See the cutting hierarchy of importance again for a visual answer:. As you can see results come from the calorie deficit, macros, and strength training.
Nutrient timing, where Intermittent Fasting fits into, is close to the top of the pyramid — it has a minimal effect on fat loss in and of itself. The great benefit of IF is that it helps you better manage your hunger and cravings. By skipping breakfast we take advantage of the fact that we can easily go without food for a few hours in the morning.
For this reason you can easily go a few hours without food until lunch. By doing this we can save more calories for the second part of the day. Eating most of our food in the second part of the day helps with comfort and satiety. Most people are socially inclined to eat more in the evening.
You never hear of someone saying they binged on junk food in the morning or afternoon. Binge eating happens at night. Some researchers speculate that this is the way our species evolved — we would hunt or gather food during the morning hours and only get to eat in the second part of the day. Hunter gatherers living in temperate and warm climates obtained most of their calories from plants mushrooms, berries, tubers, roots, nuts, etc and I imagine they ate those foods as soon as they found them rather than collect them and wait until the evening to eat them.
But regardless of what our ancestors did, this way of eating fits our lifestyle today. In the morning and noon we go to work, or school and are generally busy. Only in the second part of the day we have time to cook and eat a good meal.
Moreover, almost every social event we attend weddings, parties, dinner with the family or friends, going to movies, etc happens in the evening. That is why it makes sense to save a good portion of our calorie budget for the evening meal. Better hunger control because of the fasting period 2. You have more calories to work with for each meal which means more satisfying meals 4.
Eliminates the need for cheat-meals. You can make your meals so large they feel like cheat meals. Remember that thirst is often confused with hunger. We end up consuming food when in fact we need water.
By getting into the habit of drinking water as soon as you wake up, you can eliminate that false sensation of hunger we have in the morning. Then about one or two hours after waking up have a cup of black coffee. Coffee without sugar or milk is a powerful appetite suppressant. Water and black coffee make fasting hours very easy you may even find it enjoyable!
I recommend using any one of the 4 templates below to get started. I personally used template 1 the most. I spent a few years experimenting to see what meal pattern satisfies me the most in a deficit. What I like the most right now is this: In my first meal I have mostly protein and fruit — like a large protein shake and a banana In my second meal I prefer veggies and legumes — like a large salad and a bean quesadilla And in my last meal I prefer most of my carbs — a big portion of baked potatoes with some tofu or veggie burgers.
Bodybuilders and fitness models are very careful about timing their meals with their workouts. And for good reason. Eating a small meal about one hour before training has been shown to have a slight positive effect on training performance and muscle growth. Also, eating protein in less than two hours after lifting weights has also been shown to slightly increase muscle growth. If you train early in the morning or before your first meal, have a protein shake or protein bar before lifting weights.
That protein will ensure your muscles have nutrients to recover and grow until you eat your first meal at lunch. Train whenever is convenient for you. You can even train after your last meal. A kcal balanced meal takes about 5 hours to digest a high protein meal can take hours to digest and absorb. By the time you finish your workout you still have a lot of amino-acids in your bloodstream and protein synthesis can start. Meal frequency and food distribution do not affect fat loss and body composition.
Problems start to appear when you go the extremes. Eating only one meal a day will cause you to develop unhealthy relationships with food where you condition yourself to consume enormous amount of calories at each sitting. On the other hand, eating more than 6 meals a day creates the opposite problem.
They found no difference between high and low meal frequencies. Those extra calories should come mostly from carbs. Glycogen is a substance created from carbohydrates and water that is stored inside muscle tissue. It serves as an energy source for muscle cells because it can be rapidly turned into glucose.
Most of the energy your muscles use in the gym comes from glycogen. It is the primary fuel source for high intensity exercise. While cutting, the amount of carbohydrates you eat is not enough to completely replenish the glycogen used in training. Therefore, after a few days of lifting, your muscle glycogen stores will be partially depleted and the consequence of this is lowered training performance.
Strength loss while cutting is often caused by low muscle glycogen levels. This helps replenish muscle glycogen stores, supporting your training performance in the next few days.
Dieting, training, and mental stress increase cortisol levels which can cause water retention. This does not affect fat loss but it is frustrating because it can mask weight loss and muscle definition. Refeeding can help flush out subcutaneous water. Eating more carbohydrates causes an increase in insulin levels which in turn causes cortisol to go down. The next day, your weight can drop by 0. Keep in mind this only happens if you were retaining water before doing the refeed. A refeed day is a day of not dieting.
