Amplify Strength and Performance

A young Coach once said to me "I've been working really hard for weeks and I'm still not seeing any definition in my shoulders." I asked how much volume she was doing per week and what her training frequency looked like. I also enquired as to whether she was increasing reps or sets over time. I was met with a blank stare and a shrug. ⁠
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This young Coach made the same mistake most novice trainers make - equating level of exertion with appropriate application of stimulus. Unfortunately, how hard you subjectively feel like you are working, how much fatigue you've accumulated or how much you sweat aren't reliable proxies for muscle hypertrophy (aka the gainz).⁠
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If you want to have something to show for the amount of time and effort you put into training, you need to put the target muscle tissue fibres under enough mechanical tension to elicit structural adaptation. ⁠
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To do this adequately, the following should be noted:⁠
- heavier loads preferentially target fast twitch muscle fibres which have the greatest hypertrophic potential - the downside is that these fibres are easily fatigued so you are only able to perform a low amount of reps. Heavier loads can also be quite taxing on the joints. ⁠
- lower loads preferentially target slow twitch muscle fibres. Because these are much harder to fatigue and the sets need to be taken close to failure in order to be adequately stimulative, this necessitates working with higher reps. This can be both time consuming and uncomfortable. ⁠
- ⁠it's a good idea to work with a broad rep range, but the above considerations places the 6-12 rep range in the Goldilocks zone of not so heavy and not so light. Most of your time is likely best spent here. ⁠
- accumulate 6-8 hard working sets per session or 10-20 hard working sets per week per muscle group⁠
- hard working sets means that the sets should be taken to 2-5 RIR ⁠(Repetitions In Reserve - or how many reps you have left in the tank before volitional failure) ⁠
- train muscles 2-3x per week ⁠⁠
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In later discussions, we'll delve deeper into exercise selection, exercise variation and exercise progression. Do you have any training questions? Comment below or slide into the DM's.