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By
Charles Staley, B.Sc, MSS
Director, Staley Training Systems |
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No matter how carefully you plan
your training, no matter how much you think about it, dream
about it, no matter how much reading and studying you do,
success really boils down to those few hours every week where
the rubber meets the road— your actual workouts.
Success can be experienced on
many levels, from marginal to profound. Marginal progress
is easily obtained, even from poorly-conceived workouts performed
halfheartedly. However, greater levels of success are more
fleeting, even for those who dedicate their lives to the pursuit
of physical perfection.
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Bodybuilding success is essentially
a function of three requirements: a welldesigned workout, an intense
application of effort during the execution of that workout, and
the ability to achieve quick and complete recoveries between workouts.
Let’s have a look at a variety of ways we can improve all three
components.
The Fundamentals
of Workout Design
A properly designed workout has a
number of features, all of which are necessary for a high level
of training success:
• Your workouts must be planned:
I don’t care if every bodybuilding hero you’ve ever had
planned their workout in the car on the way to the gym, it’s
NOT the best way to do things! Incidentally, the term “instinctive
training” was never meant to infer a lack of planning, but
it’s often used as an excuse for exactly that.
Although planning can be complex,
the basic idea is to consider the type of fatigue that a workout
will produce when you’re planning the next session. If you’re
training biceps and triceps on Monday, you shouldn’t train
your pecs or lats on Wednesday, because the residual fatigue from
the previous session will cause your arms to fatigue before you
can properly train the pecs or lats. Similarly, leg training should
not take place when your low back and/or abdominal muscles are tired,
because you won’t be able to maintain a safe lifting posture.
Planning and periodization are big
subjects— too big for the scope of this article. Therefore,
let me recommend an excellent resource on the subject— the
Advanced Program Design videotape series by Paul Chek (call 800-5528789).•
Your workouts must be properly timed: there is a point, which usually
occurs between 3-4 days after a training session, when a muscle
is in the best position to be trained again. If you train the muscle
prior to this time, you’re simply blunting your progress. If
you wait too long between sessions, you’ll regress to pre-training
levels. I normally suggest waiting until you have at least one full
day without soreness before a workout is repeated. If, at the beginning
of the next workout you feel weak and/or can’t create a good
mental connection with the muscle you’re training, abandon
the workout for at least one more day.
• Your workouts must be hard
and brief: You can train a muscle to do one of two things. You can
train the muscle to contract very forcefully, albeit briefly, or,
you can train the muscle to contract for long periods of time at
a low force output. It is the former of these two methods which
causes muscle to grow. Workouts which emphasize endurance will give
you an endurance athlete’s body— remember that the next
time you’re past the one hour mark in a workout.
• Your workouts must be goal-directed:
I once was hired to help a football player complete the NFL combines.
One particular test is the 225 pound bench press for maximal reps.
This athlete was one of those people who just loves to train—
2-3 hour workouts, 5-6 days a week were the norm before I started
training him. After several weeks of low rep training, he called
me to say that he just wasn’t “feeling anything”
from his workouts. When I asked how his bench press was doing he
replied “Oh— the bench is great— in fact I just hit
a new PR last night!” So my point is, you have to decide what
the purpose of your training is, and then carry out your plan with
confidence.
• Your workouts must be safe:
I know, safety is no fun to talk about. Until you experience a serious
injury, you’ll never give safety more than a passing thought.
Take a proactive position on safety. Make sure you’re healthy
(to the best of your knowledge) going into the workout. If there’s
any doubt, wait another day, or, of course, if you have an obvious
injury or illness, see your doctor. Next, make sure all the equipment
you’ll be using is in good working order— it only takes
a second, but can save you a lifetime of pain. In particular, check
the flooring, the ends of the bar you’ll use, or, if you’re
on a machine, look it over for signs of wear. If you’re performing
a heavy squat, deadlift, or Olympic lift, take a moment to make
eye contact with anyone who may be nearby— just to let them
know enough to stand clear.