You get to eat more food for a short period of time which can help reduce mental stress. In the fitness world, the usual model for refeeding is having a specific day a week where you eat more. For example, Thursday could be your refeed day. You know that every Thursday you increase your calories above maintenance.
Over a time period of weeks of cutting you will inevitably attend some social events that tempt you to eat more than you planned. You may be invited to a wedding, to a party, or to a dinner with the family. Why not take the opportunity and make those days your refeed days? This way you get to enjoy the event, you get the physiological benefits of the refeed day, and you completely eliminate the guilt of cheating your diet.
Maintain a calorie deficit every day. The vast majority said they like having two or three meals per day after a long morning fast. That makes sense. Like we discussed in the previous chapters, this diet structure helps blunt your appetite in the morning, allows you to have big meals that leave you satisfied, and it requires little time for cooking and cleaning.
So I will give you practical guides for cutting with 2 or 3 meals per day. I recommend trying both of them for a week to see which one you like better. Depending on your job and schedule you will notice one will fit your lifestyle better than the other. I find that two meals per day work especially well for people who wake up later in the day am and have the freedom to make their own work schedule - like students, freelancers, or small business owners.
That is how much you need to eat every day. Focus on hitting just calories and protein while allowing carbs and fats to fluctuate. You may drink another cup after hours of fasting if you need it.
Aim to eat mostly protein and fiber in this meal. The goal is the make your first meal filling as possible with a small number of calories so you can have a feast in the evening. Because protein and fiber are the most filling macros, eating high protein foods and veggies fills you up very well while keeping fats and carbs low.
In addition to that, veggies are slow digesting so this meal will keep you full for several hours even if the calorie content is low. But I found that plant protein powders digest much slower than whey or casein protein powder and they keep you satiated for several hours.
In this small meal we want to include a good amount of fat because fats are the macronutrient that empties from the stomach at the slowest rate. For this reason it prevents hunger in the long-term better than carbs or protein. The main purpose of this snack is to bridge the gap between the first meal and the feast at night.
This big meal also helps with the fast the next day by preventing hunger in the morning. Depending on your schedule you can train fasted around am before your first meal, at pm before your second meal, or at pm before your last meal.
If you can only train at night, you can train after your last meal. I recommend refeeding on a day you attend an event or go out at night. Aim to eat potatoes in this meal as they are very filling. Depending on your schedule you can train fasted in the afternoon before your first meal, in the evening before your second meal, or at night after your last meal.
For most people, training in the evening after work and before the last meal is the best choice. What Results can you Expect? You can expect to lose 0. You may even lose up kg lbs in the first week. This is primarily the result of eating less food and losing water weight.
Every month you should be down kg lbs of fat and your waist should be down cm Although, most people will lose kg lbs the very first month.
The One Week Diet Break This chapter is very important for those that are going to cut for more than 6 weeks. A diet break means purposefully not dieting for a week. Calories are raised to maintenance and carbohydrate intake is increased. For each two months of cutting, you should take one week at maintenance.
For example if you do a 24 week cut, weeks 7, 14, and 21 should be spent at maintenance. These adaptations are normal and are there to increase our chances of survival. The longer we stay in a deficit and the leaner we get, the more pronounced these adaptations become. How much it goes down is determined mostly by our genes.
It may seem insignificant but even that can make further fat loss much more difficult. For example, if you take a man that maintains lbs 80kg naturally, he would burn around kcal per day. But if you have a man diet from lbs 90 kg to reach lbs 80 kg , he would burn fewer calories that other guy. He may burn only kcal per day. You can imagine that the second man would have a much harder time getting leaner from lbs because he would have to eat kcal less to create the same deficit.
Diet breaks help reduce how much our metabolism goes down while dieting because they increase leptin levels for a few days. Leptin is a hormone which regulates hunger, metabolic rate, libido, and other functions in the body. It is mainly produced by fat cells, which is why it goes down when you get lean. Researchers found that leptin injections speed up metabolic rate. They found that if you can maintain high leptin levels while dieting, metabolic slowdown is largely prevented.
Injections aside, the best way to increase leptin levels on a diet is to take a diet break. As a result, the adaptations to the shortage of food are less pronounced. Many people did them to prevent metabolic slowdown. But it seems a single day of overfeeding is not enough.
