What's up, guys?
Sean Nalewanyj, www.SeanNal.com and in today’s video here I want to talk about the subject
of training intensity.
And just like the title says ask you the question: are you truly training hard enough in the
gym to maximize your total body gains.
It’s a pretty simple question but so many beginning lifters out there get so hung up
on all these different aspect of their program like exercise selection, number of sets, rep
ranges, rest periods, training splits, all these things and they forget or don’t even
understand the basic fact that training intensity itself, the percentage of total effort you
exert on each set is actually the single most important base line factor there is when it
comes to building muscle and gaining strength.
Because it’s the underlying stimulus that actually sets those processes into motion
in the first place.
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So all of those other training factors that I just mentioned, they're obviously important
too, and it’s a combination of everything that you do in the gym that’s going to determine
your overall progress.
But when it all comes down to it muscle growth is an evolutionary stress response and it’s
your body’s way of adapting you to the environment.
And in order for there to be enough incentive to actually change the body physiologically
that environmental stress has to be strong enough.
The body has to perceive that the demands of the environment exceed its current capability,
or at least exceed what it’s currently optimized for.
That’s the message that you're trying to send your body anytime you train with weight.
You're trying to say that the environment that you're in and the task that you're being
faced with are right up near the limits of current strength capacity or actually beyond.
And that’s what triggers the response.
So if you're consistently performing tasks that are already well within your ability,
meaning you're lifting a certain amount of weight for a certain number of reps that you
can already do without a high level of exertion, there's no reason for your body to make any
change.
You can already do those tasks.
So why would your body use up valuable energy and valuable resources to build new muscle
tissue that it doesn’t even need.
Again, training intensity is the stimulus that sets the entire muscle building process
into motion.
Progressive overload is what allows you to make continued gains from week to week, meaning
that you consistently increasing the workload in terms of weight and reps overtime, but
in any single workout the fact that you simply train hard enough to triggered adaptive response,
that’s what really matters.
And without that nothing else in your program is going to make any difference.
So if you're just plain not training hard enough then you're either going to progress
a bit but not to the degree that you could be or you won’t progress at all, or even
worse, it could actually be counterproductive to your physique, which I’ll talk about
here in a second.
And I know that this might sound obvious to a lot of you, but to just as many people out
there it really isn’t all that obvious.
And there's so many lifters out there who just go to the gym, they pick some exercises
and rep range and then basically just go through the motions without really understanding what
they're trying to do.
The workouts are still somewhat challenging, they feel the burn, they get a little pump
going on but without realizing it they're still not training nearly close enough to
their maximum ability to really trigger a significant muscle building response.
Or what I’d also see is what I’d call selective intensity.
And that’s where people will train fairly hard but only on certain lifts for the more
showy muscle groups like the chests or the arms, which also happened to be some of the
least challenging muscles to train.
But when it comes to hitting the really big muscle groups, the ones that make the biggest
contribution to their overall physique like their back and their legs, it’s a much different
story and they just don’t exert the same percentage of effort.
Now, I'm not saying that you need to get under the bar and lift with every ounce of strength
until your eyeballs are popping out of their sockets on every set.
It is possible to train too hard as well.
I don’t recommend you train to complete failure on every set or that you use high
intensity methods like forced reps, heavy negatives, rest pause, et cetera, at least
not frequently.
Because going too high with your intensity can lead to excessive overall fatigue and
it can also increased your risk for injuries as well.
Training to failure on some sets some at the time is fine as long as your volume is adjusted
for it, and lower intensity-higher rep sets can also be used as well in some cases as
well for certain purposes.
But I think that on most sets, most of the time, a good solid guideline for the average
lifter is to train about one to two rep short of concentric muscular failure.
Again, on the majority of your sets.
So that basically just means that if going a hundred percent all out and lifting with
every ounce of strength until you couldn’t get another rep no matter what, if doing that
allowed you to get ten reps of a certain weight, you; stop at the eighth or ninth rep.
So you want to leave one to two reps in the tank for most sets.
That amount of intensity is high enough to trigger the body’s muscle growth response
but also low enough to where you won’t burn yourself out.
Meaning, you can perform more total volume to optimize your results and where you won’t
be putting excessive stress on your joints either.
So, if you haven’t been making progress in the gym or at least not the progress that
you feel you should be, sit down, take a look at your training plan, and that includes all
muscle groups and all exercises, not just machine flies and dumbbell curls.
And be honest with yourself and ask yourself if you're truly pushing yourself to that level
of intensity on the majority of your sets.
Because if you're training much below that then you're not going to build your physique
up to its real potential.
And like I’d mention in the beginning, it’s not just that you won’t build as effectively
as you could be but it could actually be directly harmful to your physique if you're eating
in a calorie surplus but you aren’t training hard enough.
Again, you have to think about the basic logic of muscle growth here.
You go to the gym, you put your muscles under stress to stimulate a growth response and
then you leave the gym and consume more calories.
And your body uses those extra calories to build muscle.
But if you're training intensity wasn’t high enough during the workout and the growth
response was weak as a result of that, then not only will you not gain very much because
your body just doesn’t have the incentive for it but your body won’t even need all
of those extra calories you’ve been eating so they won’t have anywhere to go except
to your fat stores.
And this is one of the big reasons why some guys can go to the gym consistently over the
course of a few months and then end up gaining mostly fat.
It’s because they're feeding their body with a bunch of extra calories that it doesn’t
even need since it has no incentive to use those calories for building muscle because
the overall stress from the workout isn’t high enough to fully trigger the growth response
so those calories just gets stored as fat.
So, the bottom line here, there are a lot of different factors that go into planning
out a complete muscle building program both in terms of training and nutrition, but basic
training intensity is the stimulus that initiates the whole process.
And without that you're not going to get the results you're after.
And it’s not just enough to train hard for chests and biceps, these includes compound
leg training, compound back training.
It includes everything.
So, take a look at your approach, be honest with yourself, because you might discover
that you could be doing more than you are right now.
So thanks for watching, guys.
If you found this advice useful and you want to get a complete step-by-step road map that
incorporates all of the different factors you need to know to maximize your progress
in terms of training, nutrition and supplementation, then you can download my Body Transformation
Blueprint by clicking here or by heading over to www.BTBluePrint.com using the link in the
description box.
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Thanks for watching, guys.
I’ll see you in the next video.