Training

Steve was about to start a major mass building phase and wanted some advice. He had read the original article "Tips for the bulking phase" and had used many of the ideas with great success, gaining 15 pounds in just over 2 months.

But now he's ready for more. After looking at his diet and training history, I knew he was ready to take the next step towards optimizing his progress.

Here are a few things I told him:

1. reps go up, never down

One of the best aspects of a mass-building phase is that your strength will increase dramatically in combination with your mass. Who wouldn't love it when the weights feel like nothing? One potential problem with this, however, is that after a month or so your body can start to break down under the unaccustomed training loads. The continuous strain on the connective tissue can become excessive until eventually something gives way. Your joints, ligaments and tendons are much more susceptible to injury during a bulking phase than your muscles, as they seem to adapt more slowly to the new loads. This is probably due to a reduced blood supply to the connective tissue, which results in a longer adaptation phase. Even if your muscles are getting bigger and stronger from week to week, it may well be that your ligaments and tendons are still at the same level as before you started your bulking phase.

One solution to this problem is to increase the number of repetitions as your strength increases. This will help ensure that you are training with weights that your joints and connective tissue can handle. For example, let's take someone who trains squats in a 5 to 7 repetition range and has increased from 400 to 420 pounds.

Instead of increasing the weight further to 440 pounds, he might be better off staying at 420 pounds for a few weeks while his body acclimates to the higher weight. However, to further overload the muscles, the following workouts will use a higher repetition range - for example, 8 to 10 reps at 420 pounds. Even if you don't stick with the same weight, which can be overprotective for some, you should at least resist the temptation to lower the reps to be able to move even more weight. We all want to see how much weight we can throw around, but if we're already putting a lot of stress on the connective tissue, the last thing the body needs is a reduction in reps to be able to increase the weight further.

To put it very simply and understandably, you could say that your body won't like you if you do this. If you absolutely need to find out how much your 1RM weight has increased, or if you want to train during a bulking phase with a repetition range of 2 to 3 reps, then you should make sure that you start training in this way some time before the bulking phase. If you're in a bulking phase and you can't increase the weight using the same repetition range, then something is going wrong and you need to find out what it is. Otherwise, you're probably cheating yourself if you think everything will go to plan if you lower the reps.

2. don't be stupid

When the subject of bulking comes up, I've actually heard people say that they can tell how well their bulking phase is going by how fat they get! The reasoning is that the fatter you get, the more muscle you build. I'm simply lost for words with something like that! We can build fat while we build mass, but we are not trying to get fat. The mistake in this train of thought is that we now know that building fat is not simply a matter of calorie intake and calorie expenditure. It also depends heavily on timing and nutrient composition! So if we do everything wrong, we may well get fatter without optimizing our muscle gains.

For example: even during the bulking phase, you shouldn't stuff yourself with Pop Tarts (small, pre-packaged cakes that are very popular in the USA) or other sweets right before going to bed. As wonderful as these extra calories may be, they are still likely to lead to an unnecessary increase in body fat. This is especially true because our insulin sensitivity decreases throughout the day, which means that later in the day there will be a higher insulin release from the carbohydrates we consume. In other words, we are more likely to build up fat if we eat carbohydrates late in the evening because our body will not respond as well to the hormone insulin as it did earlier in the day.

And if we really want calories before bed (which is definitely the case), then we'll get over 300 kcal from the 80 gram casein protocol and another 360 kcal in the form of 40 grams of healthy fats. That's almost 700 kcal right before bed without eating many carbohydrates. But before you panic and start restricting your carbohydrate intake, you should understand that I'm not talking about limiting the total amount of nutrients. I'm simply suggesting that we use smart nutrient timing. Carbohydrates are not a bad thing, and this is especially true during mass gain, but we can optimize our results by taking our insulin sensitivity into account.

3. understand the term nutrient density

There is sometimes some confusion when it comes to terms like nutrient density and calorie density, but during the bulking phase it is important to understand the difference between these two terms. I hear the term nutrient density most often in relation to leafy green vegetables, as these are full of "the stuff that's good for you". But the term "high nutrient density" could also be used to describe celery or lettuce, as they contain a lot of water in addition to their lower amounts of vitamins and minerals. Remember that water is also a nutrient, so a food that contains a lot of water is by definition a high nutrient density food.