To prevent your metabolic rate from going down, you need multiple higher calorie days in a row - a diet break. You could potentially gain, maintain, or continue to lose weight on a diet break.
It is most likely returned lost muscle tissue and glycogen. If you have to lose lbs kg of fat, you realize you have to stay in a calorie deficit for weeks.
But what if you know every 7th week you can take one or two weeks at maintenance? Then the task will seem much easier to do. After 6 weeks of cutting, you should take a diet break and eat at maintenance for a week. Leptin plays a major role in controlling metabolic rate.
A heavier body burns more energy at rest and during activity. This means that as you progress towards your goal you will have to make adjustments to your total caloric intake. The very first week, eat the number of calories the calculators show you. After you follow those numbers for a week you look at how your weight and waist have changed to determine if you need to adjust them. The ideal rate of fat loss is between 0. For most people this means 0.
You can lose fat faster than this. But the risk of muscle loss, strength loss, and low testosterone is increased. Keep eating the same number of calories every day.
How your waist around the navel changes. It may be possible for your weight to stay the same and your waist to go down. You need to eat less. The deficit is no longer present. You need to use a weekly average. Dieting, training, and mental stress tend to increase cortisol levels which can cause water retention.
There are always weeks when you stall and weeks when you lose large amounts of weight. Water retention is one of the reasons that happens. Obviously your weight is going to be affected by the quantity you eat. You can get the same 70g of carbs from g of crackers or from g of potatoes. If that small change makes such a difference, you can imagine how much your daily water intake affects your weight.
Maybe yesterday you had 2 glasses of water more than usual and your weight was higher today as a result. To solve all these tracking problems you need to do a weekly average. You weigh yourself every morning, in your underwear, after you used the bathroom. Monday - Every 7 days, you do an average. That is your real weight. After several weeks of cutting, a lot of people report hitting a plateau when they no longer lose fat eating the same way as before.
This is normal. Contrary to what is commonly believed, skeletal muscle actually has a fairly low resting energy expenditure, roughly 13 calories per kg 6 calories per pound. In addition to that, fat mass which is commonly believed to be inactive tissue actually takes 5 calories per kg 2 calories per pound to maintain.
To put that into mathematical perspective, gaining 1 kilogram of muscle would be expected to increase resting energy expenditure just as much as gaining 3 kilograms of fat. Over the course of a week that kcal daily deficit will lead to about 0. Instead you only lose 0. This term describes all of our movements that are not related to physical exercise such as fidgeting, walking to the bus station, pouring a cup of coffee, running your hand through your hair, and so on.
One of the ways our body tries to conserve energy during a cut is by reducing these spontaneous, unconscious movements. Over the course of a day, these small movements can burn a few hundred calories. So if we unconsciously reduce these movements our maintenance can suddenly be a few hundred calories lower than it was before starting the cut.
This adaptation is more pronounced in some people than others. The magnitude of reduction in NEAT partly explains why some people have a much harder time losing fat than others. Their bodies simply start burning less energy without them realizing. They say that our body will stop losing weight if we eat too little. That violates the first law of thermodynamics. This way a few hundred calories go unnoticed.
It's very easy to forget about oil or sauces. What looks like g may actually be g. What looks like a lean piece of meat may actually contain 25g of fat. A bowl of pasta from a restaurant contains a lot more fat compared to what you eat at home.
The issue must be one of these. If that wasn't the case for you, government agents will come take you away to study your genes. You'd be the secret to world hunger and space exploration - the genes that violate the laws of physics. In conclusion, this is how you track fat loss and adjust your calorie intake:.
You set the initial deficit using the calculator provided 2. You check if your weight goes down by 0. I recommend doing both. That is because your maintenance decreases along with your total bodyweight. If you lose less than 0. This way you prevent weighing errors caused by water retention, food quantity in your GI tract, and hydration status.
If your bodyweight stays the same two weeks in a row but your waist measurement is going down, you should not decrease your calorie intake. That is because you may be losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time which is the ideal scenario. NEAT describes all the small unconscious movements you make over the course of a day such as fidgeting, scratching your head, taking the stairs instead of the escalator, and so on.
Our body reduces these unconscious movements in an effort to conserve energy while in a calorie deficit. You can do that by eating less or by moving more. I recommend doing both at the same time if possible. Eat about kcal less every day and walk 2 hours extra every week.
