Is your training confused? Part 2…

Last month I wrote about people who confuse cardiovascular training with training for fat loss. This month, as promised, I’m going to briefly cover why lifting the heaviest weights in the gym isn’t necessarily the right thing to do if your goal is to gain muscle mass.

I see it time and time again, people (normally young men) training, let’s face it, for vanity (who doesn’t want to look better?!), lifting the biggest weights in the gym… badly.

The confusion here is in the difference between hypertrophy (muscle-building) and strength training.

Although there is a connection between muscle size and muscle strength, it’s not absolute – if you’ve ever heard the expression “punching above his weight class” you’ll know that size isn’t directly proportional to strength and vice versa.

A lot of strength comes from neural adaptation and your muscles becoming more efficient at lifting heavy weights, NOT from increased muscle size. So if you’re lifting ever increasing weights and sacrificing good technique just to tell people how much you lift (or because your mate’s lifting that weight so you can’t lose face and pick a lighter dumbbell to work with), then you’re actually hindering your ability to gain muscle size (and setting yourself up for a nasty injury).

Decide whether you want to brag about how much you lift (trust me, no-one really cares), or whether you want to gain some mass and get a great physique.

Once you’ve decided to drop the ego, and reduce the weight, you can start training properly.

Use proper technique, full range movements, and manipulate tempo and rest periods to increase the intensity of your workouts, NOT weight. Although it does come into the equation, weight is far less important than you might think.

Slow, controlled movements that stress all muscle fibres and increase the time under tension (of the muscle) will result in maximum stress to the muscle, which will bring about growth.

You also need to remember that EVERY DAY ISN’T CHEST DAY!

Muscles don’t grow in the gym; they grow when you’re recovering from your workouts. Give the muscles time to repair and grow before you hit them again. If you’re using a split routine - with the exception of legs, which you may be able to get away with training twice per week if you have a good program - train each body part only ONCE per week (this WILL mean having days off of training!).

There are far too many variables to cover here, but the take home message from this short article is this:
If you’re training to increase muscle mass/size, reduce the weight you lift, use good form, manipulate tempo and rest periods for intensity, and take time off to recover and let your muscles grow.

Combined with a good diet (and that doesn’t mean as many supplements as you can stuff down your throat), this will put you on the right track for gaining mass. Supplements “supplement” your diet, they don’t replace it - the clue’s in the name, it’s not rocket science. Ten protein shakes and half a tub of creatine won’t make up for a lousy nutrition plan.

If you want help with either training or diet you can contact me through my website www.DartfordBootcamps.com