Paradoxically, Pop Tarts also have a high nutrient density because they are packed with carbohydrates? Is this pure semantics? Certainly, but the term nutrient density is misused often enough that it needs clarification. In the real world, the term "high nutrient density" usually refers to fruits and vegetables because these foods are packed with vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. This is great information, but has little to do with the definition of nutrient density used in the context of mass building. In the case of mass building, the nutrient density we are concerned with is based on the macronutrients: Fat, carbohydrates and protein. This is the case because these are the nutrients that contain calories, which is exactly what we are interested in.

More specifically, the term nutrient density is used to describe a large amount of something in a small package. For our purposes, this means that we want foods with a lot of calorie-providing nutrients in a small amount of food. Take Pop Tarts, for example (who didn't see that coming), which provide 200 kcal per 50 grams. That's a pretty high nutrient density! In contrast, at the other end of the spectrum, celery provides just 8 kcal per 50 grams. If you imagine that you would have to eat 1.25 kilos of celery to get the same amount of calories as a Pop Tart, then the concept of calorie density should become quite clear (and after eating 1.25 kilos of celery, even the last person should understand it).

Why do we care so much about nutrient density? Well, if we want to build mass, we have to eat so many calories that we often don't want to eat any more. But if we can keep our calorie density high, then we will need to eat less food to get the same amount of calories!

4. a fat warning

A note of caution when focusing on calorie density: look at the overall macronutrient density of foods. Choosing foods simply based on how high their nutrient density is could be a mistake, as fat as a nutrient provides more calories per gram than the other macronutrients. This means that 10 grams of fat provides more energy than the same amount of protein or carbohydrate - even more than twice as much! If a product is full of fat, then it will provide massive calories, but it may well not be ideal for your body composition - even during the mass building phase.

We have to be realistic. A jar of lard is the most calorie dense food you can find, but you're not going to want to eat pure fat by the spoonful. So focus on nutrient density and calorie density, but don't overdo it.

5. stimulants for support

Stimulants are one of the best ways to increase your strength in the gym - whether you're in a bulking phase or not. This means that no matter what phase of training you are in (apart from a recovery phase), taking some caffeine before training will help ensure that the weights you move will be heavier than your last training session. Combine this with the gains you'll make through the mass-building phase and you'll feel an amazingly powerful effect. Even though caffeine is the most commonly used stimulant, it is still the most underrated performance enhancing substance freely available. Some of the commonly overlooked effects include:

• Increased energy
• Increased strength
• Increased endurance
• Increased performance
• Improved ability to concentrate
• Increased use of body fat for energy supply
• Muscle-sparing effects during a diet

In addition to this, the purchase and use of caffeine is legal*, it's readily available and it's dirt cheap (unless you prefer the Starbucks variety, in which case you'll need a credit card check and a guarantor before your caffeine kick). Okay, that's not really new information. But if everyone knows this, why do so few take advantage of it? One of the most obvious reasons is that people already consume far too much caffeine in their daily lives to benefit from optimal training effects. In addition, many people have already integrated these caffeinated drinks into their lives to such an extent that they are unwilling to give them up or look for caffeine-free alternatives.

One tip on the side for improved body composition and performance is to stop drinking coffee, tea** and cola on a regular basis. This also applies to students and anyone who can benefit from the mental performance-enhancing effects of caffeine. This again makes caffeine an optimal choice when you need a physical or mental performance boost.

An example plan based on a 12 week bulking phase might look like this:

• Week 1-2: 2.2 mg of caffeine per kilogram of body weight***
• Week 5-6: 2.2 mg of caffeine per kilogram of body weight
• Week 7: 2.6 mg caffeine per kilogram of body weight
• Week 8: 3.1 mg caffeine per kilogram of body weight

(It should be noted that the maximum dose of 4 mg per kilogram of body weight is never reached).

But let's be realistic: it is possible to use too much of a good thing. Using stimulants for too long can result in desensitization to the effect, meaning that we have to use higher and higher doses to feel the same effect.

Obviously, this is an undesirable situation that should be avoided. This is especially true when you consider that one of the best times to use stimulants is immediately after the bulking phase, as stimulants can help you keep the weights up while your calorie intake drops.

* High doses of caffeine are banned by some sports organizations, although reasonable amounts are usually allowed.

