So we know what sort of exercises are the right ones to do. But how do
we structure workouts around them? The idea is to focus on what
actually makes you get bigger and grow stronger, and do just that and
not much of antyhing else. And that thing is performing a Failure Set,
i.e. a sequence of reps of an exercise leading to a point where you
fail. How many reps you should be doing depends on what you are
looking for; if it's more general fitness and muscle endurance (i.e.
you want to move around lighter stuff for a longer time), then you
want somewhere between 10 and 20 reps for a set. If you're more
looking for outright strength and size (which I am), then you want
something under 10 reps for your point of failure. I believe you also
need to perform a lighter set first; not so much for "warming up"
(which can be a misleading term), but for preparing your muscles,
getting some blood moving there, firing up your nervous system; I call
this an activation set.
My activation sets are with weights about 50% of my failure set, and I
do 10 reps. I then rest for a minute, double the weights, and do a set
with the intention of failing somewhere under 10 reps. If I can reach
10 reps then I've finished that level of weights and the next session
will add more weight. When I can do 10 of that higher level of
weights, I'll increase the weights again, and so on.
For each weights session, I'll do a "split", i.e. pick a few muscle
groups, rather than trying to do all of them in one go (since I'm
trying to get out of the gym in 30 or 40 minutes). Each split is three
muscle groups, and I do three exercises for each muscle group, but
rotate them around to give the muscles a few minutes break between
failure sets. I currently have two splits: A (legs, abs and
shoulders), and B (chest, back and arms). So on a Split A day I will
do a chest exercise, then an abs exercise, then shoulders, then loop
through the three again with different exercises, and then once more,
for three exercises for each of three muscle groups, where each
exercise consists of two sets (Activation and Failure). That's 18 sets
total, which I can usually do in about 35 minutes.
This structure is not the absolute most effective for short-term
strength and size gains, but it keeps you moving, focuses on continual
improvement, has very low injury risk (no "1 rep max" madness), and
burns huge amounts of calories. It works.
No comments:
Post a Comment