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I never even considered training with timed repetitions, instead of actual repetitions, until I hired a trainer a few years back. The change can be brutal. Here’s how it works: instead of pausing after 10 or 15 repetitions, you do as many repetitions as you can for 30 seconds or 1 minute (or X seconds or minutes, depending on your fitness goals). This strategy works great for abs. Here’s a sample, intermediate/advanced abdominal workout. Perform the three exercises like a circuit, going from one to the next without stopping:
Double Crunch: 1 minute
Weighted Crunch: 1 minute
Flutter Kicks: 1 minute
Training with timed sets works for more than just abs, though. Isoholds, where you hold a given weight at the top (or hardest point) of the repetition and squeeze the muscle for a certain time, involve time reps. So does Power Circuit training, an advanced and grueling version of circuit training that consists of about 7 compound exercises, performed back-to-back for 30 seconds each. Remember, a compound exercise usually means the “basic” free-weight exercise for each muscle group that works the majority of the muscle. Compound exercises include Squat or Leg Press for legs, Barbell Rows for back, Military Press for Shoulders, Barbell Curls for Biceps, etc.
One of the greatest benefits of training by time? It stops you from quitting early. When you know you need to continue for 30 seconds with a given weight, you won’t quit when you’re tired. You’ll keep going.
If you’re training for mass, you shouldn’t be resting more than two minutes per set. Ideally, actually, you should shoot for about 1 minute between sets, and some studies show that even 30 seconds might suffice. Either way, standing around and chatting in-between sets for 3 or more minutes will actually hinder your gains, not help them. You might say, “but I can’t lift as much weight when I rest only 1-minute between sets.” Remember that the goal of mass-building isn’t to hoist a certain poundage (that seems more along the line of powerlifting or strength-training), but to shape and build your muscles.
In the seconds before you lift a set, close you’re eyes and visualize yourself lifting the weight for however many times you plan to lift it. Focus on the details, here–the feel of the handles or the bar as you lift the weight, the motion of the exercise, your arms or legs moving like pistons. Whatever your fitness goals, visualization should be a staple in your pre-lift routine. In fact, some trainers even suggest visualizing your entire workout beforehand, in addition to each set.
Make a workout playlist, and only listen to those songs when you work out. I find that associating certain songs with exercising helps set the tone for your routine; consider breaking the playlists themselves into sub-groups, like a playlist for cardio and another playlist for weightlifting. In fact, I break up my songs even further–I listen to certain songs when I train shoulders, and others when I train legs…and I usually don’t mix the two.
A lot of people tend to ask me the same things, over and over, when it comes to weightlifting. Here are two of the most common questions, answered:
1.) “I want to put on mass before next semester/Spring Break/ASAP–how do I do it?”
First of all, you don’t do it by rushing into the gym and performing 20 sets for every bodypart. The phrase “start slow” is something that I wish I knew as a beginning lifter, and one that everyone–even those who used to train frequently, stopped, and are just now returning–need to take to heart. In general, I would recommend you start with a 3-day a week full-body split. That means training your entire body 3 times a week. I prefer splitting the body parts up a little bit, so the workout takes less time–in other words, training chest, back, and shoulders on one day, and legs, biceps, and triceps on another. So you’ll repeat one of these workouts once a week. Each workout, in my opinion, should consist of about 10-15 sets, with about 2-3 sets per exercise (notice the low number of sets per exercise–the “taking it slow” mantra in effect).
After a few weeks, you’ll want to transition to a more traditional, “body-split” program, where you’re training fewer muscles in a single day. That might look like chest on one day, back/shoulders on another, biceps/triceps on a third, and legs on a fourth.
Now, after a few weeks of a body-split program, is when you can begin to kick up the volume (total set number per muscle group) and begin to utilize (sparingly at first) intensity-boosters like forced reps, drop sets, negatives, and burnouts.
Remember, though, that your diet is ESSENTIAL to mass gain. That means eating every 2-3 hours, quality foods, like whole grains and lean-protein sources like fish and chicken.
