Reality Check by Cameron Gardner

How many gym members have you observed looking exactly the same year after year?  Take a look at yourself.  How long have you been going to the gym with little or no results to show for it? 

We all do this in one form or another.  Accepting mediocrity has become a norm, especially in the gym.

 

Think of all the hours you put in weekly, monthly, yearly, over the course of your life in the gym working out and getting the same results. When I look back, at all the hours I spent in the gym and didn’t improve; it makes me sick.

 

For the average gym goer, I think they need to take a serious look at what they are doing?

 

Most of the time I see people going through the motions in the gym barely pushing themselves and then doing many sets to compensate for half hearted efforts.  One would be better served by busting their assses on a few hard sets and then going home.

 

Realistically, do you think for all the effort you put forth in each workout should result in zero or minimal results?  Would you accept this type of reward in any other area of your life?

 

As I have matured in my weight training endeavors, I have chosen not to accept it.

When I reflect on the principles of weight training the one that comes up first is the General Adaptation Syndrome. This is the basis of all things that cause stress to the human body.  Essentially if given a stress, the body will adapt in time and become stronger.

 

The three basic elements of weight training are the workout, nutrition, and rest/recovery. It is necessary to maximize the effectiveness of each in order to achieve adequate gains in performance or body composition over time.  The art of a strength coach is in knowing the almost perfect array of each component to elicit those gains.

 

Let’s take a basic look at how to go about it. These suggestions are as valid for a competitive athlete as they are for a bodybuilder or fitness enthusiast. 

 

The Workout

The easiest way to manage workout stimulus is by taking out variables. Variables would be exercises, sets, reps, intensity, etc.  Simplifying the workout is the best way to manage and determine exactly how much stimulus you need in order to gain a training effect.

 

Most people workout with the intention of destroying a body part.  Let’s throw out arbitrary numbers.  What if you only needed 2 sets total to gain an adequate stimulus in any particular muscle group?  Any more than two sets would dig you into a recovery hole.  Some of you may have heard this argument before. Many HIT (high intensity training) advocates like to use this argument.  Have you really thought about it?  With less sets and exercises it’s a whole lot easier to manage recovery and dissect your workout so you know exactly what is working and what isn’t.

 

For example, suppose you have stagnated in your results on the flat bench press for the chest and you do 4 different exercises and 3 sets each for a total of 12 sets per body part. You do this for several months and more or less you are the same strength in all exercises.  Assuming you have properly fulfilled your nutritional needs and have the recovery nailed down, then you can isolate the final variable - your stimulus/recovery in each muscle group.

 

Let’s say you cut those working sets in half for chest, then in the next couple weeks you notice you have added several reps per set to each exercise.  Wow, maybe you are on to something.  Now let’s say you cut back some more sets somewhere and you add even more reps or in this case you need to add some weight to the bar because you have gotten considerably stronger. Let’s say you cut back to one set for three different exercises and you do this for several weeks, but notice you have stalled out on your results or perhaps have gotten weaker.  Consequently you have now discovered that one set is not enough volume or stimulus; time to add some more sets.  It’s about fine tuning!

 

Another way to do this is with exercise selection.  We can use chest for an example again.  Your workout consists of flat bench, incline dumbbell press, cable crossovers and hammer strength press.  Your ultimate goal is to get a bigger and stronger chest.  Try cutting out cable crossovers and see what happens to your other exercises. Maybe cut out cable crossovers and hammer flat press and soon your flat bench press and incline press shoot up in strength and you notice you have a fuller chest.

 

In applying this to an athlete the same can hold true.  You have a football player who can’t seem to drop his 40 yard dash time. He has excellent sprint technique his program is periodized correctly and his recovery and nutrition are on point.  He has even gotten stronger in the squat, Romanian deadlift, GHG raises and his snatch is up.  You would think he is ready for a PR but he is still stuck at the same 40 time.  Maybe the RDL and GHG are too much. Although he has gotten stronger in those lifts, they are taxing him too much and are irrelevant to improving his 40 yard dash time.

 

If you are a sprinter, what would make you think that doing 10×100 meter runs would make you faster for a single 100m in a track meet?  The repetition method is what you are applying.  Multiple repeats at a sub maximal load.  How can this increase your max ability?  Repeatability and maximums are different motor qualities.

 

There is a time and place for sub maximal efforts.  On the football field if you are a running back or wide receiver and you need to do 40 routes over the course of a game then, of course you need some repetition method work.  Its hard to expect someone to be able to run 40 routes at maximum speed.

 

I recently made a planned cut back in my own training volume on every body part around 50% without a reduction in muscle mass.  As a matter of fact, I have actually experienced a gain of about 10% in lean body mass. Consequently, I have increased speed and strength in 75% of my exercises.  Perhaps take a look at your program and take a look at yourself and decide are you getting all you want out of your training.