Category Archives: Workouts

Exercise selection: The exercises you use in your training program

Exercise selection recommendations: Focus on traditional, basic exercises (examples embedded within article).

THE CIRCUS SHOW

Most gyms these days have become circus shows. Some of the shit you see in the name of “cutting edge” or “innovative” fitness is simply ridiculous, and offers little to no benefit in terms of real physique enhancement.

At the very least it is a waste of time. Like lying around trying to meditate/stretch your way to fat loss, or balancing on a ball like a seal, or more accurately like a lazy housewife (or house-husband) just pretending to work out.

At the very worst it is dangerous – twisting and swinging around at odd angles — the gung-ho dudes who are going to train like “beasts” until their shoulder pops out doing momentum-based pull-ups, or their back gives out doing a crazy boot camp drill.

I mean c’mon, I saw a professional trainer the other day have a client flop around on the ground like a fish out of water. That was the actual exercise. I swear, I am not messing with you. This literally happened right in front of my face.

To me, much of the fitness industry has it backwards. The gym is full of complicated, complex, weird, cute, wild, and new exercises and exercise systems backed by little scientific basis. It’s all about the trends and the fads and what sells (products or services), not about what is truly effective.

But we can’t put all of the blame on the fitness industry. Some of the blame falls directly on you — the consumers. You’re the ones who keep searching for the magic pill. You’re the ones who keep paying for the nonsense that is flooding the marketplace and invading the gyms. You want to believe there is some magical training system that can either (a) allow you to eat whatever you want/make up for a poor diet (b) allow you to get into shape without actually having to work hard and earn it. Sorry my friends, that magic plan is about as real as Santa Clause. You fitness kids need to grow up, embrace the truth, and get to work.

What you really need to do is ask yourself some important questions. Do you want to do exercises that make you look cool, intelligent, or cutting edge, or do you want to do exercises that are effective for physique development? Are you lazy, and just want a program that makes you “feel” like you are working out? Or are you willing to put real work into real workouts that give you real results?

LEVER SYSTEM

Effective training for physique development is exactly the opposite of the fitness trends and fads. It uses the complicated science of Kinesiology and Biomechanics to yield relatively simple exercises and simple programs. Now don’t misunderstand me. That means simple on paper, but it is actually challenging in its implementation and execution.

With all of the complexities of the human body, human movement really comes down to nothing more than a simple lever system. Your bones are the levers and your joints are the fulcrums. The biceps contracts to flex the arm and bring the radius and ulna (forearm) towards the humerus (upper arm).

Attach some resistance onto the end of that lever (ie a dumbell) and you have yourself a results producing exercise. It’s not rocket science, it’s physics, and the actual real world application is simple common sense. You don’t need crazy, weird exercises that have you balancing, twisting, and flipping all over the place, unless you are training for the circus. You need simple movements that overload the muscles and provide the initial spark for the adaptation process. That’s how you efficiently build a body. The basics may not be cool or hip or innovative or cutting edge, but they damn sure are effective!

To review:

Ineffective training programs: use simple science to yield complicated exercises that are relatively easy to perform (think one leg, twisting hip thrust curls while balancing on a ball).

Effective training programs: use complicated science to yield simple/basic exercises that are difficult to perform (think squats and lunges until you can’t move anymore).

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION

There is an old saying in the strength and conditioning world that “form follows function”. In other words, the form of a particular exercise should mimic the function(s) of the particular muscle(s) you are trying to work.

So what type of exercises should you be doing in the gym for physique development? Here you go:

WHAT LOOKS UNINFORMED IS ACTUALLY HIGHLY INFORMED

Traditional bodybuilding and fitness programs tend to get bashed in the fitness industry as unintelligent/uninformed. I will concede that many meatheads and fitness diva’s DO give bodybuilding a bad name. “Just squat ’til you puke Junior. What your knee hurts and you have chronic low back pain? Well squat anyway you wuss.” “Just do cardio for 3 hours a day, eat only a salad, and make sure to sound really stupid when you talk because that’s what boys like.”

Whatever. That’s not real bodybuilding or fitness to me, it’s just ignorance. And keep this in mind as a person trying to learn about the physique transformation process: Just because someone looks good doesn’t mean they know anything about the scientific process behind physique development, not to mention general health and overall well-being.

The problem in fitness, however, is that because of this negative association with bodybuilding, the industry is going too far in the other direction. Anything old-school or even remotely basic in nature is considered worthless. Everything has to be new and cutting edge to be effective. On a side note, is the cutting edge stuff really effective? Many of the people I see balancing, flipping, bouncing, or meditating around don’t look like they’ve ever stepped foot inside a gym.

But real bodybuilding and fitness programs, designed by coaches and trainers with scientific backgrounds and true expertise, are far from uninformed. They select movement patterns and exercises based on the anatomical functions of the muscles. These basic exercises are the basics for a reason – because they work. This is a highly informed and intelligent way to train. And quit frankly, it’s the most effective and efficient way to build/shape a body.

So a shoulder routine consisting of: military press, seated side laterals, rear-delt flies, and alternate front raises may look too old-school and simple on paper to the fitness “experts”, but it actually works all planes of motions and functions of the shoulder and optimally overloads the delts for maximum development.

