Are You Training Properly?

If you know anything about finance, you understand the concept and the value of compounding. It’s an investment principle that means that you’re earning returns on your original investment and on the returns earned previously. It may not seem like much, but over time it ends up being the difference in potentially hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.

No, I didn’t just decide to become a financial planner. There is a point here. You properly handle your finances by reinvesting and capitalizing on compounding. This helps see massive growth in the long run rather than just throwing all of your money under your mattress. That being said, we can capitalize on the principle of compounding when it comes to our fitness as well. This comes through proper training.

Key Tenant #1: Form

Every exercise is different, which makes this fairly broad. They also all have different variations. Before you do an exercise, research the correct form. If you don’t have a trainer, look at pictures and watch videos. You’re going to save so much time by doing the exercise correctly rather than incorrectly. Especially if you’re new to the gym and are unsure how it’s supposed to feel.

Without proper form, you are not going to hit the muscle you’re targeting properly, and you’re going to end up getting yourself hurt or injured. Especially if you start to add more weight. Put the ego aside, drop some weight, and do teh movement properly

Key Tenant #2: Pace and Tempo

Muscle growth and muscle maintenance are directly tied to muscle exhaustion and time that the target muscle is under direct tension. This is regardless of the muscle group or exercise. You ever notice that the biggest, leanest, guys in the gym are the ones who move the weight incredibly slow? That’s because they know what they’re doing. Take your time. It should be uncomfortably slow. Feel every inch of that movement.

Momentum is the friend of your ego, but the enemy of gains. That’s a Sunday Athletic Club original for you. If you’re moving the weight with enough speed to generate momentum, you’re doing it wrong. You should not be swinging the weight from the decline of your repetitions to the incline of your repetitions. Not only is that going to hinder the muscle growth process, it is again, going to open you up to injury. Injuries will derail progress and set you back years and years. Do yourself a favor and move the weight slowly.

That being said, we don’t want to stop the motion of the weight for too long. Pause for the shortest fraction of a second at the top and bottom of each rep and continue into the next part of the movement. This is the tempo piece. Pausing for too long is resting and decreasing the time under tension. Move that weight and rest between sets!

Key Tenant #3: Range of Motion (ROM)

If you’re not getting proper range of motion in your repetitions, this is the cheat code that is going to get you the most compound interest out of anything else you’ll read. There is always that one guy in the gym who puts a massive amount of weight on the bar just to move it a total of one inch. He’s probably good buddies with the momentum guy. Guess what though- neither of them are going to see any progress.

If you’re not getting proper range of motion, you’re doing nothing but cutting corners and cheating yourself. However, this is usually where people first start breaking for. Getting that deep stretch and following through on a full ROM is essential in properly growing the muscle. Getting all parts of the muscle involved is going to put your visible and actual growth in hyperdrive.

Feel the deep stretch. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s worth it.

Key Tenant #4: Repetitions and RIR

RIR stands for repetitions in reserve. RIR asks the question of “how many more reps could you do at this weight with proper form, pace, and range of motion”. In order to see the most hypertrophy, we know that we have to exhaust the muscle, creating those micro-tears. The best way to do this is to train to failure or at least close to failure. Meaning that for every set we do, we should repeat the motion until we have 0 to about maybe 3 repetitions in reserve. Once you start doing this as opposed to guessing in your training and randomly selecting your number of reps, you will see changes. I promise. It is harder to do, but we grow in the uncomfortable!

That being said, how many repetitions should we be attempting to get to? Tough question. 10 different personalities may have 10 differing opinions. However, I believe the answer is to aim for 6-10 repetitions per set. Here’s how I get to that answer:

We know that in order to see the most hypertrophy we want to spend maximum time under tension while also exhausting the muscle with 0-3 RIR. With1-4 reps per set, you can definitely get to the 0-3 RIR mark. The problem is, you’re going to do that rather quickly and not spend enough time with your muscle under tension. This is a useful method for strength gains, which is why you often see competitive strongmen doing one or two rep maxes, but not as much for physical, visual, muscle growth. On the other side of that coin is the high rep range, which I would consider anything above 10 reps. With this range you’re definitely spending enough time doing the exercise and are still capable of getting to 0-3 RIR. The reason I don’t utilize this range though, simply comes down to the matter of efficiency. If you’re spending time to do 20 reps per set, odds are the first 5-15 probably are not giving you all that much resistance to begin with. I almost see it as a waste of time. Why not just increase the weight a little bit and save yourself the time it takes to get to 0-3 RIR?

You should be EXHAUSTED at the end of each set. We’ll get into it more in the future, but this exhaustion leads to required long rest periods between sets.

Key Tenant #5: Picking the Right Weight

If you’re following the last four tenants correctly, it is almost impossible to pick the incorrect weight. It’s going to figure out itself.

It might take some trial and error, but once you figure out what weight level you can do 6-10 reps to failure with proper form, pace, and ROM, you’ll know what your weights are.

Again, don’t let your ego drive this. If you add more weight than you should, you’ll end up cheating and hurting yourself.

Key Tenant #6: Progressive Overload

Progressive overload is the point of training. It’s watching your lifts go up. It’s the fun part, it’s the hard part, it’s the part that actually builds you.

Progressive overload is when you are able to stay withing the confines of form, ROM, and RIR but are able to increase weight or repetitions. This happens very slowly over a long period of time, but is the goal we are striving for when building muscle.

If you are able to successfully progressively overload, you will see muscle growth. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

So What

Training like you’ve always trained will get you the same results that you’ve always seen. If you’re not training each muscle group with intensity as described above, it’s just not going to happen mate.