Hi all,
I have had a good day today, I got in a quality training session, I did some Push and Pull work including 50 weighted pull ups, some Bent Over Rows, Barbell Benching, Incline benching, Dumbbell benching, some press ups and some floor press. It took 59 minutes and was pretty hard work, but I felt good after. It was 33 sets in total, 3 more sets than I normally do, but no problem. I want to take the last couple of blogs a bit further and write about Exercises, Sets and Reps. It’s good to know what exercise to do, but I suppose it will help quite a lot to know how much to do.
First of all, when starting out on a programme you have to decide:
How often you can train.
How long you can train for.
Without knowing these two components it is very hard to put any sort of programme together.
If you can only train 3 times per week, full body training is the way to go. The way to decide what exercises to use, if you are going down this track is pretty easy. You just need to pick one exercise per movement for each training session. E.g.
- 1 x Locomotion
- 1 x changing levels
- 1 x Push
- 1 x Pull
- 1 x Rotation
You would pick a different set of exercises from each list for the 2 subsequent sessions. You will need to refer to my last two blogs to understand this.
How many sets and reps will depend on what your aim is?
Hypertrophy (muscle gain)
You can use 3 – 5 sets per exercise and your repetition range should be between 8 and 12 reps. you can take this up to as high as 20 reps for larger movements such as squats and lunges.
Strength
For strength training, you will need to use heavier loads; because of this you can’t use high reps; however you can do a few more sets for each exercise. 4-6 sets of 3-6 reps will do for strength training.
Whatever you are training for, Hypertrophy or Strength, I would cut off the session at a maximum of 75 minutes for Hypertrophy and a maximum of 60 minutes for Strength training.
Power and endurance
I am not going to cover these in this blog, but will in the future.
If you can train more frequently, then you can use what is known as Split Training.
Split training means that you would dedicate each training session to a different movement, this way you can do more work per training session on each particular movement.
Day 1. Locomotion
Day 2. Push
Rest day
Day 3. Pull
Day 4. Changing levels
Rest day
Day 5. Rotation
Or you could split this way.
Day 1. Locomotion
Day 2. Push / Pull
Rest day
Day 3. Changing levels
Day 4. Rotation
Rest day
Rest day
Whichever split you use, you should pick a maximum of 4 exercises for each of the movements and the reps and sets remain the same as previously explained. There are no real hard and fast rules for how many exercises you can do, but remember the Sets, Reps and Rest times explained below and it will pretty much determine how much work you can get in per session. Stick to the time guidelines for each session
Rest times
Hypertrophy
When training for Hypertrophy, your rest times should be short; you are trying to fatigue the muscles to force maximum growth in them. Optimum rest times should be around 45 – 60 seconds between sets and 60-90 seconds between exercises.
Strength
When you are training for strength, then longer rest times are necessary so that the muscles and the Central Nervous System can recover sufficiently for you to lift heavy repeatedly. Fatigue is not what you want when training for strength, so if you feel that your intensity is dropping, then it is better to stop your session, no matter what stage you are at, at the time. Ideal rest times, if you go by the book are approximately 3 minutes between sets and 3-5 minutes between exercises. However, over the years I have found that you can still get decent results if you structure your sessions well with much shorter rest times.
That’s pretty much it for tonight, have a good one, wherever you are. In the next blog on this subject, I am going to tell you how to determine your weight loads using percentages of Repetition Maximum.
Steve
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