Training

Load Variations for Accelerating Muscle Mass Growth

Updated on February 19, 2020 by Brad Murphy

Varying Weight / Load Selection For Muscle Mass Gains

The weights we lift in the gym – whether they are free weights, incorporated in machines, attached to cables, or any other type – are the fundamental aspect of resistance training.

A training program that alters the loads you are lifting is therefore a fairly reliable way of stimulating muscle growth from your efforts.

The basic tenet of load manipulation is to stimulate an anabolic response by changing the tension on the muscle fibres by manipulating the resistance.

You’re probably thinking any kind of resistance training involves manipulation of the load. A standard ascending pyramid increases the load with each set.

That’s correct, but pyramids are mostly designed around repetition ranges, as are any other examples of programs that focus more on the number of reps than the load.

Here you will see that the number of reps you can perform is synonymous with the load selection, and you could just as easily call heavy-light sets ‘low-rep-high-rep’ sets.

Regardless, the emphasis is on resistance and not reps. Perhaps the best example of this is the classic dropset.

Dropsets

These are reliably effective, and very simple to understand. Dropsets are also something you can throw into your normal training as well as making them the focus of your program for a short while.

A dropset is where you perform repetitions with a given weight until you reach muscle failure. When that happens, you immediately strip some weight off – about 25% – and start repping to failure again without a rest.

You can do 3 to 5 drops within a single set before taking a rest and then repeating the process for another couple of sets.

That would be the more focused method of doing it.

The other way is to finish each group of sets on each muscle group with a dropset, so that you would complete 2 sets as normal and then crank out a big dropset to finish off the muscles.

Big barbell exercises are tough to do this way because it takes a while to strip the weight, unless you have a spotter. You really want to make the weight change a fast movement to minimize the rest your muscles get.

The dumbbell rack is good as you can quickly select a lighter set of bells.

The best dropsets are probably on machines and cables though because you can just drop the pin a couple holes on the stack and start lifting again with virtually no break, which is the whole point really.

You can even do some mega dropsets where you just drop one plate at a time to thoroughly burn your muscles on that last set. If you work down from a high weight that can be something like an 8-10 drop dropset.

Dropsets allow you to work your muscles to failure multiple times in one set. In fact, it’s the only way that can be achieved without the help of a spotter.

The incrementally decreasing weight is basically a way of pushing the muscle beyond its self imposed failure limit.

It’s a similar effect to when a spotter helps you by taking more and more of the load as your set progresses but where you keep the actual weight constant. Those are called Forced Reps or Assisted Reps, and they can be of great use when you don’t want to pause to mess around with the plates on a bar.

The biochemical response to pushing the muscles past their threshold and continuing to reach failure with the lighter weights in such a brief space of time is the release of two of the most important anabolic hormones in the body: human growth hormone (HGH, or just GH) and IGF-1 (Insulin-like Growth Factor 1).

The more we stimulate the release of these hormones during the workout, the more potential muscle mass we can grow in the days following, especially during our sleeping hours when they come out again.

The initial spike from training with techniques like dropsets is key because it signals the level of hypertrophy response that is necessary as a result of the training stimulus.

I probably don’t have to tell you that growth hormone is one of the most popular physique enhancing drugs, as well as a phenomenal healing and recovery aid, when used in its illicit exogenous form.

Dropsets, however, will help you make more of your own, endogenous, growth hormone. And that’s always good for growing more muscle.

Diablos – Point to Point Pyramids

I call these diablos because the visualization of the method looks like those funky yoyo things you spin on a rope (which are actually called Diabolos, but whatever).

“Diablo” also works because these workouts are the brain child of Lucifer himself.

Remember pyramids? – if not, I explain them more deeply in the Reps Variations article. The short version is this:

Ascending Pyramids: this is where you select a heavier weight after each set. Generally speaking, less reps are performed with each passing set as well.

Descending Pyramids: here you would with the heavier weight and decrease the load per set. Reps tend to be increased, or at least performed to failure with each drop in weight.

As you can see, these pyramids are relevant from a repetition and load perspective. One tends to have an inversely proportional effect on the other.

I’ve also talked about Diamonds before, which are essentially two pyramids performed back to back. Diamonds are an ascending pyramid followed immediately by a descending pyramid.

The diamond shape is used because it looks like two pyramids/triangles base to base.

Diablos, on the other hand, are like two pyramids that are performed point-to-point. They are sets of incrementally decreasing followed by sets of increasing load, usually returning back to the original weight.

These can be used with most exercises, equipment and muscle groups but the most effective approach is to use them on the bigger compound lifts.

In a typical squat diablo, you would select a weight that you can perform 6, 8, 10 or 12 reps with. You would then perform those reps for the first set.

For the second set you would drop the weight enough to allow you to perform the same number of reps as you did in the first set.

The third set involves a similar drop, again so that you can carry out the same number of reps.

You could continue to a fourth set of decreasing load but if you’re new to these it’s probably best to start the back side of the diablo after 3 descending sets.

For the first ascending set, simply add load back on to the bar so it’s equal to the second set’s weight. You then lift that for as many reps as possible.

The last set’s load should be the same as the first set. You’ll probably struggle to do many reps with it but that’s kind of the point.

It would look something like this:

Set 1 – 315 lbs x 8
Set 2 – 300 lbs x 8
Set 3 – 275 lbs x 8
Set 4 – 300 lbs x 3
Set 5 – 315 lbs x 2

Obviously, the reps in the last sets are determined by your fatigue level, but the idea is that their low number compliments the higher rep sets in the first half.

For some people, these are particularly difficult, and they are not necessarily the most effective strategy for everybody, but they CAN trigger change if you are experiencing some stagnation in your training progress.

Running the Rack

This one’s fairly straight forward.

Most gyms have long racks of dumbbells these days and they usually include an expansive range of weights all the way up to 200 lbs in some cases.

Running the rack involves performing increasingly heavy sets of dumbbell exercises until you reach a weight you cannot lift.

The idea is to increase the load after each set only by the difference between the weight you just used and the next one on the rack. Dumbbell sets in gym tend to be in 5 lb increments, so you increase by that much.

It’s important not to sacrifice form as the weights get heavier and heavier. Once you reach a weight that you can just about complete a single rep with, then you have effectively run the rack.

The cool thing about this is that if you run the rack every once in a while, you should see the progress you have made in the meantime simply by making it further up the line of dumbbells.

To add extra muscle mass building depth to running the rack, you can descend back down the weights once you have reached that heavy single rep. You could do this in discrete sets or as a massive dropset.

If you do it as separate sets with rest intervals then you should descend by the same minimum increments as you ascended, i.e. 5 lbs in most cases.

If you perform the descent as a dropset then you will find better success if you skip a couple of weights each time – 10-15 lb increments should be fine for about 3 or 4 drops total. This will allow you to get more out of each set rather than reaching failure too quickly every time.

Running the Rack is best used on big mass building dumbbell exercises like presses and rows. It’s also pretty intense, especially if you are doing the dropset descent, so I wouldn’t use them more than once per muscle group.

It’s a good method for bringing up a muscle group that’s falling behind. A lot of people find success with shoulder pressing given that the shoulders are prone to lagging behind the larger groups that have more stabilizer and support muscles to assist.

The shoulders, however, are also quite susceptible to injury so it pays to make sure they are properly warmed up before hammering them with this or any other intensive program addition.

Breakdowns – Simple Triples

I discussed a method called Tri-set Pyramids in the rep variation article, which are sets where three distinct rep ranges are hit without taking a break. A typical example would be 5-10-20 sets where you start with a large lift for 5 reps and incrementally decrease the load and the number of recruited muscles with each increase in repetitions.

Breakdowns involve a similar decrease in load and similar repetition ranges but rather than completing it all in one set, the breakdown is done after each discrete set.

Also, the exercise remains the same for each of the breakdowns, rather than switching down to a more isolatetion-type movement.

While both the tri-set pyramid and breakdowns work to boost muscle growth potential by forcing your muscles to operate in distinct stress brackets – i.e. low, medium and high rep ranges – their execution is quite different.

Here’s an example of a simple triple breakdown:

Exercise: Barbell Rows

Set 1: 205 lbs x 5
Set 2: 165 lbs x 10
Set 3: 95 lbs x 30

These sets can be performed with the usual 2 to 3 minute rest.

