Varying workout intensities ensures great results.
For example, if the trainee squats on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the progression could look like this:
Monday. 3×5@85 lbs
Wednesday: 3×5@95 lbs
Friday: 3×5@100
A novice can do this because the novice is sooooooooo far away from his genetic potential, a potential that has never been tapped into, that the strength gains come quite easily and quickly.
The other reason that a novice can add weight to the bar every workout is due to the relationship between stress and recovery. Lifting weights is a stress on the body that must be recovered from, but because the weights being used are so light (when compared to the novice’s potential) the novice is able to recover very quickly. 48 hours is enough rest so that more weight can be added on the following workout.
There comes a point, however, that weight can no longer be added to the bar on each workout. As a trainee comes closer to his genetic potential, the law of diminishing returns set in, and progress slows down. Using our example of the squat routine above, assume the trainee is now squatting 225 lbs for 5 reps.
Monday:
3×5@225. The trainee was able to hit his target of 3×5@225.
Wednesday:
1×3@230 and 2×5@225. In this scenario, the trainee wasn’t able to increase his lift to 230 and do 3×5. He was only able to do 1 set of 3 at 230, and then went back down to 225 to finish up. This is an example of progress not being made from one workout to the next.
Friday:
1×3@225 because the trainee was too fatigued to try and do more. The accumulated fatigue from the Monday and Wednesday workouts has not dissipated enough to permit a good workout on Friday.
What has occurred shows the relationship between stress and recovery.
In this case:
The amount of stress being applied overwhelms the novice’s ability to recover from it.
225 lbs is much closer to the novice’s genetic potential than when he started at 85 lbs. The novice can’t add more weight on Wednesday’s squat workout because the squat workout on Monday was too stressful; 48 hours is no longer a sufficient amount of time to recover.
If the trainee is trying to maintain a 3 days a week lifting program while still applying the concept of progressive overload, how does one continue to make progress if 48 hours isn’t enough time to recover?
You could skip Wednesday’s workout and wait until Friday, but two workouts may not be enough to spur further progress. If two squat workouts aren’t enough but three is clearly too much, you’d seemingly be stuck. This dilemma separates the beginner lifter from the intermediate lifter. The intermediate needs more complicated programming to continue making further progress.
One possibility is changing the workouts to vary intensity across the week. Intensity in this setup refers to the percentage of your one rep max that you are using.
If your one-rep maximum for the squat is 100 lbs (100% intensity)
- squatting 85-100% of that 100 lbs is high intensity.
- squatting with 70-85% of that 100 lbs is considered medium intensity.
- squatting 70% or less of that 100 lbs. is considered low intensity.
Monday: Medium intensity.
On medium intensity day, you use higher volume. You could do more exercises, more sets and more reps. For example 3 sets of 8-10 reps on the squat.
Wednesday: Low Intensity.
On low intensity day, you could do the squat for 2×6 with the same weight you used on Monday.
Friday:
High Intensity: On high intensity day, you could work up to one heavy set of 5 reps on the squat.
In this template:
- you are using Monday’s medium intensity/high volume workout to drive further progress in hypertrophy (muscle size).
- Wednesday’s workout is done while the body is still trying to recover from Monday’s workout. It adds a little volume to the week’s total without adding too much additional fatigue. Plus, it facilitates recovery by driving blood flow to the muscles and maintains movement coordination.
-Friday’s workout is where you do maximum strength work to try and improve your top end strength. Since the workout itself isn’t too stressful, the trainee should be fully recovered by Monday where the trainee will try to beat what he did on the previous Monday.
This is a very effective method of trying to apply progressive overload (the key to any training program) over the course of a week. Instead of trying to beat your previous best every workout, you try to do it on a weekly basis.
In this example, the trainee would try to surpass his Monday volume day on the following Monday by adding a rep or two, or adding a couple pounds to his lifts. On Friday he tries to beat the maximal strength work he did on the previous Friday.
In the next post, I’ll show how I used this template effectively in the past few months to add size to my body and increase my bench press.
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