Finally, make liberal use of power
racks, good spotters, chalk (although gym owners will hate me for
saying it), and anything else that improves your chances of having
a safe workout.• Your workouts must be repeated at least four
times: Although I am a strong advocate of constant change, if you
don’t repeat a workout at least four times, you don’t
have a frame of reference to ensure progress. Since bodybuilding
is a qualitative sport, it’s not easy to gauge progress unless
you have a quantitative standard of measurement. Since we know that
there is a direct relationship between strength and lean mass, I
believe it is imperative for all bodybuilders to aggressively improve
and monitor their strength levels.
• Your workouts must be progressive:
Progression ensures intensity. What I mean by this is, by repeating
a workout at least four times as detailed above, the last 2-3 times
are going to be very difficult and result-producing. The intensity
is guaranteed because you have “raised the bar” so to
speak, and you’ll have to summon all of your resources to accomplish
the goal. This is far different from simply “working hard”
on a series of workouts which have no continuity. We don’t
know what’s really in us until we’re pushed to the limit.
• Your workouts must be efficient:
I’d like to make a case for the drop set in this article. In
a “standard” set, the only repetitions that really do
you any good are the ones at the end of the set, regardless of how
many reps you’re performing.
I used to be less enthusiastic about
drop sets until my colleague Jerry Telle convinced me that they
could be effectively performed starting at very high percentages
of 1RM.Telle’s method utilizes a technique I call “wide-spectrum
variable-tempo (WSVT) drop sets.” The idea is to carefully
warm up to a 23RM set, and then progressively strip off weight so
that you can continue all the way down the motor unit spectrum.
In this way, you’re fatiguing your highest threshold muscle
fibers as well as the medium and low threshold fibers. These WSVT
drops can last as long as 4 minutes and believe me, when you finish
one, you’ll be convinced too. (Telle presents seminars on his
unique methods, called Tellekinetics. For more information, please
call 800-5192492).
• Your workouts must manage fatigue
properly: Since fatigue accumulates over the course of a workout,
the sets performed at the end of the workout will be performed with
less intensity. For this reason, I structure the majority of my
workouts as circuits.
To most bodybuilders, circuit training
is thought of as a method of integrating resistance and aerobic
exercise by performing several exercises in vertical progression
(meaning that one performs one set of each exercise until all have
been completed, as opposed to finishing all sets of the first exercise
before progressing to the second) with little or no rest between
exercises. The supposed (and unproven) benefit of this type of high
density (work torest ratio) exercise is that the exerciser will
improve aerobic and anaerobic functioning at the same time.
Unfortunately, this narrow definition
has done a disservice to circuit training, and to those who have
dismissed this method as an ineffective fringe variant used only
by the profoundly unfit as a way of regaining some semblance of
fitness. In truth, circuit training has much to offer, even for
the advanced, if you'll allow for a slightly broader definition
of the term, and a bit of creative application.
To illustrate my point, let’s say that you’re training
lats and triceps tomorrow, and you’ll perform two exercises
for each muscle. Here’s how most people would structure the
workout:
Exercise 1: Chin-ups Exercise
2: Seated Rows Exercise
3: French Press Exercise
4: Tricep Pushdowns
Using this arrangement, it’s
hard to do justice to the last exercises. You’re simply too
exhausted from the first two exercises. So instead, let’s arrange
the exercises into a circuit:
Exercise 1: Chin-ups Exercise
2: French Press Exercise
3: Seated Rows Exercise
4: Tricep Pushdowns
You can perform this workout in two
ways: you can do a large circuit where you complete one set of each
exercise, and then repeat for the desired number of circuits, or,
you can perform the first two exercises back to back until all prescribed
sets are completed, and then complete the remaining two exercises.
Either way, I rarely use the “station” approach to workouts
any longer— it’s just not efficient.
• Your workouts must employ
a warm-up and cool-down: Boxing fans know that, when a fighter climbs
into the ring bone-dry, he’s probably in for a tough night.
Bodybuilders can learn a lot from this phenomenon.