What about twisting, lunging, hip thrusting, rotating, one-arm shoulder presses with a hop? Can it be effective? Sure. Is it necessary? Absolutely not. If anything, it limits overload on the delts because of the complexity of the movement. It overloads the nervous and potentially cardiovascular systems before the muscular systems, which is not what we want for physique development. Is it cool looking? Maybe to novices. But to me, that shit looks better on desperate housewives than on real fitness warriors.

So stick to the basic exercises based on the knowledge of the body as a simple lever system and the knowledge of each muscle’s natural movement function. It’s the best way to get real world results.

That is unless you are willing to buy my latest and greatest training invention for ultra-fast results. We’re talking losing 30lbs in 3 days with no changes in diet necessary. In fact you can eat anything you want in unlimited quantities because I finally found the magic pill. Its called S.B.H.T.P. = The Stability Ball Humping Training Program. All you have to do is grab a stability ball and…

Routine/Training Splits: The way you organize your training week. How you divide your muscle groups up over different training days.

Training Split Recommendations: 3-5 day splits. *Samples at the end of the article.

Ah, the training split — the legends, folklore, and arguments over the right or best training splits date back to the Golden Era of bodybuilding and fitness. Chest and tri’s or chest and back, which one is better? They both are effective. The truth is there is no one right or best training split. In fact, switching up training splits can be a variable you manipulate on a regular basis to change the training stimulus or to emphasize different muscle groups (priority training).

But my belief is that some type of training split is much better than no training split at all — meaning full-body workouts/total body training — at least for physique development. We’ll get to that argument in due time, but first…

MORE ON VOLUME TRAINING

The previous article in the series (volume) presented the science behind my recommendations for a moderate-to-higher volume training protocol for those with physique enhancement/body composition goals. Lets review a few of the critical points in those research findings, and introduce some additional concepts supporting volume training:

1. In the research data, higher training volumes improved both muscle strength and size better than singe-set or single exercise training protocols.

2. Multiple sets per exercise with multiple exercises per muscle group increase acute growth hormone, testosterone, and IGF-1 production more than lower volume training protocols. These all have a positive impact on the muscle building, fat burning, and body composition change processes.

3. Most muscle groups have more than one movement function (hamstrings flex the knee and extend the hip, chest flexes the shoulder and initiates horizontal adduction). Multiple exercises are necessary to train and overload all functions and movement patterns of each muscle group.

4. There are different muscle fiber types and firing thresholds within each muscle group. Changing exercises, angles, and even rep ranges can change muscular recruitment patterns and goes a long way in ensuring maximum fiber recruitment, overload, and development.

5. We all have strong and weak muscle groups. This is often due to muscle innervation patterns, or the way in which the nervous system recruits muscle groups to complete a specific lift. Generally, a weak muscle group is located right next to one or more strong muscle groups. This makes sense — the stronger muscles just take over for the weak muscle and accomplish the task. A mix of compound and isolation exercises (especially for our weak muscle groups) is necessary to correct muscle imbalances and induce maximal, symmetrical muscular development.

6. There are different causes of muscular failure during different lifts. Sometimes we fail during heavy, compound exercises (squats, deadlifts, etc.) because of systematic reasons — nervous system fatigue or oxygen debt (cardiovascular system). Generally, during isolation lifts (dumbell curls, leg extensions, etc.) we fail because of localized muscular reasons — accumulation of lactic acid. Combining compound exercises with isolation exercises covers all bases of muscular failure, and thus maximizes adaptation, improvement, and development.

7. Multiple exercises per muscle group allows you to figure out which one you look the best performing (especially when you are spritzed with oil and a fan is pointed directly on you) for your cover model shoot, or at least for your facebook/twitter/dating website profile pic.

TYING SOME PRINCIPLES TOGETHER

I hope I’ve convinced you — through both the science AND real world examples of physique athletes (bodybuilding and fitness training generally consists of 3-4 sets of 3 or more exercises per body part) — that volume training should form the basis of your training program. Multiple sets and exercises per body part is the way to go for body composition change.

Now remember back to the article on training duration. We explained that due to primarily hormonal reasons, the optimum length of a training session is right around 30-60 minutes. This allows our anabolic/fat burning hormones (growth hormone) to peak and prevents our catabolic/fat storing hormones (cortisol) from rising too high and making the workout counterproductive in terms of physique improvements.

If we are to do a certain amount of volume per muscle group, yet limit our training time; then the only possible answer is to utilize some type of training split. There is no way you can perform adequate volume per muscle group (for physique development) using a full-body routine AND stay within the duration parameters. It just doesn’t work.

What you do is blast 1-3 muscle groups with the right amount of training volume, and come back another day for a different set of muscle groups. By the end of the week you’ve trained the entire body, all with the right amount of volume.

THE BEACH BOYS AND GIRLS

Guys, does this sound familiar? Monday you train chest and biceps. Tuesday you train chest and biceps. Wednesday you train chest and biceps…Girls, does this sound familiar? Monday you train hips and thighs. Tuesday you train hips and thighs. Wed you train hips and thighs…

Remember when you weight train, you are actually breaking down individual muscle fibers. Training is only the stimulus to produce physique change. Your body recovers, repairs, adapts, and develops in all of the processes that take place BETWEEN training sessions.

