The current lifting workout: Part 1

It's amazing to consider how many workouts there are to choose from. Anyone who has lifted for a long time has discovered and tried many different types to see what works best for them. One thing I've discovered is that picking the actual lifts you do and sticking with them for long periods of time works well for me. There is a lot of literature out there advocating changing lifts frequently as part of cycling your routine. A good example of this is to do barbell bench press for 4 weeks and then switch to dumbell press for 4 weeks. For me what I find is that when I eventually come back to bench after doing other similar but different lifts is that I haven't progressed on bench. It's frustrating to come back and spend two or three weeks seemingly weaker than you were before. Some of this, in my opinion, is attributable to muscle memory. The human body has an amazing capacity to become very good at repetitive exercises. I find that when you consistently train with great form, you develop a "groove" which makes you very talented with that lift.

I understand that there will be a lot of bodybuilders, and others out there saying that you need to work muscle groups from various "angles" and the variety helps -- all of which may be true for some. So, looking at back exercises, you might need 2-3 lifts for outer lats and 2-3 lifts for upper back and the inner lats and finally one decent lift for the lower back to put together a full back workout. Then, if you change a couple of these out every 4 weeks you might have to be very talented at as many as 14 back exercises, versus my 5-7 exercises. And as you consider all of the muscle groups, you can quickly get to a remarkably large number of exercises to keep track of, and become very good at.

So my strategy is to pick exercises that have proven themselves over a period of time, that can be done by myself - without a spotter - and use a variety of intensity techniques and rep schemes to bring out the variablity muscles need to stimulate growth and improvement.

A great starting point, in my opinion, to determine the best exercises to use for each bodypart can be found at bodybuilding.com. Go to the site (not the store) and search on "Big Cat" -- then click on the ICE program and read it from start to finish. For anyone lifting it is a great starting point -- he clearly outlines the makeup of each major muscle group and then creates an exercise regime for working each group correctly. For a guy like me that is somewhere between bodybuilder and powerlifter, I have, of course, adapted from that.

Major considerations that went into how my lift program was created.

• The desire to work every major muscle group twice per week. Once with a lot of volume and intensity, and the other time with medium intensity and around 1/6 the regular volume. This really keeps soreness to a minimum and gives the muscle a good pump at least twice a week-- which if you have your nutrition down well significantly aids recovery.
• Research has shown that you should try to work a muscle every 5th day. However, I must have a steady 7 day cycle. So generally, its a high intensity lift -- three days rest for that muscle and then one moderate intensity followed by two days off.
• I want to have biceps and back separated by at least two days. I do a lot of close grip pull-ups, and those really work the biceps as a secondary muscle. Biceps are a slow recovering muscle so I need a couple of days off after biceps before a back day.
• Its difficult to find a great compound shoulder exercise that will work with exhausted triceps. So, triceps and shoulders need to be separated by a couple of days also.
• The need for at least one day completely off after leg day. Anyone that does heavy squats will understand that.
• My desire to have at least two days completely off in a row. As mentioned in the original "cycling your workouts" post, rest and recovery are as important as the actual workout.
• I also have a full running program that has to combined with this lift plan. I like having Biceps on Sunday so I can have that also be a hard run day. Mostly personal preference I guess.

Currently I do the following split:

Sunday - Biceps

Monday - Off

Tuesday - Off

Wednesday - Back/Shoulders

Thursday - Legs

Friday - Off

Saturday - Chest/Triceps

The next piece to consider after the actual lifts to be performed and the days to perform it are the sets/reps, lift styles and how to vary (cycle) the workout.

Most research currently indicates that the best rep range for muscle growth is 5-8 reps per set. Of course I modified this also, as I find that I get a better results from certain exercises using a few more reps. So when you read these rep ranges, note that for legs and back I usually go a little higher than these numbers. Generally, in cycle 1 I use a rep range of 7-10 per set. Cycle 2 is a range of 6-8 and Cycle 3 is 4-6.

Each cycle lasts for 4 weeks. In week 1, I do between 60-70% of my target weights, while reducing volume by at least one set per exercise. In the following three weeks I go increasingly harder, usually trying to hit my goals in week 3 and exceed them in week 4 if possible. At the end of cycle 3 I take 10 days off from all workouts.

In the next post I will give the actual workout for each cycle that will be combined with my lift evaluations to track progression.

Evaluating and comparing lifting workouts

It's not a simple task to determine whether you are progressing or not from workout to workout. Sure, if you bench press 250 for 3 reps in week 1 and then do 5 reps with 275 in week 4 you can clearly say you have progressed. But how much? And what happens if you bench 250lbs for 5 reps in week 1 and 265 for 3 reps in week 4? Have you progressed?

What I use to analyze this data is a version of the one rep max calculator. You can find many versions by Googling it, here is an example: http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/OneRepMax.html.

It is important to understand that I generally don't want to try one-rep maximum lifts. Why? I don't like injuries. When you lift a significant percentage (or multiple) of your body weight, one rep maxes leave little room for error. A lot of times you will need a spotter (I lift alone almost every time) and even when your form is perfect, you still might get injured. It's just not worth it when you consider the time it takes to recover from an injury.

As will be shown, steady - significant progression doesn't require one rep max performances.