The second set’s load selection is about 20% less than the first set. The 3rd set is around 50% of the first set’s load.

High reps from 25 to 30 are meant to challenge the slow-twitch fibres once the fast-twitch have been used in the first couple of sets. This can improve muscle size because most of your large muscle groups are about 50-50 slow-twitch to fast-twitch fibres.

By training both fibre types equally you should stimulate some simultaneous growth and thus increase mass more than single rep-range training.

The three ‘classic’ repetition ranges are involved here with suitable time spent on each exercise type to produce some new adaptation.

Closing Remarks on Load Variations

I think programs and sets that manipulate the load deserve some concluding remarks, because a lot of people find it difficult to lift lighter weight for the sake of progress.

It’s usually because of their ego, and a compulsion to lift as heavy as possible all of the time, often in the overly-hyped hypertrophy range.

The idea of lifting less to gain more might even make sense to some guys…until they get to the gym, and the voices in their heads start telling them they have to go big or go home.

It’s often what leads to people repeating the same 8-12 rep range forever trying to force progressive overload, when all they’re really doing is setting themselves up for stagnation.

I believe working outside your comfort zone contributes a lot to success.

It’s easy to bench big weight every other time you’re at the gym because it’s enjoyable. It might not be as appealing to do 30-rep sets with light weight after your first couple of heavy sets but it works well.

And if it works well then use it regardless of whether the guy or girl you are trying to impress just walked into your area while your grunting your way through a set of 135 on the bench.

If you let your ego do the lifting then you’re already half way to missing your goals. Anyone that matters shouldn’t care about the numbers you’re lifting. Manipulating your weight selections will help you lift more in the future anyway. That’s what consistent progress is all about.

I’ll leave you with a rather obvious word of warning: You need to have a good base of strength – especially core strength – to tackle the sets where you start heavy and pyramid down.

Warm-up sets are a given, but even those will not help you if your nervous system is just not experienced enough with heavier weight.

It should be implied that you are familiar and comfortable with the multi-joint compound lifts such as the deadlift, benchpress, shoulder press, military press and bench press, before you start fiddling with descending pyramids, diablos and so on.

A good benchmark to look out for is the point where you stop making leaps in progress from straight set training. If you’re tracking your progress with any accuracy, then you’ll know when that happens.

Rep Variations for Boosting Muscle Size Gains

Updated on February 19, 2020 by Brad Murphy

Muscle curls vary reps to boost muscle size

Increase Muscle Hypertrophy with Repetition Variations

These days, most coaches, bodybuilders and strength athletes will recommend that you train with different rep ranges to maximize growth and strength gains.

There was a time not too long ago when a large population of the gym community believed specific muscle strength and growth goals were achieved through the execution of specific repetition ranges.

Somewhere along the road, you’ve probably heard something similar to this:

1 to 5 reps builds strength
8 to 12 reps for hypertrophy
12+ reps for strength endurance

A lot of people have taken that literally and decided to live their gym life in the 12 rep range, because they “want mass gainz, bruh”.

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Problem is, scientific research and real world practices are constantly evolving and finding the best way of doing things. Those repetition counts, it turns out, might not be so accurate…or important in terms of hypertrophy.

What’s more important is varying your rep ranges to stimulate greater adaptation and change within the muscle tissue.

Where absolute strength gains will probably always involve lifting heavy, hypertrophy seems to have a lot more to do with factors such as:

Metabolic stress
Time under tension
Anaerobic respiration
Range of motion

When you look at a modern, progressive bodybuilding program, you can definitely see a shift towards a new kind of training.

Periodization – Rep Variations for Boosting Muscle Size Gains

Periodized training programs are nothing new, but in the world of bodybuilding, they have taken a while to fully set in.

Amongst other things, some forms of periodization can involve the weekly changing of repetition ranges in order to stimulate maximum muscle growth and never let stagnation set in.

Some variants of periodization include:

Classic Linear
Reverse Linear
Undulating

Undulating periodization is one type of program that involves the weekly shifting of rep ranges, where you might stick with high (15+) reps for a week, then drop to a more power/strength range of 1 to 5 the following week, and so on.

You can even perform different rep ranges for different muscle groups within the same workout.

All of this is to say that the number of repetitions you do can be varied to enhance your results. The idea of rigidly adhering to old school methods is counterproductive, unless you adhere to the training program better if those methods are utilized.

Some people even mess with their repetitions from set to set, or within the sets themselves, and that’s the discussion I want to get to now.

Tri-Set Pyramids

Remember tri-sets from my article on manipulating set design?

Tri-sets are three exercises performed back to back with no rest. They are like a compound set in that the same muscle group is worked for all of it.

Mostly, people perform the same number of reps per exercise within the tri-set, so an example set would look something like this:

Dumbbell shoulder press x 8
Dumbbell lateral raise x 8
Dumbbell front raise x 8

With the tri-set pyramid you actually increase the number of reps each time you change the exercise.

This also means that you begin with heavier weight for the first exercise, and use lighter weight with each change – also known as a descending pyramid or reverse pyramid (because of descending weight).

A typical example would be 5-10-20, where you do 5 reps on the first exercise, 10 on the second and 20 on the last.

Many people perform a compound movement, such as bar and dumbbell presses (shoulder/bench), squats, deadlifts, pull-ups etc. followed by a couple of movements that involve less muscles each.

The third and final exercise is usually an isolation movement. As usual though, there are many different exercise choices you can make. The general idea is to treat it as a modified tri-set and use the same muscle group throughout. So, using a similar example to the one above:

Standing barbell shoulder (military) press x 5
Dumbbell seated ‘Y’ shoulder presses x 10
Cable lateral delt raise x 20

By doing the tri-set in this pyramid fashion, three repetition ranges are used in a single set. This means you hit those ranges that are classically associated with strength/power, hypertrophy and endurance strength.

Twenty Ones – 21s or Sevens – 7s

It doesn’t really matter what you call these, as long as you get the idea.

These sets change the range of motion of the muscle you are working every 7 repetitions.

The first seven reps are actually half reps, performed from beginning of the movement up to the halfway point
The second seven reps are also half reps but this time from the half-way point to the full contraction point of the muscle.
The last seven reps are whole reps, through the entire range of motion, from full extension to full contraction.

These are best done with single joint movements like arm and leg curls. Also, they are more effective if machines or cables are used to ensure constant tension through each group of seven reps.

Dumbbells are not as great because there is little resistance in the first half of the rep. During a bicep curl, for example, there is a lot less tension on the muscle in the first half of the rep when using dumbbells. Cables and machines apply equal tension even at full flexion.

The beauty of twenty-ones is that each part of the set benefits you in a slightly unique way.

The first half of the rep improves flexibility and stimulates muscle growth at full flexion, thereby increasing muscle size along the full length of the tissue.

The middle seven reps are in the range of motion where you are strongest, thus allowing you to put a lot more effort into forcing a maximum contraction.

The last seven reps should burn progressively stronger as you come to the last rep. Ideally, you would not be able to perform another with good form.

Those last repetitions, which are performed deeply in anaerobic respiration, will cause a strong pump and trigger anabolic processes for muscle hypertrophy.

Large multi-joint movements like the benchpress and squats don’t work as well with this because they use too many other supporting muscles that wouldn’t benefit from it. Those movements are better performed as complete range of motion repetitions nearly all of the time.

Twenty-ones increase the working muscle’s time under tension as well as pushing the full range of motion. You should take this into account and lengthen the recovery period for that particular muscle.

Every major muscle group can be trained with 21s, and you can even follow it as a program for a few weeks at a time, adding it as the first 3 or 4 sets of your workout or even the last ones to finish off a group.

The following examples are muscle group and exercise pairings that can be used to perform twenty-one style training.

Chest – Cable crossover, pec-deck and fly machine
Shoulders – Cable lateral/front/bent-over raises
Back – Lat pull downs, straight arm pull-down, cable row
Triceps – Cable push-downs, rope cable extensions
Biceps – Cable curls, rope cable curls
Quadriceps – Leg extensions, hack squat, leg press
Hamstrings – Leg curls

If you’re starting out with 21/7 sets then you might find you can only complete one in fullness at the beginning.

Don’t worry if this is the case; just complete the rest of your sets in straight-set fashion and go for adding another one the next time you hit that muscle group.

