all the way down to your chest? Heresy to many, I know, but I postulate that it will drastically improves strength and muscle mass gains while reducing injury risk dramatically if you start working within your functional and safe ROM. In fact, if you take a look at a proper setup and technique by the greatest powerlifters, you will see that they optimize the ROM by effectively shortening it – while distributing the load evenly between the involved joints and muscles.

Should probably limit his bench press ROM to avoid shoulder injury

Will most likely be able to do injury-free benches for years. And lift twice as much as the guy above.

A tangential note is from back in the days when I tried Power Factor Training by Sisco and Little (google it). Yeah, it was pretty much useless for most intents and purposes, as the ROM was just too short for most exercises and didn’t really reach my definition of the optimal length-tension part of the ROM – so let me state upfront that I don’t recommend it. For squats, though, I remember increasing the load in what was basically a half squat from 200kg for about 15 reps to 300kg and 25 reps over a period of  a couple of months. My legs have never grown faster or been as big before. In later years training for powerlifting I got up to about 260kg for a single and only managed to hurt my hips and my back, with smaller legs to boot. I don’t have the best structure for the lift so squats have always been my nemesis, but I’ve recently started cutting off depth again and poundages are now going up by leaps and bounds. Yeah, I know it’s not “hardcore” or that I will ever win (or compete) in a powerlifting contest, but frankly I don’t give a damn, my body ain’t getting any younger and having struggled through a LOT of injuries and pains throughout the years I think I’ll do it my way for now. Oh, and it seemed to work just fine for Charlie Francis’ and his sprinters – Ben Johnson regularly lifted 280kg/620lbs in half squats at a bodyweight of 90kg/200lbs. Drug-charges aside, and a whole lot of controversy I won’t get into here (read Speed Trap if you’re interested) he’s still considered one of the fastest men on earth.

If you can do a proper bodyweight squat, below parallel and without rounding your back, go ahead and do squats – you have the needed mobility and most likely a suitable structure. A vast majority of lifters either need extensive mobility work, alterations in technique, or to drop deep squats altogether.

 

So in summary:

- Release any restrictions and trigger points.

- Dynamically work the muscle through a pain-free ROM while gradually loading it within reasonable limits, bodyweight will be sufficient for most purposes.

- Restrict the heavy loading to a safe ROM within your own structural capabilites and the optimal length-tension relationship of the muscle.

Del

Missing the beach for all the sand

November 14, 2011 · , · Børge Fagerli · 6 Responses

beachrunning

I like the beach better than the forest, so I took the liberty of creating my own metaphor. This one is in reference to people getting stuck on minor and irrelevant details in their nutrition and training programs, missing the perspectives and foundations which are absolutely needed to reach their goals. It’s like worrying about what shoes to wear when the house is on fire, when you’d better get the hell out of there if you want to have any feet to put those shoes on in the first place.

The energy balance equation is simplistically speaking a matter of energy in (the food you eat) minus calories out (the activity you generate), and I’m going to talk about both sides of that equation today.

Yeah, I also preach the term “a calorie is not a calorie” but let’s step away from the dumb strawman arguments where we’re working within a world of (I was hoping I could fit in more w-words here) more realistic calorie numbers and breakdowns, not a thousand calories of sugar compared to a thousand calories of whey compared to a thousand calories of lard. Good? Great.

So, in order to add mass to your body, be it muscle (yay) or fat (omg no) – you have to generate a caloric surplus. And vice versa, in order to lose mass you have to generate a caloric deficit. Yes, it is indeed possible to add muscle while losing fat, I’ve done it quite successfully with a number of clients and in myself, but let’s focus on the big perspectives here – as that is the whole point of today’s blog post.