Research shows that muscle groups can take up to 48-72 hours to fully recover from a volume-based strength training routine. And usually these research studies involve no additional training in that time frame. Additional training — as is necessary for physique development – delays this recovery process and extends the recovery time frame.

If you hit muscle groups before full recovery and adaptation has taken place, you are inhibiting your potential physique development gains. In other words, if you train the same muscle groups day in and day out — as are the case with the above examples, but also with full-body training — your body will not be able to realize optimal development. The muscles remain in a chronic broken down state, and never have the chance to rebuild.

A properly designed training split will ensure you have ample amounts of training volume for physique development while at the same time ensuring proper recovery for each individual muscle group. For example, you overload your chest and triceps one day, and the next day those muscle groups are resting while you train your legs and core. Now, you still need to take complete rest days entirely off from training to allow the body as a unit, including the nervous and hormonal systems, to recover. But you get the idea of staggering overload with recovery across the body for maximum training efficiency.

SAMPLE 3-DAY SPLIT

Monday — Chest, shoulders, triceps
Tuesday — Off
Wednesday — Legs, core
Thursday — Off
Friday — Back, biceps
Saturday — Off
Sunday — Off

SAMPLE 4-DAY SPLIT

Monday — Back, core
Tuesday — Chest, biceps
Wednesday — Off
Thursday — Legs, core
Friday — Shoulders, triceps
Saturday — Get drunk and party like a rock star (just kidding, but wanted to see if you were still paying attention).
Sunday — Off

SAMPLE 5-DAY SPLIT

Monday – Back, core
Tuesday – Chest, calves
Wednesday — Off
Thursday – Shoulders, core
Friday — Quads, hamstrings, calves
Saturday — Biceps, triceps
Sunday — Are you ready for some football, or the Real Housewives of (some city), or whatever you are into, and the couch?

Again, these are only a few of the many possibilities of different muscle combinations and training splits. But again, the take home message is this: I believe some type of training split is better than full-body/total-body training for physique development. Performance-based goals is a whole other ballgame, and the exact opposite may be true, but as physique athletes we don’t really care about those goals.

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Volume: Amount of work performed during a training session. The total amount of weight lifted, the total amount of time under tension. The number of exercises and sets performed in a training session.

Volume Recommendations: 3-5 exercises for large muscle groups, 2-3 exercises for small muscle groups. 2-4 sets per exercise.

Enough TALK about how often or how long we should work out. I’m beginning to feel like a body “talker” or body “philosopher” instead of a body “builder” or body “sculptor”. Its time to dive into the heart of it all and figure out what we should actually be DOING at the gym for optimal physique development.

TURN IT UP

My wife is always complaining that I turn up the volume too loud on the TV. Hey, I need to hear the dialogue after all of those gunfights, explosions, sex scenes, and fart jokes. Sex, violence, and immature humor, what can I say? I’m a product of contemporary American society. As the old-school rockers used to say, if it’s too loud (or there is too much volume), you are too old!

Training for physique development requires a certain amount of training volume. That’s just the bottom line. You have to stimulate each muscle group, and force it to spend a certain amount of time under tension in order for visual development to take place. That’s not just me talking, that’s the science of human and exercise physiology.

Instead of diving into the beautiful and entertaining, yet educational prose you’ve come to know and love here, I’ve decided to rip this article off with just the facts. I’m sorry to all of my fans. The best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be (stolen from Bret Hart), will be back in another installment.

By now, I hope you know me well enough to know that I’m only kidding. There are people out there who are way, way, way smarter and more talented than I am. All I am trying to do is take the research I’ve compiled from various sources, along with practical experience from competing in natural bodybuilding and working ten years as a personal trainer, and narrow it down into a plan that you can follow in the real world to get optimal physique enhancement results.

In other words, my goal is to merge the lab with the gym.

Just so you know I’m not making all of this stuff up, here’s some of the science behind training volume recommendations for physique development.

THE SCIENCE SAYS

“Single set training may be appropriate for untrained individuals or during the first several months of training, but many studies indicate that higher volumes are necessary to promote further gains in strength, especially for intermediate and advanced resistance-trained athletes” (NSCA via J Strength Cond, J Appl Sport Sci)

“The musculoskeletal system will eventually adapt to the stimulus of one set to failure and require the added stimulus of multiple sets for continued strength gains.” (NSCA via Designing Resistance Training Programs, Human Kinetics)

“It is generally accepted that higher training volumes are associated with increases in muscular size. This is the result of both a moderate to higher number of repetitions per set and the commonly recommended three to six sets per exercise.” (NSCA via J Strength Cond, The Encyclopedia of Sports Medicine: Strength and Power in Sport.)

“Although research studies usually only focus on one or two exercises (total or per muscle group), empirical observations, interviews with elite bodybuilders, and more exhaustive prescriptive guidelines suggest that performing three or more exercises per muscle group is the most effective strategy for increasing muscle size.” (NSCA via Strength Cond, Designing Resistance Training Programs, Phys Ther Pract.)