Muscle Fiber Types 1 and 2 - An Overview

100 Reps Training – Hundreds

The concept of Hundreds training sort of takes a massive dump on traditional approaches such as 3 sets of 12.

It’s pretty much what it looks like – 100 reps.

Thankfully, you do just one set per muscle group, but if you’re thinking that still sucks, then you’re only partly correct.

There are some benefits to throwing down some hundreds that aren’t readily available by any other means. So while it might not seem like your favourite thing to do, it might still be a good idea to incorporate it every now and then.

Hundreds training was once a well used strategy to break through plateaus. It can do this because the results have carry-over to your regular strength and hypertrophy training:

It trains slow-twitch muscle fibres as well as fast-twitch
It increases capillarization, the growth of blood vessels that feed you muscles with blood and oxygen, nutrients and hormones

The majority of your muscles are comprised of roughly an even proportion of slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibres.

Research into the hypertrophy of muscle tissue tells us that growing both fibre types will increase the overall size of the muscle.

Given that slow-twitch muscle fibres are normally used for endurance type activity, the very high repetition aspect of hundreds training actually recruits them for the first half of the set.

Training slow-twitch fibres is not a practice often performed by bodybuilders, especially amateurs who are mostly interested in lifting heavy for single or low double figures reps for multiple sets.

Those same people often avoid doing much intensive cardio, which would also build the slow-twitch muscle fibres in certain parts of the body.

However, hundreds training is a way of exercising those fibres over the whole body, and stimulating biochemical changes which promote muscle growth the likes of which would not otherwise be easy to obtain.

Capillarization is the formation of new blood vessels to feed the muscles with more blood flow, and the oxygen, nutrients, anabolic hormones and everything else that comes with it. [source]

This happens as a result of the metabolic stress that those hundred reps put the muscles through.

Such a long time under tension puts extra demands on the vascular delivery system. And capillarization is one of the fastest ways the body can respond in order to fuel those local increases in demand.

When you return to a more regular program, the benefits from your hundreds training carry over to enhance any other bodybuilding and powerlifting sets you perform.
Hence why it is known as a plateau buster.

Tips for Hundreds success:

Weight selection is important. You want to get about 3/4 of the way through before the muscle starts to fail
A mini break at the first sign of muscle failure is okay but you should only take enough breaths as yo have reps left to complete
Strict adherence to form is paramount. Sacrificing form to complete bad reps is pointless.
One set per muscle group means you can hit them all twice a week if you follow hundreds as a program
If you dedicate some full-time program to 100s then only do it for 3 to 4 weeks

Above all else: you need to have some lifting experience. This is not for noobs because anyone who has been lifting for less than a year should not need to break stagnation yet.

Also unless you have some solid experience lifting high-rep sets then you probably won’t complete a hundred reps.

Even one hundred body squats are too much for some. You will want to at least get to the point where you are squatting weight for 20 rep sets before considering hundreds training.

Pyramid and Pump – Rep Variations for Boosting Muscle Size Gains

Pyramids are just ways to describe the sequence in which you lift weights. For the purposes of this explanation:

an Ascending Pyramid is where you start with a specified weight and increase it incrementally with each set
a Descending Pyramid is where you decrease the weight with each set

Confusingly, most ascending pyramids involve descending reps and descending pyramids involve ascending reps.

Just think of the load you are lifting as going up or down in weight and you’re there.

Pyramid and Pump is a cool way to trigger some serious growth, while incorporating some varied loads, varied reps and a set to failure.

Basically, there are two ways to do this, and both have their advantages.

Perform an ascending pyramid of 3 sets, followed by a 4th set of high reps for maximum muscle pump
Perform a descending pyramid of 3 sets, followed by a 4th set of high reps for maximum muscle pump

As you can see, the only difference in the two approaches is whether you increase the weight with each of the first 3 sets or decrease it.

I’ll lay down some examples of both methods.

Tip: It helps to know your 1RM (one rep max) for the exercise you are going to do. If I’m honest you should have a pretty good idea if you are at the experience level you need to be to consider doing this in the first place.

Ascending Pyramid Pump

For this one you’ll do 3 sets of ascending weight (and descending reps) followed by a 4th set of 20 reps.

The reps should go something like this:

Set 1: 10 reps
Set 2: 8 reps
Set 3: 6 reps
Set 4: 20 reps

Now, you need to select a load for that first set of 10 so that you’d have one or two reps in the tank after completing it. A good guideline for 10 reps is to choose about 60% of your 1RM.

Follow the same logic for Sets 2 and 3. Again, a guideline would be 70% 1RM for 8 reps and 75% for 6 reps.

When you come to the 4th set you need to select a load that will get you at least to 15 reps. This means you will get a really good pump by 20 and possibly even fail. A guideline for this is about 50% of your 1RM.

Descending Pyramid Pump

This is where you start heavier and drop the weight with every set.

Your reps should look something like this:

Set 1: 6 reps
Set 2: 8 reps
Set 3: 10 reps
Set 4: 20 reps

If you apply the same reasoning as for the ascending pyramid, you would start with roughly 75% and descend to 60% of your 1RM before finally doing a set of 20 at about 50%.

Remember, those are only examples. You can play with the numbers to find what works the best for you, but the ultimate goal of the exercise is to finish on a massive pump.

What this achieves is to prime your muscles with the first 3 heavier sets. Changing the load and reps slightly activates the muscle more completely.

The 4th and final pump set then floods those primed muscles with blood, oxygen and nutrients. The pump fills the cells of the muscles, thereby creating tension and stimulating the cascade of reactions that results in anabolic growth.

For some people, staring heavy with a descending pyramid is difficult. If that is the case then the ascending pyramid might be a better match.

What I find with the ascending pyramid – where you increase the load per set – is that the change from the 3rd set (with the heaviest weight) to the 4th ‘pump’ set (with the lightest weight) is dramatic, and really lets you put some power into the last set.

However, on days when you are feeling good and feel you can lift heavy first, i.e. with the descending pyramid, you can put some bigger lifts in at the start because you haven’t fatigued yourself.

Of course, it’s always best to ramp up to the heavy weight with some warm up sets, but you should not do to many reps in the warm up so that you don’t waste energy.

After warming up, you can rack a heavier weight than 75% 1RM for the descending sets – maybe start with 80% and add a little per week. This makes you work a little harder on strength building for the first set, before moving on to hypertrophy with the following sets and then the muscle pump set at the end.

When you hit the heaviest sets first, you will recruit the most muscle fibres possible, which results in greater muscle growth and strength improvements. You can also take each set to near failure, or failure, which is again great for stimulating growth. In that sense, it’s a bit like a drop set.

Following an ascending pyramid, you cannot work to failure on each set because the next set will be heavier and you will miss the first rep if you do.

The downside of descending pyramids is that you are more prone to injury because you are beginning with the heaviest weight. To reiterate, a good warm up is crucial for heavy lifting.

For people who have been lifting less than 6 months, I would advise sticking to ascending pyramids for the time being.

Once you are confident that you have developed your core strength, stabilization muscles, and accustomed your ligaments and tendons to heavy lifting, you can think about doing descending pyramids.

By the way, some people call descending pyramids, ‘reverse’ pyramids. It’s all the same.

Diamonds, Octahedrons and Triangles

Pyramids are a linear way of looking at progressive load selection relative to repetition count in weight lifting. You don’t really have decide between ascending or descending pyramids at all.

You can do both.
Ascend then descend.

I call these “diamonds”, but other people call them triangles (they are wrong). If you put two pyramids base to base you get an octahedron. Basically an 8-sided 3 dimensional diamond (or rhombus).

Why does that matter?
It doesn’t.

Anyway, it’s probably best to stick with 2 dimensional descriptions given that all we’re talking about here is a visual representation of increasing and decreasing weight.

Diamonds it is.

With these, you get most of the best of both worlds. You can ascend from about 60% of your 1RM to your 75-80% weight and then descend back to 60% and then finish with a 50% pump set.

This allows for the slower increase to heavy weight, but also lets you let the failure sets loose on the backside of the workout.

The only drawback of diamonds is that you aren’t getting maximum muscle recruitment because you aren’t hitting the heaviest weight off the bat.

Nonetheless, they are excellent for stimulating muscle growth. and the pump is ridiculous.

