Right off the bat you read that title and you are thinking to yourself, “What is ‘R’ going to stand for this time. Funny how much a letter can evoke pondering. Had I titled this the importance of Rhubarb, who knows what you would be thinking, but likely you would be thinking something about Rhubarb.  Hmm maybe my next post should be about Rhubarb Pie.

Training, no matter what the the method, has one goal. That goal is to Refine.

Be it bulk, strength, fat loss, speed, corrective, etc the goal is to raise you to another level of yourself. It is to perfect and polish your ability to the best level that you can. If you aren’t following the importance of ‘R’ then your efforts are all in vain.

The 4R list of success

Rest-”Freedom from activity (work or strain or responsibility).”
Regeneration-”Renewal or restoration of a body, bodily parts, or biological system (as a forest) after injury or as a normal process.”
Recovery-”Restoration to a former and/or better condition.”
Reality-”The quality or state of being actual or true.”

The key to drive most of those things is balance in training. If you always rest, you aren’t training. If you push too hard all the time, you are never recovering, where is the balance?

Yakovlev's Fig 1

The Pusher

In your training program you have “The Pusher.” The pusher can be any internal or external factor that guides you to excel past comfortable levels of training expression.

The Coach
The Trainer
The Competition
The Inner Montage

All of the above can be leaders of the push towards conditioning and excellence. All above can be leaders towards your demise.

The Stressors

The Stressors can exist in physical training, but they can also exist in the realm of environment and mental. Meaning running long distance in hot polluted air while thinking about the fight you got in last night with your mother, is not helping bring forth the ‘R.’

The Healers

The overall problem is that there isn’t in most cases the factor of “The Healer.” For every push and stress you need an equal ‘R’ reaction.  Time and investment in the former always leads to snubbing of the later.

The Food
The Bed
The Foam Roller
The ART specialist
The Therapist

While some of the above doesn’t have to be literal, it all goes back to investment of your craft. People constantly invest in the wrong parts of progress. You can see this in every area of life.

Example of Investing Wrongly In Progress

-Doing aggressive intervals before having the ability to do progressive increase
-Disposing of rest times before imposing pause in training
-Utilizing superset training before understanding the basics of one move at a time
-Running for endurance before decreasing body mass and reading the body for impact

This kind of training is the equivalent of buying a cell phone on the basis of being able to have 10 people in a network, but you are lucky if your mom still calls and leaves that daily message about her favorite TV show.

You must walk before you run and you must regenerate for optimal recovery. It all ties together and being cheap in the beginning will leave you with half ass results in the end.

The Side Effects of Neglecting “R”

Obviously some things are specifically dependent on goals, but overall you can look for these side effects.

-Decrease in performance
-Decrease in desired body composition
-Decrease in sleep ability
-Decrease in strength
-Decrease in immune system
-Increase in stress
-Increase in sensitivity to mental and environmental factors
-Increase in fatigue
-Increase in stiffness and joint pain vs DOMS

Regulating “R”

A few logical reactions to training and stress will help you implement the “R” factor into your program.

-Higher intensity means higher rest time and a longer need for recovery
-A push is necessary for optimum advancement, but don’t expect such a linear advancement even with a balanced drive.
-Expect your greatest improvements to come after days of recuperation.
-Any decrease in nutrient value will lead in a increase of time need for optimal recovery. Because of this nutrient timing while in a hypercaloric state is crucial to obtaining maximum “R.”
-You can greatly improve the “R” factor with an extra focus on things like longer sleep, foam rolling, and proper warm up and cool down programs.

Tie it all together

When choosing or designing a program make sure that for all your actions you have set in place a recovery reaction. In doing so you will see tremendous improvement in RESULTS.

To read comments or to leave a comment click here

Tracking your training progression (or degression) is one of the simplest but most overlooked tools you can have. It’s free and with tracking you can determine if what you are doing is paying off.

Dear Diary: “Today I totally blew at Bent over Rows but nothing prepared me for the leaking gas that came out on the third set right in front of shasha. Next time less weight.

Journal-Training day 12: “Tim said while I was doing chin ups that I dipped my pelvis forward too much and that my core was weak. God he is hot.”

Running Log-Day 182: “Today I  went up further on the mountain trail and then got harassed by an anteater, it was the weirdest thing. He just jumped out and said “F**K you I’m Anteater.” Calves felt good though, love that new massage stick,

So as you can see logging in your journal can be massively important to finding clues and noting progress.

We at FLzine have found some of the best logs on the net. This is paper/print only, not software as we are still evaluating some different gadgets.

Best Bang For Buck Log: BodyMinder Workout and Exercise Journal

Best “WTF does it cost that much” log?: The Fitness Log Book for Runners

Best “Right under your nose” log: Microsoft Documents>New>Templates>Logs

Best Stylish Log: Werkit training logs

Best “Everything but the kitchen sink” log: Arnie Baker

To read comments or to leave a coment click here

by Frederick C. Hatfield, Ph.D.

One of my favorite lines is, “I can pass by the weight room, smell the iron inside, and instantly begin to grow.” Simply, some people tend to thrive on very little exercise, while others seem to be incapable of making gains no matter how hard, long and frequently they train. This was referred to as one’s “tolerance to exercise,” a term coined by Arthur Jones years ago. One’s “tolerance” is high if more exercise is needed, and low if less is needed. There are many variables that can affect your exercise tolerance. Of course, “genetics” ranks highest on the list below, and you’ll notice several such factors. Others, on the other hand, are able to be manipulated in various ways.

