If your not willing to do Strength Training you will never get in top shape. Muscle may weigh more, but when you increase your muscle composition, the body is able to burn more fat, even when you are resting, because your metabolism is higher. A pound of muscle will use 350 to 500 calories per week to survive, while a pound of fat only needs about 14 calories per week .
When we are inactive or have little activity in our lives, our body would rather store fat over muscle because it is easier. Research indicates that muscle loss found in elderly people doesn’t come from age, but lack of activity. Even a young person who doesn’t get enough exercise can lose muscle mass and strength.
So, if your not maintaining or strengthening your muscles you will lose strength. So lets get started. First, what is your goal?
Most of us would agree that our goal is to get in the best shape shape we can. We are not looking to be Mr. or Ms. Universe, we just want to be healthy and look our best.
There are many ways to train, in the future I will address them in detail. Remember you want to find the best training program for you, remember The Torpedo Principle. I am going to address the foundation of the training program that has best worked for myself and my clients. All of the programs are not the same, each client’s program is customized but the foundation is the same. We are going to discuss a low to medium weight, high repetition program.
For example, say your maximum weight you can bench press is 100lbs, you are going to use 30% to 60% of that maximum weight. So if your just starting out you would use in this example 30lbs, more advanced you would use up to 60lbs.
The average amount of repetitions someone would do for a basic strength training program is between 8 to 12 reps. And usually 3 sets of a given exercise. You are going to increase both repetitions and sets.
Your reps will be between 15 to 25. You will be completing 4 or 5 sets per exercise. Don’t panic yet, it is going to be hard work, but remember your only using low to medium weight.
The most important rule in this training program is your rest periods. You will only rest between 10 to 20 seconds in between sets and only 1 to 2 minutes between exercises. It is not a lot of time to rest.
The reason that you don’t get to rest a lot in this program, you want to keep the blood constantly pumping to the muscle. The blood flowing to the muscle is what breaks the muscle down. Ok lets stop right here and cover muscle breakdown.
If you don’t know how a muscle is built up, you need to know. This is important, it will give you a different outlook on what strength training is all about.
The muscle is made up of active and inactive fibers or muscle cells. When a muscle is in use these fibers are stressed. During normal usage muscle does not get stronger, because there is no need. If the muscle can handle the task it does not seek to grow and/or get stronger.
When a muscle is stressed beyond its capacity to function it will start the fiber recruiting process. It will start to make the inactive fibers active, in order to handle the stress you are placing on the muscle.
Muscle fibers are very fast to recover. If your not putting constant stress on them they will snap back to normal state quickly without any growth or strengthening.
Have you ever seen the guy at the gym that goes all the time but looks no different. You see him complete and exercise then walk around for 5 minutes before he does the next exercise. He doesn’t change because he is not working the muscle hard enough, he is posing.
To build muscle strength and growth, you want to keep constant stress on the muscle. Ladies, you don’t have to worry, unless you use hormone supplements or steroids, you will not get much bigger. You will get stronger and denser.
Now that you know how the muscle basically works you can see why we do high rep sets, with very little rest in between. I guarantee that for those of you that have a workout routine already in place, if you change you rest period over to what I told you. You will get a more intense workout without increasing your reps.
For those of you that don’t have a workout routine I will be covering that in Part 2. Understand that what I am giving you is part of a Strength Training foundation. Once you have the foundation you will be able to modify it to fit your personal needs.
Remember this is still about winning the Fitness Game and your well on your way. Part 2 will be on tomorrow. If you have any question feel free to email me and I will get back to you as quickly as I can.