A guy – yes, I also wonder why there aren’t more girls asking this question – wants to gain more muscle and tells me upfront he’s eating “lots” of food. If we for a moment assume that his training is perfect (I never do, but let’s not get distracted), what is his problem? He’s not eating ENOUGH food and/or he’s moving around too much. I don’t care how many gainer shakes he’s slamming down or what magic super supplement he’s buying, or even if he’s pharmaceutically enhanced. If the scale isn’t moving his energy balance equation is in perfect harmonious equilibrium and he’s simply burning up all the calories he’s eating. Fixing the issue is a matter of logging what he’s eating NOW, and then just increasing something. To be more helpful, if the protein intake is already in the range of 2-2.5g and fats around 0.6-1g pr kg bodyweight, I would tend to add carbs and place them in the post-workout meal(s). If he’s in the upper ranges of what I recommend in bodyfat (12%+) and also not moving around too much, I would add some fats instead of carbs. Yeah, I already mentioned in a previous blog post that I don’t think low carb diets are optimal if you’re lean and with a high training volume, so that’s why. If I had my way with him – yup, that sounded gay – then I would actually first lower his bodyfat to single digits (7-8% or so) and then increase calories by adding in some carbs.

I would also look at the other side of the equation. Some seem to think that while increasing calories to support mass gains is obvious, they fall into the trap of thinking that they should add cardio to burn fat in the process. Well, that’s like turning up the heat and then opening all doors and windows. And the fridge. You add calories and then burn them right up again. Not only will cardio indirectly inhibit muscle growth by burning up the calories the body was hoping to use for muscle growth and recovery, it will directly inhibit muscle growth by sending endurance-specific adaptive signals to the muscle which cancels out the anabolic signals. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do any cardio when the goal is muscle growth, as I’m convinced it is absolutely needed to optimize recovery and the nutrient/oxygen supply to the muscle both during and between those grueling weight training sessions. It’s just a matter of degrees, and moderation is key here. I already talked about this in my previous blog post, so go read it for my recommendations.

When lifting weights, don’t make it into a cardio workout. If you’re spending more than 1-1.5hrs in the gym and keeping a fast pace the whole time, a first step would be cutting your volume by 30% or more. 4 sets for an exercise might be needed if you’re moderately advanced, and even up to 8 sets – but doubling the work doesn’t equate to double the gains. It’s more like 5-10% extra, so have a closer look at the return-of-investment numbers and realize that without sufficient calories to support training, your results would actually be better by doing less, not more.

Some type of daily activity is recommended, especially if your job is sedentary, and you drive a car everywhere – even if the grocery store is just around the corner. Then you have the high-strung people with a physical job, walking or biking to work, and generally fidgeting around a lot (you know the type). There’s no need to add more activity to that, and if you have a hard time eating more you should seriously consider moving around LESS. As the saying goes: Keep the easy days easy and the hard days hard. If you want the energy to beat your personal records in the gym, you can’t spend your off days doing lots of other types of training or moving furniture for your grandmother. Alright, I’ll give grandma priority here, it’s not often she and her 20 cats moves into the penthouse apartment of a building with 10 flights of stairs and no elevator – but at least take the train/subway to work and skip the Crossfit and Tabatas you had planned that day, ok?

Now for the girls who want to “tone up” or more practically speaking, lose some fat without losing that precious muscle mass in the process. Cuz’ you know, you actually need to have some muscle under there if you want to look anything like the fitness models you idolize. They spent years and years slowly building up that muscle mass, it didn’t magically appear overnight just because they had the courage to add weight plates to the barbell in the squat rack, or have a few protein shakes here and there. I realize men want to lose fat, too – I’m just picking on the girls here because I see the same story all too often.

I already covered the training aspect, and to sum up – it’s not as simple as looking at the calorie burn on your heart monitor and assume that ‘more is better’. It’s a matter of sending the correct signals to the body.

On the intake side, I could write books on it – and someday, like two weeks from next never, I’ll probably get a grasp on my OCD-perfectionist brain and get one published. Meanwhile, I’ll just give a brief overview of both sides of the coin – overdoing it and underdoing it.

First, the girls who are underdoing it. I don’t have any interesting stories to share, it’s mostly about grossly underestimating how much food they’re actually eating during a day. Some will tell me they’re not eating more than 1000kcals per day being 80kgs and still not losing weight. They’re doing that magical low-carb diet and still not losing weight. What fat burner is the best? Are almonds more healthy than walnuts, and how about avocados compared to olives? They hate olives but if that’s the magic ingredient they will damn well learn to like them, or smother them with butter and cream to make them go down.