Research shows that the ideal protein range for resistance trained, lean athletes in a deficit that means you is 1. The amount of protein you need is scaled upwards with the severity of caloric restriction and leanness. The higher the body fat percentage, the lower the protein intake can be compared to total bodyweight. Now, some people promote a higher protein intake than that on the basis that it improves satiety.
That's true. Protein is the most filling macronutrient. When you eat 4 or 5 meals a day, you are almost forced to eat a lot of protein because you have to spread it out between those meals. About g of protein are needed for a small meal to be filling, adding up to a total of g per day. Protein also requires more energy to digest and absorb compared to fat and carbs.
This means a diet high in protein will actually provide a larger calorie deficit than a diet low in protein, even if the daily calorie intake is the same.
However, when you're using intermittent fasting satiety is not an issue. You can eat 2 or 3 big meals a day which means you can achieve the same level of fullness per meal with less total protein. You get two major benefits: better hormonal balance and more satisfying meals. One of the biggest problems of getting very lean is that testosterone levels go down.
This issue is rarely talked about in the fitness industry. If people learned that many fitness models and bodybuilders suffer from low sex drive and erectile dysfunction, they may be turned off from wanting to achieve their physique.
It's embarrassing and bad for business. I didn't know that in the beginning. Each of the macronutrients protein, fat and carbs are involved in supporting the endocrine system. If one of them is emphasized over the others, testosterone production takes a hit. If your calorie intake is fixed and you eat a lot of protein, it means you eat less carbs and fats as a result. And the current research shows this:.
Adequate carb intake is necessary to support training, and in supporting training it is also supporting a healthy hormonal profile by preventing the chronic rise in cortisol, glucagon and epinephrine.
Studies in vegetarians who are known to consume less saturated fat and fat in general also show similar results. Of course, individual response to low fat dieting varies a lot but there is definitely a correlation between low fat intake and a decrease in testosterone level. It too plays a role in testosterone production. But an increase in protein consumption will always accompany a decrease in both fat and carbohydrate intake arguably the two more important macronutrients for endocrine support.
So it sabotages hormonal balance indirectly. In order to avoid the same problems I had, I want you to use a balanced diet. This does not negatively affect your results. Protein should be consumed at the minimum level required for muscle support in training and the remainder of the diet should consist of carbs and fat if testosterone optimization is also one of your goals.
Sodas, juices, beer, milk, protein shakes and other liquids that contain calories should be consumed sparingly. If you want a beverage, go with water, tea, or coffee. On occasions such as birthdays, parties, dates, vacations, and so on, you may want to enjoy a drink or two. You can. Alcohol will not stop fat loss nor will it interfere with muscle growth if you drink in moderation. Alcohol doesn't stop fat loss if you stay in a calorie deficit.
If you eat less carbs and fats that day, you can make room for a few hundred calories of alcohol. Your fat loss results will be the same. The first thing you need to pay attention to is the calorie content of each type of drink.
As a rule of thumb, the sweeter the beverage, the more calories it has:. If you want to get a little drunk, it's best to go with low calorie drinks such as spirits.
If you drink for the taste, go with cocktails, beer or wine. You'll be able to fit 2 or 3 drinks into your deficit. They do.
This means it stops fat and carbohydrate oxidation and leads to fat gain indirectly. If alcohol is burned for fuel, any surplus dietary fat will be stored. Although we all know we should be drinking plenty of water every day, most people are always slightly dehydrated. Thirst is actually a signal of dehydration, not a warning. Adequate water intake is particularly important while cutting because many thirst sensations are confused with hunger. Dehydration can thus give you a false feeling of hunger and drive you to overeat.
Moreover, hydration also plays a role in physical performance. This is a better way to track water intake compared with glasses or fl. A person working outside on a sunny day will need more water than someone who sits at a desk in an office with air conditioning.
This is why we look at urinations instead of following a recommended water intake. By far the most important driver of muscle growth is progressive overload. In order to get bigger, every few weeks you must lift more weight for the same number of repetitions or perform more repetitions with the same weight. Of course, metabolic fatigue contributes to growth as well. But many people overestimate how much it actually helps. In every gym you will see guys perform supersets, drop sets, circuit training, or lifting low weights for high reps with short rest periods.
While the metabolic fatigue produced through those training methods does in fact stimulate muscle growth, progressive overload is much more powerful.
I showed you these pictures in the first chapter of the program:. The muscle development of these men is determined by their strength. Their body fat percentage correlates with their waist measurement around the navel.