“Resistance training is the best natural stimulus for muscular growth. Many weight training programs have been developed over the years in an attempt to modify and manipulate this natural process, each with varying degrees of success. The truth is, the success of a program is often determined by its ability to elicit a specific hormonal response, and little else.” (ISSA)

“Independently or in various combinations, several exercise variables can increase serum tesosterone concentrations in boys and younger men:

• Large muscle group exercises
• Heavy resistance (5-10RM)
• Moderate to high volume of exercise, achieved with multiple sets, multiple exercises, or both.
• Short rest intervals (30 seconds to 1 minute)
• Two years or more of resistance training experience”

(NSCA via Med Sci Sports Exerc, Can J Appl Physiol, Int J Sports Med)

“In a study designed to sort out the different variables related to GH (growth hormone) increases, Kraemer and colleagues found that serum increases in GH are differentially sensitive to the volume of exercise, the amount of rest between sets (less rest, higher GH), and the resistance used (10RM produces higher lactate values and higher GH responses). When the intensity used was 10RM (heavy resistance) with three sets of each exercise (high total work), and short (1-minute) rest periods, large increase were observed in serum GH concentrations.” (NSCA via J Appl Pysiol)

“Variation is even more important relative to resistance training. The skeletal muscles are many and varied, and they function in intricate patterns of cooperation and opposition. To make matters more complex, there are different muscle fiber types within the muscle which have different firing thresholds such that working a muscle does not necessarily mean working all of the fiber types that comprise the muscle.” (Hormonally Intelligent Exercise)

I’M SPEECHLESS, FOR ONCE

There’s not much I can add to the above data to convince you any further, other than that virtually every fitness athlete, model, bodybuilder, figure girl, or anyone whose primary goal is to look good that I know personally or have read about through various media outlets trains with a certain amount of volume. Quite simply, volume training, or multiples sets and exercises per body part, is the superior way to train for body composition change. This style of training maximizes lean muscular development, which of course, increases the metabolic rate. This in turn helps your body burn off more unwanted body fat, even at rest.

If you want to look good, then turn up the training volume so loud that you can’t hear the “experts” trying to sell you on a “cutting edge” system that promises that hyper-abbreviated workouts are enough to produce maximum physique development results.

Duration = Total training time, length of an exercise session. Does not include warm-up or cool-down period.

Recommendation = 30-60 minutes

How long can you last?…………

We’re talking about exercise here people. Clean it up.

So we’ve established that you are going to be busting ass during a training session to change your body right? But how long should you be busting ass? Is there a minimum amount of time necessary to facilitate noticeable physique changes? Are their upper limits, or is it simply the more the better — which at first glance sounds logical?

8-MINUTE ABS?

“Just twenty minutes, three times a week and the weight fell off”. “Eight minutes a day on the magic ab device and I had a six-pack in no time.” “With this new wonder supplement I didn’t even have to exercise to get my cover model body.” Yeah right! Don’t be a sucker my friends. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Remember, people get paid, sometimes quite a bit, to endorse products, systems, and miracle cures. These days you need to be an informed consumer in the health and fitness industry so you don’t get scammed. C’mon, do you really think Michael Jordan owes all of his basketball accomplishments to drinking Gatorade and wearing Hanes t-shirts?

Listen, you are going to have to work out hard and practice good nutritional habits if you expect to get in shape. Magnify that consistency, dedication, and sacrifice by ten if you expect to get ripped (low, single-digit body fat percentage). There is no other way around it. I’ve yet to find the magic pill that allows you to do whatever you want and still get in elite shape. Trust me, I’ll be the first to tell you if I find it. When that day comes, we’ll kick back at the pool together, eat fries, sip on margaritas, and toast to our killer beach bods. Until then, however, you are going to have do it the old fashioned way and earn it.

There is a lower limit to exercise duration. You can’t just show up to the gym, warm-up, stretch, balance on a ball, chat about your life, and then call it a day. There are certain volume and intensity levels you must hit if your body is going to experience an adaptive response to training. Not to sound like an old school 80′s bodybuilder or aerobics instructor — and of course when I say not to sound like one I mean exactly to sound like one — you are going to have to sweat, feel the burn, and get the pump going a little bit to get results. Although the old-timers’ programs were not as sophisticated as today’s (and for the most part that probably is a good thing — the basics are the basics for a reason, they are effective), they certainly knew how to put in the work. Admit it, when it comes to health and fitness, the majority of us today are lazy as shit.

So if you are one of those suckers who believe in 8-minute abs, or 7-minute abs, or 1-minute abs, do yourself a favor. Stop wasting your time and just stay on the couch. You’re going to get the same results without missing an episode of American Idol. Trust me, it takes a certain amount of work to force your body to change; if you are not ready to put in that work, and just want to keep doing the latest exercise fads in your search for the (non-existent) magic pill, you are wasting your time, effort, and probably, money. In a “get rich quick” and fast food nation, there is no such thing as fast fitness or “get fit quick”. But as you know, there is no shortage of scam artists perpetuating those myths and selling you what you want to hear. Well, stop listening to what you want to hear and start listening to what you need to hear. Get your booty to the gym and get to work.

