Today we are going to go over resistance training, why you should be doing it, how to choose exercises, sets, reps, weight, and how to progress your workouts to keep seeing results. It may seem strange that it took this long to get to the “how to workout” part. But I find people often struggle more with the cardio and nutrition side. Making a point to exercise more, whether that is using a program made by me, one from somewhere else or just showing up and doing something, will start to get you results as long as it is more than you were doing previously.
I had a client tell me they prefer cardio because it feels like they accomplish more in a shorter period of time. I completely get that, there is no better feeling than being drenched in sweat after a brutal cardio session. However, cardio alone will not get you to where you want to be and it won’t lead to results that you will be able to maintain long term. Not every person wants to look like a body builder, but it is impossible to accidentally acquire that amount of muscle mass.
We have already covered the health benefits of cardio. But let’s talk about body composition. Cardio is great for burning calories for the duration and a little bit after the cardio session. This increases your calories burned, but only for the day that you do cardio. It does very little for muscle growth unless you need to build strength for a cardiovascular activity. The long term improvements are going to be more in your cardiovascular and respiratory health. This is why you definitely can run, burpee and box jump your way down to a lower number on the scale. But unless your plan is to do that consistently and progressively for the rest of your life, that weight is going to come back.
Resistance training is where you are going to get the most muscle growth. You are challenging your body by adding a load that it is now going to need to adapt to meet the demands of. One pound of muscle burns 6-10 calories per day. By increasing the amount of muscle you have on your body, you will be increasing your BMR or the amount of calories your body uses in a day to function. This means if you ate at your current maintenance calories and just focused on resistance training, as you developed more muscle, you would start to lose fat from the deficit you are creating. The average person can gain 1-2 lbs of muscle per month. This would be at a slower rate than if you included a deficit and added in cardio, but something to keep in mind for long term health.
Muscle becomes even more important to have as we get older. Sarcopenia, or gradual loss of muscle, occurs naturally as we age and begins at age 20. Women are also at risk of conditions such as osteoporosis, making slips and falls much more detrimental. By increasing muscle mass, motor skills such as balance and coordination can be maintained and improved. Resistance training improves overall quality of life, sleep, mental health, metabolism and cardiovascular function; reducing one’s risk of all cause mortality. It increases your HDL which will help improve your overall cholesterol levels, reducing risk of cardiovascular diseases. Resistance training is also great for preventing diabetes by improving insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism. Even if you are not convinced that resistance training won’t make you bulky, you should be doing it for your future self.
Exercise Selection:
Exercise selection, I am now realizing, is a very large topic and varies depending on your goals. When I program for athletes, I focus on the movements involved in their sports and reducing their risk of injury during it. My hockey kids had a lot of ballistic or explosive movements with a focus on single leg stability and power; the goalies had a more circuit style of program with an emphasis on lateral movements. A baseball player would have more of a focus on their shoulders and being explosive in those movements. This also varies with where they are at in their season. If you do participate in sports, let me know, we can get way more into it.
I am not here to just hand you some ideas for workouts, I am here to help you build independence for long term success. Your exercise library does not need to be extensive; remember, quality over quantity. I have seen some very creative movements, I have also created some of them. If they don’t have a reason or a purpose, maybe something simpler would be more effective.
A squat to press is a great example for this and I do program it for people. It’s a great full body movement. But I don’t use it with the intent of building stronger legs or shoulders; I use it as a way to warm up the entire body for the movements to come. You can squat with more weight than you can shoulder press and your shoulders will get more from a shoulder press that doesn’t use the momentum from the upwards movement of your squat.
If you have ever hired someone to make you a program and they are using exercises like a lunge with a bicep curl or a single leg cable row, I suggest asking them why they chose that particular exercise. I worked with a woman who told me she was successful in client retention because she would make the exercises so complicated that they couldn’t do them on their own. However, that does not lead to long term success for the individual.
There are two types of exercises, compounds and isolation. Compounds involve multiple muscle groups. This includes movements such as squats, deadlifts, rows, pullups and push ups and also combinations of movements such as the ones mentioned above. Compounds often mimic functional movements. You squat down to pet a dog or deadlift some grocery bags off the floor. You may use a squat to press to put something on a high shelf that is heavier than you could have lifted without adding in the momentum from the squat. Someone who does work on a ladder could benefit from standing on one leg and doing a row to improve their balance and coordination while performing an upper body movement.
Isolation movements involve focusing on one muscle group. These are great for rehabbing or improving the definition of a specific group. These would be exercises such as bicep curls, tricep extensions, calf raises, leg extensions, and hamstring curls.