**Except green tea.

*** Consumed one hour before activity

6. use stimulants cyclically to stay muscular

Stimulants can help us increase our muscle mass through an increase in strength and through the same mechanism, stimulants can also help us maintain this increased amount of muscle mass when the bulking phase ends. Of course, if we reduce our calorie intake after the bulking phase ends, the increased stimulus for muscle growth also ends. Although this is not the end of the world, it can result in a reduction in strength, which equates to a reduction in the stimulus for muscle growth. In combination with the adjustment in nutritional intake, some people experience a rebound effect that causes them to become weaker and less muscular faster than they would like. In most cases, this rebound effect is more psychological. Ultimately, a heavy bulking phase results in a perpetual pumped up feeling because our muscles are overloaded with glycogen and even intramuscular fat. Suddenly we reduce calories, insulin levels drop and the same goes for the pumped up feeling, as well as the training weights...

Of course, we are not talking about the end of a high-dose steroid cycle here, but this is exactly how many people perceive the end of a mass phase. This is always most drastic when someone thinks they are getting too fat and decides to greatly reduce their calorie intake - essentially flipping the switch from muscle building to a dieting phase. As mentioned in the original article on tips for the bulking phase, such a rapid switch has a devastating effect on your physiology and undermines all your efforts. If we manage to maintain or even increase our strength after the mass-building phase ends, then this will give us a huge psychological boost - not to mention the obvious physiological benefits:

An example mass-building program might look like this:

• Ideally avoid stimulants for the last 3 weeks of your mass building phase
• Start with 2.2 mg of caffeine per kilogram of body weight 1 hour before training
• Increase your caffeine dosage to 2.6 mg of caffeine per kilogram of body weight after 8 training sessions with the initial dose
• Increase your caffeine dosage to 3.1 mg of caffeine per kilogram of body weight after 8 further training sessions

Now that we've revealed all this sexy information, it's time for a reminder: stimulants are medical agents and have side effects. Use your mind when you decide to use stimulants. Even when I present the possibility of using stimulants to my clients, I never directly recommend that they use stimulants or other pharmaceutical agents. (A caffeine addiction is not a pretty sight. One day you wake up at noon, look in the mirror, and realize you're nothing more than a shaky junkie high on Caramel Machiatos and have spent your college funding in $5 servings on another fix of this elixir of the gods. This is when you hit rock bottom).

FAQ:

Q: You're wrong. I got muscular through my bulking phase and my strength went up, but I reduced my reps and still didn't get injured.

A: I think what you're saying is that it's not necessary to increase the rep range when we're getting stronger during bulking and I agree with you. Of course, I never said that any of these tips are necessary - they are just ideas that might help.

IT'S great that you haven't had any problems, but keep in mind that no one does a training session with the thought in the back of their mind that they might get injured. It just happens. I've seen it too many times, unfortunately. In fact, applying this first tip could have saved dozens of people from injury.

Q: You're contradicting yourself! Didn't you just talk about being careful during mass building to protect your joints, while in another tip you show people how they can further increase their strength by using stimulants?

A: At first glance, combining these two tips seems like a contradiction, but if you understand that this article is not meant to be followed as a single plan, then it makes more sense. In other words, people will use and put into practice the parts of the article that they like and ignore the rest. These tips are not meant to be dogma that everyone must follow. To put this in perspective, I would like to mention that the first article was read by over 100,000 people! Reactions ranged from people saying it didn't provide anything new to readers saying it was the article that impacted them the most in the year it was published. Ultimately, we all have different preferences, goals and thought processes, so it makes sense that we make something different out of these tips. As for the tips in question, I would expect the safety tip to be used by those who have a history of getting injured while training, while the stimulant tip will likely be used more by exercisers who are a bit more aggressive and less cautious with their training. Live and learn, I would say.

Q: First you tell me to use stimulants and then you tell me not to use them. What's the matter now? Can't you make up your mind?

A: It's crucial that I don't want to tell anyone what to do with these tips. They merely represent an idea of ideas that can help you achieve your goals. Let's use stimulants as an example. Do I think they can help you increase strength and muscle mass? Yes, absolutely. Do I recommend their use? No, absolutely not. But also keep in mind that a lack of recommendation to use them does not mean that I discourage their use. In other words, this means that if I don't directly recommend the use of stimulants, it doesn't mean that I think it's a bad idea to use them. I simply want to make sure that it is everyone's responsibility to decide for or against the use of stimulants.

