Most of the advice here is really bad. First, any exercise will increase your fitness if you haven’t been exercising. After that, what to do depends on what you want to achieve.
Don’t try to increase your strength and endurance at the same time. There is pretty strong evidence that exercising for one tend to block increases in the other. If you want to increase both, exercise for strength then when you reach your goals there, switch to endurance training. The one time you may want to do intermediate weights and reps (the maximum weight you can lift for 10-12 times per set) is if you are trying to “bulk up”, to add muscle mass to your body.
For strength exercise hard and less frequently. Two or three sessions per week, three exercises per session (best combination is bench press, deadlift or squats, and bent rows or chins), with the most weight you can handle for five repetitions, and do 5 sets, spaced at least three minutes apart, of each exercise.
That is, for example, 5 bench presses, rest 3-4 minutes, bench presses, wait, BPs, rest, BPs, rest, BPs, rest, Squats, rest, and so on. The best gains will happen doing this three times a week.
Once you reach your strength goals, the simplest method to increase your endurance is to maintain the weights and start increasing your reps. Switch to more repetitions per set, but fewer sets and with shorter rest periods between them. You can also begin adding minor exercises, such as curls and calf raises and so on since you want to exercise for longer periods now. Also, for endurance, you should increase the days you are exercising to 5 or 6 days per week with a “split shift”, doing chest and shoulders one day, arms and upper back the next, and lower body on the third, then repeating.
You do not need supplements if you are eating a reasonable diet.
Getting sore is a decent indication of how stressed your muscles were.
No, getting sore is an indication of your “total lift”—that is the sum of the amount lifted and how many times. For example, deadlifting 300 pounds 6 times gives a total for that set of 1800 pounds. The greater your total lift, the more likely you are to be sore; and since you can lift 70% of your maximum lift far more times than 90%, you will usually get more sore doing endurance training than doing strength.
Brian Sharkey, Fitness and Health (the earlier editions were titled Physiology of Fitness)
Jim Johnson, Treat Your Own Rotator Cuff and Treat Your Own Knees
and quite a few bodybuilding and strength training books over the decades.
No, getting sore is an indication of your “total lift”—that is the sum of the amount lifted and how many times. For example, deadlifting 300 pounds 6 times gives a total for that set of 1800 pounds. The greater your total lift, the more likely you are to be sore; and since you can lift 70% of your maximum lift far more times than 90%, you will usually get more sore doing endurance training than doing strength.
This is trivially easy to falsify. Try lifting your absolute maximum once, and see how sore you are immediately after and the next day. Try lifting a tenth of that twelve times, and see how sore you are after that. If you don’t bring your muscles to fatigue, you’re not going to be sore even if you rack up a total lift much larger than you would in an ordinary workout.
That said, once you’ve gotten your body acclimated to regular weight training, you’ll become sore much less easily, and this doesn’t mean that you’re not getting the benefits from the weight training
I agree with your last paragraph completely, but I guess I wasn’t clear about the “total lift” and soreness bit. I didn’t mean a fixed amount of weight, I meant doing your maximum reps with a particular weight—the maximum number of times I can lift 70 pounds is a lot more than 5 times the number of times I can lift 350 pounds. In fact it is more than 10 times as much- 70 pounds by 50 reps (3500 pounds total) versus 350 pounds by 4 reps (1400 pounds total). And the former leaves a lot more aches than the latter.
I agree with your last paragraph completely, but I guess I wasn’t clear about the “total lift” and soreness bit. I didn’t mean a fixed amount of weight, I meant doing your maximum reps with a particular weight—the maximum number of times I can lift 70 pounds is a lot more than 5 times the number of times I can lift 350 pounds. In fact it is more than 10 times as much- 70 pounds by 50 reps (3500 pounds total) versus 350 pounds by 4 reps (1400 pounds total). And the former leaves a lot more aches than the latter.
Well, if you exercise until you can’t lift 50 pounds for another rep, you’ve fatigued your muscles more (deteriorated more myofibrils) than if you exercise until you can’t lift 180 pounds for another rep, although you’re not going to build your fast twitch muscles as much only doing low weight.
Well, if you exercise until you can’t lift 50 pounds for another rep, you’ve fatigued your muscles more (deteriorated more myofibrils) than if you exercise until you can’t lift 180 pounds for another rep, although you’re not going to build your fast twitch muscles as much only doing low weight.
… and you are quite possibly just overtraining, leaving yourself worse off than before!
Although I’ve never used it myself, I know guys who swear by the method of working with high weights to depletion, then lower weights, then lower, until they fail to lift a fraction of their maximum. Whether your muscles can recover from that in a timely manner depends largely on the kind of condition you’re already in, I wouldn’t suggest trying it if you’re not already a veteran.
Although I’ve never used it myself, I know guys who swear by the method of working with high weights to depletion, then lower weights, then lower, until they fail to lift a fraction of their maximum.
I have tried it and it is a lot of fun! It can work too… if done in the right balance.
I merely affirmed what you said and pointed out that turning the dial one step further into the ‘high amount of fatigue’ end of the spectrum can not only reduce strength gains but outright reduce them. Overtraining really does make you weaker. Not to mention chronically tired. (I’ve tried that too.)
Whether your muscles can recover from that in a timely manner depends largely on the kind of condition you’re already in, I wouldn’t suggest trying it if you’re not already a veteran.
Some would say that you need more recovery time if you are already well built than if you are less so. We can improve our ability to restore muscles via training but not as much as we can increase the amount of muscle mass that needs to be restored.