I have them send me a food log, and notice that most of the time they don’t even know how much oil they’re adding to their salad, or how many calories that one piece of chocolate in between every friggin’ meal is adding up to. Or how 3 sticks of sugar in the coffee-macchiato-latte-special with cream and hazelnut syrup actually adds up to almost 1000kcals all by itself. Sure, a low-carb diet is going to feel like magic because you’re excluding a whole macronutrient, and thusly a whole lot of calorie-dense cookies, potato chips and fries – as well as adding in protein-laden foods like cheese, bacon and cream effectively filling you up like a ton of bricks and automatically lowering your overall calories. The same thing can be said for Intermittent Fasting, and even low-fat diets. It’s all about finding a diet you can stick to, one that inherently imbalances the energy balance equation to create a daily deficit, for long enough to make a difference in the long run.

And if you spend 24hrs of the day in a chair, couch, car seat, bed or toilet – get up and move around more. Do you burn more calories on the treadmill or on the spinning bike? How about walking backwards, does that burn more calories? Look, we can spend time discussing the finer points of MET values and the accuracy of a formula you found on the internet, but that’s just going to waste time where you could be doing SOMETHING. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you’re nowhere near being at a level where a 5% difference is going to matter in the long run. It’s all about finding an activity you can stick to – “one that inherently imbalances the energy balance equation to create a daily deficit, for long enough to make a difference in the long run.”

So how about making it something fun? Go dancing, roller skating, riding the toboggan with the kids (rattkjelke for the Norwegians), or running along the beach in the sunset with a greek playboy. This sentence was sponsored by Star Tour – now offering special discounts for girlfriends traveling to Greece this fall. Stop wasting time trying to find the perfect diet or cardio routine and learn how to do table push-aways, eating until full and only eating when hungry. Get off your ass once in a while, do something fun with family and friends. Let’s talk when that stops working for you. It will probably work just great for a long time.

The overdoing it category is best illustrated by telling a story about a client of mine. A girl who is extremely dedicated, ambitious and hard-working – but alas, those qualities also bites her in the ass by making her overly detail oriented and obsessive over irrelevant details. I could say that about many of my clients, and about myself – I guess it sort of comes with the territory – but I’m just using her as an opportunity to illustrate what I’m talking about. Now, let’s call her K, is working a physically demanding job – being on her feet, carrying heavy stuff – even people – for 8 hours or more 5 days per week. And sometimes on the weekends, because she tends to be too nice to say ‘No’ when someone asks her to cover an extra shift. She’s also spending 1hr+ in the gym lifting weights 3-4 times per week. To top it off, she’s running errands, shopping, walking the dog, intervals etc etc – and we’re probably talking an additional 1-2hrs of higher caloric burn 7 days per week. I’ve had to be VERY careful with her diet and just bringing the calories down slowly, strategically adding more if I see indicators of overdoing things – since we don’t really have much control of the activity level when the job is what puts food on the table. And the dog needs to poop, for god’s sake.

Cesar Milan will show you how you can conserve calories by teaching the dogs how to walk each other. Win-win.

She will incessantly worry about any small deviations in her diet if unplanned events come up, or even the planned events but where it’s difficult to control the calorie intake. She and her boyfriend was invited to a family dinner at her mother’s house one Sunday. Her mother being aware of K’s need for healthy and nutritious food, went out of her way to prepare broiled chicken breasts just for her. K then noted in her progress report how she almost freaked out because her mother had put oil on the chicken, and while some – probably all of it – had dripped into the pan below she couldn’t tell how much fat was in there.

Now, stop for a moment and think about it, because that’s what I told K to do. I’m not out to embarass or pick on her, because the problem was very real to her at that time . It’s just that sometimes you have to take twenty (or more) steps back and take a bird’s eye view of things (yeah, I realize that would make it 20 steps up in the air) to gain the proper perspective. It will avoid a lot of emotional distress if you’re one of those unfortunate souls plagued by the same thought process as K here. Her caloric expenditure over the week is probably in the 2500-3000/day range. The diet I set up for her is creating a daily deficit in the range of 500-1000kcals depending on the day, with a free meal one day per week where she can satisfy any cravings and at the most ending up at maintenance calories. That’s easily 30-35 meals per week, of which one is slightly more calories than the others. But this was added calories she hadn’t planned beforehand, and obviously that’s a good reason to panic. I’m being facetious here, and I have a right to be.