Four and Five Rep Volume Increments

Before we get into this, let’s just recap on Tri-Set Pyramids and Pyramid Pumps.

With tri-set pyramids, you decrease the weight WITHIN the set itself, not resting until the 5-10-20 reps have all been completed. You also change the exercise WITHIN the set, generally moving from compound lifts to isolation movements as you go.

With regular pyramids and the pyramid pump, you increase or decrease the weight AFTER each set. You also perform the same lift/exercise with each set change.

The Four and Five Rep system I’m about to talk about has 2 variants, and they are both blends of the two I’ve just re-capped…sort of.

Variation #1

With this program, you perform exercises in the usual order: compound/multi-joint lifts, followed by lifts of increasing muscle isolation, for example:

Bench press
Incline dumbbell press
Cable cross over
Seated machine fly

Do 3 sets of each, like a regular chest/whatever workout, but each time you change to the next exercise, you add 4/5 reps to your sets.

The whole thing looks something like this:

Bench press – 3 sets x 4 reps
Incline dumbbell press – 3 sets x 8 reps
Cable cross over – 3 sets x 12 reps
Seated machine fly – 3 sets x 16 reps

The basic idea is to do your heaviest sets with your strongest lifts and continue increasing the reps as the number of recruited muscles drops, until you are doing isolation movements in the last round.

If you do this correctly, you should reach near failure on the last rep of each set and failure on the final16-rep sets, which should also give you a great pump.

By changing the rep count with each change of exercise you are hitting each of the classic rep ranges of bodybuilding to stimulate gains in both strength and size.

If I’m following this program for a while, I tend to go with 5 rep increases on lower body exercises and stick with 4 rep increases on upper body work. The bigger leg muscles really benefit from those 20 rep finishers!

Variation #2

The other way to do this is to do all the rep ranges for all the exercises. This means doing 4 sets of the same exercise with incrementally increasing rep-counts.

That means doing something like the following:

Back squat – 4 sets x (5, 10, 15, 20) reps
Landmine squats – 4 sets x (5, 10, 15, 20) reps
Leg press – 4 sets x (5, 10, 15, 20) reps
Knee extensions – 4 sets x (5, 10, 15, 20) reps

The drawback here is that you must strip weight off the machine or bar, or select different dumbbells after every set. But if you can handle that then it’s an awesome way of hitting all the rep-ranges for each part of the muscle group within a single session.

Fixed Load – Target Reps

This is a nice program you can follow for a while to help you see your goal coming closer week by week.

I like this approach because it’s really simple and adds some depth to your training and growth that you might otherwise forego. You can also do it alongside other training methods so that you don’t feel you are putting everything else aside.

Here’s what it involves:

Your Big 4 compound lifts – Bench, Squat, Deadlift, Shoulder press – plus the Pull Up.
Find the weight for each exercise that you can complete 8 reps with. For the pull-ups, that might be bodyweight or assisted bodyweight – and that’s fine.
When your normal routine comes around to these exercises, you will complete as many reps with that original 8 rep weight as possible. Repeat this weekly until you reach your target reps.
I suggest 15 reps is your target.

NOTE: you can either add this in as a one-set test every time or you can follow it as a program and do 3 sets of maximum reps. Follow the rest of your training as normal.

REMEMBER: Always hit that exercise first and always use the same load/weight that you could originally perform 8 reps with.

The interesting thing about this is that you are taking a weight that is on the cusp of your strength / hypertrophy boundary in terms of repetitions, and taking it to the hypertrophy / strength endurance level.

During the process, you are gaining size, strength and stamina. Of course when you reach your 15 rep goal, you will be able to increase the weight that you can do for 8 reps. And on the other end of the scale you will be able to go deep into big 20 rep volume sets with weight that you could only do for 12 reps or so before.

Sticking to it for a few weeks is tough because you will be tempted to increase the weight on the bars. It’s okay to do that, as long as the first exercise you do is to perform this benchmark test.

For me, when you have a goal like XXX lbs for XX reps, it is better to focus on that and concentrate on this as a micro-cycle. It’s only for your bigger multi-joint lifts so you can continue as normal for your smaller muscle groups and isolation exercises.

You can do it for your isolation movements too – no-one is going to stop you – but I find that exploring different rep-ranges and varying loads on the machines and cables will help your progress because it will stimulate adaptations that will help the main Fixed Load Target Reps effort.

Concurrent Training – Does Endurance, Cardio Exercise with Resistance Training Hurt Your Gains

Updated on February 14, 2020 by Brad Murphy

Concurrent Training will it hurt my muscle gains

What is Concurrent Training?

Concurrent training is when you go for a jog with your shake weights and do some star jumps every 2 minutes.

No it’s not. I am, of course, messing with you. No-one should do what I just described unless they’ve got the mullet, sweatband and short-shorts to go with it.

Concurrent training is where you undertake two different forms of exercise discipline – namely resistance weight training and some sort of cardio-vascular/endurance training – within the same session, day or fitness program.

Some people avoid doing any cardio for fear that it will reduce their gains in muscle strength or hypertrophy.

Others blast out a fierce cardio session immediately prior to lifting weights, seemingly unfazed (or, dare I say it, mindless) of other, more productive methods.

Choose Your Main and Secondary Goals

The fact that you’ve come to this site means you are probably more interested in growing muscle than your aerobic engine for a fast 5 km run, but it pays to outline things from the start.

If strength is your main goal, it should be your primary focus. This means the majority of your training will be geared around building strength.

Using the same 5 km run example, it won’t serve you well to aim for an 18 minute 5K if what you want more is to squat 350 lbs within the year.

One type of training would inevitably eat into the other – both in terms of time and physical progress – possibly resulting in neither being achieved.

So, pick your poison. I’m assuming it’s muscle hypertrophy (both strength and size), and always keep it in mind when you are engaging in concurrent training.

Science and Concurrent Training

Scientific studies are a controlled setting in which the theories, concepts and methodologies that are played out in the empirical world, can be put to a statistically measurable test.

There is no shortage of scientific studies that have investigated concurrent training, and more importantly drawn conclusions about the impact of cardio/endurance exercise on muscle strength and size gains.

Happily, for people like me, there has also been a couple meta-analyses of said studies.

A meta-analysis is where some or all of the individual studies are analyzed and statistically compared to determine agreement between their findings, root out the outliers, and ultimately, calculate the average of all of the results.

Meta-analyses are at the very top of the scientific study hierarchy because of the confidence level in the results.

The more individual studies there are, the higher the value of the meta-analysis. A single study can be flawed and therefore give a skewed result, but a meta-analysis of many studies cannot.

Meta-Analysis Findings

Wilson et al completed a meta-analysis of 21 individual studies that examined the detrimental effects of concurrent endurance/cardio training on resistance training outcomes.

The 21 studies involved were chosen because the matched certain criteria, namely they:

Compared strength training alone to strength-plus-endurance (concurrent) training
Compared combinations of concurrent training
Measured at least one parameter from strength, power or hypertrophy

“Effect Size” – ES – is a simple way of quantifying the difference between groups of results rather than just using statistical significance.

For example, the Wilson meta-analysis found the average ES for hypertrophy amongst the concurrent training results was 0.85.

On its own that might mean very little, but it works when you also know that the average ES for hypertrophy in the strength-only groups was 1.23; and for the endurance training it was 0.27.

For clarity, the Effect Sizes for hypertrophy are summarized as:

Strength training only = 1.23
Concurrent training only = 0.85
Endurance training only = 0.27

Additionally, the strength-only and concurrent training results effect sizes are significantly larger than the endurance-only training.

Here are the mean ESs for strength improvements:

Strength training only = 1.76
Concurrent training only = 1.44
Endurance training only = 0.78

Again, strength and concurrent training ES is significantly greater than endurance with respect to strength gains.

Finally, the mean ESs for power development were:

Strength training only = 0.91
Concurrent training only = 0.55
Endurance training only = 0.11

This time, significant differences were found between all three groups.

What Are the Takeaway Points from the Wilson Meta-Analysis?

The results show a very obvious pattern with strength-only training winning on all 3 measures: Hypertrophy, Strength and Power.

Also clear is that endurance training by itself led to significantly less gains in all 3 measured as compared to concurrent training (although endurance still led to positive effect on all 3).

