MORE TRAINING MISCONCEPTIONS

I have been approached on countless occasions by people in gyms asking me:

“How can I become big like you?”

“How can you sweat so much, burn so many calories and still stay big?”

“I’m not sure why but I feel as though I’ve stopped improving”

I see many people at the gym talking on their phones in the middle of training and socializing before moving on to performing the next set. Other gym-goers seem more interested nowadays in their work-out attire and taking attractive selfies to post on social media. Some people come to the gym, do 15 minutes of exercise and go home thinking that this is enough to gain muscles; while others stay for at least 3 hours training the same muscle, believing that if they perform plenty of exercises with very high repetitions, the body will become toned, lose fat and have better sculpture.

If you’re one of these people and not sure what to do, today I will give you various guidelines to help you have a better understanding of how you should train, what type of training can make you bigger and stronger, and how you can improve your capacity for endurance sports.

As we discussed in my earlier blog regarding calories in vs calories out, it is very important to be aware that besides exercise, nutrition is crucial for mass gain and muscle recovery, but only under one condition: You must train correctly. Everything in sports is inter-related. In order to become fit, strong or big, you’ll need to commit yourself to training hard and doing the exercises correctly.

Today’s focus is on the number of sets and repetitions that a person must carry out in order to achieve their fitness goals. I have simplified these concepts in the table below to make you better understand the fundamentals of training:

Emphasis explained:

Metabolic efficiency: Helps to maximize performance when fatigued because the body becomes better at managing the metabolism.

Muscle size: The typical training for body building that can trigger hormones like HGH (the human growth hormone) and IGF1 (insulin-like growth factor) which are responsible for muscle growth.

Force production: Strength training usually occurs in response to intense and large muscle activation. This kind of training triggers the release of the testosterone hormone, which provides an anabolic effect (increase in total mass), increased basal metabolic rate (improved body composition), serves a role for sexual development amongst males and aids cardiopulmonary function. In other words, it does not give you the muscle mass you get in the hypertrophy training, but builds more strength and increases your weight lifting capacity which can be beneficial when doing hypertrophy training.

Acceleration: This type of training typically involves doing heavy strength exercises as fast as possible on the basis that strength + speed = POWER. Power training usually involves a combination of a high strength exercise with a high speed exercise e.g. heavy squats followed by jumping squats. Programs for power training are designed to amplify the athlete’s ability to apply power in general, to meet sports specific criteria or both.

The table serves as a helpful tool in understanding how you should train either for strength gains (by doing sets with low repetitions in the region of 3-10) or for muscle endurance (by doing high repetitions of around 25). Remember also that strength or hypertrophy training will not be efficient if you are not taking the right amount of supplements such as proteins, which will lead to muscle soreness and negatively effect your body by resulting in muscle loss instead of muscle gain. In a series of new blogs focusing on Sports Nutrition, I’ll provide you with some key guidelines to determine the right amount of proteins, carbs and fats you should consume for each type of training.