Her mother knows all too well how health conscious and fat-phobic K is, and most mothers are pretty good cooks who will add just enough oil to moisten and flavour the meat, so I doubt it was more than a couple of tablespoons (20-30g) of fat. Or maybe her mother is working for Satan himself, and is an awful cook to boot, so she poured the stuff on there. Still, most of it ended up in the pan below, so I seriously doubt there was more than 20g of fat in K’s chicken breasts. That’s 180kcals. So the day’s deficit was reduced to 320-820kcals, which is still a deficit. Even if her mother was Satan himself (herself?) and made sure K ended up in a surplus, a body subjected to the type and amount of training K’s doing would partition the calories into muscle growth and to cover energy and recovery needs.

People get fat by creating a caloric surplus every day from junk food, and partitioning calories eaten into fat stores by sitting on their ass all day. So why is it that so many in K’s situation would ass-ume that applies to them and they would wake up fat the next morning and hire an exorsist to rid their mother of her demonic possession? Why do you not demand the same amount of obsessive control of your activity level? Strap on a heart rate monitor with a calorie burn function (yes, they are highly inaccurate, but bear with me here). Once you reach 2000kcals, I don’t freakin care if you’re in the middle of the pedestrian crossing during rush hour traffic, you have to collapse on the ground and not move a muscle for the rest of the day. Call your parents to come pick you up and strap you to the bed until it’s midnight and officially a new day, then you can move again. Just don’t let it happen again.

Sometimes it’s a good idea to take ten million steps back and gain some overall perspective, considering both sides of the energy balance equation and doing the stuff that matters the most, not get stuck on the stuff that matters the least. Run lightly along that beach and enjoy the fresh air and the sunset. If you just stare at the sand you’ll eventually trip, faceplant and hurt yourself. Been there, done that.

(And I also ran out of good metaphors.)

Del

Your body is listening – what are you telling it?

November 3, 2011 · , · Børge Fagerli · 5 Responses

For those familiar with my methods, you know that my mantra is: Listen to your body. Meaning, auto-regulation in your training where you work up to a daily max and using a set of rules, let your body tell you how heavy to lift and for how many sets that day. Don’t force-feed yourself to gain muscle unless you want to gain a lot of fat. Take your time and train in such a manner as to make the body hungry for nutrients. Don’t starve yourself when you want to lose fat unless you want to reduce fat burning, increase the potential for muscle loss, and feel awful in general. I realize that many correlate pain and suffering with results, but it is time to stop trying to force your body into doing what you want it to do, and start cooperating with it instead.

It is also time to realize that this intrinsic relationship is mutual – not only should you listen to your body, but YOU should become a lot more aware of what messages you are giving it. Everything from the type, intensity and volume of training to what nutrients you are feeding it at what time will determine what adaptions you get out of it.

To lose fat you need to create a deficit, so it should be as simple as doing endless hours of cardio to expend as much energy as possible, while eating as little as possible – except the bare necessities of protein to spare muscle and some EFAs for hormones and health. Obviously, that doesn’t really work too well unless you are extremely obese and have sufficient stored fat to cover such a dramatic energy deficit, or for a very short time – generously helped by powerful fat burners and even more potent drugs. The body is a survival machine so it will do everything in its power to keep you alive.

Food and diet

I already touched on the subject of diet in a previous blog post, and the most important message was that research shows the genetic response is determined not only by the calorie intake but also the ratio of carbs, proteins and fats. A balance of 30-40% of each macronutrient seemed to be the best, at least for the sedentary and slightly overweight people (and rats). The various low-carb approaches so popular these days will also work great, but – and here’s the understatement of the year – I’m not a big fan of these approaches for leaner people with a higher activity level or for a lifestyle approach for long-term health. I prefer more carbs the leaner you are and the more high-intensity training (or overall volume) you do. Lower carbs and higher fats are fine if you sit around all day and do brief low volume weight training such as HIT, and low-moderate intensity (“please kill me now”-boring) treadmill for cardio, or if your bodyfat isn’t in the single digits yet.

So balance carbs according to your needs and the body will store them in muscle to fuel workouts, don’t believe anyone telling you that carbs will make you fat. Or fats for that matter. Nothing will make you fat unless you eat a lot more than your body needs, so the culprit is the caloric surplus – unless you’re creating a stimulus which tells the body to partition the extra calories into muscle building and recovery. That changes everything.