GYM RATS AND BUNNIES

Just like with training frequency, however, there is a flip side to the training duration coin. Again, I am probably talking to less than 10% of the population here. When it comes to the length of a training session (minus warm-up and cool down periods), there is a point of diminishing returns, and training past that point becomes counterproductive.

Where are all of my gym rats? Where are all of my fitness bunnies? Are you listening or did you just smash your computer screen and curse my name because I even dared to suggest that a 2+ hour marathon training session may not be the best approach for your physique development goals?

First off, I admire your dedication. There are so many lazy people in our generation that it is very refreshing to come across someone who is willing to work hard towards their goals. I admire your will to do whatever it takes to get the job done. But if you are truly dedicated to changing your body, you should expend the extra effort to learn some of the science behind the physique development process.

Why? It takes more than just dedication to get results. It takes more than just being a “tough guy/girl”, putting your head down, bulldozing ahead, and working out longer and harder than everyone else. That’s part of it, but you must implement your passion and effort within the parameters of proper program design. In other words, it takes more than just a “balls to the wall” or “kick ass” approach to maximize your potential. It takes an intelligent approach based on research AND real world experience. If you try to push your body too far or too quickly in one direction, it will fight back and resist. And to get results, you want your body (meaning your metabolism and hormonal system) working with you, not against you.

THE BIG THREE

The primary reason why there is an upper limit to training duration, and training frequency for that matter, has to do with the hormonal response to our training sessions. Exercise impacts natural hormone production, which within the confines of a properly designed program, is one of its primary benefits. Hormones can send messages to our body to rebuild, reshape, and redesign itself.

The majority of people think solely about calories in vs. calories out when it comes to changing their body. This is only part of the story, and probably the least important part. Of even greater significance is the power we have to use diet and exercise to control and manipulate our metabolic rate and our natural production of physique-altering hormones. In response to exercise, we are primarily concerned with three hormones: testosterone, growth hormone, and cortisol.

• Testosterone is anabolic, which means it helps us build muscle by signaling protein synthesis. Building muscle boosts the metabolic rate and helps us burn fat.
• Growth hormone is anabolic. It enhances amino acid uptake and protein synthesis within muscle cells. It is also our most potent fat burning hormone. Growth hormone increases fat cell breakdown and the use of fatty acids as a fuel source.
• Cortisol is catabolic. First, cortisol inhibits protein synthesis and muscle growth. It can also cause the body to oxidize protein and convert amino acids into glucose to be used as fuel (in other words it can force the body to break down its own muscle tissue). In excessive amounts it can suppress the immune system and lead to fat storage (particularly around the midsection).

For physique development we want to maximize our muscle building, fat burning hormones and minimize our muscle burning, fat storing hormones. This is a severely over-simplified statement, but essentially growth hormone and testosterone are the “good guys”, and cortisol is the “bad guy”.

HORMONES AND EXERCISE DURATION

Here’s what happens during an intense training session, and by intense I mean proper exercise selection and execution along with a certain amount of training volume and effort exertion. In other words, no Jane Fonda workouts here please. The hormones that positively alter our physique, growth hormone and testosterone, initially rise in response to the training stimulus. But the hormone that negatively alters our physique, cortisol, rises as well.

On a side note, cortisol is not all bad. There is a certain amount of tissue breakdown that must happen if the body is going to adapt and respond to strength training. Cortisol IS a part of the bigger picture of tissue breakdown, repair, and growth. Our goal is not to completely eliminate cortisol production, as some would have you believe (ie with cortisol blocking supplements or drugs). Our goal is to control it through proper program design and food selection. The problem, when it comes to physique development, is chronically elevated or excessively high cortisol levels. This happens with overdoing the training duration and frequency parameters.

Testosterone levels rise in response to proper training, but there is a period of time after the training session where testosterone levels fall. This is a normal training response. During the recovery phase testosterone levels rebound and rise again IF you allow enough time in between training sessions (revisiting the importance of training frequency recommendations). This sequence of testosterone fluctuations coincides with the muscle adaptation/growth process.

Growth hormone levels rise in response to an intense training session. However, there is a critical point within the training session where growth hormone levels peak, and then begin to fall. Research shows that this occurs anywhere from 25-50 minutes within the workout. If you train too much further beyond this critical point, your workout starts to become counterproductive. Why?

Remember, cortisol also rises in response to an intense training session, but cortisol rises in a linear fashion and does not begin to decline until after the workout stops. In other words, cortisol can continue rising even after growth hormone levels peak and fall. If you extend your workout beyond the upper limits of recommended duration, cortisol levels begin to outpace growth hormone levels. Your hormonal environment and your body’s physiological processes, begin to shift into a catabolic state. At this point, the body begins to break down muscle tissue as a fuel source. Talk about counterproductive!

You are lifting weights to build lean muscle and boost your metabolism. But if you are working out too long (or too frequently), catabolic hormones rise above anabolic levels and you will actually start losing muscle and slowing the metabolism. This defeats the whole point of training in the first place. With proper programming your body experiences a net muscle GAIN and RISE in metabolic rate, and thus looks better, “hotter”, etc. With improper programming, due to the overproduction of cortisol, your body experiences a net muscle LOSS and DECREASE in metabolic rate, and thus looks worse, non-beach ready, etc. It reinforces the idea that exercising for physique development is much more than just calories in vs. calories out. It’s about the hormonal impacts of exercise.

