Many whites may have asked such a question: "Is the X training plan better than the Y training plan?" "What is the best chest training plan?" However, such problems are not actually from the perspective of real training. What stage of training you are in now, how much tolerance you have for the amount of training, and whether you know how to stimulate muscle growth are all things you need to consider. So we must have a comprehensive understanding of the basis of strength training. When you can grasp the main points of each layer of this pyramid, you can make your own training plan. Then in this series of articles, you will learn what you have to do, why and how to do it in order to achieve your training goals.
Let's start with the bottom and most important layer of the pyramid.
Persistence, translated here as compliance, means being able to adhere to the vernacular. There are three basic elements of compliance:
● Realistic (practical)
● Pleasure (enjoy the process)
● Flexibility (flexibility)
Before designing your training plan, the first thing you need to consider is your schedule. If you plan to implement a so-called "best" training plan: train for two hours six times a week. However, if you work 50 hours a week, have children and do other hobbies after life, then this plan is not practical. Before you decide what you should do, you should start by knowing what you can do. So your training plan should be sustainable and practical relative to your life.
"Best" doesn't mean sustainable. It is true that many athletes or fans just want to make progress and use any plan to make the fastest progress, but not all of them do. If you are carrying out a "sub-optimal" plan, but you like it very much, you will be very involved and can persist for a long time, which will often bring better results than the "optimal" plan. What makes you progress should be persistence, not perfection.
We are not robots, and there will be all kinds of accidents in our lives, such as you being scolded by your boss today, you not getting along well with your colleagues, or you being injured. As long as it has a negative impact on you, it will affect your fitness progress to a certain extent. So at this time, it is very important to learn to be flexible, which is also the core of the whole pyramid, including flexibly adjusting the intensity of a day, the frequency of a week, the choice of actions and so on. It is very important to balance work, life and training. Even professional athletes sometimes affect their training because of certain factors.
Make a summary about the first layer of the pyramid: make a long-term training plan, which should conform to your personal schedule, be flexible and flexible from the perspective of daily, weekly and monthly, and enjoy the process at the same time.
Let's talk about the second layer of the pyramid: volume (capacity), intensity (intensity) and frequency (frequency).
Capacity, intensity and frequency are the three most important variables in strength training. They complement each other, so put them together. Because this is the pyramid of muscle and strength training, I will talk about "muscle hypertrophy" and "strength".
The strength mentioned here refers to the relative weight used.
Before we talk about intensity, we need to know specificity. Single-mindedness means that in order to achieve your training goal, you have to train for it. For example, weightlifters, the training methods will focus on heavy weights and low times, because they judge their performance by the maximum weight lifted in the competition (1RM).
Strength is not only a physical feature, but also a skill. If you want to be stronger in a certain action, you should train this action more, because of neuromuscular efficiency. "Strength" is more affected by specificity than "muscle hypertrophy".
In a study by Brad Schoenfeld, two groups of subjects, one training with a weight of 3RM and the other training with a weight of 10RM, had the same amount of training, which means that the only variable is intensity. The two groups found the same muscle growth, but the strength of the 3RM training group increased more. This means that "intensity" is more influenced by specificity. If you want to be stronger, you should do heavy training.
But does this mean that strength is not important for muscle hypertrophy? No, it's just that the intensity range of "muscle hypertrophy" will be wider, and your training needs to be "heavy enough" (reaching a certain intensity threshold) to have the effect of increasing muscles, otherwise we will all reach the same muscle level because of the gravity of the earth.
So how do we measure strength? Common methods are% 1RM, RM and RPE.
When it comes to intensity, it often involves "fatigue". Exhaustion can indeed increase the recruitment of muscle fibers, but sometimes it will affect our training volume. For example, you do three sets of bench presses with a weight of 5RM. If you are exhausted in the first group, the number of times in each group may be like this: 5, 3, 3. It depends on the rest between your groups. However, if you don't kill yourself in the first group, it may be like this: 4, 4, 4. Then in the second case, your training volume will be higher.
Should fatigue be completely avoided? Not exactly. We should use exhaustion wisely. Squatting to exhaustion is not the same thing as lifting sideways to exhaustion. We can be exhausted in most single-joint action groups because the movements are not so easy to deform and the risk of injury is relatively small. Or practice several movements with one muscle, and the last group of each movement is exhausted. However, when you are in the unloading period, you should stay away from fatigue. Exhaustion should be skillfully applied to your training cycle as an advanced part. There are many considerations about fatigue, and I will write an article about it in the future, so I won't expand it in detail here.