OK, so if you have looked at the one rep max calculator you understand the idea behind evaluating one lift -- for my example, lets say 5 reps of 405 on squats. My calculator says that doing that is equal to a lift of one rep at 473. It really doesn't matter which calculator you use, as long as you find one and stay consistent with it. When I used to do one rep max lifts, I found that these calculators tend to be more accurate on some lifts than others. Generally, it is a decent estimate that will put you in the zip code of where you are at. Again, the goal is progression, so we are looking at the change in these figures anyway.

The interesting piece of my lifting evaluation program is how it examines progression using the one rep max calculator in conjunction with doing more than one set. So back to my example, if you do one set of 5 at 405 on squats -- how would you compare that to 3 sets of 5 at 405? My method is to treat 3 sets as the base workout. Then I average the implied one rep max for each lift of the three sets. Thus, the squat evaluation for 3 sets of 5 at 405 would be 473. If I do 2 sets, I take a 2% deduction, while if I do 4 sets I add 2%. It's a lot of math, but I simply plug the numbers into Excel and it goes pretty quickly:

2 sets of 5, 405 squat = Lift Evaluation of 463.5 (473 less 2%)

3 sets of 5, 405 squat = Lift Evaluation of 473

4 sets of 5, 405 squat = Lift Evaluation of 482 (473 plus 2%)

for 1 set, I do a 3% subtraction from the three set base, and for 5 sets I do a 3% increase. Above 5 sets there is not any additional value.

So where do the 2 and 3 percent figures come from? They are from a little bit of trial and error and a little bit arbitrary -- if person A can do 2 sets of 5 at 405, but can't quite get the fifth rep on the third set - you can imagine the one rep max of person B who can do 3 sets of 405 is higher than that of person A. As you will see later, since we are looking at changes in these numbers, the additional percentage generally is not important.

Once you have a lift evaluation for each exercise, you're ready to compare workouts.

Using my example -- let's assume at the end of your first workout cycle you did 3 sets of 5 reps at 405 on Squats. This translates to a lift evaluation of 473. At the end of cycle 2, you are able to do 2 sets of 5 reps at 410 and one set of 4 reps at 420. Using my calculator, the cycle 2 lift evaluation is 478.2, or an improvement of 1.1%.

And there it is. I evaluate each workout by averaging the percentage improvement I make on each lift in the workout to form an average percentage increase for "chest" day, or "leg" day, or whichever focus muscle group is being lifted. Below is an example:

BACK/SHOULDER
Shoulder DB Press	68.7
	2.1%
Side Laterals	27.2
	3.8%
Rev Flys	34.6
	9.1%
DB Rows	78.4
	-9.6%
CG Pullups	239.7
	38.5%
Pullovers	118.9
	7.5%

The percentage change below each lift evaluation is calculated from the previous cycle. These are my cycle 1 stats on Back -- The average of the percentage changes in these lifts is 8.6%.

I am always amazed at how the human body will continue to gain strength with consistent training for a period of time. Really, to add 7% to the amount you lift every 13 weeks is something that most men that train with intensity should be able to accomplish for an extended period of time. If you do this consistently for 3 years, your lifts will increase by 125%!

Of course, as you become more advanced, the growth rate will slow. It depends on a lot of factors, but at some point after 3-5 years of training, progressive training requires new standards and careful consideration of new factors. Injuries, over-training, workout nutrition to name a few have to be much more closely monitored. One of the main functions of this blog is to discuss and quantify how well these type of ideas work in relation to progressive training.

Cycling Workouts

Several years ago I started cycling my workouts. Anyone that has lifted or ran for a period of time realizes that you can't simply lift more and/or run faster each week. You have to build up to a maximum effort -- then rest and build up again to a new peak. Overall, the goal is progressive improvement. At the end of each cycle you should be able to lift more or run faster than at the end of the previous cycle.

I look at cycling from three different standpoints:

1) some muscles respond better (i.e. hypertrophy or growth) when stimulated either using a different set of exercises or by changing the rep range within an exercise group. As an example of the former, you can do barbell curls to work the biceps for a few weeks then change over to dumbell curls for several weeks. Changing the rep range could be done by working 3 sets of 8 for a few weeks and then coming back with 4 sets of 5 for the next cycle. My most recent cycling program for lifting has three major rep ranges for each muscle group -- and each rep range is done for a 4 week cycle. More on this later.

2) As an athlete becomes more advanced, the intensity of the workouts increases substantially. Growth becomes more challenging and rest and recovery, as mentioned above, are watched just as closely as the actual results. By cycling the intensity of the workouts, you give both your muscles (tendons, ligaments, etc) and CNS (central nervous system) time to completely heal from these grueling workouts.

3) Finally, the third area of cycling is where you work on improving one or two areas for a period of time while training to maintain all other areas. This is something that I want to experiment with and quantify in future trainings. From the perspective of progressive training, is it better to improve a little on all elements of your workout, or attempt to gain a lot on a couple of area's and maintain on the others? If you are training for a specific purpose, say a 5K run -- you may need to only improve on speed work if you have great endurance.

A great resource for how I began cycling my workouts can be found at Lee Appersons website:

leeapperson.com

Although I don't agree with everything he says on all topics -- you can clearly see how his cycling ideas influenced my workout structure.