DURATION DISTINCTIONS

Keeping all of the above information in mind, the optimal training session length is anywhere from 30-60 minutes, assuming you are busting butt and training at the right intensity levels. That’s really all you need to remember in “practical application” terms. So don’t worry, you don’t need to run out and get your PhD in Endocrinology to get results from training.

Duration parameters for physique athletes, however, do raise a few questions. So we should address the distinctions we need to make between our training programs and those of other types of athletes.

1. Performance Athletes. Training programs need to mimic the demands of an athlete’s sport. So if in your sport you need to run, jump, hit, climb, crawl, swim, bike, or whatever for 2+ hours, than your training session should be structured accordingly. In other words if you are going to be competing in long duration events, than your training sessions should be longer in duration. That is the only way you are going to increase performance levels.

It may not be the best for your hormones, it may not be the best for your appearance, but it is the best for your sport. In fact many athletes, especially endurance athletes, are known for having clinically low levels of testosterone and clinically high levels of cortisol. Maybe that’s one of the reasons for the apparent widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports.

And although performance athletes can perform at a high level, many don’t look that great. Tons of them don’t even look like they exercise. Some are flat-out obese. While they are talented at a sport, many are just as embarrassed to take their clothes off at the pool as those in the average population. Now to be fair, the reverse is also true. Many fitness athletes and models who look like the fittest people in the world would also look “athletically challenged” if you put them on a field, court, or track.

But once again, that’s why I always say that training for performance is different than training for appearance. The physique athlete has no desire or need to perform in a sport for 2+ hours. We just want to look good — 24 hours a day baby! So keeping the hormonal impacts of exercise in mind, there is no reason we should ever be training for more than one hour at a time. If you feel like you need to work out longer, than you are not working out hard enough, and you should focus on increasing training intensity.

2. Enhanced Athletes. All of this talk about maximizing the natural production of anabolic/fat burning hormones and minimizing catabolic/fat storing hormones to induce changes in physical appearance is assuming that I am speaking to the natural athlete. If you are taking performance-enhancing drugs, the training game completely changes. If you have artificially elevated levels of hormones from drug use, there is no need to worry about managing your internal, natural production. It doesn’t matter. It will later on, when you stop taking the drugs, but that is a whole other story I’ll leave for your doctor, therapist, etc.

Again, I am not condemning those who choose to use drugs, making any moral (or other) judgments, or demeaning their athletic or physical accomplishments in any way. I only mention it to draw clear distinctions about who I am advising and setting these training guidelines for — the natural fitness athlete. In all honesty, if you are taking performance-enhancing drugs, you SHOULDN’T be trying to learn from me. There are other experts in the field that can better advise you.

Of course, the flip side is true. If you are a natural athlete, you shouldn’t be trying to learn from someone who has built their physique with the help of chemistry. You shouldn’t be trying to emulate the training programs of enhanced athletes. You have a different training environment with more limited recovery abilities. Many who advise 2+ hour training sessions, 6-7 days a week, twice a day, etc. are not bound by “normal” human physiological principles.

So to sum up: train, train naturally, train hard, train for a minimum amount of time, but don’t train too long.

Recommendations:

• Beginners: 2-3 exercise sessions per week
• Intermediates: 3-4 exercise sessions per week
• Advanced: 4-5 exercise sessions per week

Before you worry about free weights vs. machines, total body training vs. body part splits, New Age vs. Old School, or Jane Fonda vs. Richard Simmons, you have to figure out how often you should be training to maximize your results. Step one of getting any job done is to actually show up. Once you get there, you can figure out how you should proceed to complete the task at hand. But even the best-laid plans are meaningless if they are not applied, and you instead opt to sit on the couch, eat (insert your favorite junk foods*), and watch (insert your favorite junk TV show*). *I guess for me that would be cookies, peanut butter straight out of the jar, and Sportscenter. For my wife, it would be Parmesan Goldfish, Mountain Dew, and any trashy reality TV show (e.g., Real Housewives or the Kardashians).

ARE YOU A LAZY A$$?

For most of us, we know what the problem is right? We don’t exercise enough. The solution to that problem is straightforward and simple — get your lazy ass off the couch and get to the gym more.

Strength training is the stimulus your body needs to adapt and respond. Consistently hitting the weights will help you build lean muscle, boost your metabolism, burn fat, and eventually, change your physique. Listening to Oprah’s guests talk about it, watching Chuck Norris train on his home gym, buying an infomercial product, reading about programs in fitness magazines, or TALKING about getting into shape are all not enough. You actually have to DO IT yourself to get results.

One of the main goals of transitioning from a beginner to more advanced levels, and progressing from out of shape to in shape, is to increase the body’s workload capacity. This can happen in several ways. We can increase training volume and/or increase training intensity. But probably the easiest way to go about doing this at first is to increase training frequency. In other words, we can focus on getting you to work out more often, thus forcing your body to adapt to higher and higher amounts of training stress.