Furthermore, where power was concerned, strength-only training resulted in significantly greater improvements than concurrent training, which in-turn was significantly more effective than endurance only.

Wilson notes that concurrent training, where running was the endurance type training, there were significantly smaller gains in muscle hypertrophy and strength (although they were still gains).

However where cycling was the endurance training, this decrement didn’t reach significance. Interpretation: concurrent training with cycling preserves muscle gains better than running.

No form of training resulted in decreases in muscle size, strength or power, i.e. all effect sizes highlighted positive change.
The only decrease, which is not discussed above is that VO2max – a measure of maximal aerobic output – actually reduced with strength-only training.

That’s important from a health perspective, and from the perspective of someone designing their training program.

Given strength, power and hypertrophy can be increased no matter what style of training, but cardio fitness can be reduced in strength-only training, can you really afford not to add some endurance/cardio to your routine?

Perhaps the most important point to make here is that concurrent training does not result in complete negation or “robbery” of muscle gains. Is not the reason you are not making muscle gains!

Continue reading for some information that’ll really make you question your pre-conceived notions that “cardio hurts my gains”.

Cardio will definitely not completely rob your gains, as many gym bros seem to think.

Daylight Robbery or Downright Complimentary?

The concurrent training meta-analysis discussed in the first part of this article gives us hope that we can have our endurance training and our strength training in the same program and not significantly slow our muscle growth or strength.

Cardio will definitely not completely rob your gains, as many gym bros seem to think.

There are, of course, some signs to watch out for when you decide to go down a concurrent training path.

We don’t really know too much about the effects on people with a lot of training experience.

Most studies involve untrained individuals, and their progress tends to reflect that. Noobs, after all, make the best gains of their life in the first 6 months. I don’t believe the results can be flipped on their head if you are, say, a 5 year veteran of the gym.

In the case of experienced lifters, it might be the case that you would have to monitor your measurable factors a little closer if you decide to add some more cardio into your routine.

Another point to consider is that the longer your session of endurance/cardio training, the more it will effect your muscle strength and hypertrophy gains.

Technically, you can still improve strength and size if you do an hour of endurance a day, but combined with your gym sessions you are looking at a lot of time spent exercising, and the potential for over-training.

Overall fatigue and over-training can have detrimental effects to both your progress and your health. Downtime wasted because you are sick is not the same as downtime for recovery and growth.

Getting the right balance is key, and that is a program design issue, and one that can vary from one individual to the next.

Experts Agree – Concurrent Training Works

Data gathered from all the studies of concurrent training doesn’t support the popular belief that cardio or endurance exercise will ruin your muscle gains.

It’s great to see when experts in the field bash out opinion articles like the one Murach and Bagley did in 2016 (don’t you just love recent scientific literature? It leaves a fresh taste of nerd in your mindbrain).

These papers allow them to expand on the number crunching and offer forth what can be considered as extremely educated opinions.

Perhaps the most exciting figure from that report shows that combining aerobic training with strength training of the quadriceps leads to greater muscle hypertrophy gains than strength-only training.

This doesn’t mean concurrent training is better for muscle hypertrophy than strength training alone. That’s far too broad a statement, and we’ve already seen from the Wilson meta-study that all muscle related measurements point to strength-only training as being most effective.

For one thing, the data was from the measurement of quadriceps size. i.e. one muscle group and one measurement criterion.

Secondly the strength training volume was rather low with 2 days of lifting per week, and aerobic at 3 to 4 days per week. Most strength athletes would balk at the very suggestion.

Designing Training Programs from Scientific Studies

What’s interesting is the potential for program design that comes out from an analysis of the last few decades of studies.

Murach and Bagley highlighted previous research into the optimal timing of concurrent training, which found that a minimum 3 hour separation time between aerobic and resistance training should be observed.

Waiting 6 hours or more is even more beneficial and 24 hours is optimal. It’s logical of course, but again not always practical for a great number of people, who have time for one session a day for 4 days

However, we’re not really discussing those people. We’re discussing people for whom muscle and physique conditioning is extremely important.

For this reason, it’s not beyond the realm of sanity to recommend a 7 session week, at one session per day, alternating between aerobic/cardio and resistance training. The emphasis would be on resistance training with 4 out of the 7 days.

The logical 24 hour waiting time holds with this pattern, as does the strength training volume required for quality gains.

Provided sleep and diet are sufficient, there shouldn’t be a problem with following 7 a week.

That said, individualities do come into play, as does work/life balance. The above idea is merely an indication as to what can be done.

Bodybuilding and Body Fat Management

It occurs to me that I haven’t really focused on the benefits of concurrent training. That’s mainly because if you’re looking to pursue it, you already know why, and what you’re really looking for is information about how aerobic training affects your resistance training.

Hopefully the health aspects of aerobic training doesn’t need to be discussed in depth here anyway. I’m sure you know them.

Fat management is key to the bodybuilding physique though. And that’s definitely a goal only achievable through some formula of concurrent training.

It’s true that raising the intensity of your resistance training will increase metabolic turnover and fat burning, but to really torch fat you are going to need to add some cardio to your gym game.

Unfortunately, walking on a treadmill for 20 minutes every other day won’t really cut it. If you’re eating an anabolic diet for maximal muscle growth, you’ll need to hit the cardio accordingly.

Interval training, where you complete burst of intense cardio interspersed with steady state low-intensity cardio works well.

Alternating lower body and upper body aerobic work relative to resistance work is preferable as well.

For example: on your bench press day, you would use a power cycle or spin bike, and on your squat day you might use the rowing machine.

Final Word – For Now

I’m going to get into training programs, periodization and balance in further detail as this website matures, but I wanted to put this, albeit two-part, article up in order to leave a signpost for concurrent training.

Read the literature I’ve linked out to if you have time. It’s well worth the ten minute read, and provides detailed insights that one can only really brush over in an article of this kind.

In the meantime, the best judge of your progress is you. If you feel you are doing too much cardio and it’s bringing fatigue into your program, then step it back.

Just be aware that there are definite positives to adding aerobic fitness to your strength and size training. The research tells us cardio is not the gains killer it was once thought to be.

It may even help in some circumstances.

Exercise Variations for Accelerated Muscle Mass Growth

Updated on February 11, 2020 by Brad Murphy

Mna on workout machine varying exercises

Exercise Variations for Growing your Muscle Quickly

I’ve discussed set design, rep variations and load manipulation in previous articles, all of which I encourage you to read if you are interested in maximizing muscle growth from your training.

This article will cover another element of training that you can play with to stimulate improved mass gains: the exercises themselves.

There are several changes that can be made to the exercises you do, including the order in which they are performed, your body position, the type of grip you use, unilateral versus bilateral and so on.

Again, the exercise changes trigger adaptations to be made that can improve your strength and size improvements when you return to your regular training program or move on to another variant.

Extended Sets

The extended set describes a lot of sets. The “extended” part simply refers to the set lasting longer than it otherwise would due to something you do to allow it.

A dropset is technically an extended set because in the process of reducing the weight in increments, you can keep working the muscles to failure again and again within the same set.

You can extend a set by changing your grip on a barbell. Moving from a close to wide grip on the bench press, for example, can enable you to push out a few more reps in the set.

Adjusting your stance in a squat or deadlift can similarly extend the set. Widening your stance throughout a set of leg exercises should help you squeeze more from the set.

man working out on machine vary his sets

Hardest to Easiest

Perhaps the most effective extended set variation is that in which you adjust your position through the set from the most difficult to the easiest, while using the same load from the beginning to end.

Put another way, each positional shift puts your body in a stronger position to complete the movement you are doing.

The best example of this in my opinion will always be the bench press or dumbbell bench press with an adjustable bench. For optimal results, the bench should be able to be adjusted from incline to decline.

The trick here is to use a weight which you can only complete mid single figure reps with on the incline bench press. This will be a load that sits in your strength building range of 4 to 6 repetitions.

The first portion of the set you should complete 4 reps in the incline bench position. Your only break is the quick time in which it takes to adjust the bench to its flat position.

For the second portion of the set you should attempt to complete another 4 reps but only if this does not work your muscles to failure. If you can only perform 2 reps then so be it. Once complete, adjust the bench once more to its incline position.

In the final portion of the set you should rep to muscle failure in the decline position.

