I have received a lot of questions lately about training programs on the website or in my ebook Arm Size and Strength: the Ultimate Guide. This is obviously a concern, as methodology is critical to the effectiveness of a program. Otherwise, you can just pile up exercise and call it a workout. But as I teach in my Essentials of Program Design, proper use of all the loading parameters is what leads to the best results in the weight room. Having coached World and Olympic medalists in 18 different disciplines, I can vouch that this is what made a difference between a top 3 podium and not making the team for many an athlete, and yet, a lot of coaches still don’t know how to properly use all the trainings variables to ensure the best results.
I’ve put together a short guide to let you have a glimpse of how I use them, and the most common questions we get that might hinder your workouts.
Loading Parameters 101
An example of the world-famous German Volume Training
The basic variables most people know are: sets, reps, rest, volume, intensity and tempo. The first 4 are fairly well understood, but the last two are just not that well-known. Not matter what the variables though, from the interaction we have with readers of this site, the problem lies not in what those variables are, but most often in how they are put together in a program, so I’ll cover that to some extent as well.
Sets – This is an aggregation of repetitions done with little rest in-between. That trips most people up is that sets and reps have an inverse relationship; in other words, the more sets you have, the less reps per set and vice-versa: the more reps you do, the less sets you have.
This means you can do 3 sets of 10 or 10 sets of 3, but 20 sets of 20 is just plain idiotic. Yes, there are exceptions. This is why I used my famous German Volume Training to illustrate this. 10 sets of 10 does seem to violate that rules, but the intensity is modified accordingly to allow the high volume of this workout. All parameters must be in balance.
Reps – While this is the basic unit of the workout, people are often stuck at the same weight or are afraid of doing more than the prescribed rep when it is an exact number. This is why I use the double progression system when writing most of my programs. So instead of having 3 sets of 8 reps, I’ll write down 3 sets of 6-8 reps, or 10-12, and so on. Why? Because the intensity interval between the chosen rep range is not that great, but it allows one to give a maximum effort of all sets, especially if all the sets are not done at the maximal reps.
So a given set for someone who’s starting on the program and has chosen the adequate intensity for the exercise might do 8 reps on the first set, then 7 reps on the second and only 6 reps on the last one. This means that the next workout, he will not increase the weight but focus on doing more reps, so it might look like 8 reps on the first set, 8 reps on the second and 7 on the third. Only when he can complete all the sets with the full reps should he increase the weight. This provides a trainee with a challenge for each exercise, and is an indicator of progress that motivates him to achieve more in a progressive and realistic way.
A quick note on percentage-based rep – another frequent question I get. There are several reasons why I prefer to use the RM system rather than the percentage system. One of them is that each muscle group has a different fiber type, hence they can’t be trained at the same percentage for the same number of repetitions.
Another frequent caveat of the percentage system is that it locks the athletes into using specific weights, regardless of what they are capable of lifting on a given day. On a very good day, the load might be too light for the number of repetitions given, whereas on a bad day, the load will be too heavy. I’ve known of several athletes who felt frustration at having to follow a precise percentage and thus increased their risk of injury doing so.
It should also be mentioned that neurological efficiency changes with training age, so as athletes get stronger, they need to shift toward using weights that are closer to their one-rep maxes
Rest – While incredibly simple, having different duration of rest with exercise in the same sequence seem to confuse people. More on this later.
Volume – This is simply the number of repetitions multiplied by the number of sets and the number of exercise. It needs to be said that while 10 sets of 10 reps for a given muscle group has the same total volume as 5 sets of 20 reps, the effect will not be the same as intensity and time under tension change dramatically.
A very common mistake I see with total volume is that it often gets confused with the quantity of mechanical stress a muscle is submitted to. Not so. Many techniques can increase this stress irrespective of total volume. Just mentioning a few like agonist supersets, drop sets and cluster training; those can make you sore despite the total volume being the same as another workout you did just before this one. So keep that in mind when assessing volume.
Tempo – This is the rhythm of the rep. It stands to reason that if you take 2 seconds to do a repetition, versus 5 seconds with the same weight, the results you will get from that rep will be vastly different. If you multiply tempo by the number of reps you have in a given set, you get time under tension (TUT), which dictates the kind of results you will get from a given set.
Intensity – No matter what the Mentzer fans, HIT apologists, and even CrossFit aficionados say, intensity is not how hard an exercise feels. Yes, it takes dedication and mental toughness to go through some workouts, but that is not intensity as defined by exercise science. Exercise physiologists throughout the world define intensity as how close a load is to that person’s 1RM for a given exercise. So for someone who benches 200 kg, lifting 180 kg is a very high intensity load, since it represents 90% of his 1RM. But for someone who benches 300 kg, the same 180 kg load is NOT as intense, since it represents only 60% of his 1RM.
So when you do a training program, definitely choose your intensity according to the other loading parameters.
A word on exercise order – This is often a disregarded parameter and one that causes a lot of confusion. I used the alphabetical notation with a number to be more precise. Hence, you have to all of A1 and A2’s sets before moving on to B exercises and so on.
Let’s put it all together with an example. Let’s take two agonist supersets for a chest and back day. It would look something like this:
A1 – Incline Barbell Bench Press
4 x 6-8, 40X0 rest 10 seconds
A2 – Dumbbell Incline Flyes
4 x 10-12, 3010 Rest 120 sec
B1 – Wide-Grip Lat Pulldown
4 x 6-8, 3010 rest 10 seconds
B2 – Straight Arm Lat Pulldown
4 x 12-15, 2011 Rest 120 sec
Pretty classic bodybuilding workout. No questions on this one. But it would be a lot more efficient if done this way:
A1 – Incline Barbell Bench Press
4 x 6-8, 40X0 rest 10 seconds
A2 – Dumbbell Incline Flyes
4 x 10-12, 3010 Rest 90 sec
A3 – Wide-Grip Lat Pulldown
4 x 6-8, 3010 rest 10 seconds
A4 – Straight Arm Lat Pulldown
4 x 12-15, 2011 Rest 90 sec
So you do one superset, rest 90 seconds, than do the other superset and rest 90 seconds. This is one set of the A exercises. So while your chest is resting, you are working out your back, and vice-versa. This is more efficient from a neurological standpoint, but only from a time perspective.
I hope this short guide helps you take full advantage of the workouts on my website. And to the internet advanced crowd of arm-chair experts: if you learned anything in this article, you are NOT advanced.
In strength,
Charles