So if you know in your heart that you don’t exercise enough, then spend the immediate future just focusing on being more consistent with your training. Schedule your workouts into your calendar (electronic or paper, whatever you prefer). Try to set a plan based on the above frequency guidelines, figure out how to fit those training sessions into your week, and then devote yourself to adhering to that plan without exception.

And don’t read any further. It will just confuse you. The rest of this article is for advanced athletes only, the ones who may be pushing themselves too far in the other direction.

ARE YOU AN OBSESSIVE A$$?

There is a flip side to the frequency coin, and that side is a little more complicated. I’m probably only speaking to less than 10% of the population out there with this one, but that 10% can fall victim to their own high levels of motivation, thus unconsciously sabotaging their physique enhancement results. They also can be stubborn and hard to get through to. Dedicated people often can’t hear, or don’t want to hear that there is an upper limit to optimal training frequency.

Many gung-ho athletes and trainees just assume that if some exercise is good, more (sometimes extreme levels of more) is better. The problem with that mindset is that there comes a point of diminishing returns. There comes a point where you outpace your body’s ability to fully recover and adapt. If you train, and train, and train some more with no thought of recovery, your body ends up in a constant catabolic/broken down state. Your muscles can’t recover, and you are not allowing your body enough time to adapt to the training stimulus (and thus make visual improvements). You end up spinning your wheels and getting nowhere, frustrated with the lack of progress from all of your efforts. You are also predisposing yourself to training overuse injuries and setting your body up for a huge metabolic/weight rebound sometime down the road when you return to some semblance of normalcy.

I see this overtraining phenomenon the most with the following personalities:

1. Obsessive compulsive personalities. Exercise becomes their one fixation, which is not healthier than any other type of obsessive behavior.
2. People transitioning from performance athletics backgrounds. Sometimes overtraining is necessary during a sport’s competitive season to improve a skill or compete on a schedule, but it is not necessary (and actually is counterproductive) simply to look better. Training for performance is different than training for appearance.
3. Those who use exercise as a stress relief. This is good up to a certain point, but if overdone begins to add overtraining exercise stressors on top of life/career stressors.
4. Successful business and career professionals. Busting ass and working harder and longer than everyone else has paid off with their career development, and they think the same will hold true for physique development. It is true up to a point, but it’s not always about working out more or harder, its about working out smarter.
5. Those who alternate back and forth between extremes. They go from sedentary and doing nothing to extreme levels of activity and trying to make up for it. If you’ve dug yourself a fitness hole, you can’t just jump out of it, unless you are Batman. You have to climb out of it.
6. Those who waited to the last minute to train for something (beach season, wedding, etc.). You can’t speed up normal human physiological processes.
7. Those who try to out-train poor dietary choices. That doesn’t work, you just can’t make up for a poor diet.

RESPECT THE RECOVERY PROCESS

Training is only the initial stimulus for your body to undergo physical change. You build muscle, burn fat, and alter your physical appearance via all of the metabolic, hormonal, and physiological processes that take place IN BETWEEN training sessions. If you train too frequently and short circuit the recovery process, you will not see visual improvements no matter how hard you train.

Inadequate recovery equals no adaptive response. This equals no muscle growth, no metabolic boost, no burning off body fat, and no change in physical appearance. In the worst-case scenario, it can actually make you more prone to storing body fat, due to chronically elevated levels of the hormone cortisol. You might as well just sit at home eating (*insert your favorite junk food), and watching (*insert your favorite junk TV show). At least that is a fun way to get fat, trust me I’ve done it.

Here are some of the physiological processes that happen in the recovery phase from a weight training session:

1. Satellite cells are activated when muscle fibers receive trauma or damage.
2. Satellite cells fuse to existing muscle fibers and help to repair/regenerate the damage by increasing the size and number of contractile proteins (called actin & myosin) within those fibers.
3. The body restores cell fluids, electrolytes, and minerals lost during training.
4. The body must refill muscle glycogen stores as glycogen is the primary fuel used during high intensity training. Contrary to supplement marketing, this doesn’t just happen with a single high-carb post-workout shake. It takes multiple balanced meals to adequately restore glycogen levels.
5. The immune system responds with a sequence of actions leading to inflammation. This inflammation is what causes muscle soreness. The purpose of this inflammation is to contain the damage within the muscle cells, increase blood flow and nutrient delivery to the damaged area, repair the damage, and clean up the injured area of waste products.
6. Antioxidants scavenge free radicals and repair oxidative stress caused by the increased rate of oxygen consumption during the training session.
7. Growth factors (such as IGF-1) regulate insulin metabolism and stimulate protein synthesis.
8. Testosterone, cortisol, and growth hormone levels rise, fall, and return to baseline levels in their own respective patterns (assuming you are training naturally without performance enhancing drugs).
9. All of the above processes can take up to 48 hours under normal circumstances but can be delayed by many factors including poor dietary decisions, lack of sleep, and high stress levels just to name a few.
10. On a side note, all of the above actions require energy (calories). This is why we say that strength training boosts the metabolism (the rate at which your body burns calories on a daily basis) and is so crucial to the body composition change process.