When you perform a set like that, what you are doing is using a load which is normally within your strength range of a maximum or 6 reps and extending the set to a range more synonymous with hypertrophy, somewhere in the range of 8 – 12 repetitions.

Muscle Fibers

All that you change is your position, which in turn helps you recruit more muscle fibres to complete the task. By making your position stronger throughout the set you are extending the set, and thus heightening the stimulus for hypertrophy.

This has excellent carry-over to your regular strength and hypertrophy training.

There are several exercises within which you can change position to achieve similar results. The shift can range from something as simple as a grip to the kind of equipment manipulation discussed in the adjustable bench press example.

Another good example for an extended bench press set using dumbbells involves changing your grip each time.

Start with your grip reversed (palms facing you) and complete the first portion of the set like that. You can do this either on a flat bench or a slight incline.

The reverse grip may feel odd at first if you are not used to it, but you will find that pushing the dumbbells up from closer to your waist will begin to help.

This grip activates the upper pectoral muscles more than an incline bench with regular grip does.

Reverse Grip

The reverse grip is also the most difficult to perform out of the three grips in this extended set.

For the second part of the set, you should twist the dumbbells roughly 90 degrees so that you have a neutral grip (neutral grip is what you would use for dips on parallel bars).

The third part of the set should be completed with a traditional bench press grip / overhand grip (aka prone grip), i.e. knuckles towards your face.

I’ll give a third example, and that is the pull-up. If you are used to doing bodyweight pull-ups and want to get more out of them, this extended set is for you. You can obviously add weight if you need to as well.

The hardest form of a pull-up is the prone, or overhand, grip (palms facing away from you). So begin your set with those.

If your gym or home equipment has neutral grips, then move to those next (parallel, palms facing one another).

Next move to under hand/reverse grip and complete the set to failure. This last element is the easiest form of a pull-up because it recruits your biceps and allows you to tuck your core more tighter.

Unilateral Exercises – One-Sided Lifting

If you follow major fitness publications, or social media trainers, you’ll see unilateral training is becoming a big thing.

Oddly, those of us who know what we’re talking about, and don’t just follow trends, have been doing one-sided lifts from the very beginning.

A basic example is the shoulder press. Bilateral shoulder pressing involves a barbell, or two dumbbells. being pressed vertically to train both left and right deltoid groups.

Unilateral training involves lifting only with one side at a time. There are lots of benefits to this.

Bilateral Deficit

Bizarrely, our bilateral lifts are not as strong as the sum of their equivalent unilateral lifts.

The weight you can push on your one-arm dumbbell press is probably more than half of what you can bench press standard.

A number of studies have confirmed this to be true, though they can’t quite explain why. It probably has something to do with more support and stabilizer muscles being recruited for one side rather than being shared by both.

Another interesting paradox is that by training unilaterally, the bilateral deficit becomes smaller!

Cross Transfer

Perhaps even weirder than the bilateral deficit thing is that training on one side of your body improves the strength of the untrained side.

Again, there’re studies to back this up, no matter how crazy it sounds. In fact, there are instances of people training certain muscles for several days on end but only on one side of the body. When their untrained side was tested afterwards it had gained considerable strength. [source].

This phenomenon is called cross-education, or cross transfer. It also goes a long way to support the theory that initial strength gains are largely a case of neural adaptation over physical growth.

Either way, strength helps size and size helps strength, so unilateral training is good.

Core Improvements

Another benefit is to your core muscles and stabilizers. Your core’s purpose is not to flex the spine (as most people who do crunches seem to think).

The core muscles are stabilizers, there to resist other movement by bracing and acting as a counter point.

Building the core group of muscles also helps improve your overall strength and keeps you injury free.

Unilateral lifting encourages new growth and strength improvements in a novel way, by making the core activate in different ways to provide counterbalance to the one sided lifts.

The carry-over to your other training is excellent.

Adaptation

Aside from the other benefits, unilateral training is another stimulus for growth. Perhaps your weak side is weaker than your strong side by enough to make a difference to your regular training.

If that’s the case then adding some unilateral training into your program, or indeed following it as a program for a while, will help to bring your weak side up to par with your strong side. When you then return to bilateral training, you will notice the difference immediately.

Often, we don’t realize we are creating imbalance with bilateral training. Our strong side can take over and our core compensates for it.

The lift might look perfectly fine on inspection, when in fact there is an ever-growing differential being introduced between your left and rights sides. And ultimately, that can start to show in your appearance, and through injury caused by imbalance.

Unilateral training: it’s not just a gimmick. Try it out and get the benefits.

Training Different Muscle Fiber Types – Fast-Twitch and Slow-Twitch – What You Need To Know

Updated on February 11, 2020 by Brad Murphy

This is an exciting post for me to write, mostly because it’s one of those subjects that misinformed people and broscientists think they absolutely know everything about.

When, as usual, they don’t even know the half of it.

Muscle Fiber Types and the Training Techniques

Muscle fiber types and the training techniques to grow their size, increase their number or increase their strength is the basis of a lot of weight lifting talk, both in and out of the gym.

Of course it’s been a subject scientists have been interested in getting to the bottom of, not to mention professional athletes and coaches.

Can you train in a way that increases your slow-twitch (Type 1) or fast-twitch (Type 2) muscle fibers? Or will you be making a workout mistake and wondering why you are not making the muscle gains.

The age-old broscience response is, of course:

low-rep count with high weight/load for fast-twitch fiber growth; and …

high-rep count with low weight/load for slow-twitch fiber growth

You’ve probably also heard it said that Type 1 (slow-twitch) are predominantly activated for muscle endurance, and Type 2 (fast-twitch) for short spells of high power and strength.

You may even have come across some sage advice about which muscles are type-I or type-II dominant, and how to train them thusly.

So, what’s true, what’s almost true and what is BS?

Continue reading, and you might just be surprised what you get out of it, specifically in terms of directly applicable and practical tips for your weight training.

Muscle Fiber Types 1 and 2 – An Overview

There are two main types of muscle fiber.

Type 1 = Slow-twitch fibers
Type 2 = Fast-twitch fibers

There’s also two basic sub-categories of Type 2:

Type 2A
Type 2X

Type 2A are somewhere in between Type 1 and Type 2X.

The force output requirement of the task you are performing determines which muscle fibers are recruited by your nervous system.

It happens in a sequence called the Principal of Orderly Recruitment, starting with Type 1 fibers activating in greater and greater numbers until Type 2 are brought in.

If the load/force requirement keeps increasing, your muscle will ultimately reach the point of failure when there are no more Type 2 to recruit.

Type 1 fibers take the longest to fatigue, which is also why they are the principal muscle fiber type used in endurance sports like triathlons and marathons.

It’s also why the theory of low weight – high reps training is a logical approach for growing Type 1.

When you lift heavy weight, the first few reps recruit mostly Type-2 fibers, so that training type for that muscle type obviously follows.

Type 2X fibers are even more powerful than type 2A but they endure much less again. For training purposes, they are not very useful because their time of effect is extremely small, as is their proportion in trained muscles.

Therefore, when resistance training and other physical exercise is discussed, any muscle fiber talk will refer to Type 2A.

Both Type 1 and Type 2 can produce about the same amount of force per unit of area.

That’s interesting because people often think force and power are interchangeable, and also that Type 1 muscles shouldn’t be able to exert the same force as Type 1.

It’s true that Type 2 are more powerful but that’s because they can exert the same force over a shorter period of time.

Training and Muscle Fiber Growth

Different training triggers different growth responses in type 1 and 2 muscle fibers.

Resistance training, more accurately strength training, tends to elicit a higher growth response in Type 2 fibers by a quarter to three quarters more than in Type 1.

Athletes who train for and compete in power dominated sports such as the shot put or sprinting have a higher proportion of Type 2 fibers.

Likewise, endurance athletes like distance runners, cyclists and triathletes grow more Type 1 compared to Type 2.

Endurance sports and type 1 muscle draws energy from fat storage and oxygen, whereas sprinting 100m is requires anaerobic respiration fuelled by glycogen and phosphocreatine stores.

It might seem odd then that proportions of Type 1 to Type 2 fibers in bodybuilders and lifters are roughly the same as they were before they started training.

So what does that mean for your muscle fiber types? And, more importantly, how can you use it to your advantage with respect to your training?

