The title is catchy, I know. Also, it is not true I have to warn you. You will face plateaus in your training. BUT, having continuous progress in the long term is way less complicated than it seems. Here I will write one “guide for dummies” on how to periodize your training in order to keep it always progressing and changing the training variables correctly. Remember, this is not a definitive guide that will magically work for everybody. There are always individual variability to all aspects of training. Charles R. Poliquin liked to state though that “70% of people will respond to basically the same things. 15% will respond to more training, 15% will respond to less training.”, and I agree with him.
Everything written here is backed up by research and updated according to the guidelines from “Science and Development of Muscle Hypertrophy – 2nd Edition, Brad Schoenfeld”.
HOW TO PROGRESS VOLUME: Volume is a synonym for SETS. Volume load refers to sets x reps x load. The actual guidelines suggest a total volume of 10-20 sets per muscle group per week, with a possible advantage to increasing volume for lagging body parts.
HOW TO PROGRESS FREQUENCY: it refers to the number of sessions per week and the number of times a muscle group is worked over the course of a week. Literature suggests that higher frequency per week nd higher volume load per session leads to superior neuromuscular adaptations, hormonal markers for recovery, strength improvement and gains in lean body mass. I train myself with the good old A-B-C split, training each muscle group twice per week.
HOW TO PROGRESS LOAD: simply put, it is how much weight you lift. Intensity of load refers to the percentage of your 1 rep max (RM) in that given exercise. Research suggests that with equated volume load regimens, there is not advantage to training heavier or lighter. Both will promote similar hypertrophic gains. Research also suggests that a minimum of 30% of 1RM is necessary to elicit enough stimulus for hypertrophy. Remember, the lighter you train, the closer you need to get to muscular failure in order to stimulate your muscles to grow.
HOW TO PROGRESS EXERCISE SELECTION: varying exercise parameters can target different aspects of the musculature as well as make synergists and stabilizers more or less active, contributing to hypertrophy. When exercise variation occurs too frequently, a person may spend too much time having to learn the new movement and utilising suboptimal loads. Learning and getting stronger in the basic lifts (squats, deadlifts, bench press, pull-ups, bent-over rows and military press) is a must. After you get stronger in those, you can feel free to change your training regimen more frequently. No, it is not necessary to start a training session with a compound movement. It all depends on how well you can perform that movement, if that body part is lagging you can employ advanced techniques to increase stress in that muscle group.
HOW TO PROGRESS TYPES OF MUSCLE ACTION: the most common types of muscle actions are eccentric, concentric and isometric. In very simple words: Isometric – Iso: same, metric: length. Your muscles are contracted without changing their length. Concentric is when you lift the load, and eccentric is when you lower it (the scientific definitions are a bit more complicated than this, but let’s just make it popular in here). During the eccentric contraction, you are 20-50% stronger, allowing for greater loading, and the extent of muscle damage is heightened. There seems to be additional effects by adding supra maximal eccentric contractions to a training program, meaning, forced reps at the end of a set or eccentric sets, where you utilize loads you couldn’t normally lift by yourself so you have someone do it for you, and you resist the eccentric portion alone.
I will finish here the first part of this article. Stay tuned for the 2nd part coming soon! It will be worth it, I promise!
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