If you want a physique like them, what you need to do is match their relative strength level and have a slim waist. The best indicator of the quality of your physique is relative strength. Relative strength means your absolute strength compared to your body weight. If aesthetics is your goal then you should aim to improve your relative strength because the stronger you are compared to your body weight the better you will look.
Who do you think will look better, a 77 kg lbs guy benching kg lbs for 5 reps or a 95 kg lbs guy benching kg lbs for 5 reps? The first one will undoubtedly look much better even if he has less muscle mass overall than the second guy. The reason for that is because the first guy has a much better muscle to fat ratio. Anytime you improve your relative strength, you will look better. Each kilogram you gain should results in a kg increase on your bench press and weighted chin ups, This will ensure that the weight you gained was predominantly lean mass.
Strength and muscle size correlate closely only when strength is gained in a medium rep range They train their nervous system to produce high amounts of force for low reps and use the form that gives them the best mechanical advantage.
To a large degree, strength is a skill. So when doing only reps per set, strength and size are not tightly related. For strength to translate to muscle size, you must lift weights in a medium rep range such as reps per set. Muscle damage micro-tears produced by lifting weights may be another driver of growth but the evidence is inconclusive.
Lifting heavier and heavier weights over time is the most powerful stimulus for hypertrophy. To achieve a certain muscle size, you must achieve the strength level that corresponds to that size. Powerlifters and weightlifters can lift very high amounts of weights for reps without being very muscular.
The stronger you are for your bodyweight, the better you will look. The Novice Training Routine Use this tool to see what your strength standards are. If on most of the exercises you fall into the Untrained or Novice category, this is the ShredSmart routine you should use. When you reach the intermediate strength standards you can move up to the main ShredSmart Training Program. The fastest way to make strength and muscle gains as a novice is to train the main exercises often.
The vast majority of the strength gains you will make in the beginning will be neurological in nature. When you first start lifting weights, you are weak not only because your muscles are small, but mainly because your nervous system is not trained to recruit muscle fibers properly. Training the main exercise a few times a week gives you a lot of opportunities to practice the movement. That helps you make the neurological adaptations quickly and get to the point where muscle fibers have to increase in size to contribute to strength.
Two days of rest are usually enough to allow you to recover and be able to replicate or surpass your previous performance. In the first weeks of lifting, you set a personal record every time you go the gym. So it makes sense to train an exercise more often and progress as quickly as possible. During that time it will have to be modified slightly. After weeks you may find you no longer enjoy doing some of the exercises. What you need to do in that situation is to replace them with a similar variation to bring excitement back into your training.
Here is the routine again, this time with different exercises. Keep those that you make great progress on. However, if you want to develop your lower body more, you can do the lower body workout twice per week. You can see that all exercises have a rep range, for example or When you hit the top of the rep range in all sets, increase the weight by 2. Over the following workouts aim to add one rep to each set until you reach the top of the rep range.
At that point you increase the weight again by 2. Set 1 - 5 reps with Next time you do bench press you will focus on adding reps to each set until you hit 6 again.
You may do: Set 1 - 6 reps with Next time you may do: Set 1 - 6 reps with At this point you increase the weight by 2. Focus on making good progress each month instead of getting frustrated you did not perform well one workout. In order to make predictable progress, you should stay away from failure. At the end of each set you should be able to perform at least one more repetition with good form. This will ensure easy, predictable progress every week.
They do reps until they can no longer lift the weight by themselves and then have someone help them ek out 2 or 3 more reps usually on bench press.
That is counterproductive. Ideally, you should never fail to complete a repetition. The goal of RPE is to allow you to measure how close you get to failure at the end of a set. RPE is based on repetitions in reserve — basically how many reps you think you could have done with a given weight. But most people in the fitness world use this RPE scale so I use it too in order to use the same model. The ShredSmart workouts are all based on doing straight sets — all sets are done with the same weight.
That tells you need to lower the weight in order to complete the required reps. For optimal progress you should follow these RPE guidelines: Set 1 - 7 to 7.
Training close to failure on these exercises is dangerous because there's a high risk of injury. If on the fourth rep you already hit 9. So the exercise that workout might look like this:. Set 1 - 6 reps with Your goal for the next workout is to add reps in the last set while making sure you stay below 9. Your next workout could turn out like this:.