Both types of exercises will have a place in your workout. Where in the workout depends on your goals. The exercise you start with is going to be the exercise that gets the most effort. Which generally should be a compound. It requires the most energy therefore giving it the most effort makes sense. You will get the most net work done per amount of effort.
But let’s say you have a goal of building a particular muscle group. Starting with an isolation exercise could make sense. For example glutes, you can add some kick backs before a squat and it makes it so when you go to do the squats, your glutes will be challenged more than they would have if they went in fresh.
Imagine you’re a glute, you show up to work, ready to go and you get added to a group project, put in what you have to and then move on to your next task. Not too challenging right? Now imagine if it was 2 pm, you’ve already been working hard and now you get asked to join a group project. That is going to be more of a challenge for you than if it were your first task. Remember, what gets challenged, gets changed. This will become important when we get into choosing weights.
I don’t think I would recommend that for an easier to hit muscle such as a bicep because it will take away from what you could get from your pulling movements. But maybe if you use straps, take your pointer finger and thumb out of your grip, it could still work the same. I’ve never put much thought into growing biceps. If you try it out, let me know how it goes.
When I create a workout, I go from most to least amount of effort required. Assuming you are working out at an intensity that will create change for you, this will allow you to focus your energy to where it is needed most. If I were to make a “template” of how to build a workout, it would be something like this:
Main Compound (squat, deadlift, bench, row, pullups)
Compound 2 or Unilateral compound (Single leg/arm)
Whichever you didn’t do for exercise 2
Intermediate accessory (usually a larger group of muscles worked than an isolation-could be unilateral as well- hip thrusts, sissy squats, face pulls, straight arm pulldown)
Accessory 1 (an isolation exercise related to main compound)
Accessory 2 (arms, chest/delt flies, hip adduction/abduction, leg extensions/curls)
This template doesn’t work for all goals. I’ve done body building programs with more emphasis on isolation exercises. If you do any form of competitive strength, there is a large focus on your first compound and then the rest is various isolation exercises to complement it. But we are focusing on general health and body composition goals, which this template is perfect for.
If you put enough intensity into your first movement, there is a good chance even 4 exercises is plenty. If you’re still getting used to being in the gym, learning new movements, rehabbing something or still learning your own strength, more than 6 is fine too. As a general rule, you should get enough out of each movement that you shouldn’t need to do the same movement again. Going from a barbell bench press, to push ups, to a dumbbell chest press will just get you more volume in the same movement. Bump up the weight, increase your sets or reps, slow down your tempo, this will make your workouts more efficient and effective. Generally, If your workouts are lasting longer than 45-60 minutes, you may be taking too long of rest periods or you’re not being challenged enough from the exercises you’re doing.
How to Progress:
There are many ways to make your exercises more challenging. You can increase the weight, sets, reps, tempo, or add in a pause to reduce momentum or focus on a certain point during the movement. You can also increase your lever lengths or turn it into a unilateral movement. Bands or chains can also be added to create a more dynamic increase in challenge throughout the movement.
The most efficient way to increase the challenge of an exercise would be to increase the weight. To know if the weight is heavy enough for the movement, you want the end of your set to feel like you may have had 2-3 more reps left. This will become more effective as you become more comfortable with getting closer to failure.
Certain movements take longer to go up in weight. This is due to the size of the muscle, the percentage of increase in weight available and the mechanics of the movement. This is where alternative methods can be helpful.
Start off by increasing your reps, you can do this by shooting for 12-15 instead of 10, adding in an additional set, or both. Look at the total reps completed by the end of it. Now, similar to doing 2.5 hours of cardio, there is a point where you are just wasting time. Try to keep each set under 20 reps, feeling like you may have had 2-3 reps left.
There are some exercises where you may be able to get so many reps with one weight; but the moment you increase the weight, it just doesn’t move. This could be exercises such as delt flies, chest flies, and front/lateral raises. Sometimes you need to increase the weight and shorten the lever length by bending your elbow. This reduces the force required from the muscle to move the larger weight.
Another way to continue to progress your strength before increasing the weight would be to slow down the tempo. There are 3 components to every movement, concentric, isometric and eccentric. This is often written as ratios (C:I:E). Adjusting the ratio of time in each component can be very beneficial.
The concentric portion is where your muscle is shortening, think of the upwards movement of a bicep curl. This is the weakest component of the movement.
Isometric is the pause at the end range of motion before you go back to your starting position. There are also movements such as a plank where you spend the entire time in an isometric position.