2.) “I really want to lose weight, but I don’t want to become bulky. I’m not interesting in putting on muscle.”
When I ask these folks what his/her current exercise regimes look like, the answer’s usually as follows: running, then some light weights for 15 reps or so. Two things that weight-lossers need to learn: running after your workout and/or in the morning, before breakfast, are the BEST times for weight-loss. Running before you lift actually short-changes your workout–it’s much more beneficial for you to train hard, then run, rather than run, and be too fatigued (or just fatigued) to truly train with intensity.
Also, a fantastic way to lose weight isn’t to do 15 reps with a really light weight, but to alternate (by workout, or by week) between low-rep training (6 reps) and high rep training (12-15 reps). And when I say 6 reps, I mean a heavy weight. On the first set, you shouldn’t be able to lift it more than 8 times, and on the last set, you should struggle to lift it (with a spotter, perhaps) 6 times.
For weight-loss goals, I’m an avid fan of circuit training. Obviously, you need to work up to this level (oh, “start slow,” again!), but after a few weeks of a full-body split, you can begin with an abbreviated form of circuit training (fewer sets and longer rest times between circuits). The running/swimming/elliptical-ing/whatever form of cardio you perform should happen after your workouts, or in the morning on your off days.
Which brings me to my next point: let your cardio gradually progress. Though you may start at 3 days a week, with a moderate intensity routine like 30 minutes of incline-walking, make sure you gradually increase the intensity by lengthening the time, shifting to a jog, or performing cardio more than 3 days per week.
Your diet’s obviously important, as well. Eat clean, but don’t skip meals; a small meal every 2-3 hours, assuming it consists of clean foods, won’t harm you’re weight-loss goals–it’ll help.
It’s interesting that a lot of people, when training, focus on nearly every aspect of a movement except one…what you’re doing with your neck. Poor form, especially when it comes to your neck, can mean disaster. A simple rule to follow is this: whatever exercise you’re performing, keep your neck in-line with the plane of your body. So:
On Bench Press, keep your neck on the bench. Don’t lift it up as you lower the weight, and don’t lift it up as you try to push the weight back to the starting position.
With Barbell Curls, or any standing or sitting curl, don’t look down at your biceps.
With Bent Over Barbell Rows, don’t look up into the mirror (or straight ahead). Fix your eyes on a point on the floor, where your neck’s in-line with your back.
With Push-Ups, don’t look up. And, like many people do when struggling, don’t push your chin into your chest. Keep the back of your neck straight (not arched up or down).
These are just a handful of exercises, but perhaps the most-tempting ones when it comes to putting your neck in an improper position. So next time you lift, pay attention to your neck.
You know, a lot of people talk about exercising as if you just need to show up at the gym and voila! A perfect body. But the truth is, the most important part of training–the part that really separates the haves from the have nots, in terms of gains–comes at the end of every set. I’m talking about those final repetitions, when a thought flashes through your mind: “should I give up now?”
Let’s get something straight, first. The mind’s a powerful thing, and negative thinking, even in something like training, goes a long way. If you THINK you’re tired, if you THINK you can’t perform another repetition, you probably won’t. But that doesn’t mean you’re incapable of doing it…in fact, you probably can knock out a few more repetitions. You just don’t want it enough. I say this a little slyly, obviously, because there’s a fine line between pushing your body and being foolish; but as long as you maintain proper form, and you don’t have any preexisting injuries or any condition that prevents you from doing so, you should try to push your body to its physical limit.
A famous weightlifter once said, more or less, the point that separates the champions from everyone else occurs in the last 3 or 4 repetitions of the set. So stop selling yourself short, stop making excuses. Finish the set with a grunt; finish the run with a sprint; finish whatever exercise your doing, for whatever purpose, by expending all of your energy. In other words, train like a champion. If you’re not, if you’re only expending a fraction of your energy every workout, why are you here? Why are you doing it in the first place? As a cheesy slogan once put it, go big or go home.