A brief summary:

• Descending sets increase tension and metabolic stress a muscle is exposed to. Exhaust a muscle with a heavy set and then immediately perform more repetitions with lighter weight.
• Emphasize the eccentric (lowering) phase of an exercise to increase the time under tension. Perform heavy negative repetitions at the end of the last set of an exercise. - If you isolate one muscle, stretch the opposite muscle for increased power release
• Plan strategic unloading phases with reduced intensity depending on your needs.
• If your goal is to set a personal best, then develop an external focus. If your goal is to build muscle, focus on a better mind-muscle connection.

Beginner gains

When you start training, you will make progress very quickly. Almost any training program will lead to more strength and hypertrophy. But over time, the gains will diminish. Despite this, many strength athletes continue to train in the same way for years without making further progress. Continued gains in strength and muscle mass require you to adapt to a specific training approach. Follow these strategies and put yourself in the fast lane to a better body.

1. descending sets

Mechanical tension (i.e. the force applied by a muscle) provides the primary stimulus for muscle growth. It is the reason that training with weights makes your muscles grow, while aerobic training does not. During cardio training, there is simply not enough mechanical tension to stimulate hypertrophy adaptation. There is convincing evidence that factors other than tension are also involved in the growth process. Metabolic stress is one of these. Metabolic stress involves an accumulation of metabolic products (such as lactate, hydrogen ions and phosphate ions) and a decrease in pH levels as a result of intense anaerobic exercise.

Although the exact mechanisms are not yet known, scientists believe that increased muscle fiber recruitment, an acute increase in anabolic hormone levels, changes in myokines and cell swelling play a role in this process. Theoretically, training programs that generate high levels of mechanical tension in combination with significant metabolic stress should be best for maximizing muscle growth.

Metabolic stress is increased by training that relies on rapid glycolysis (the anaerobic burning of carbohydrates) as the primary energy source. The fast glycolytic energy system is prevalent in activities that last approximately 30 to 120 seconds - or between half a minute and a minute and a half. In resistance training, this would be sets performed with moderate to higher repetitions. During such training, there is also prolonged compression of the blood vessels, which further reduces the oxygen supply to the working muscles and increases metabolic stress. How can you use this information to your advantage? One proven strategy is to incorporate descending sets into your training program.

Here's what you should do:

Perform a heavy set to the point of exhaustion (generally in a repetition range of 3 to 10 reps) and then immediately reduce the weight and perform several descending sets. This will substantially increase metabolic stress and boost your metabolism.

Here is the way you should do this:

Perform a set to momentary muscle failure, then immediately reduce the weight by 20 to 25% and perform as many more reps as possible with the reduced weight. For an even greater metabolic effect, perform double descending sets by reducing the weight again by 20 to 25% and performing as many repetitions again until you reach the point of muscle failure. A word of warning: although descending sets are a highly effective training method, they can be extremely demanding on your neuromuscular system. Therefore, use them sparingly in the context of a periodization program.

Don't make every damn exercise a descending set exercise. Try to limit the use of descending sets to a select few sets in a given microcycle, listening to your body and watching for signs of overtraining.

2 - Maximize the negative repetitions

Don't focus exclusively on the concentric portion of the movement during an exercise while ignoring the negative repetitions (the eccentric portion of the movement). Resistance training is not just about moving the weight up. Lowering the weight can be just as important, if not more so. Scientific research has shown that negative repetitions have a greater effect on muscle hypertrophy than concentric training and there is evidence that maximum growth cannot be achieved unless eccentric muscle actions are performed.

This may be related to the fact that eccentric repetitions are primarily responsible for the muscle damage caused by training with weights. Although muscle damage can have a devastating effect on short-term performance, the associated inflammation and increased protein turnover has been shown to induce long-term hypertrophy adaptations. Many believe that structural changes associated with muscle damage influence gene expressions that result in a strengthening of the muscle, which protects that muscle from future injury.

Eccentric exercise also increases metabolic stress, with the greatest increases occurring at higher eccentric intensities. These factors help explain why negative repetitions send a stronger anabolic signal than concentric training, leading to increased protein synthesis.

Here's what you should do:

Include some heavy negative repetitions in your training program. These should preferably be performed at the end of the last set of a given exercise.