Make a summary about strength:
If your goal is to maximize muscle gain, then the intensity of 3/4 should be 6- 12RM, because this intensity range is the best intensity range for cumulative training. The strength of 1/4 should be less than 6RM or 12-20RM, which is also to maximize the hypertrophy of various muscle fibers. The significance of heavy weight is that when your strength increases, the more training you can accumulate, and the more experienced trainers need to pay attention to the development of strength; The significance of light weight is that it can bring a good pumping feeling, and at the same time, it has less pressure on joints, connective tissues and ligaments. When you are injured or have joint discomfort, you can spend it with light weight. Therefore, for the training of muscle hypertrophy, it is necessary to change the training intensity regularly and systematically, and arrange the intensity as a variable in your training plan.
If your goal is to increase strength, shouldn't all training be heavy and few times? Not exactly. In the research Schoenfeld just mentioned, although the strength of the 3RM training group increased more, it took them longer to complete the training (the rest time between groups was longer), and they were more prone to joint pain, greater training pressure and more difficult to recover. Therefore, if your training goal is to develop strength, the intensity of 3/4 should be 1-6RM, and the intensity of 1/4 should be 6- 15RM. Moderate weight can help you train your motor skills while accumulating training (the strength mentioned above is also a skill), and more muscles can also help you develop your strength better, although the relationship between them is not completely linear.
There are many ways to express capacity, and we usually use "volume load" to measure it, but this method also has its shortcomings. Different movements, different intensity, can not compare the training volume well.
Ability is the most critical factor for strength and muscle growth. For better training effect, the most effective way is to practice more. However, more is not always better. The curve between ability and training effect is probably an inverted U-shape.
Here is another introduction to the fitness-fatigue model, which was put forward by Bannister in 1982.
Training will produce two sequelae: adaptation and fatigue. Among them, "post-adaptation effect" is a positive physiological response, and "post-fatigue effect" is a negative physiological response. When your fatigue exceeds your adaptability, you may overtraining.
When you train more and more, you accumulate more and more fatigue. If it can't be restored, it will have a negative impact.
The highest point depends on many factors: training years, different muscle groups, current energy intake, whether to use drugs, sleep quality and so on. However, should we always use large-capacity training methods? Not exactly. A better method is to increase linearly and then decrease. For example, the first week of a mid-cycle, the first week of chest training 12 group, the second week 14 group, the third week 16 group, the fourth week 18 group, the fifth week 20 week, and the sixth week 10 group (minus).
However, in our whole training career, the trend of ability should be gradually increased. The higher the training level, the greater the training ability. In addition, women tend to bear greater training ability than men.
When making a training plan, you can refer to the following table:
The above assumes that you practice every movement or muscle 2-3 times a week (if you only practice one movement or muscle a week, you need more training, and vice versa). Within a given intensity range, the frequency range can be changed to some extent. The amount of training should be adjusted individually according to your own needs and current goals.
Frequency generally refers to the number of times an action or a muscle is trained in a week.
According to the above, ability is the most critical factor to increase strength and muscle, so training frequency should be used as a tool to change the amount of training.
From the actual training point of view, for example, 12 group barbell squats, if completed in one training class, the weight and movement quality of the following groups will definitely decline slowly, so if it can be divided into 2-4 training classes, that is, 6-3 groups of barbell squats each time, this will not only ensure the training quality, but also improve the total training volume; Similarly, for example, chest training has four movements a week, and each movement has four groups. If a training class is completed at one time, the training quality of the last two movements will decline because the first two movements have accumulated some fatigue. If we practice the last two movements on another day of the week (increasing the training frequency of the chest), the training quality of these two movements will be improved, and the total training volume of the chest in a week will be higher.
People with good toughness tend to benefit from higher training frequency (2-4+ times), while those with poor toughness tend to be suitable for lower training frequency (1-2 times). Training frequency should be used as a tool to change the amount of training.
Capacity: Repeat 40-70 times for each muscle. If your main goal is to develop strength, then 3/4 or at least half of your training should come from the actions you want to become stronger; If your main goal is to develop muscles, then 3/4 of the training amount should come from the intensity of 6- 12RM, and 1/4 should come from heavy or light weight.
Strength: 1- 15RM
Frequency: 2-3 times/week/each muscle or action mode.
If you are a beginner, the training amount starts from the left side of the range; If you are an intermediate or advanced coach, the training volume starts from the right side of the range. Give yourself some time and see if you can make progress. Take this as the starting point standard, and then make corresponding adjustments according to your own reaction.
To be continued ... tomorrow will bring the rest of the pyramid, muscles.