Besides ensuring good progress, using RPE also promotes good form and helps prevents injuries. Most people get injured joint pain, muscle tears, tendinitis, muscle pain, etc when they compromise exercise form in order to do more reps than they can actually handle. If you teach yourself to stop each set 1 to 3 reps before failure you will be much safer in the gym and will avoid injuries that would have otherwise stopped you from training for a few weeks or months. The ShredSmart Training Program.
After you finish cutting, the ShredSmart training program can be easily adapted for lean bulking when strength and muscle gains are made much easier. After a few weeks you may find you no longer enjoy doing some of the exercises or you can no longer progress on them. In that situation, replace them with a similar variation. Important: Replace only the exercises you no longer enjoy doing. Each week we increase the load by 2. Every 4th week is a deload week after which the cycle restarts.
This will ensure predictable progress every week. RPE stands for Rate of Perceived Exertion and is based on repetitions in reserve — basically how many reps you think you could have done with a given weight. It also prevents you from pushing too hard and mess up the progression model. But most people in the fitness community use 10 RPE to signify technical failure so I use this scale too in order to avoid confusion. In order to be able to complete 3 sets of equal reps with the same weight, the first set needs to be around 7 RPE, meaning you could have done around 3 more reps when you stopped that set.
If on the fifth rep you already hit 9. If you fail to complete the required reps in one of your workouts, simply use that same weight the following workout which requires fewer reps. On the third workout you increase the weight by 2. Important: After you surpass the Proficient Strength Standards and you approach the Advanced Strength Standards, you may no longer be able to progress by 2. Not being able to complete all the reps when you increase the weight will therefore become common and it may take you 2 or 3 cycles to be able to add weight to the bar.
Alternatively, you can start microloading. But you can order such plates online. You can find microplates that weigh 0. Using such plates you will continue to be able to add weight to the bar each month without losing reps. Dumbbell exercises, isolation exercises, and some compound exercises are not well suited for the periodization model described above. Dumbbells usually go up by 2. Isolation exercises on the other hand are impossible to improve even at a rate of 2.
For example improving your DB Biceps Curls by 2. For intermediate and proficient lifters, a realistic rate of progress on isolation exercises is kg per year, maybe even less. Double progression means you first increase the reps done with a given weight and when you reach the top of a rep range, you increase the weight. In the workout routine, you can see that all exercises not marked with p have a rep range as well, for example , or You start with a weight that you can lift for 3 sets in that rep range.
When you hit the top of the rep range in all sets, you increase the weight by 2. Over the following workouts you strive to add at least one rep to each set until you reach the top of the rep range. Set 1 - 10 reps with Next workout you take 2.
Remember that you increase the load by a total of 5 kg or 10 lbs thus you need to reduce the number of reps per set by around 4. So you drop the reps to 6 and over the next several workouts you will focus on adding reps to each set until you hit 10 again.
When you reach 3 sets of 10 again you take a heavier set of dumbbells and go back to the bottom of the rep range. You should use the same progression model for isolation exercises biceps curls, triceps extensions, lateral raises, etc and machine exercises leg extensions, leg curls, cable rows, lat pulldowns, cable triceps pushdowns, cable curls, etc. During the deload week, drop the number of sets to two and go back to the bottom of the rep range. The RPE guidelines apply to these exercises as well.
Remember RPE takes priority over rep progression. If you hit RPE 8. So aim to add reps as frequently as possible but push yourself near failure only on the last set. If you do not have time to train 4 days a week or prefer to train less, you can follow a 3 day per week workout routine. If you can follow the 4 day per week program, do it. That extra day of training allows for a higher total volume per muscle group while keeping the volume per session low.
Distributing the weekly volume over more days of training improves recovery and allows for faster strength progress. But this 3 day split is effective too. I have personally trained with a split similar to this for about 2 years and made great progress with it at the intermediate level. After a few weeks you may find you no longer enjoy doing some of the exercises.
Replace the exercises you no longer enjoy doing but keep those that you currently make progress on. Rest minutes between sets on compound exercises and minutes between sets on isolation exercises. Understanding these basics will help you defend yourself against misinformation and not fall prey to program hopping - the condition in which people change their training programs very often in the hope of making better progress.
All training programs are built on three pillars:. Volume - the total number of sets you do each week Intensity - how heavy the weights you use are Frequency - how often you train a muscle group. Making progress in the gym for long periods of time requires that all three of these variables are set correctly. The first thing you need to understand is that there is a hierarchy of importance when it comes to setting a training program.