Here's the way you should do this:

Load the bar with a weight equal to about 105 to 125% of your concentric maximum weight for one repetition and perform as many negative repetitions as possible. Assuming that the muscle was not fully fatigued during the concentric, this supramaximal stimulus will help to create greater fatigue in the motor units and thus generate a stronger stimulus for muscle hypertrophy. Aim for a 2 to 3 second tempo, making sure you lower the weight in a controlled manner. A few extra heavy negative reps performed at the end of your last set is all you need to stimulate new muscle growth. You will need a training partner to help you move the weight up during heavy negative repetitions, as this is a supramaximal load. Just like descending sets, this strategy will work your neuromuscular system hard, so use this technique sparingly.

3 - Stretching the opposite muscle

Scientific research has shown that too much static stretching can reduce your strength and speed if performed immediately before training. Imagine that you are shooting a rubber band. If you stretch the band too much, it won't fly as far as it would if it were tighter. The same thing happens to your muscles - reduce their stiffness and their force production will decrease. Another suspected theory associated with this effect involves reduced neural drive and a resulting reduction in the number of motor units available for contraction. But what if we turn this around and focus on stretching the opposite (i.e. the antagonist) instead of the agonist? This means that you stretch your quadriceps before you train your leg biceps. Or you stretch your triceps before you train your biceps.

By reducing the neural drive and preload of the antagonist, its force production is inhibited, causing it to interfere less with the contraction of the antagonist. Hypothetically, this allows the agonist to produce more force, increasing its performance. Scientific research has shown that this actually works in practice. These studies have found, for example, that vertical jump height in trained strength athletes is significantly higher when antagonistic stretching has been performed beforehand than when no such stretching has been used.

Here's what you should do:

Before you perform an exercise, stretch the antagonistic muscle for about 15 seconds. Perform 3 to 4 sets of this targeted stretching with about 10 seconds rest between each stretch and then immediately start your working set. Try to minimize the time between the last set of stretching and the start of the work set. This will ensure that the antagonist remains maximally inhibited during the execution of the following set, optimizing your gains.

4 - Unload on demand

You can walk into any gym and without exception you will see strength athletes using a "head through the wall" approach to their training, where they always go all out. They will go to muscle failure on every set and usually do a few forced reps afterwards. Volume and intensity remain consistently high.

The problem with this type of training is that it can limit your resources. Yes, training hard and heavy is essential if you want to become more muscular and stronger. This is the basis of the overload principle, which states that you need to keep challenging your muscles beyond their current capacity so that they have to adapt to the new demands. But if you think that the key to getting big and strong is to train with consistently high volume and high weights all the time, think again. Studies have shown that such an approach can impair IGF-1 and testosterone production at rest while chronically elevating cortisol levels, which will eventually lead to overtraining and psychological burnout. Progress slows down, stagnates and reaches a point where you even lose muscle and strength.

If you keep the revs of a car engine in the red zone for too long, you will eventually destroy the engine, right? Well, your body is not much different in this respect. It needs time to regenerate its resources. If you come to training strong and fresh, then there will also be an upward trend in your progress.

Here's what you should do:

Structure your training program to include regular periods of unloading with reduced intensity and volume. Try to keep things regulated. One strategy that works well is to gradually increase the intensity and/or volume over the course of a training block (generally a month or so) and then schedule an unloading week. This is also known as a gradual load, where your efforts increase and decrease to produce an undulating training pattern. Similarly, periodize your training to muscle failure so that you only go to the point of muscle failure occasionally and not every set. Key point: Keep in mind that recovery ability can vary from individual to individual. Genetics, nutritional supplements, the use of anabolic steroids and other factors play a role in this process. So make sure you are in tune with your body and adjust the frequency of your recovery cycles based on your individual response.

5 Refocus on your goal

Your focus influences your motor learning.

There are two types of focus of attention: internal and external. An internal focus involves concentrating your attention on a specific body movement, while an external focus involves concentrating on the effects that your actions have on your environment. There is research that shows that an external focus tends to promote superior results compared to an internal focus when it comes to learning a new skill. This is consistent with the view that an internal focus causes interference with the automatic control processes that regulate performance (i.e., overthinking technique in an exercise). An external focus of attention, on the other hand, allows the neuromuscular system to naturally self-organize a movement. It is believed that if you focus on the desired outcome, the neuromuscular system will inherently find the best motor scheme to accomplish a task. The result is improved force production and more accurate execution skills.