Protein sounds simple on paper – just eat enough of it at each meal. Sort of. You also have to consider the quality of proteins. We know that whey will impact muscle protein synthesis to a larger degree than it’s milky counterpart casein, and both of them – especially combined – are superior to soy protein. Even if you double up on the soy protein the effect is still better with milk proteins. I would argue that humans thrive on animal-derived proteins instead of vegetable-derived, and research supports it, but I won’t take it further than that as vegetarians do not easily forgive and forget. And I wouldn’t want to be chased down with a sharpened cucumber just because I told you to drink milk/whey+casein shakes or load up on meat and eggs. Additionally, a higher protein intake increases satiety and TEF (Thermic Effect of Feeding) so replacing the same amount of calories from carbs or fats with proteins will make the body spend more calories to process them.

Fats also tell your body different things, it seems as if society is catching up to the fact that saturated fats aren’t the silent killer as science is showing us how components of animal fats can be very beneficial to humans. Whole milk build more muscle than skim milk even when the servings were isocaloric – i.e. they increased the skim milk serving to match the calories of the whole milk serving, and even with less proteins and carbs the whole milk outperformed the skim milk. Coconut oil contains 50% medium chain triglycerides (MCT) and these fats are actually oxidized for energy instead of stored in fat cells. And also contains some of the saturated fats believed to be involved in muscle growth (also found in whole milk). Omega-3 fats (DHA, EPA and DPA) tells the fat cells to store less fat and release more. Omega-6 fats found in many vegetable oils induce inflammation and increases fat storage compared to the omega-3 and omega-9s.

So you see, it’s not just all about the calories, but what you – or rather the foods you are eating – is telling your body to do.

Training

I think this is where most people are really confused, and where the body is receiving mixed messages. Confusing the muscles. Which according to a lot of personal trainers is the key to success, right? So why aren’t their clients getting stronger and leaner, and more importantly: why isn’t the trainer lean and muscular if this was true? Because it doesn’t work that way. Well, not the way most people apply it, at least. Read yesterdays blog post to learn to what I think about muscle confusion… A planned and strategic change in certain variables will have a profound and positive effect, but trying to make your body good at what is essentially conflicting training goals is what I refer to as: Jack of All Trades, Master of None. Try to be good at everything and you will end up being mediocre. Crossfit is a perfect example of that, but I already pissed off the vegetarians so I won’t go there. Today.

Tell your body to build its tolerance to long and slow enduring miles via a properly applied long-distance running program and you will be a good marathon runner. Tell your body to build large muscles by, and I quote myself from yesterday: Lift a sufficiently heavy load, sufficiently many times (sets and reps), sufficiently often (frequency) to make the muscle adapt and grow larger and stronger. Tell your body to become faster by doing short sprints with full recovery, overspeed methods, low rep and explosive training with some strategic plyometrics and agility drills – and you will become a better track & field athlete, sprinter, fighter or attacker in soccer or basketball.

So why do some people insist on trying to train like all of the above and end up like some sort of super-human hybrid runner/fighter/bodybuilder? Long slow miles build endurance champions, but they look completely different from sprinters, don’t you think? Because the first is telling their muscle to become more energetically efficient, i.e. smaller and with increased oxidative capacity, strengthening the “aerobic engine”. The latter requires muscles displaying highly powerful and explosive contractions and developed ATP-CP system since a race only lasts for 10-40 seconds depending on the distance. A typical workout for a sprinter is 10-15 repeats from 10-100 meters with full recovery (walking) of 2-3 minutes in between. Far from the 60+ minutes of treadmill or spinning classes done by 90% of girls in gyms around the world. Yet, who wouldn’t want to look like Usain Bolt or our own Christina Vukicevic? In fact, I know guys who would want to look like Christina Vukicevic.

Not doing any powerwalking or 2hr cardio sessions on the treadmill.