It is well established that you cannot really build endurance and strength at the same time. But as I wrote, it depends on what you want to achieve. I am reasonably, but not especially, strong, but when working at landscaping when I was younger I could work people who were substantially stronger than me into the ground. And endurance is more correlated with health than is strength, except for some increase in resistance to injury with increasing strength.
It is well established that you cannot really build endurance and strength at the same time.
WTF? No it isn’t. It’s hard to build strength without building endurance. Sure, strength training isn’t optimal for endurance building but it’s far from terrible. (Although I suppose it holds for a really stretched definition of ‘really’.)
Most of the advice here is really bad. First, any exercise will increase your fitness if you haven’t been exercising. After that, what to do depends on what you want to achieve.
Don’t try to increase your strength and endurance at the same time. There is pretty strong evidence that exercising for one tend to block increases in the other. If you want to increase both, exercise for strength then when you reach your goals there, switch to endurance training. The one time you may want to do intermediate weights and reps (the maximum weight you can lift for 10-12 times per set) is if you are trying to “bulk up”, to add muscle mass to your body.
For strength exercise hard and less frequently. Two or three sessions per week, three exercises per session (best combination is bench press, deadlift or squats, and bent rows or chins), with the most weight you can handle for five repetitions, and do 5 sets, spaced at least three minutes apart, of each exercise.
That is, for example, 5 bench presses, rest 3-4 minutes, bench presses, wait, BPs, rest, BPs, rest, BPs, rest, Squats, rest, and so on. The best gains will happen doing this three times a week.
Once you reach your strength goals, the simplest method to increase your endurance is to maintain the weights and start increasing your reps. Switch to more repetitions per set, but fewer sets and with shorter rest periods between them. You can also begin adding minor exercises, such as curls and calf raises and so on since you want to exercise for longer periods now. Also, for endurance, you should increase the days you are exercising to 5 or 6 days per week with a “split shift”, doing chest and shoulders one day, arms and upper back the next, and lower body on the third, then repeating.
You do not need supplements if you are eating a reasonable diet.
No, getting sore is an indication of your “total lift”—that is the sum of the amount lifted and how many times. For example, deadlifting 300 pounds 6 times gives a total for that set of 1800 pounds. The greater your total lift, the more likely you are to be sore; and since you can lift 70% of your maximum lift far more times than 90%, you will usually get more sore doing endurance training than doing strength.
Brian Sharkey, Fitness and Health (the earlier editions were titled Physiology of Fitness)
Jim Johnson, Treat Your Own Rotator Cuff and Treat Your Own Knees
and quite a few bodybuilding and strength training books over the decades.
This is trivially easy to falsify. Try lifting your absolute maximum once, and see how sore you are immediately after and the next day. Try lifting a tenth of that twelve times, and see how sore you are after that. If you don’t bring your muscles to fatigue, you’re not going to be sore even if you rack up a total lift much larger than you would in an ordinary workout.
That said, once you’ve gotten your body acclimated to regular weight training, you’ll become sore much less easily, and this doesn’t mean that you’re not getting the benefits from the weight training
I agree with your last paragraph completely, but I guess I wasn’t clear about the “total lift” and soreness bit. I didn’t mean a fixed amount of weight, I meant doing your maximum reps with a particular weight—the maximum number of times I can lift 70 pounds is a lot more than 5 times the number of times I can lift 350 pounds. In fact it is more than 10 times as much- 70 pounds by 50 reps (3500 pounds total) versus 350 pounds by 4 reps (1400 pounds total). And the former leaves a lot more aches than the latter.
I agree with your last paragraph completely, but I guess I wasn’t clear about the “total lift” and soreness bit. I didn’t mean a fixed amount of weight, I meant doing your maximum reps with a particular weight—the maximum number of times I can lift 70 pounds is a lot more than 5 times the number of times I can lift 350 pounds. In fact it is more than 10 times as much- 70 pounds by 50 reps (3500 pounds total) versus 350 pounds by 4 reps (1400 pounds total). And the former leaves a lot more aches than the latter.
Well, if you exercise until you can’t lift 50 pounds for another rep, you’ve fatigued your muscles more (deteriorated more myofibrils) than if you exercise until you can’t lift 180 pounds for another rep, although you’re not going to build your fast twitch muscles as much only doing low weight.
… and you are quite possibly just overtraining, leaving yourself worse off than before!
Although I’ve never used it myself, I know guys who swear by the method of working with high weights to depletion, then lower weights, then lower, until they fail to lift a fraction of their maximum. Whether your muscles can recover from that in a timely manner depends largely on the kind of condition you’re already in, I wouldn’t suggest trying it if you’re not already a veteran.
I have tried it and it is a lot of fun! It can work too… if done in the right balance.
I merely affirmed what you said and pointed out that turning the dial one step further into the ‘high amount of fatigue’ end of the spectrum can not only reduce strength gains but outright reduce them. Overtraining really does make you weaker. Not to mention chronically tired. (I’ve tried that too.)
Some would say that you need more recovery time if you are already well built than if you are less so. We can improve our ability to restore muscles via training but not as much as we can increase the amount of muscle mass that needs to be restored.
It is well established that you cannot really build endurance and strength at the same time. But as I wrote, it depends on what you want to achieve. I am reasonably, but not especially, strong, but when working at landscaping when I was younger I could work people who were substantially stronger than me into the ground. And endurance is more correlated with health than is strength, except for some increase in resistance to injury with increasing strength.
WTF? No it isn’t. It’s hard to build strength without building endurance. Sure, strength training isn’t optimal for endurance building but it’s far from terrible. (Although I suppose it holds for a really stretched definition of ‘really’.)