This does not mean that you should never use an internal focus. Studies have shown that using the mind-muscle connection, where you focus on the target muscle, increases the EMG activity of that muscle. This suggests that you can improve motor unit recruitment, and therefore muscle development, by using an internal focus of attention. The bottom line is that both an external and internal focus have their place in your training program and their use should be based on your training goals.

Here's what you should do:

Use an external focus if maximum strength or power is your goal. Visualize the end point of the movement and focus on moving the weight as explosively as possible to reach that end point. Assuming you have mastered correct exercise execution form, your neuromuscular system will do the rest. However, if you are looking to increase hypertrophy, then focus directly on the target muscle and feel it working throughout the duration of the exercise. This way you will maximize recruitment of the target muscles while minimizing involvement of the supporting muscles. While some lucky people can build muscle relatively easily, most mere mortals need to be a little more sophisticated to gain muscle mass and strength. Seriously consider these five tips and say "goodbye" to your plateaus.

References:

1. Schoenfeld BJ. The mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and their application to resistance training. J Strength Cond Res. 2010 Oct;24(10):2857-72.
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3. Hather BM, Tesch PA, Buchanan P, Dudley GA. Influence of eccentric actions on skeletal muscle adaptations to resistance training. Acta Physiol Scand. 1991 10;143(2):177-85.
4. Roig M, O'Brien K, Kirk G, Murray R, McKinnon P, Shadgan B, et al. The effects of eccentric versus concentric resistance training on muscle strength and mass in healthy adults: A systematic review with meta-analysis. Br J Sports Med. 2009 08;43(8):556-68.
5. Evans WJ, Cannon JG. The metabolic effects of exercise-induced muscle damage. Exerc Sport Sci Rev. 1991;19:99-9125.
6. Wernig A, Irintchev A, Weisshaupt P. Muscle injury, cross-sectional area and fiber type distribution in mouse soleus after intermittent wheel-running. J Physiol. 1990 Sep;428:639-52.
7. Barash IA, Mathew L, Ryan AF, Chen J, Lieber RL. Rapid muscle-specific gene expression changes after a single bout of eccentric contractions in the mouse. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol. 2004 Feb;286(2):C355-64.
8. Moore DR, Phillips SM, Babraj JA, Smith K, Rennie MJ. Myofibrillar and collagen protein synthesis in human skeletal muscle in young men after maximal shortening and lengthening contractions. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2005 06;288(6):1153-9.
9. Nelson AG, Allen JD, Cornwell A, Kokkonen J. Inhibition of maximal voluntary isometric torque production by acute stretching is joint-angle specific. Res Q Exerc Sport. 2001 Mar;72(1):68-70.
10. Behm DG, Button DC, Butt JC. Factors affecting force loss with prolonged stretching. Can J Appl Physiol. 2001 Jun;26(3):261-72.
11. Kokkonen J, Nelson AG, Cornwell A. Acute muscle stretching inhibits maximal strength performance. Res Q Exerc Sport. 1998 Dec;69(4):411-5.
12. Sandberg JB, Wagner DR, Willardson JM, Smith GA. Acute effects of antagonist stretching on jump height, torque, and electromyography of agonist musculature. J Strength Cond Res. 2012 May;26(5):1249-56.
13. Fry AC, Kraemer WJ. Resistance exercise overtraining and overreaching. neuroendocrine responses. Sports Med. 1997 Feb;23(2):106-29.
14. Izquierdo M, Ibanez J, Gonzalez-Badillo JJ, Hakkinen K, Ratamess NA, Kraemer WJ, et al. Differential effects of strength training leading to failure versus not to failure on hormonal responses, strength, and muscle power gains. J Appl Physiol. 2006 May;100(5):1647-56.
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By Brad Schoenfeld
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/demolish-your-genetic-limits

The female strength training revolution

Has anything advanced female super-fitness more than CrossFit? That's a rhetorical question and the answer is quite obviously 'no'. Due to the popularity of CrossFit, more women than ever before are training with weights, getting stronger than ever before and looking better than ever before. Neither bodybuilding nor the popular "bodybuilding light" - figure class, bikini class, etc. - have attracted as many women as CrossFit. Whether you love CrossFit or hate it, these are the facts. In the past, I've dubbed CrossFit with such unflattering terms as the "Scientology of Fitness," but it's hard to miss the legions of extremely trained, insanely strong women popping up everywhere.