Alright folks. I know a fell off the map a little bit last semester (taking too many hours can get in the way of blogging, believe it or not), but I have been keeping tabs on this whole Bodyplex vs. the Omni discussion. Keep in mind that this is a personal blog (even though it’s affiliated with the school newspaper) and does not need to be unbiased. In fact, I say a lot of biased things on here–like whenever I suggest a workout routine, or a diet. As a certified personal trainer, I prefer certain exercises and certain kinds of diets to others. So relax.
Anyways, back to the subject. I’ve exercised at both Bodyplex and the Omni, more than once, and I’m a member of a Crunch fitness in Atlanta….and the Omni’s by far the nicest. The amenities are outrageous; whether it’s the amazing locker rooms, the rows of machines, the rubber-gripped dumbbells, or even the separate workout facility for women or even the separate room for abs, the Omni’s amazing. Yes, it’s a little more expensive than Bodyplex, but the facility’s certainly worth the price.
With that said, I demand a certain level of quality from the gym I attend–and all three of the gyms listed above achieve that quality–and beyond that, I don’t really care. To be frank, I won’t use 75% of the amenities at the Omni. Not the sauna, not the separate facility for women (shocking), and not the majority of the machines, either. I prefer free-weights. Yes, the Omni’s free-weights feel better than the ones at Bodyplex, but the difference–to me–does not warrant the additional cost or the extra minute or two it takes me to drive to the Omni. But, to be perfectly honest, I’d attend Bodyplex even if the Omni discounted its price. I like the size of Bodyplex and the rough-around-the-edges look to the gym. It reminds me of the weightlifters that I admire, the ones that began training in freezing basements in Austria or in broiling hole-in-the-wall gyms in Texas.
So go the the Omni, or go somewhere else. If you want, you can always find me in the free-weight room in Bodyplex, by that giant chunk of mirror that’s torn out of the wall. You know, the one the maintenance staff forgot to fix two years ago.
When you first start exercising, things can be tough. You’re not sure what exercises to do or how to do them. You’re not really sure how long you should work out for, or even how you should work out to become, say, stronger or leaner. To top it all off, when you do exercise, you wake up the next morning to an aching soreness that’s just, well, debilitating.
While I can’t alleviate the soreness (think of it as a rite of passage), I can give you a few pointers. To all you beginners out there, entering into the gym for the first-time–or maybe coming back after a long break–here are a few things to keep in mind.
1. Fewer Sets: No matter what your training goals are, you need to start out small. That means two to three sets per exercise, max. Your body needs to adapt to the stress of training; you can’t just jump into 20 sets per body part on the outset.
2. Think Big: The majority of training programs you’ve heard about are advanced training programs that target individual muscles. In other words, one day devoted to chest, for instance, and one day devoted to biceps and triceps. In reality, beginners should begin with full-body workouts. Instead of training just chest on one day, consider dividing your body parts into push/pull exercises. Spend the first day training chest, triceps and shoulders and the second day training back, biceps, and legs. On the third day, repeat the first day’s exercise. The next week, switch the days around so your repeat the back/biceps/legs day twice.
3. Eat!: Whatever your training goals are, you need to eat healthy. Eat a protein-rich meal every two to three hours; you can eat a handful of nuts and a yogurt for one meal, for instance, or a protein shake for another. Just make sure three of the meals are substantial (like two tuna sandwiches or chicken breasts and a baked sweet potato). Stay away from fast-digesting carbs (or white carbs, like white bread, white rice, plain bagels, potatoes, etc.). Instead, eat brown rice, wheat bagels, wheat pasta, etc.
4. Transition: After a month or so of training like this, you can transition into a more advanced routine. Here, you can start focusing on your training goals. If you want mass, you can focus on training a few body parts each day for 8-12 repetitions per set. If you want to lose weight, consider switching to a low-intensity circuit program and then increasing the intensity (by adding more exercises) as you improve. By transitioning slowly from one routine to the next, from a less advanced one to a more advanced one, you’ll realize greater gains than by just jumping into a routine randomly.
