Training Styles, effort and cake

There has been a couple of recent pieces of research that have come out that is showing some interesting findings when it comes to building muscle and losing fat that I think are worth talking about and understanding.

If you’re into a bit of the science behind training, building strength, building muscle etc… then this might be for you. But if not and you’re here for a read because of my amazing jokes, then read on.

Just as a side, Nat recently bought me a piece of Biscoff cheesecake from Woolies. Shit, that stuff was good. Move aside teevee snack, we have a new obsession.

Anyway, The first bit of research that has a lot of the fitness community talking about, especially the science based people, is a study that found, when it comes to building muscle, and i’m talking about building muscle and not strength, these are not the same. We need botha dn they both compliment each other but they are different. So, when it comes to building muscle, they found that there was the participants were getting the same amount of muscle growth when using reps of 6 all the way up to 25!

Typically in the fitness world, and when you’re digging into the articles and research it was most commonly explained that, for strength reps were 6 and below, hypertrophy (muscle building) were reps between 6-14, and then anything above that was more for endurance. But not that has been turned on it’s head a bit by this new study, but the main thing to point out from this was that the results were similar as long as they took those sets to failure or very close to it. So effort is really the driving factor. 

The other study was conducted by a female doctor and strength and conditioning coach who looked at building muscle and burning fat. She looked at training in a typical straight sets style. 6 exercises, done 1 at a time with a few minutes rest between each, vs the same 6 exercises done in more of a circuit format, 3 grouped together, then rest then the other 3, thus saving time on your workout. Again the results were the same. Similar amount of muscle built and fat lost between the 2 training groups, and again the main caveat was that each group took those sets to failure or close to failure.

So, really what i think we can take from this, is that effort is pretty much the main driving factor for getting the stimulus change response we need. Going to failure or close to it is going to give you the best results.

Secondly, there are many ways to skin a cat, as i’ve said many times before. You can hit circuit style, straight sets, super sets etc… it all works well with different varying rep ranges, as long as the effort is there. So it can be nice to mix it up sometimes. We don’t need to be so rigid in our training.

Charles Poloquin, a guru in the strength world had a really nice training style for a bit called 6-12-25, where you perform a big lift for 6 reps, an accessory lift for 12 reps followed by a more isolated muscle group set for 25 reps. I’ve tried it a few times and it’s awesome, that set of 25 is hard both mentally and physically and you really get that burn and pump feeling.

So it also means that sometimes we can go a bit lighter, which will be safer and take those reps up to a higher range, with good form an d close to failure and still get as good a response as a heavier load for lower reps.

Lot’s to play with.

We might bring it on to class for a bit too.