Back in the eighties, when I was just starting my coaching career, a woman who could do deadlifts and presses at 65 kilos was as rare as someone doing deadlifts at Planet Fitness. Today, on the other hand, you can find many women who can perform the "queen of weightlifting exercises" at 90 kilos. Three decades ago, the only place you would see a woman with a six-pack was at a bodybuilding competition. Today, a six-pack in women is nothing special anymore and this is largely due to CrossFit.

Let's look past the shortcomings of CrossFit

I can already hear the objections starting to sprout in your brain. You think CrossFit is dangerous, that they're all using steroids, etc., etc. But you know what? Just like the best athletes, pretty much all popular training systems get some things wrong, but in the end, these athletes and training systems are still successful because they get so many other things right. There is simply no absolutely perfect training program. Let's look past the shortcomings of CrossFit and try to figure out why this training system produces so many damn strong women who will outperform the average male exerciser as early as their warm-up workout. After following the CrossFit phenomenon with interest for several years, I've been able to isolate four primary reasons that you would probably finish in last place if you were to compete in the next CrossFit Women's Regional Championships. (Oh yeah, you'd probably have the worst abs of all the competitors, too). Note: Male CrossFit athletes are no slouches either, and many of them could successfully compete in Olympic weightlifting championships, powerlifting championships and bodybuilding competitions (which many actually do). So don't let the focus on female CrossFit athletes distract you from the fact that there is a lot for all of us to learn here.

Reason number 1 - work capacity

How many hours a week do you train? I train between 8 and 10 hours per week. That may sound like a lot, but I'm in contact with a number of CrossFit coaches and CrossFit competitive athletes and I know that CrossFit competitive athletes train at a high level between 6 and 8 hours per day - at least when the CrossFit Games are approaching. This means that these athletes train about 4 to 5 times more than you and manage to recover from this amount of training. Are you worried about getting into overtraining? Hey, I can understand that, but the longer I train, the less I worry about this much-feared affliction. Remember that training volume - and therefore workload - is the key factor in muscle growth. As long as your intensity is at 60% of 1RM or above, the more work you do (as long as you can recover sufficiently from that work), the more adaptations you will achieve.

I'm as fascinated by the workload of these CrossFit competitive athletes as you are, but I attribute it to the slow waning of scientific ignorance. Some readers will be too young to know this, but the IOC did not allow women to compete in marathons until the 1980s because of the widespread assumption that the "weaker sex" was incapable of handling the stresses of such long distances. Today - only about three decades later - the world marathon record for women is only about 15 minutes slower than that of men. Oops, I guess we were wrong and maybe we are wrong in our assumptions about how much work a strength athlete can do. On a related note, I know trainers who still believe that all your efforts will be undone by a sudden shitstorm of catabolic hormones if you train with weights for longer than 60 minutes. This was common knowledge in gyms around the world just a few decades ago, even though world-class bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger had clearly never heard of this idea and were doing much longer workouts.

The bottom line is that the problem may not be that you're training too much, but rather that you're not training enough.

Reason number 2 - Forcing progression

We all know that progressive overload is important and you can believe me when I say that you are doing your best when you increase the weight on the bar by 2.5 kilos every week. With CrossFit, however, things look a little different. Each WOD(Workout of the Day) is a group competition. WODs typically involve improving your best time for a specific training session or trying to do more work within a given time window. Either way, WODs are total hell and probably a bit more intense than YOUR typical workouts.

I'm not suggesting you should throw up from overload after every workout (or any workout), but many typical exercisers lose sight of the important importance of progression and intensifying workouts. Sure, we all try to beat our personal bests whenever we can, but CrossFit has a very different focus on this.

In CrossFit, you don't go to the weight room to "see how you feel that day". When you go to the gym, you give it your all. It's more of a "do it or die" scenario. Sure, there are some downsides to such an approach, but you can't deny that the typical CrossFit athlete trains hard and is always trying to train harder.

The bottom line is that you may not be training as hard as you think you are.