At the bottom of the pyramid are the most important variables and as you get closer to the top each level becomes less important for your overall results. As you can see, exercise selection, rest periods, and tempo are less important than the bottom three levels.
But these are what beginners tend to ask about the most:. These are not the right questions. Volume, intensity, and frequency are what truly matter. If those are set correctly, progress is almost guaranteed, even if all the other layers of the pyramid are set suboptimally. While progressive overload strength is the main driver of muscle growth, volume is the main driver of strength.
You need to do a certain number of heavy sets for each body part every week in order to stimulate progress. If you do too little volume your strength progression stalls because the stimulus is insufficient.
If you do too much volume you overshoot your recovery capacity and that slows down your progress as well. Studies and practical experience shows that the optimal amount of volume for intermediate and proficient lifters is 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week. Intensity must also be set properly. Obviously no matter how many bench press sets and reps you do with 2. This can be done with both low and high loads.
Both would count equally towards your weekly volume and would stimulate muscle growth and strength although the heavier sets would be superior for stimulating strength gains.
With that said, most of your sets should be done in the rep range because that is the most efficient way to accumulate your weekly volume. Rep 1 - Easy Rep 1 - High effort. All of them would count equally towards your weekly volume as long as they are taken within at least 4 reps to failure.
But as you can see, both light and very heavy weights pose problems for accumulating the ideal weekly volume. Lights weights are inefficient because you have to do a lot of reps in order to get close to failure. And those reps tire you so much that close to the end of the set you feel like dying. After each set you feel the need to sit down and just breathe. Isolation exercises are actually better done in a high rep range because it allows you to target the muscles better and avoid putting high amounts of pressure on your joints.
Doing these big exercises in a high rep range is extremely tiring and requires high amounts of willpower and good muscle endurance. It just makes the task of accumulating those hard sets per week unnecessarily difficult. Heavy weights on the other hand are inefficient because they take a toll on your body over time. Lifting heavy all the time can lead to joint pain and severely increases the risk of injury.
Your form needs to slip just once for you to get a nagging muscle pain or in the worst case scenario a major shoulder or back injury. Also, lifting heavy requires lots of willpower and attention and can make workouts feel like a chore. Using medium weights is the best choice.
By training mostly in the rep range you can easily accumulate the required weekly volume. In addition to that, you can maintain good technique, not cheat the range of motion, get pretty close to failure safely, not burn out your willpower after just a couple of sets, and not be left with creaky joints.
With that said, using heavy and light weights for a few sets per week is beneficial. Heavy weights help you build strength faster and light weights help you improve muscular endurance and work capacity. But a good rule of thumb is to do the big compound movements in the rep range and isolation exercises in the rep range.
You can think of frequency as the way you organize your weekly volume instead of it being a distinct training variable. If the number of heavy reps per week is equal, different training frequencies will produce similar results at the novice, intermediate, and proficient levels.
However, training a muscle group twice or three times per week is slightly better than once per week for most people because performance and recovery are improved. Imagine you had to do 5 exercises for a muscle group to achieve your weekly volume target: 3 sets of weighted chin-ups, 3 sets of cable rows, 3 sets of lat pulldowns, 3 sets of T-bar rows, 3 sets of bodyweight chin-ups.
Doing them one after the other is effective but your performance on the second, third, fourth, and fifth exercises is decreased because of fatigue. Workout 1 3 sets of chin-ups with In time, this translates to more strength and muscle gains.
A frequency of once per week is fine when the total weekly volume is 10 to 15 sets. But when the weekly volume is between 15 and 20 sets per week, a higher frequency produces better results. The muscle groups that are trained only once per week on the ShredSmart program are those from the lower body. Also, legs tend to grow faster than the upper body so doing less volume for legs may help you develop all your major muscle groups at about the same rate. Intermediates do well with sets per week, proficient lifters do well with sets per week, but advanced and exceptional lifters can go up to sets per week or even more.
At the bottom of the pyramid are the most important factors, and as you get closer to the top each level becomes less important for your overall results.
If they are set correctly, progress is almost guaranteed. If they are set incorrectly, progress will be slow or nonexistent. Volume is scaled upwards with training experience.
This allows you to hit more exercises fresh than if you were to do them all in a single training session. Lifting in this rep range is the most efficient way to accumulate the required weekly volume. In a study by Rhea et al. The non-periodized group trained each movement with the same number of sets and reps three times per week.
