Day 109 - Your Guide to Sets and Reps (Recovery Time Too!)

Any training program should begin first and foremost with setting a goal or goals. Last year, I blogged a 7-step approach to program design. If interested, you can start here with Step 1: Needs Analysis

If you want a quick, straight to the point guide to sets and reps, refer to the image above, while I explain each "Training Goal" below, along with applications of each.

To begin, however, as I said before, you should start at square one, and decide on what your training goals are. Secondly, you should determine either your 1RM (1-rep maximum) or 10RM. If you look around online, you can find many different ways of calculating such a thing. You can choose to either test yourself to determine your 1 or 10-rep maximum, or you can try various testing procedures to estimate your 1RM or 10RM.

Testing your rep maximums is not necessarily imperative, but it can be helpful to accurately choose proper resistance to hone in on your repetition goals listed in the table above.

If you decide to calculate your 1RM, you can then follow this table to aim for specific reps:

%1RM - Number of Repetitions Allowed
100 - 1
95 - 2
93 - 3
90 - 4
87 - 5
85 - 6
83 - 7
80 - 8
77 - 9
75 - 10
70 - 11
67 - 12
65 - 15

So, a quick example on how to use this table: If you can bench press 250 pounds 1 time, you should use 218 pounds for 5 reps. Make sense? Good, let's move on.

What training goal should I aim for?

Hard to say, that is usually up to the individual, but for most folks who are just looking to "get in shape", usually the hypertrophy and muscular endurance categories are mostly used. Both of these categories allow for a fair amount of strength increase, but also allows folks to burn calories, etc.

Strength training and power training (for the most part) is targeted for specific sports and athletic performance. Not only that, but as I will explain later, strength and power training repetition goals should only be used by experienced resistance-trained individuals, done with safe, proper, equipment, monitored by a certified strength and conditioning specialist, and be performed as "core exercises".

Strength vs. Power Training

I don't intend on making this a science lesson, so I will do my best to explain this in simple terms. Strength is the amount of force a muscle or muscles can generate to move a load or weight. For example, an individual may be able to max out their bench press at 250 pounds. By lifting that 250 pounds, once, they can generate a lot of strength to move the weight up one time, but the repetition may be slow.

Power, on the other hand, is being able to generate force at a much higher rate. For example, an individual who can bench press 250 pounds, 1 time, would want to drop down in weight, in order to press the weight at a faster rate.

Strength training can be valuable in many facets of athletics, however, in many cases, power is far more valuable to perform better. Let me use this example, because of the recent events at the 2012 London Olympics. Usain Bolt has very strong legs. I am assuming he uses strength training to make his legs strong. Having said that, there are many individuals who have just as strong, if not stronger legs than he does.

The difference here, is his ability to generate force, or power. He is able to generate a tremendous amount of power to propel himself down the track.

"Core" vs. "Assistance" Exercises

Strength and power repetition ranges are intended to be done by "core exercises". A core exercise is one that recruits one or more large muscle areas (chest, shoulder, back, hip, thigh), involve two or more primary joints, and receive priority when one is selecting exercises because of their direct application to sport.

"Assistance exercises" on the other hand, usually recruit smaller muscle areas (upper arm, abdonminals, calf, neck, forearm, lower back, or anterior lower leg), involve only one primary joint, and are considered less important to improving sport performance.

Summary:

Strength - High-load, low-repetition training to improve overall strength of the muscle(s) being trained. Should mainly be targeted by "core exercises". Long periods of rest between sets to allow full recovery of muscle fibers in order to produce maximum amount of force every subsequent set.

Power - High-load, low-repetition training similar to strength training but designed to increase the overall explosiveness of the muscles. Also designed to be targeted by "core exercises" only. Also intended to have long periods of rest between sets to promote full recovery.

Hypertrophy - Higher repetition goals when compared to strength or power training. Shorter breaks as well, as the intention is to cause a higher metabolic demand in the muscle fibers to promote muscular growth.

Muscular Endurance - Low rest periods, higher rep goals, lower loads. Ideally used to improve the aerobic efficiency of the muscle fibers. Should be used by endurance athletes to improve muscular efficiency. Not intended to improve overall strength or power, however.

Quote of the day:
"The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work."
~ Richard Bach

Day 72 - Resistance Training for Runners

Research has shown that even endurance distance runners can improve their race times with a well-designed resistance training program in as little as 8 weeks.

Traditional wisdom would lead you to believe that distance or endurance runners need to be thin or streamlined, and therefore should avoid resistance training. This is simply not true!

First of all, we know that resistance training does not necessarily lead to an increase in body mass.

Secondly, a well-designed resistance training program (including plyometrics) can improve the strength and natural elasticity of the muscles and ligaments, improving what is known as "running economy".