Reason #3 - Novel, unexpected training challenges

If you've ever watched a real CrossFit training session, you may have noticed that this type of training is a little different from what you do. You probably never perform more than 5 reps on the deadlift or 2 to 3 reps on the Olympic weightlifting exercises. And as everyone knows, "low reps are for mass gain and higher reps are for definition." Okay, I just had to let that one go (sorry), but you probably also believe that the optimal range for gains is between 8 and 12 reps. Or that if you want to increase your strength, it's probably best to train in a range of 1 to 5 reps. Additionally, you'll probably train with weights during some workouts and cardio during others. And you know what? The science more or less agrees with your approach to all of this.

The fact is, CrossFit hasn't really caught wind of these ideas yet, which is why things are done a little differently here. So if you walk into a CrossFit box and want to start a WOD, here's what you might see people doing:

The dirty 50:

• 50 box jumps on a 60 centimeter box
• 50 jump push-ups
• 50 repetitions of kettlebell swings
• 50 walking lunges
• 50 Knees to Elbows
• 50 repetitions of standing shoulder presses with leg swing (push press) with 20 kilos
• 50 back extensions
• 50 wall balls with a 10 kilo ball
• 50 burpees
• 50 Jump Rope Double-Unders (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSPslSgkp60)

Murph

• Run one mile (1.6 km)
• 100 pull-ups
• 200 push-ups
• 300 squats using only your own body weight
• Run one mile (1.6 km)

King Kong: 3 rounds consisting of

• 240 kilo deadlift
• 2 muscle-ups (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS1A--3mNZ4)
• 3 x repositioning from the squat position with 120 kilos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Y8QwctmhU)
• 4 handstand push-ups

I would go so far as to say that you've probably never done anything remotely resembling one of these workouts. After all, at least at first glance, these workouts seem to violate pretty much every well-known training principle. But as wacky as these workouts may seem (and perhaps are), they offer a unique benefit: they place threatening demands on the body that cause disruptions to homeostasis. In other words, your body will literally feel threatened by the extremely unfamiliar demands of these workouts and begin to build both muscle mass and strength to protect itself from similar threats in the future.

At the core of this basic assumption is the idea that something new is a key feature of effective training, which is especially true for muscle hypertrophy. Think about this: if you had to provoke a sore muscle the next day, what would you do today to achieve this? Would you do something familiar or something unfamiliar? And the more experienced you become, the more important new types of training sessions will become. When you go to a gym as a beginner, everything you do there is something new, isn't it? And of course you will build muscle and strength quickly no matter what you do. Later on, however, it becomes harder to shock your body even if you train hard because the exercises you do are something you are used to and you have already adapted to them.

The bottom line is that you should consider scaring your body (with caution, of course) with novel and unexpected training challenges.

Reason number 4 - Social support

My final observation that might help explain why CrossFit seems to be so effective for many people involves peer pressure, er, I mean peer support of course. We all know the value of a motivated workout partner. If you have the right training partner, then you can push and support each other to perform better and some friendly competition will definitely help you give it your all, even if you might not have otherwise.

Now multiply that effect by 15 or 20 and you have what happens in a typical CrossFit environment. When you start your WOD, as the big timer on the dial approaches the 00:00:01 mark, you and your fellow exercisers are part of a highly charged athletic competition, not just a training session. It's a competition, it's intense and you can't help but do your best not to lose face. I would also like to note that at a high level of athletic training, even in individual sports like weightlifting and wrestling, athletes train in a team environment. Look at the famous Westside Barbell Club in Columbus, Ohio. Over the years, several respected weight training experts have told me in confidence that they believe 90% of Westside's success comes from the high-intensity team environment and has less to do with the unusual training methods they use. The bottom line is that you will train harder in a group environment. Consider finding such an environment.

A different perspective

Sure, a lot of what's done at CrossFit seems completely stupid and dangerous (and maybe it is), but you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. If you take the time to look a little closer, you'll find that there are hidden treasures to be discovered. And as a final thought, let me remind you that the activity we all know is so valuable for health, performance and athletic preparation - resistance training - was dismissed as a bad idea by virtually everyone just a few decades ago.

Scientists, doctors and trainers warned that training with weights would stunt your growth and slow you down. Today we laugh at such views, but have you ever wondered what people will be laughing about in 50 years' time?

By Charles Staley
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/why-crossfit-girls-are-stronger-than-you