Now you don’t have to study and memorize all of the above data. And I’m not just trying to sound smart or impress you with fancy science (although you might be starting to get the idea that my recommendations are a little more research-based than just meathead bodybuilding or diva-girl fitness training). I just want to give you a sense that the physique development process is more sophisticated than just blindly training away all day, every day.

Here is the take home message: Recovery is a complex process, and the advanced trainee trying to maximize their results must balance intense training with recovery. Of course if you train like a wimp, you can train every day, because you have nothing to recover from. I’m really just speaking to the athletes who make a sincere effort to bust their butts in the gym in order to change their bodies.

OVERTRAINING SYNDROME

The frequency recommendations at the beginning of this article were set for a reason. They were not just blindly pulled out of a hat. And remember these recommendations are for people training primarily for physique development. I understand that participation in competitive sports may require more frequent and longer training sessions to maximize sport performance and/or adhere to competitive schedules. But that’s also why competitive sports have off-seasons.

What happens if you train more often than you can recover from? There is an actual technical term for the physiological state that results from training too long or too frequently on a regular basis — Overtraining Syndrome. According to the NSCA overtraining syndrome is “Excessive FREQUENCY, volume, or intensity of training that results in extreme fatigue, illness, or injury which is often due to a lack of sufficient rest, recovery, and perhaps nutrient intake.”

And what are some of the effects of this overtraining syndrome? Here you go:

• Emotional and mood disturbances including increased irritability, anxiety, and even depression-like symptoms.
• Sleep disturbances
• Altered immune system functioning including increased rates and duration of illnesses and infections.
• Decreased desire to train, decreased joy from training — that is if you even like training to begin with.
• Altered hormonal patterns including a reduction in anabolic, muscle building/fat burning hormones (testosterone, growth hormone, IGF-1) and an increase in catabolic, muscle destroying/fat storing hormones (cortisol).

This last one is the worst side effect for those concerned with body composition change. Physique development is way more complicated than just the simple calories in vs. calories out theory. It really comes down to properly managing and manipulating natural hormone levels and metabolic rate through diet and exercise. Do this the right way and getting into shape is a smooth process. Do it the wrong way, and dropping body fat will be impossible no matter how many calories you cut or how much you exercise.

Negative hormonal alterations (such as reduced testosterone/growth hormone and increased cortisol production) are the primary reason why many who overtrain struggle with fat around their midsection DESPITE their high levels of exercise. Abdominal-specific body fat often has a lot to do with abnormally high cortisol levels. These people tend to be fine everywhere else on their bodies, but tend to hold a lot of flab around the midsection.

I see this most often with endurance athletes. Research has shown that this group of athletes has the most compromised hormonal profiles — meaning lower than normal amounts of testosterone and higher than normal amounts of cortisol. People who engage in frequent and excessive amounts of aerobic activity are shooting themselves in the foot in terms of physique development. They may be improving performance (as in the ability to run farther or at a faster pace) but they are not optimizing hormones, metabolism, and thus, physique development results.

But its important to note that overtraining can happen in any form of exercise, including strength training. So don’t think because you stay away from the treadmills and sling the weights around that you are immune to the overtraining syndrome. Every athlete needs to balance training with recovery.

But here is the major difference. Performance athletes including endurance athletes can overtrain and still improve skills and performance. It is rare that physique athletes can overtrain and still make improvements in body composition and physical appearance.

TRAINING NATURALLY IS DIFFERENT THAN TRAINING ENHANCED

There is one more important side note to discuss in our conversation on training frequency. Performance-enhancing drugs (steroids, growth hormone, EPO, etc.) speed up the natural recovery process and allow an athlete to train harder, longer, and more frequently without the risk of overtraining. This is one of the primary benefits of performance enhancing drugs. And yes, there are benefits. But even more important is that there are also severe consequences. So obviously, I do not recommend you travel that route. Don’t take your health for granted. No six-pack or set of guns or nice legs is worth compromising your mental or physiological health.

I do not mention this out of any moral judgment on athletes that decide to use performance-enhancing drugs. To each their own. I only mention it so the natural athlete does not get confused by many of the training protocols they see online or in bodybuilding and fitness magazines. Many of the articles that recommend training 6-7 days a week, sometimes twice a day, are written by athletes using performance-enhancing drugs. The natural athlete, training under different conditions, should not attempt to emulate these programs.

Remember, the recovery process involves an ebb and flow of natural hormone fluctuations (including testosterone, growth hormone, cortisol, and IGF-1). There are rises, falls, and eventual returns to baseline levels. The natural athlete needs to maximize anabolic hormones, minimize catabolic hormones, and properly manage their entire hormonal system to achieve optimal results.

If you are taking exogenous (outside) sources of these hormones, you don’t need to pay as much attention to the endogenous (within the body) production of these hormones. In other words, athletes using performance-enhancing drugs can train on sub-optimal training protocols (including too much frequency) and still achieve outstanding results. The natural athlete needs to train smarter, and must manage recovery. Part of the recovery process is adhering to targeted frequency recommendations.

In summary — train, train naturally, train hard, train frequently, but not too frequently.