• Red vs White Fiber Ratio
• Tolerance To Pain
• Level Of “Psych”
• Amount Of Rest Since Last Workout
• Perceived Exertion
• Amount Of Eccentric Stress (Which Causes Connective Tissue Microtrauma)
• Incentive Level
• Strength-To-Weight Ratio
• Time Of Last Meal (Energy)
• Type Of Foods Eaten At Last Meal (Glycemic Index)
• Use Of Ergogenic Techniques Or Substances
• Musculoskeletal Leverage Factors
• Motor Unit Recruitment Capabilities
• Skill Level At Exercise Being Performed (If Such Is Required; e.g., Cleans)
• Equipment Quality & Design
• Environmental Factors (e.g., Heat, Cold, etc.)
• Size Of Muscle Being Exercised
• Various Intra- and Extracellular Biochemical Factors
• How close you are to your maximum potential in size or strength

All these factors, and perhaps several more as yet undreamed of, will variably affect how frequently you should train each body part and how best to split your routine.

Several years ago, after chatting with Arthur and reading some of his thinking on the topic, I began charting other lifters’ reps at 80 percent max. I found that guys who were so-called “fast” gainers were only able to do 4-6 reps at 80 percent, while lifters who seemingly never made great gains were able to rep out at around 15-20 reps with 80 percent of their max. Apparently, so-called “fast gainers” have rather poor anaerobic strength endurance. This is explainable in part by the fact that they’re probably mostly white muscle fiber, which has fast twitch/low oxidative capabilities. Conversely, slow gainers are probably mostly red muscle fiber (slow twitch/high oxidative) and therefore may possess greater ability for rapid during-set recovery.

The problem is, however, that each muscle group’s tolerance to exercise probably differs. Each exercise you do for each body part can – and often does – possess an entirely individual rep ability at 80 percent max. To discern your specific tolerance level for each body part, follow these simple instructions:

1. Determine your approximate one rep maximum (1RM) for each exercise.
2. Load 80 percent on the bar (machine) & rep out with it for one all-out effort to see how many reps you can do.
3. Apply this information to the table below to determine each body part’s exercise tolerance.
4. Take into account ALL of the factors listed above that can affect your exercise tolerance.
5. Critically evaluate whether your predicted exercise tolerance levels stand up to what you know from experience to be true. Remember, “low tolerance” means that you probably make easy gains for that body part, and “high tolerance” means that you’re probably a hard gainer for that body part.

Here is an example of what I’ve found in regards to exercise tolerances for fast gainers, average gainers and slow gainers. Perhaps you’ll find these figures and estimations to be pretty close estimates. But perhaps you won’t. One thing is clear, you must look! Your continued progress toward your maximum potential may well depend on it!

Slow Gainers (usually predominantly red muscle fiber):

Days Of Recovery Required For Each Body Part Before Training It Again

Slow gainers often benefit most from 10 or more sets of 15-20 reps

Average Gainers (usually a mix of red and white muscle fiber):

Days Of Recovery Required For Each Body Part Before Training It Again

Average gainers often benefit most from 5-8 sets of 10-12 reps

Fast Gainers (usually predominantly white muscle fiber):

Days Of Recovery Required For Each Body Part Before Training It Again

Fast gainers often benefit most from 3-5 sets of 4-8 reps done explosively

By critically evaluating your individual muscles’ tolerance to exercise, you can more easily “fine tune” your training regimen to provide maximum gains in the shortest possible time. But don’t forget the other factors that may affect your recovery rate. Look at the list again (above). How have you accounted for each of these variable’s effect on your progress? Have you raised or lowered your reps and sets accordingly? Have you increased or decreased the frequency of your workouts commensurably?
Training intensity? Have you taken into account your ratio of white versus red fiber, and adjusted your exercise load and movement speed accordingly?

Why Can’t You Just Copy The Pros?

Why is it that most newcomers to bodybuilding, and even most intermediate level bodybuilders, can’t make continued gains using a split they copied from one of the pros? It’s quite simple, really. First of all, you must be truthful with yourself in answering some basic questions. Are you as fastidious as the pro you seek to emulate in all that you do? Your supplement schedule? Your diet? Have you as much time “in the trench” as the pro? How long have you been forcing your body to adapt to stress? Most pros have forced adaptations to their muscles and other bodily systems that have taken years to accomplish. As your body changes over time, your susceptibility to further change does as well. New forms of stress force different adaptive processes to occur, and each adaptation requires that different stressors and training schedules be devised in order to take your body one more step closer to its maximum potential.

So, as you change your body, your body demands different scheduling for further adaptation to take place. It isn’t simply a matter of piling on more pig iron to satisfy the progressive overload principle. It’s more complicated than that. One of the biggest mistakes all bodybuilders tend to make is that they do not build their programs with this important fact in mind. As you change, so must your training because your body’s “tolerance” to that level or type of stress has changed. And, how you split your training can be an important source of new adaptive stress to which you have not yet adapted.

Most bodybuilders are not “hard gainers” or “fast gainers” in all body parts. Further, as you get closer to your maximum potential — where all professional bodybuilders are — you may become a hard gainer, whereas earlier in your career your gains seemed to come easy. Or, maybe you’ve remained an easy gainer but have yet to discover the type of stress your body now requires to force continued growth.

Through experimentation, I assure you that finding your own level of “tolerance” (body part per body part) will make a big difference. Where to begin? Here are a few examples of how you can split your training program. Adjust them at will.

This article can be found originally at Dr. Squat: http://drsquat.com/content/knowledge-base/finding-ideal-training-split

To read comments or to leave a comment click here