Manipulating Fatigue-Variables for Eliciting Growth in Development
When you first begin training, you adopt some of the more popular trends of weight lifting such as lifting super heavy, and lifting to full max effort each day possible. I mean, the law specificity states you train for the desired outcome! But these early misconceptions of training can be detrimental, and if done long enough, develop bad habits that are hard to break. I have had a chance to work with many lifters and some of them feel that if the workout isn’t at least two hours long and requiring the heaviest of weight, it is a waste. This is by no means realistic but sometimes teaching an old dog new tricks requires heavy effort, thankfully science has progressed and allowed us to have a much smarter approach.
But let’s say the day comes and you have a client ask “why” in regards to your programming and mentor ship with the iron. How do you handle this situation and supply them the correct guidance for advancing their ability with the barbell?
Depending on the context, the answers vary. I know for myself, I make decisions based on what’s best for the athlete. One variable I CONSISTENTLY implement regardless of the athlete is “manipulating fatigue”. What I mean by this is manipulating the volume, the load, and the rest intervals to elicit the fatigue desired for the athlete targeted.
Hypertrophy: Developing Size
For athletes who are looking to develop a more dense structure, I abide to some of the common principles of hypertrophy-heavy volume. I have had athletes work with rep counts such as 8,10,12,20...even perhaps 100 reps or more! How it’s implemented and designed would take time to discuss, but understand that eventually the individual will adapt to this stimulus and need another modification to programming to improve their response to training. The next consideration I consider is rest intervals. It makes sense to lift heavy to become heavier, but if you’re allowing yourself to take 5-8 minutes in between sets you aren’t eliciting a level of fatigue that could spike a metabolic response to provoke higher levels of natural GH (growth hormone). I am talking about on major movements, 1-2 minutes tops. Afterwards, for isolated movements I am talking about 30-60 seconds tops. This could cause you to drop the weight per exercise and feel as if you are compromising the weight on the bar, but with time and adaptation you can learn to recover faster, tolerate fatigue faster, and grow in your mindset to elicit the best response possible by your body to grow in your development. I used to lift for two hours a day, and now having had a child and working on a disaster of a sleep schedule, I would be lucky to lift for 45 minutes. But during this time I have kept the same volume of training but having to decrease my rest rate during programming. This level of fatigue achieved from training has improved my size, my body composition and even my strength!
Strength: Developing Performance
For athletes who are looking to develop a stronger performance, the approach on volume changes as I am not looking to incorporate ideas of hypertrophy. The idea of 3x10 reps on bench press is 30 total reps. I can redistribute volume though, so instead of using an expression of 3x10 I could use an expression of 10x3. In both instances we use 30 reps, but for 10x3 I am able to load a heavier weight and also have multiple sets to work on force development and improving my ability to have a stronger performance. Just as with hypertrophy training, strength athletes also want to improve their performance by gaining muscle mass for improving the cross sectional area for the ability to lift more weight. In this case, rest intervals of 2-3 minutes for major movements and 30-60 seconds on isolated movements could improve the ability to elicit heavy levels of fatigue for provoking a response on elevated GH levels. For the advanced of individuals, it has even been documented that elite athletes could work multiple sets of triples, doubles or singles with 30 second rest intervals to (a) improve force development and (b) elicit fatigue. There could be an issue for anyone who decides to program this way all year long. Cycles and phases of training should exit to keep a healthy balance of development for growth and performance.