Ideally, distance runners would benefit from 2 different training styles or repetition ranges. Resistance that targets a 6-12 rep range has been shown to be most beneficial in stimulating muscle hypertrophy (muscle cell growth) so you may want to bypass that rep range if you wish to keep your body slim.

Having said that, endurance runners, or any endurance athlete for that matter, would greatly benefit from a 12+ rep range. When training with higher repetition ranges, you are not only training your slow-twitch or "aerobic" muscle fibers, but you can actually cause your fast-twitch or "anaerobic" muscle fibers to transition to be more aerobic.

This can be beneficial to endurance athletes because your muscles become more suited to use oxygen as a preferential energy source. In other words, your muscles will increase their overall endurance!

Secondly, and the rep range that many endurance runners (or endurance athletes) may skip over, is the 5 and under rep range. For most endurance athletes, upper body training is not nearly as important as training for the legs, so when I speak of 5 and under rep training, I am mostly referring to heavy squats, lunges, deadlifts, etc.

Strength or power training (5 and under repetitions), combined with plyometric exercise can improve the strength, power, and overall natural elasticity of the muscles and ligaments in the lower body. When the muscles and ligaments retain more of their natural elasticity, your body will expend less energy traveling over comparable distances.

Also known as "running economy", by quickly collecting and releasing stored kinetic energy, your muscles expend less energy because they allow the elasticity to do most of the work for them.

Although a bit of a bad analogy, think of things this way: If you were to jump up and down in place, your legs would tire out fairly quickly. However, if you were to be jumping on a trampoline, you would not only be able to jump higher, but you would be able to jump up and down for a longer duration. This is because you are allowing the springs of the trampoline to do much of the work for you!

Distance runners, or endurance athletes in general can benefit just as much from resistance training as anyone else, just begin your strength and conditioning program as anyone else would - by focusing on your goals in mind!

Quote of the day:

"It is better to travel well than to arrive."
~ Buddha

Day 6 - Muscular Endurance and Athletic Performance

Below is a question I was asked recently regarding muscular endurance:

Question (paraphrasing):
"I was wondering what you thought of muscle endurance in which the value of very high rep (20-30) sets. Probably too much of an over-simplification on my part, but it seems like very high rep sets are more conducive to performance?"

Muscle endurance can be a great asset for certain athletes such as those that compete in endurance events where your primary energy source is aerobic in nature (eg. marathon runners). Do not confuse this with
other sports that may seem to be "aerobic" such as hockey, basketball, or even soccer. These sports and others similar to these actually consist of many different bouts of fast, powerful actions (anaerobic power). For that reason, to increase performance in MOST sports, power andspeed training should be the cornerstone of training.

Having said all of that, every athlete should include some sort of endurance training at some point in their
training periodization. Now when this falls into your actual training regimen, depends on what type of sport or event you will be competing in. Let me give you a few examples.

Every muscle in your body has a specific ratio of type 1 (aerobic), to type 2 (anaerobic) muscle fibers that is determined by genetics. This ratio will not change, however, you can train type 2 fibers to become MORE
aerobic in nature. The trade off for that is that they lose a bit of strength/power.

If you are an athlete that wants to train your muscles to be more powerful/strong, you can first train your muscle fibers to be more aerobic which makes them more efficient. When I say more efficient, I mean they are better at oxygen transport, utilization, waste removal, etc. this can benefit you when you then start to hit the heavy weights because your muscles will recover quicker so you can train more efficiently.

On the flip side of that coin, MMA fighters for example would want to first train their muscles to be strong and powerful but then have endurance properties because of the number of punches/kicks they could potentially throw in a fight.

I have actually experienced an example of this with myself recently. I am coming off of my mass phase, where I increased my muscular size and strength, so I have no problems picking up my son. However, my muscles aren't very 'endurance' trained, so my arms start burning after holding him for a pretty short amount of time.

By focusing on power and strength training, an individual's performance increase would be noticeable in the speed/quickness department. If an athlete would want to increase their performance so that they could race after a puck in hockey, for example, their training should focus on speed and power which would allow them to blow by the opposing player.

On the flip side of the coin, if their endurance lacks, then after a couple of 'sprints', their legs would be toast and they wouldn't be able to skate as fast towards the end of the game. That is where training structure and proper periodization come into play. Ideally, you want to have an even balance between performance (powerful, strong, explosive actions), combined with endurance (ability to perform for longer periods of time) to have the best of both worlds, and then vary each asset depending on your sport.

A defensive line in football, for example, would want to be VERY strong/powerful, but they dont need as much endurance because the plays are so short and they have long rest periods at times between plays.

Quote of the day:

"He who conquers others is strong. He who conquers himself is mighty."
~Lao Tzu