The answer to the first question is: if your weight training is the dominant part of your program, then you most likely have a fairly even split – 50/50 – of Type 1 to Type 2 muscle fiber, with perhaps Type 2 having the edge.

The answer to the second question is more interesting.

You may have read my article about concurrent training and part where I discuss quadriceps training, particularly the observational study that saw quads grow larger in response to strength training plus endurance training compared to strength-only training.

It now seems more obvious why this would be the case. Your quads are roughly 50% type 1 and 50% type 2. It might stretch to 60/40 from one individual to another but the proportions are close enough to make the following argument:

Concurrent training builds bigger quads than focused strength-only training because it’s building both muscle fiber types equally.

Now, take most muscles you train and try and work their Type 1 fibers out using a treadmill or a static bike and you’re going to look extremely silly.

That’s where we come back to the low weight – high reps style of training.

To maximize growth, at least from the perspective of muscle fiber type, which definitely has an impact on size and strength of the muscle, perhaps a mixture of high load and low load training is a good idea.

An Interesting Muscular Exception

There are some muscles that don’t have an even split of muscle fiber types. Mostly they are those muscles with functions irrelevant to training such as tiny fast-twitch eye muscles.

There is one “macro” muscle that can be 80% to 90% Type 1 (slow-twitch), and that’s the soleus.

The soleus is one of your calf muscles – not the gastrocnemius, which are higher up and recognized by their tell-tale “split” when they are well developed. The soleus is on the inside of these and extends most of the way down your achilles tendon.

You can always tell a runner from their well developed soleus muscles.

Training Specificity Based on Individual Muscle Fiber Proportions

As always, it comes back to what you want to get out of your training. As far as performance goals are concerned, it’s fairly easy.

if pure strength is your goal then you have to lift heavy and often and, at some point in the near future, increase the weight. Your muscles overcompensate and grow in order to be able to handle that kind of weight better then next time.

For strength gains in the 85% 1RM and above kind of training, the growth will largely take place in the form of myofibrillar hypetrophy – basically the contractile proteins in your muscle fibres.

The degree of Type 2 fiber development will probably exceed Type 1 but don’t forget that powerlifting athletes – who live for the squat, deadlift and benchpress triple – end up having proportions of type 1 to type 2 that are similar to the un-trained Joe.

Endurance athletes will train primarily in the realm of their chosen sport, be it running, cycling, triathlon or whatever. The distance, time, fuel requirements and so on will undoubtedly lead to greater Type 1 development, and of this there is little doubt.

Bodybuilding, where size of muscle growth takes an equal or even greater priority than strength, it seems appropriate to mix your training methods up as I mentioned earlier

But what about your body type, and muscular make-up?

It’s fine to say that on average, muscle doesn’t tend to have overly unbalanced proportions of muscle fiber types, and training specifically for Type 2 doesn’t even seem to change that very much.

However, there are exceptions. And those exceptions probably play a role in an athlete becoming exceptional at one sport or another.

So, can you somehow find out what type of sport or training you’d be more suited towards, based on your muscle fiber proportions?
And, can you actually convert your muscle fiber type from one to another?

The answer to both questions is, not really.

In terms of finding your Type 2 fiber proportions for example, your different muscle groups might be slightly different, so that talking about your quads might not be relevant for your chest.

Secondly, this has been investigated in a couple of studies (here’s one of them…oh, and here’s the other), where scientists sought to discover whether there is a connection between proportions of muscle fiber type and the amount of repetitions a weight lifter can perform at a certain (usually high) percentage of their one rep max (1RM).

These studies were attempts to verify or debunk theories that lifting 85% of you 1RM for 6 reps or more means you are Type 1 dominant, lifting less than 4 reps, you’d be Type 2 dominant and anywhere between that would mean you have an even spread.

The flaws in the theory are plentiful, and doesn’t address the glaring issue of what a Type-1-dominant person compared with a Type-2-dominant person’s maximum single lift (1RM) would be if all other factors were equal.

Similarly the number of reps you can do varies exercise to exercise even using the same muscle group. For example, I can do more reps of 85% of my leg press 1RM than I can of my squat 1RM.

Skill is another massive factor. Someone who’s squatted for a year won’t be as skillful in the movement as someone who’s done it for a decade. Skill development in the case of compound lifts refers to many factors, including technique, neurological adaptation, support muscle growth, nervous system function and flexibility.

Going back to those studies, the second one even involved taking biopsies (samples) of the muscle tissue itself. That study (Terzis et al) found less of a correlation to reps at % of 1RM than the previous one (Douris et al), and that wasn’t very convincing.

The Douris study should a significant correlation of repetitions and weight to type 2 muscle fibres but it was so small as to be virtually insignificant.

And the more invasive study was even less impressive. It found that only 4% of the difference in lifting certain weight at certain reps was down to the participants’ muscle fiber types.

Summarize That Last Section, Please

Basically, you’d have to go and get chunks taken out of every one of your muscles and lab tested to get even a slightly accurate idea as to their fiber type proportions.

And, it would have to be more than one chunk from each – to get an average spread, because muscle fiber type can change across the span of muscle tissue.

No-one should have that procedure done, and it’s not clear from lifting weights at this or that percentage of your one rep max whether you are Type 1 or Type 2 dominant.

So don’t bother.

To answer whether you can convert you muscle fiber from type 1 to type 2 – again, not really.

Some kind of extreme muscle damage can cause it to happen, as can old age, but neither of those things are relevant to a person looking to improve physique and strength healthily (that would be you).

Conclusion – Muscle Fiber Type – Go Big, Go For Both

For me, it all comes down to how you use the knowledge you have. Now you know a little more than you did about Type 1 “slow-twitch” and Type 2 “fast-twitch” fibers.

Perhaps you are more enlightened than before, or perhaps I have confused you. I’m sorry if it’s a case of the latter.

I try and write these things as concisely as possible, but oftentimes brevity doesn’t help the subject matter stick, it just leaves more questions than answers.

My answer to the muscle fiber debate is to pursue the path most obvious. We have two main types of muscle fiber. Training them both will stimulate both to grow.

If size and strength are important to you, this should be good news. Instead of focusing entirely on high-rep-low-load or low-rep-high-load training you can do both. Variety being the spice of life, I hope that is music to your ears.

Still, depending on your primary goal, you can have a dominant focus in your training, and a secondary focus. If increasing your maximum lift is your main goal then you should primarily attack your high-load training, with some high-rep thrown in.

Perhaps your main aim is to be a massive brute. If so, primarily focus on moderate-high rep training with some heavy low-rep stuff on top.

The beauty of all of this is that you no longer have to limit yourself to certain lifting practices to make headway, and you don’t have to think in terms of fast-twitch or slow-twitch.

How to Gain the Most From Your Workout – Work Out Mistakes (Part 2)

Updated on February 10, 2020 by Brad Murphy

This is part 2 of the article about muscle gains and why you can’t seem to make any progress. Part one is here

What You Can Change to Succeed

Consistency is the key to success, but that doesn’t mean plodding along with the same old program day after day, week after week. That’s bound to get boring, and what’s more, it leads to stagnation of muscle growth.

There are some things you can implement straight away that will help you defeat those four gremlins discussed above:

Social Media
Motivation Hunting
Too Much Information
Shortcuts and Cheating the Grind

Here’s the major fix.

Setting Hittable Targets and Achievable Goals

I know, I know, you’ve heard this before. I understand, because I was once the person being advised to do this.

What we’ll do today, however, is go through a critical example of target and goal setting. You can then apply that example to your program, and you can even adapt it to many other aspects of your training.

For this example, I’m going to talk about the benchpress.

I’ve never met a dude who didn’t want to bench bigger, and have more developed pectoral muscles. Never.

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Benchpress Goals

Now, depending on where you are with your bench, you’re going to want to slide these numbers around to fit your current lifting experience.

It’s the methodology, the consistency and the progress that’s important, not the numbers. Numbers are relative to the individual doing the lifting.

So, with that in mind, men and women, young and old, small and massive…anyone should be able to apply themselves to this.

Example

For a lot of guys, an awesome goal to reach is benching 225 lbs for 15 reps. I’m using that because if you’re in your first 6 to 18 months lifting, those two 45 lbs plates at either side of the bar are like the holy grail.

