Strength training: motivation and progression

1. “Need to” versus “like to”: the first matters more, but reward yourself with the second now and then

What you actually should be doing matters far more than what you like doing. But don’t forget that the first isn’t possible if you never get to do things you enjoy from time to time.

Doing things you enjoy feeds motivation and cements commitment. In practice, though, we tend to like what we do well: strong people like lifting heavy weights, very flexible people do a lot of stretching, and those with good endurance prefer running. All of this is fine and justified, as long as the things we enjoy don’t completely replace what we actually should be doing. As a rule, we all like to eat sweet foods, but also very fatty ones; at the same time, we need those nutrient-rich foods far less than we consume, and we should be eating considerably more protein.

One way to try new things is to build an “experimenting period” into the end of every workout. This means that after your usual exercises, you spend 15 minutes trying something completely different or new.

2. Try more than one way to progress

Progression is, on the one hand, the foundation of everything, but on the other hand this aspect is very often extremely misunderstood. Most trainees start too heavy and move forward too fast. All in all, we all understand that a weekly jump of +2.5 kg would mean an extra 130 kg a year. That is one example of something that may work in theory but doesn’t hold up in practice. Another nuance that tends to be forgotten when planning progression is that, besides lifting heavier weights, there are many other ways to adjust the difficulty of a workout.

The more experienced the trainee, the more important it is to try different ways of progressing. Besides adding weight, you have the following options for progression:

• Shorter rests between sets
• A proper, full range of motion
• Pre-exhaustion
• Training alone and without music
• Not using equipment that supports your training
• Longer sets
• Progressing across several different rep ranges at once

3. Organizing workouts by contrast supports recovery

In many cases, fatigue is specific to the activity just performed (the movement pattern). The exhaustion or fatigue from attempting a squat record affects the result of a subsequent 10-rep bench press set much less than it affects the result of a set of 10 squats.

Keep this in mind when putting together your training program, too. When arranging your week, try to place lifts/muscles/body parts that are as different as possible in terms of movement character on consecutive days.

This concept is exactly what splits are built on: lower-body days alternate with upper-body days, and workouts aimed more at strength alternate with workouts that stimulate hypertrophy.

The relationship is this: the more different workouts (in terms of movement structure) you can put on consecutive days, the more often you can train two lifts (movements) with a similar structure. The more often you can train, the faster you develop.

To be continued…

Author: Janar Rückenberg (translation)

Source:Turg.Fitness.ee

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