They continued with that pattern for the 12 weeks of the study. But this simple explanation cannot fully account for such a big difference in the progress made by the two groups. Imagine that for the next 6 months you had to train the same way every workout - 3 sets of 6. No matter how you felt, you would go in the gym and push as hard as you can to add weight to those 3 sets of 6. For example, after a personal record that took a lot of effort you would doubt that you can surpass your previous performance.
Periodizing your training allows you to get excited for each one of your workouts. You are never doing the same thing and you can always progress in some way.
By decreasing the number of reps you do you can lift more weight and that makes you excited. By going back to a higher number of reps, you get excited to see if you can lift more than last month. Enjoyment and novelty can impact training performance. In research, progression models that include periodization almost always outperform non-periodized programs.
Also, all elite natural powerlifters and bodybuilders use some form of periodization in their training. Why Do We Need Deloads?
It allows the fatigue you accumulate over a few weeks of training to dissipate so you can start a fresh training cycle. Each workout you do does two things: 1.
It stimulates your muscles to grow 2. It creates fatigue. Because you train often, the fatigue created by a workout is not allowed to dissipate completely before you do another one. So over the course of a few weeks of training, you slowly accumulate fatigue.
And if you let it get too high, it will hurt your performance. You did not have enough rest. Tuesday morning you still have some residual mental fatigue left from Monday. After each day of work you accumulate more and more mental fatigue.
But what if you were stubborn and on Saturday morning you wanted to work some more? Would you have good performance? Most likely not. What you need is leisure time. Leisure time helps you get ready for another week of productive work.
They allow the fatigue you accumulate over a few weeks of training to dissipate so you can start another string of productive workouts. In research the role of deloads is explained using the fitness-fatigue model. At some point the fatigue accumulated over a few weeks of training catches up with you and your strength inexplicably goes down.
Actually, after a deload your strength is usually higher because fatigue no longer masks your true potential. Excitement and novelty make you enjoy your training more which makes you put more effort into it.
Physiologically, changing the rep range within the week helps reduce the repeated bout effect making your muscles more sensitive to a training stimulus. You can do this multiple ways: 1. Using a pocketbook and a pen 2. Using a note app in your phone 3. Using a weightlifting app. No matter what method you use you need to be able to tell how many sets, reps and what weights you used last time.
It also allows you to write short notes under each exercise to remind yourself of something next workout. When you open an exercise you can see what you did last time under Previous.
The light gray text shows the weight you used last time and the default reps and RPE you set for that exercise when you made the routine. Under Exercise Notes you can see what you wrote last time. After completing each set I input the weight, reps, and RPE into the app and click done. That starts the rest timer at the bottom of the screen.
To make calculating the weight easier you have the option to click plates to add them to the bar and the weight is calculated automatically. After finishing the exercise I write something in the notes section. Please keep in mind that unfortunately the ThinkEatLift app still has some bugs. It works smoothly on my Samsung S7 but some people have told me that on their phones the app sometimes loses their history or shows random numbers under Previous instead of their last performance.
If that happens to you I apologize and sadly I have to recommend using a different workout app or just using the notes app in your phone or a notebook and pen to keep track of progress. If you start using the ThinkEatLift app and you find any bugs, please let me know what causes them.
Symmetric Strength is not an app to track your progress workout to workout but to track your progress long term. It has three very useful features:. After each personal record you should go into the app and input the weight you lifted, the number of reps, and you body weight that day.
The app will then show you in what category of strength standards you fit into, your estimated 1 rep max, your long term progress, how you compare to the average lifter at your strength level, and your strongest muscle groups. This tool allows you to calculate what weight you need to lift on each exercise in order to reach a certain strength standard. Checking this data often is very motivating because it gives you clear goals to pursue in the gym.
When you start using a heavier set of dumbbells this tool can help you estimate how much you need to reduce your reps per set. If a female lifter is able to bench press the empty bar for sets of 5, adding 2.
Doing sets of 10 with the empty bar is equivalent to doing sets of 5 with 2. If you are hitting your recommended rep ranges pretty easily then you know that it is a good time to increase the weight. A simple formula for that would be to calculate your current weight x 1. How important is consistency in this program? It is the most important element of this program! Just remember that the difference between wanting and achieving is discipline. Your journey starts here!
Best of luck! Simplyshredded Team. Powered by Shopify.
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