5. Listen to Your Body: It sounds cheesy, but seriously. If you feel tired or worn out, don’t lift that day. If you hate an exercise or don’t feel it working the muscle, don’t do it. By switching around exercises like this, you’ll hone in on a routine that works just for you. That’s part of the reason why copying a routine out a magazine word-for-word won’t work in the first place.
Whatever your goal is–fat loss, muscle mass, whatever–you need to follow this one huge principle: improve from workout to workout. In other words, don’t just get into the gym and go through the motions. The whole premise behind working out is that you’re trying to improve some aspect of your body or physical fitness. So what does improving look like? Well, it means if you manage to eek out 10 pull-ups today in a circuit, let’s say, then you want to get 11 next time. If you manage to squeeze 12 repetitions on bench press with 165, that means you get 13 repetitions with 165 next time, or (if you’re doing 10-12 reps) an almost equal number of repetitions with 170. When you hit the desired number of repetitions, crank up the weight.
If you’re not improving, you’re not growing. There’s actually a form of training where you perform an exercise until the day you don’t improve–whether it means not going up in weight or not going up in reps–and then you stop doing that exercise. The motivation behind it is that if you LOVE an exercise, you won’t want to give it up, so it adds this extra incentive to beat last week’s numbers.
Improving, though, also requires some preparation. If you’re tired, hungry, or not adequately hydrated, you’re physical performance in the gym decreases dramatically. So make sure you take care of yourself outside of the gym so you can excel in the gym.
And don’t even think about going to the gym without a journal!
A few small changes to an exercise, or a workout, can make a big difference. Try some of these and see what sticks.
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Too many gym enthusiasts focus on the positive portion of the repetition–where you’re calling the weight up–at the expense of the negative….and rob themselves of serious opportunities for growth. Next time you’re exercising, lower the weight after each repetition slowly (about 3 seconds). On the very last set, trying lowering it as slow as you can before the weight drops on its own.
Pinkie-placement on incline flyes can make a big difference in how you feel the exercise. When you flye the dumbbells up, near the top of the movement, rotate your pinkies inward (in other words, in the comfortable direction, so that your palms begin to face towards your head). You should feel a much stronger contraction in your chest. This movement, by the way, mimics the cable version that few people use…cable crossovers, but where the pulleys are set at the lowest ring. With this version of cable-crossovers, you specifically target your upper chest.
If you don’t feel bent-over barbell rows in your upper back, try performing them on the smyth machine (where the bar is locked in place). You’ll be able to focus more on the muscle contracting then balancing the bar.
Try not to train abs until your workout’s over. The abdominals stabilize your core during a slew of exercises, and when you train them prematurely (at the beginning of your workout, for instance), you’re setting yourself up for injury. A weak core when you’re doing a barbell row, for instance, or a squat, is a recipe for disaster. Save them for the end.
Ever substitute plate raises for dumbbell front raises? Grip a plate like a steering wheel (at 10 and 2) and raise it in front of your body for repetitions. It has a different feel than front raises, and recruits your core to a greater degree. If you’re having trouble swaying, you can also perform this movement on your knees.
If you’re like the average fitness enthusiast, you probably include a cable exercise in your routines only for triceps (pushdowns)…you should really start to show the cables some love, though. Since using cables puts constant tension on your muscle at all points in the lift, it makes it an idea machine for lateral raises, oblique crunches, and other isolation movements. Don’t feel shy about going heavy, either; try doing low reps for cable lateral raises, for instance, or try doing some heavy cable shrugs to target your traps (the muscles around your neck). Either way, you should really try to incorporate some cable movements into your routine–even if it means just supersetting cables with another compound movement, like military press for shoulders…in this case, you might do 4 sets of 6-8 reps of cable lateral raises superset with 4 sets of 6-8 reps of military press. Get ready for the burn.
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