Now, it’s a beautiful day when you bench 225, but that 15 rep count is savage. It means you have to be strong, yes, but also efficient and enduring.

Looking at it from an aesthetic perspective, your chest muscles by default will have to be well developed to get through a set like that.

So, how do you get there?

Training Frequency

The first thing I’d do is get the training schedule out and mess with it until I’m training my chest:

Twice a week, with
Two/three days between each chest session

A basic will look something like this:

Monday – Chest and Triceps
Tuesday – Legs
Wednesday – REST
Thursday – Chest and Triceps
Friday – Back and Biceps
Saturday – Shoulders and Traps
Sunday – REST

Research suggests there isn’t much hypertrophic (muscle growth) benefit to hitting a specific muscle group more than twice a week, hence the scheduling there.

This is step 1 of efficient resistance training. Don’t do extra work if it doesn’t translate directly to progress, but do go right up to that boundary point.

Training Volume and Intensity

Training the primary move first in your workout is important 95% of the time. There may be a case for pre-exhaust training if you are particularly struggling to break through at some point, but for this example we’ll keep it simple.

Training volume generally refers to the number of sets and reps you do in a given time. High volume = large sets and high rep counts.

Training intensity with respect to resistance training refers to the weight you are lifting. High intensity = heavy weight (roughly 70% of your one-rep max and above).

To bring up a particular movement, in this case your bench, you will want to work with varying rep ranges, which will be partly dictated by varying intensity.

Strength is improved most successfully with heavy weight and low reps, but hypertrophic muscle growth is stimulated by time under tension and metabolic stress.

Until someone says any different, maximum growth will come from training muscles to failure with controlled concentric and eccentric contractions. That covers the maximum time under tension side of things.

The metabolic stress aspect will be improved by limiting your rests between sets and pushing the envelope. This sets off the chain of anabolic reactions in your body to achieve what is the basic goal: growth.

Your anchor point must always be the flat benchpress, but it doesn’t always need to be the primary bench movement during this process.

So for example:

Chest Day 1 – Flat Bench always the first exercise
Chest Day 2 – Alternate between Decline and Incline bench each week

Every week, Chest Day 1 (preferably after the 3 day break from chest) begins with the good old, regular, flat benchpress.

Here, your will warm up without feeling the burn in your chest muscles with a gradually increasing load. Then you will be at your progress weight.

Each week, perhaps every two weeks, you will be looking to add a little bit of weight to your bar. This is the very essence of progressive overload – the bedrock of resistance training and bodybuilding.

This is also the point in your week where you see this process of target-setting come to fruition.

Targets, Goals and Timeframes

Your goal is 225 lbs for 15 reps.

But by when?

Let’s be reasonable here. There’s no point saying you want to bust out 225 x 15 in a month from now if you are struggling with 135 x 8.

You’d basically need to double your reps and double your plates in 30 days, which would be in 8 sessions at the gym. It ain’t gonna happen.

Instead, work backwards using common sense and logic.

And hittable targets.

Your targets are weekly/fortnightly increases of weight on the bar.

Let’s take one of the smallest plates in the gym: the 2.5 lb.

It may seem small but stay with me here. Adding 2.5 lbs to each end of the bar, every week, will give you 90 lbs in 18 weeks.

That’s 18 Chest Day 1s to add 2 x 45 lb plates to your benchpress. It’s between 4 and 5 months of consistent progressive overload.

Now, I know, that’s a hell of a linear progression and .you’re probably asking something like, will it be that easy to add 5 lbs to my bench every week, particularly when you are edging closer to that 225 lb goal?

Consider this: if your goal was 205 lbs and not 225, would it get more difficult when you are approaching the 200-205 lb goal?

Perhaps, but that’s all part of the psychological game, not necessarily a physical limiter. There are people who will struggle the closer they get of course. There will one day be a goal you struggle to achieve.

In fact, the closer you get to your maximum potential, the harder each single pound is to add to the bar. That’s life.

I doubt 225 x 15 is that maximum potential though, and if it somehow happened to be the case, then you’d still make progress following a simple, consistent and progressive strategy.

What makes the difference between continued success and stagnation.

Well, that’s where a mix of controllable factors and uncontrollable factors come into play, the latter of which you are at the mercy of.

Controllable Factors

These are the things that actually make the most difference to your rate of success. Lifting heavy weights is just a stimulus.

The actual muscle growth happens when you rest, the raw material comes from the food you eat and the medium comes from the water you drink.

Those are your three most important controllable factors right there:

Sleep
Diet
Hydration

Beyond that, you’ve got supplements. Supplemental protein is an absolute must for anyone looking to add muscle mass. It’s too convenient and scientifically proven to be anything but mandatory.

Your training is another input you have complete control over.

Training and Adaptation

Follow the same routine for long enough and your body will adapt to it. Once it has adapted too much, your progress will stagnate.

That’s where program design comes into play. If you haven’t already begun to learn about different training methods, periodization, specific movements, rep ranges and set design then I recommend getting into it.

Training variations are how we can continue to improve and adapt to the stimulus of resistance and load, tension and metabolic stress.

Some people refer to this as “keeping your muscles guessing” but that’s a horrific bro-science term that comes up short in every way.

Constantly throwing curveballs at your muscles is not the way to go about things, and it’s not how muscles adapt. Career powerlifters integrate the squat, benchpress and deadlift into their workouts for years, but they switch up aspects of those vital stimuli to generate improvement.

It’s about mastering and tweaking aspects of your training – be it sets, reps, intervals, rests, duration, frequency, volume, intensity etc. – in order to stimulate progress.

One of the aspects you can tweak is the way in which you train your secondary, support and stabilization muscles.

If you want to bench bigger, you will need to develop all of the muscles that are involved, and the beautiful thing about that is that there are many muscles to train.

Those will help improve other lift movements, which will in-turn help develop more muscle groups.

Compound Lifts Before Isolation

I’m getting a bit beyond the scope of this article here, but it’s important to remember that your benchpress (for this example) must be the first exercise you do on the vast majority of your chest days.

The benchpress is a compound movement, or multi-joint movement, because it uses more than one joint and more than one muscle group.

It’s also the lift you’re trying to put the most effort into, and so should be the one you perform first when you have the most energy.

The triceps are a good group to hit after the bench, given that they are the main assistance muscles. They will also be partially fatigued after the benchpress so you may as well finish them off.

Others find success in splitting chest and triceps to different days so they can get the maximum output from both groups. That might mean changing to chest + biceps, and back + triceps days.

Your lats are stabilizers during the bench, as is the core. Even leg drive is important to maximize the lift.

Of course, there’s also the additional chest exercises you can do. Most people who are bringing up a muscle group in this way will also perform some varied dumbbell, cable, machine, unilateral and variable resistance work to really hit all the areas of the muscle group.

Examples include: dumbbell flyes, single arm press (unilateral), cable cross-over, resistance band pushups, dips, underarm benchpress etc.

Machines are great for really taking a group to failure without risk of injury. They are often more efficient than other equipment for drop sets because all you need to do is move the rack pin and start lifting again.

In Closing

Hopefully, that’s provided a bit of an insight into how you can use your targets and goals to obliterate those weird obstacles you put up for yourself.

Social Media posts can now be a video of you hitting that weeks target, explaining how to people and/or giving them advice if they want to know more. How much more fulfilling is that than filtering through sixteen thousand booty pics.

Motivation is no longer a problem, considering you have a target to hit every week or two and that goal of yours is getting increasingly more attainable. Aimlessness is why we sometimes lack drive. There should always be a point to the things we do.

Doing nothing because there’s too much out there to do…that’s a thing of the past. You have focus now. An goal to get, targets to hit. Procrastination is dead to you.

Cheat the Grind???!! – You are in the grind now my friend. Grinding your way up to that goal weight with every tiny plate you add.

Can you see how this relatively easy change to your training program could make you progress so much more efficiently?

This is just one example of many as well. You could take the benchpress targets and apply them to other compound lifts you want to improve on.

Once each one is brought up to the standard you want you can shift focus to another, while maintaining that one.

Think of the amount of ground you will cover simply by incorporating these small incremental weight changes to your program, then start thinking what other types of targets and goals you can set out to hit.

As always, I appreciate feedback, and if you are looking for some help in any particular area, give me a shout.

Thanks for reading.