Most of you reading this blog is probably interested in a leaner and more muscular physique, so why would you confuse your muscles with the training of a middle- to long-distance runner? And this, I think, applies to girls in particular as you are the ones most prone to think that it’s all about the caloric burn. Since the heart rate monitor is telling you that 30 minutes of cardio burnt 200kcals, and since a magazine article told you that low/moderate-intensity cardio burns the most fat, you should go for 1-2hrs if you REALLY want to burn fat. Right? Wrong, and it’s actually been shown that the female body can preferentially mobilize fat from the upper body and store them right back in their lower bodies. There are probably evolutionary reasons why women’s bodies are extremely sensitive to lots of cardio and lack of food, and yet they are the most adamant at doing exactly that. Long-duration cardio directly inhibits muscle growth, so you’re sabotaging your efforts of “toning” your butt, too. But hey, if you really want a skinny-fat ass and legs, keep doing what you’re doing.

Sure, you may burn more fat DURING the session itself by doing low- and moderate intensity cardio, but what happens the other 22-23 hours of the day is more important.  There’s a reason why most long-term studies show high-intensity intervals to be superior for fat loss, even if it’s mainly glycolytic in nature and burns less calories on an acute basis it will tell your body to burn more fat for energy while resting and recovering – while the carbs you eat will go to refilling muscle glycogen. Not making you fat.

Long slow miles built this champion. The great Ingrid Kristiansen.

Oh, and most women shouldn’t be running anyway…

I’m rambling, so let me get to the point: Short and intense activity will tell your body to grow larger, stronger muscles, and to become (cliché alert) A Lean, Mean Fat Burning Machine.

My favourite types of cardio

1. sprint intervals, where you go hard (90-100% effort) for 5-15 seconds, then easy for 20-60 seconds. 5-10 minutes of this 2-3 times per week. Including a 5 minute warm-up and 10-15 minute cool-down (easy walking) total duration will be in the 20-30 minute range. No, I don’t recommend Tabata intervals for most people. There are more interesting ways of killing yourself. Activities: pushing a car across a parking lot (put it in neutral and release the parking brake, stupid), hill sprints, prowler/sled pushing or dragging, elliptical or rower set at high resistance, Airdyne bike, barbell/dumbell/kettlebell complexes, heavy bag work for fighters.

2. tempo intervals, where you go at a slightly lower intensity (around 70-80%) for 30-60 seconds, easy for 90-120 seconds. Total duration 20-30 minutes. Think elliptical, rower, Airdyne, skipping rope, track running (football/soccer stadium preferred), but I can allow a limited amount of high incline treadmill running.

3. I generally don’t recommend long duration moderate intensity cardio, but for recovery purposes or if you’re sedentary during the day – a brisk walk for 20-60 minutes is great and can be done on a daily basis since it is low intensity in nature (heart rate range of 110-140bpm). I recommend this option exclusively (and no intervals) if you’re already doing 4-5 high volume weight training workouts like some bodybuilders and powerlifters. Adding intervals to this would probably destroy you.

The infamous 4×4 intervals? Overhyped, but sure – if you’re a heart patient, or competitive athlete in sports requiring different physical qualities – but only for certain phases of the year, and not to the exclusion of more sport-specific training. For physique-, fitness- and strength athletes – rarely, if ever.

So I guess you’re asking, what is the Perfect Program? Again, context…but generally – and these guidelines obviously do NOT apply to the endurance weenies:

Off-season, for explosive type sports and for gaining strength and lean muscle:
2-4 cardio sessions per week, usually no more than 1-2 x 20 minutes sessions of intervals, 1-2 sessions of brisk walking for 20-30 minutes. If you’re doing 3 short workouts of weights per week, you can get away with more cardio, if that’s your cup of tea. If your workouts resemble Arnold’s or Ronnie Coleman’s, you probably shouldn’t do any cardio at all. You should also slap yourself in the face and rethink your training routine, as it’s not going to work without superior genetics and a boatload of pharmaceuticals. But I digress.

For fat loss or contest prep:
3-6 cardio sessions per week, of which sprint intervals no more than 1-2 days per week, tempo intervals another 2-3 days per week, 20-30 minutes total duration per session, and watch for signs of overtraining/overreaching. Doing too much high-intensity work when your recovery is already compromised by a calorie deficit is a seriously stupid idea. I let the diet do the majority of the work, but that definitely doesn’t mean I will cut calories hard. If you never dieted for a contest before, allow yourself double the time you THINK you need – i.e. most first-time competitors should aim for 20+ weeks of slow and steady dieting to get really lean. Then you won’t have to kill yourself with PSMF-type diets and 2 hour cardio sessions because you’re not leaning out as fast as you thought you would. I will often recommend reducing leg training frequency down to 1x/week as well.

