In a previous newsletter I mentioned the importance of focusing on one thing in your workouts.
That’s called specificity of training.
For me that one thing is building muscle. I’m not worried about strength, although I don’t want to struggle picking up my granddaughter, but I’m not interested in deadlifting a Dodge Durango.
In other words, I go for muscle size with a strength side effect.
If your primary goal is to get seriously strong, you should train for strength, which will result in a size side effect.
If you try to max out both, you are diluting your focus. It will take you longer to gain in either area—unless you’re some kind of genetic freakazoid, a.k.a. Ronnie Coleman.
For example, say I want to bench press 350 pounds. I should focus on low reps—4s, 3s, and singles every so often—as well as taking long rests between sets.
And high volume is important. You’re “teaching” your muscle fibers as well as tendons and ligaments to handle heavier and heavier poundages.
That means going to failure on lots of sets is not important—in fact, too much of it can overburden your nervous system and derail strength gains.
So training to failure and volume are mutually exclusive—more of one, means less of the other.
Low reps, volume, long rests between sets and very few sets to failure. That’s how you train the nervous system to learn to handle heavier and heavier poundages and condition the power fibers to fire more efficiently. Plus, you toughen up the tendons and ligaments.
Higher reps and fatigue don’t really play a part in building maximum strength and power, so you want to steer clear…
But what if my goal is to build big pecs? While the bench press is okay for that purpose, the dumbbell decline press is better.
It more accurately trains the pectorals’ line of force—upper arms driving in toward the sternum—and allows a more complete range of motion.
I will also want to keep my reps higher for most sets—10—and also venture up around 20, and lower, around 7 for a few sets.
Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., renowned hypertrophy researcher, recently said: “From an efficiency standpoint, a moderate repetition range somewhere in the 8 to 12 or 8 to 15 range is where you want to be for the majority of your training, and cycling in lower and higher ranges helps to optimize growth.”
Rests between sets should be anywhere from 20 seconds to 1 1/2 minutes, depending on your conditioning. That triggers what pro bodybuilder Lee Labrada calls the Growth Threshold.
You want a cumulative buildup of fatigue products in the muscle along with maximum blood flow, or pump, to elicit a growth response.
Lee says, “Your goal during a workout should be to fatigue the target muscle more and more with each succeeding set.”
He was a proponent of training all of his work sets to failure and chasing fatigue to keep poundages moderate. That trains an array of muscle-fiber types for multiple “layers” of hypertrophy.
Now, I’m no expert at training for strength. I did train with a powerlifter back in my 20s, and I had a hard time getting stronger. Part of the problem was that the guy I trained with was a closet bodybuilder and had us doing lots of “assistance work,” which was higher-rep isolation exercises, like dumbbell flyes and triceps extensions…
I’ll admit that he was pretty strong, but he also had perfect genetics for the powerlifts—oh, and he used steroids, so there’s that. I really shouldn’t have been training with him…
For me, the bodybuilder-training style was only diluting my strength-building abilities and powerlifting totals.
Bottom line: For the fastest results possible, decide what you’re after and focus on it exclusively. If you want to lift monster weights, train for that alone and enjoy the size side effect—just be careful…
Even superman Ronnie Coleman eventually had major problems. That’s not a portable dipping setup in the second photo…
If you want muscle size, avoid low reps and joint-crushing poundages. Go for fatigue, pump, and the growth threshold. You will enjoy a strength side effect…
You want to be big AND strong. I get it. The best way? Train for strength over the course of a few months, like the winter, and then transition to training for muscle size the rest of the year…
But if you try to mix the two, you will have slow results in both. And if you add in a third discipline like ballet, you’re really asking for trouble.
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Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
www.X-Rep.com
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