Other training variables

In last week’s post we concluded a chapter on the holy trinity of training program design. To be precise, we covered 3 main elements of every program – volume, frequency and intensity. Everybody who has ever touched a weight is aware of the fact that training involves more than just weights, reps, sets and visits to the gym. Today we will take a closer look at the remaining important training variables and explain why they are important and I’ll throw some practical application advice in there just for good measure.

Range of motion and form

Range of motion represents moving the weight from the starting position to the end of the movement. Why is this important? I am sure you’ve seen people who bench a quarter of the rep because they either don’t let the bar touch their chest or they do not go to the point of full elbow extension. In practice it’s usually a combination of the two, usually with a weight way too heavy for them. I am also sure that you’ve seen guys who do not squat anywhere remotely close to parallel (never mind any deeper), those who do half a pull-up or half a dip. These guys often think that the heavy weights mean growth and that the whole gym will stop and focus on their macho strength. Unfortunately for them, they are limiting themselves quite a bit by depriving their muscles from adequate tension. Let me explain by using an example, we’ll take the bicep curl because it’s easy to follow and there’s not too much overlap with other muscle groups. Imagine someone lifting 70 kg but lifting the bar only to the 90-degree angle (the bottom half of the movement). His biceps aren’t feeling the load of 70 kg, at best it’s 30. That same lifter would be significantly better off if his sole purpose wasn’t to stroke his ego (which is already quite “hypertrophied” if he’s lifting 70 kg on this exercise). The same exercise done with 35 kg, literally half the weight, but through the full range of motion will stimulate at least 30 kg of tension but in a much safer way.

We can explain the importance of form by using this same example. Proper form ensures two things, one is the aforementioned safety because executing the exercise with good technique mitigates the risk of injury. The second is the tension for the TARGETED muscle. Again, I am sure you’ve seen people swing and do all manner of things on this exercise. They use everything to lift it except for the biceps. Lower back, legs, core and a multitude of stabilizer muscles get involved to lift that weight while the biceps has a noticeably diminished contribution in contrast to the properly executed exercise.

Here I’ve got only one piece of advice for you, and it is fairly simple – remember that poor exercise form because of weight that are too heavy (for you) will make only one thing grow and that’s your ego, because your muscles aren’t getting the adequate tension.

Rest between sets

Despite the fact that this is an important variable and it is often poorly done in practice, the segment about it will be fairly short. Here’s a brief overview:

• For compound movements conducive to high intensity work (think deadlift, bench press, squat, shoulder press, bent-over rows and such) I recommend rest periods of 3 to 5 minutes under the condition that you do between 1 to 5 reps (maybe 6) over 85% of your 1RM and that you do not leave more than 2 reps in the tank

• For exercises from the previous category as well as most machines when done between 6 and 12 reps with an RIR of 2 or 3 I suggest resting between 90 seconds and 2 minutes

• For exercises done with lighter weights for 15 or more reps I suggest resting between 60 and 90 seconds, maybe even less than that

Tempo

This variable represents the speed at which you execute a repetition. It is made up of several parts, also called phases and those are – concentric (the positive part of the movement, think lifting the weight), the top of the movement (think full lock out of elbows on the bench press), the eccentric (the negative part of the movement, think returning the weight to the starting position) and the bottom of the movement or the starting position. You get the tempo when you add up the time it takes you to go through all four phases. In order to mitigate the already out of hand length of this text I will not go into much detail of every study on this topic. Also it is probably the least important of all of these training variables.

Tempo of 8 seconds (imagine the bench press where you lift the weight for 4 seconds and descend the weight to your chest for 4 seconds) have shown to be effective, but so have tempos of 2 seconds and 4 seconds. My advice to you is not to do anything too extreme, a good idea is to have a slightly slower negative – 2 seconds for instance. I also advise you to lift with a tempo that’s going to let you control the weight. Do not let gravity pull you (we all know the absolute geniuses who fly on the lat pull-down machine) and do the tempo that allows you to go through the full range of motion safely.

In any case, I will return to this topic in the future and give it undivided attention for an entire text, but this will have to be enough for now.

Exercise selection

Here we reach an age old question – machines or free weights. In essence, your muscles can’t tell the difference between barbells, dumbbells, cables, machines or bodyweight exercises, all your muscles feel is tension stimulus regardless of its source. Obviously, powerlifters will want to do their movements because those are their sport and it’s important to note that free weights help with coordination and strengthen stabilizer muscles much, much better than machines do. However, machines can isolate a muscle better. All these types of exercises have their time and place and not a single one is superior, all of them have advantages and disadvantages. You can absolutely build monstrously large legs without ever squatting, but squats are a fantastic way to achieve leg size. You can build a huge chest without the barbell bench press, but that exercise is very conducive to heavy loads (and progression which is key to growth).

The recommendation for exercise selection depends on so many factors that are basically down to the individual. Some of the most prominent are: the desired goal, injury history, build and the biomechanics of the lifter (limb length, thickness and durability of bones and joints), preferences and training history i.e. training experience among others.