So a typical training week deep into contest prep, only 4-6 weeks from competition date – and this ONLY an example, not a template to copy indiscriminantly:

Monday:
Morning: Tempo intervals, 5min warm-up, 30secs high intensity, 90secs low intensity for 20mins, 5 min cool-down. 30min total duration. .
Afternoon: Lighter chest, laterals for shoulders, some triceps work

Tuesday:
Sprint intervals – 5 min warm-up, 10 x go hard for 10 secs, easy for 40 secs. Easy walking for 12 minutes. Total duration 25 minutes.

Wednesday:
40min brisk walk in the morning

Thursday:
40min brisk walk in the morning.
Afternoon: Lats and biceps

Friday:
Morning: Tempo intervals, same as Monday
Afternoon: Chest and back – horizontal pulling focus (rows and deadlifts)

Saturday:
20-30 min brisk walk and easy mobility work or rest

Sunday:
20-30min brisk walk in the morning (or I might have someone do sprint intervals on the same day as legs)
Afternoon: Legs

Conclusion: Stop confusing your body, and start telling it what you really want.

This is what happened when I told Mette Ulseth’s body what we wanted it to do
Del

The Perfect Program

November 2, 2011 · · Børge Fagerli · 10 Responses

I’ve found The Perfect Program. Yes, I tell you, it’s true.

The problem is that I didn’t find it in a book or on the Internet, nor did I find it by copying some random athlete or lifter who looks buff. How many of you have tried that, and made it work? C’mon, raise your hand! Not many, huh?

You see, to find The Perfect Program, you have to start by understanding the basic principles of training – and you can make them really complicated (I have a tendency to do that) or you can make them very simple and basically sum them up into: Eat, Lift, Grow. And the bros on the forums who just get tired of looking for The Perfect Program, or for all the noobs asking for The Perfect Program will in the end just break down and tell you just that.

It can be summed up in a better way: Lift a sufficiently heavy load, sufficiently many times (sets and reps), sufficiently often (frequency) to make the muscle adapt and grow larger and stronger.

Then you can begin to look at stuff that I get very OCD about – how the different variables affect the muscle on a microscopic level and stimulate an adaption.

I will probably bore you with more details in a later post, so today I’m just going to make it short and sweet:

- First, look at what you have been doing, training-wise, up until now.

- Second, look at what you ARE doing now, and how that’s working for you.

- Based on the above two, you can make a qualified guess about what The Perfect Program for YOU will be right NOW. Because sadly, The Perfect Program isn’t just one program broken down into a perfect harmony of exercises, loads, sets and reps. If there was such a thing, I could just publish it, be a millionaire in no time and stop working as a coach – my purpose would have been served and I could just sit around in my boxers and watch reruns of Oprah all day, scratch my balls and eat my special protein rice pudding (jasmine rice with MyoProtein Strawberry and a few drops of almond extract, refrigerate for a couple of hours. You’re welcome). Yes, it’s a brilliant combination, you should try it some time. The ball scratching, I mean.

The program will CHANGE based on what adaptions you have stimulated in your body up until this point. So if you have been training with a high volume, one-bodypart-per-week bodybuilding type program, you will most likely get more out of lowering reps and volume while increasing loads and frequency instead of just training more sets and exercises. And if you’ve been doing the 5×5 routine for a while and not really getting anywhere, maybe it’s time to lower frequency and increase reps for a while. If you just keep doing the stuff you’re already comfortable with and good at, you won’t necessarily get better. Identify which part of the system is limiting, i.e. what link in the chain is the weakest. Focus on that while maintaining the dominant qualities, and you will see renewed progress.

Let me show you.

...a picture of a girl not afraid to lift heavy-ass weights...

