In previous posts, I have already described the basic principles for adequately stimulate your muscles and induce them growing. However, even these basic principles become useless if you repeat them each and every day. This occurs because of muscle adaptation, which makes unnecessary adding new muscle for handling the same workload. For this reason, I have already pointed to the need of periodically changing your routine, by modifying parameters such as the number of sets, the number of reps per set, the exercises, etc. This is one part of the equation. In addition, you need an overall strategy to be used as a reference for the changes you do in the routine. This post describes some well-known training styles that can be used to implement this strategy, contributing to avoid stagnation, break plateaus and maintain constant progress.
Probably the most important training style for ensuring continued muscle growth is periodization (a.k.a. cycle training). The basic idea is splitting up your training into chapters, where each successive chapter is sufficiently different from the last to elicit more muscle growth. This difference is accomplished by changing some routine variables from one chapter to the next. These variables include the number of reps per set, the number of sets per exercise, the number of exercises per muscle, the exercise selection per muscle, the tempo, the rest between sets, etc. Notice that the number of chapters you can design is almost unlimited, though probably the two most common chapters are “Heavy” (i.e. low reps, heavy weight) and “Light” (i.e. high reps, light weight). The reason for this is two-fold. First, since heavy training puts a lot of strain on the muscular as well as the nervous system, alternating it with light training gives your body a chance to recover and prevents overtraining. Second, while heavy training hits more fast-twitch muscle fibers, light training focus more on slow-twitch fibers. Alternating both, you can fully work all your muscles fibers. Typically, each chapter lasts from 3 to 6 weeks, enough time to determine whether it worked or not, but not too much time to halt your progress again.
Second training style comes from a common situation: After sticking with an exercise for some weeks, one surely would be able to increase the weight and do the same number of reps, or increase the number of reps while using the same weight. This results from muscle adaptation. Obviously, if you decide not to increase the number of reps or the weight, you are not taking your muscles to the maximum, and therefore, you are not forcing them to grow. In order to maintain a constant challenge to the body, progressive overload training style aims for increasing at least one training variable every workout. This can be achieved in a variety of forms such as increasing the reps per set, slowing down the tempo, increasing the weight, decreasing rest time between sets, etc. Unfortunately, it can occur that in some workouts you are not able to increase any variable. Factors causing this include inadequate nutrition and/or rest during the previous days, sickness, injury, mental barriers or overtraining. Identify what are the causes in your case, and respond appropriately.
Traditional training style involves going for the heaviest weight for the desired number of reps for a working set just after having warmed up properly. However, continually training in this way will let you soon or later to a strength plateau. A good way to break/avoid this plateau is introducing periodically pyramiding training style in your routine. With pyramiding, each successive set is done with heavier weight and less repetitions. For instance, if you are performing 3 sets for an exercise, use light weight to get 12 reps on the first set, then increase the weight in the second set so you can get 10 reps, and in the third set increase the weight again in order to reach only 8 reps. Additionally, you can also use reverse pyramiding. In this style, each successive set is done with lighter weight and more repetitions, which allows you lifting maximum poundage before being excessively fatigued.
Further information on these training styles can be found in the “Training Principles” section of Muscle 101 site, while the article “Periodization: The Key To Continuous Gains!” by Matt Danielsson goes deeper into periodization.
Probably the most important training style for ensuring continued muscle growth is periodization (a.k.a. cycle training). The basic idea is splitting up your training into chapters, where each successive chapter is sufficiently different from the last to elicit more muscle growth. This difference is accomplished by changing some routine variables from one chapter to the next. These variables include the number of reps per set, the number of sets per exercise, the number of exercises per muscle, the exercise selection per muscle, the tempo, the rest between sets, etc. Notice that the number of chapters you can design is almost unlimited, though probably the two most common chapters are “Heavy” (i.e. low reps, heavy weight) and “Light” (i.e. high reps, light weight). The reason for this is two-fold. First, since heavy training puts a lot of strain on the muscular as well as the nervous system, alternating it with light training gives your body a chance to recover and prevents overtraining. Second, while heavy training hits more fast-twitch muscle fibers, light training focus more on slow-twitch fibers. Alternating both, you can fully work all your muscles fibers. Typically, each chapter lasts from 3 to 6 weeks, enough time to determine whether it worked or not, but not too much time to halt your progress again.
Second training style comes from a common situation: After sticking with an exercise for some weeks, one surely would be able to increase the weight and do the same number of reps, or increase the number of reps while using the same weight. This results from muscle adaptation. Obviously, if you decide not to increase the number of reps or the weight, you are not taking your muscles to the maximum, and therefore, you are not forcing them to grow. In order to maintain a constant challenge to the body, progressive overload training style aims for increasing at least one training variable every workout. This can be achieved in a variety of forms such as increasing the reps per set, slowing down the tempo, increasing the weight, decreasing rest time between sets, etc. Unfortunately, it can occur that in some workouts you are not able to increase any variable. Factors causing this include inadequate nutrition and/or rest during the previous days, sickness, injury, mental barriers or overtraining. Identify what are the causes in your case, and respond appropriately.
Traditional training style involves going for the heaviest weight for the desired number of reps for a working set just after having warmed up properly. However, continually training in this way will let you soon or later to a strength plateau. A good way to break/avoid this plateau is introducing periodically pyramiding training style in your routine. With pyramiding, each successive set is done with heavier weight and less repetitions. For instance, if you are performing 3 sets for an exercise, use light weight to get 12 reps on the first set, then increase the weight in the second set so you can get 10 reps, and in the third set increase the weight again in order to reach only 8 reps. Additionally, you can also use reverse pyramiding. In this style, each successive set is done with lighter weight and more repetitions, which allows you lifting maximum poundage before being excessively fatigued.
Further information on these training styles can be found in the “Training Principles” section of Muscle 101 site, while the article “Periodization: The Key To Continuous Gains!” by Matt Danielsson goes deeper into periodization.
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