The strongest is the eccentric portion where your muscles are lengthening. Think of the downwards portion of a Romanian deadlift, you will get more out of the movement by spending more time on the lowering portion of it. Eccentric training has grown in popularity in recent years as a way to increase strength and size while reducing risk of injury.
Extending the duration of any one of these components will increase the challenge you get from the movement. You will get the most out of extending the eccentric portion because it can handle the most load.
Where to start:
That's great we now know how to progress, but progress from what? This depends on your goals.
There are three goals that can be accomplished through resistance training. Strength, endurance and hypertrophy. Strength goals would be anything relating to lifting more weight. Endurance goals would be anything to do with being able to do something for longer. Hypertrophy would be anything to do with increasing the size of your muscles.
You are going to see improvements in all of these areas from resistance training. Think of them as the three components of your results and how you adapt your workouts is going to adjust how much of each component you get from it. I am going to simplify this down to Personal Trainer knowledge. I could get really in depth with Kinesiology knowledge on this if you would like. But that’s more than most will ever need to know. If you are interested, here is a table from Jordan Strength that breaks it down beyond the three I’m going to talk about.
If you have a strength goal: You are going to want lower reps, typically under 6 reps for 2-6 sets. You will also need a longer rest period for this, 2-3 minutes or longer. If you know the weight of your 1 rep max of this movement, you will use 85-95% of your one rep max.
If you have an endurance goal: You are going to want higher reps, typically over 12 reps for 2-3 sets. With short rest periods around 30-60 seconds. This would be about 65-75% of your 1 rep max.
If you have a hypertrophy goal: This is the happy medium where most people spend their time training. With reps between 6-12, for 3-6 sets and about a minute for rest. This would be about 75-85% of your 1 rep max.
Notice how I never said to use heavier or lighter weights? This is important. You still want the weight to be heavy enough that by the end of your set, you feel like you are being challenged. The percentage of your one rep max is a great way to determine what weight to use. However, it’s not always the easiest or safest to find, depending on the movement and it changes as you get stronger. Aiming for 2-3 reps in reserve by the end of your movement is a great alternative that will adapt with you as you progress towards your goals.
These numbers are also on a spectrum. Strength gains do not stop because you did 7 reps instead of 6. If your goal is hypertrophy and you hit rep 12 and still feel like there is more in the tank, keep going. You may also have different goals per exercise throughout your workouts.
Rest:
Rest periods also vary. If you need 2-3 minutes of rest after completing 6 reps of bicep curls, you may want to focus on improving your endurance. If you can recover from a squat in 30 seconds, you could probably handle a heavier weight. There are 4 things to check before moving onto your next set:
Muscles: Do the muscles involved feel ready to go? Even if it only feels like you can hit half the reps.
Cardiorespiratory: How is your breathing and heart rate? Are you still gasping for air or are you feeling good and ready to go?
Synergists: How are your synergist muscles doing? The muscles you aren’t targeting, but are working in the movement e.g. back muscles. You don’t want these muscles to take away from the muscle you are focusing on in the movement.
Nervous system/psychology: How's your mental state? Are you ready to go again?
You can see how something like a squat or a deadlift could need a longer rest period than some bicep curls. The larger the muscle or muscle group, the more energy and rest required.
Splits:
How you break up which workouts you do throughout the week will depend on your goal but also your schedule. A five day body building split sounds fantastic until it takes 3 weeks to complete it. There are various options for splits. To keep it simple, try to hit each muscle group 2-3 times per week. Keep in mind, muscles require 24-72 hours to recover. The more you challenge the muscle, the more recovery it will need.
You could do a full body workout every day, not hit any specific muscle group hard enough to need more than 24 hours to recover and be fine. There is increasing popularity for full body workouts due to the shorter recovery time. I have yet to actually try it myself, but it’s a great option if you don’t know how frequently you will be able to make it to the gym.
Upper/Lower splits are a great way to add more of a focus on specific groups within a workout. This could be 2 or 4 days easily or you could add in a total body if you come an odd number of days per week. It also allows for flexibility if your ability to get to the gym varies each week.
I like to build my weeks based on the compound I am doing. My Squat day would be legs, deadlifts would be more back and hamstring focused, bench would be chest shoulders and arms and then the row/pullups day would be more upper back and shoulders. This is my way of doing the push (Chest &Tris’), Pull (Back & Bi’s), legs split but with more focus on the areas I need more work on.
Workout splits can be a whole article on their own, but as long as you are hitting the areas you need to, you will be okay. Just make sure if you are also fitting in rest or active recovery days to allow your muscles time to recover and grow.
As always, If you need help with any of what we covered, please reach out.
Have a great week,
Paige
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