You’re on a Myo-reps routine, and the last couple of months you’ve been doing anywhere from 9-12 +3x to 20-25 +6x on most exercises. This is a typical set progression for you:

50kg x 14 +4+4+4+4+4+4+3

You are good at grinding out reps, but if you add only 5kg your reps usually drop down to 6-8 reps. You are very metabolically efficient and your volume tolerance is great at this point. It wouldn’t benefit you to add more reps or sets or exercises at this point, you would get better results by doing some lower rep, neural work to increase your strength. So the 5×5 routine with auto-regulation would be one option, or you might do a couple of weeks of 5-8 rep training as a transition phase. Maintain the volume and strength-endurance adaptions by adding a few back-off or dropsets here and there.

Another example, you’re doing a dropset routine with something like 5 reps -10% -10% (i.e. drop load 10% do max reps, drop another 10% load and do max reps). It looks like this:

100kg x 5, 90kg x 4, 80kg x 3

Or if this was the 5×5 with auto-regulation routine, you worked up to a top set of 5, dropped the load 5% and even after 3-4 minutes of rest you can only grind out a set of 5 at an RPE 10 and have to stop there.

Your top end strength is pretty good, but a 10% load drop should usually get you a couple of extra reps even with a short rest, so it’s a pretty safe assumption that your volume tolerance and endurance sucks. I’m not objecting to dropping reps even further and either do -20% drops with a short rest for a dropset routine, or -7% (which usually increases the number of sets you can do) for the RPE-based 5×5 routine – but you would most likely get more return of investment of time and effort by doing a few weeks of higher rep, short rest and more metabolic type training – Myo-reps would be perfect for this, obviously.

Maintain top end strength by working up to one heavy set of 3-5 reps, then add more reps, volume and exercises – the latter focusing on muscle groups you perceive as being a weakness or holding you back. More unilateral training such as bulgarian split squats, lunges, 1-leg SLDLs, 1-arm DB Rows, pulldowns and bench press/floor press…you get the picture.

Oh, and if you gas out after a couple of sets unless you take 5 minutes rest between sets, breathing like a sumo wrestler (or at least, how I imagine a sumo wrestler would breathe) – maybe it’s time to add some cardio to your weekly schedule. The aerobic system is quite important not only for between-set recovery, but also for recovery between training sessions.

A simple demonstration of this can be seen in some of the occlusion studies, where highly trained powerlifters were put through 2 weeks of extremely light loads (30% of 1 rep max) and a blood pressure cuff around the upper leg. If I remember correctly they used a simple leg press (yes, I’m too lazy to go look up the details right now). One would expect a loss of both strength and muscle as these guys were at the very pinnacle of strength holding multiple world records and generally resembling silverback gorillas. The results were a significant increase in CSA (cross sectional area) of the thighs, some of it obviously swelling and an increase in fluid and glycogen, but a lot of it was retained after they got back into their regular training.

Another demonstration is when lifters go from high volume routines and either have to take a week or two of rest or a low volume and frequency HIT’ish type routine due to illness, vacation or – less commonly – because they are smart and understand that it is beneficial to let the body fully recuperate once in a while. They get back in the gym and not only have they retained most of their strength, but often they are significantly stronger and many will get PRs in lifts that have been stagnant for months. Now, that doesn’t mean you should start doing HIT or stop training altogether, it just means that it was a proper strategy AT THAT TIME because you came from a high volume routine where your body had been pushed to the brink of overtraining for weeks on end.

I don’t want to dumb it down and tell you that variation is the key, or that “you have to confuse the muscle, bro” – that usually means the person saying it is more confused than you are. I’m just saying: don’t be afraid of playing around with loads, reps, sets and frequency, and don’t get locked into a static routine thinking that if you just work 10% harder at it or start twisting your thumbs while doing bicep curls, you will be the next cover model of BODY magazine in a few months…

The optimal strategy should be based on a comprehensive analysis of your training history and a knowledge of the fundamental training principles – then you will be able to make a better qualified guess of what The Perfect Program is for you at this point in time and for the next few weeks, not for all eternity. Most people when left to their own devices will just keep doing what hasn’t been working for a long time, thinking that it suddenly will start working again – or jump randomly from one routine to another, hoping that the stars will align and because you are Mommy’s unique little snowflake and have been a good little boy/girl all year (Santa told you so), suddenly find that Perfect Program.

If that’s a description which sounds familiar to you, maybe it’s time to leave your training to a qualified professional.

(That professional being me, obviously…)

Del