Warming up is a transition (physical
and psychological) from a low level of activation to a much more
intense level of engagement. George Carlin once remarked “No
one jumps out of the bed first thing in the morning and vacuums
the floor!” If you’ve ever experienced not wanting to
go to the gym, and you forced yourself to go anyway, only to have
one of your better workouts, you can bet that your warm-up was responsible.In
my experience, most people have a very hard time getting their warm-up
right: they either spend FAR too much time and energy, which creates
too much fatigue, or they jump immediately to their top weight.
The warm-up has two components. The
first phase, called the general warmup, is used to elevate body
temperature. I suggest using any activity you like, performed in
a low intensity, continuous manner, until you break a sweat, which
normally takes between 2-3 minutes. I personally like skipping rope.
If you have any muscle groups which you know are excessively tight,
I’d recommend stretching them now. Don’t stretch aggressively—
just enough to loosen up a bit.
Next comes the specific warm-up, which
simply refers to your “warm-up sets.” The big question
is, how many should you do? My rule of thumb for this is to take
your top working weight for the first exercise you’ll do (you
may have to estimate of course), and perform 2 warm-up sets for
every hundred pounds of weight. For example, if you plan to deadlift
315 pounds for 5 sets of five reps, I’d suggest 6 warm-up sets.
Incidentally, for some unknown reason, people always seem to think
that the last warm-up set must have at least as many reps as the
first “work set.” Bad plan, because it’ll create
too much fatigue. The last warm-up set should consist of 1-2 reps
only— all you’re trying to do here is gauge the proper
working weight for your first work set.
Warming up for subsequent exercises
depends on how similar they are from the first exercise you did.
Using the above example, if you second exercise is the bench press,
follow the 2 sets per hundred pound rule, since you’ll be training
entirely different muscles. However, if you’ll be performing
leg curls for instance, it should only require one warm-up set to
become mentally and physically prepared for the exercise.
Cooling down is simply the reverse
of warming up. Spend a few minutes performing some type of light
cardiovascular exercise to pump some blood into those hungry muscles
and to ramp yourself back down to your “normal” day. If
you have short muscle groups, now’s the best time to stretch
them.
• Your workouts must be placed
during the best time of the day: I’d like to make an argument
here for early morning workouts. Many people can relate to having
the best intentions all day long at work, only to fall into a heap
as soon as they get home from their jobs. Before you know it, Seinfeld
reruns are looking a lot more attractive than climbing under a 400
pound bar!
Getting up at 5 or 6 am for a workout
can seem daunting, but it’s actually not that difficult, if
you plan for it. After an initial adjustment of 4-5 workouts, most
people report that they have much more productive workouts than
ever before.
The Basics of Exercise
Biomechanics
If you’re a competitive weightlifter
or powerlifter, your objective is to find the easiest way to lift
a weight— otherwise, you’ll lose. But if you’re lifting
to increase muscle mass and strength, your goal is to find the hardest
way to lift a weight.
This is a difficult concept for people
to grasp, because it runs 180 degrees to what your instincts tell
you to do. Watching novice lifters confirms this— everything
is done with maximum “body English.”
My general rule of thumb is that if
you can find a way to make an exercise harder, do it. For example,
if pausing for a full second at the bottom position of a bench press
is harder than “touch and go” style, use the pause. If
maximally squeezing your biceps (more than would be necessary to
lift the weight) at the top of a curl makes the exercise harder,
do it. If crunches are harder on a Swiss ball, use one.
Of course, this approach requires
that you check your ego at the door. In fact, it has been my observation
that the ego is one of the most insidious obstacles to making progress
in the weight room. During one of my last workouts, I noticed a
trainer giving some advice to a couple who were holding down each
other’s butts during leg curls— he suggested that they
use their glutes to lift the front of the quads off of the padding,
so that they could stabilize their own body during the exercise.
As soon as they realized that this
would necessitate using less weight, they went back to their former
habits. Too bad.
Of course, all good personal trainers
and strength coaches have come up with their favorite “tricks”
to make various exercises more effective. You don’t need a
degree in Kinesiology to learn how to develop your own. All it takes
is discipline and creativity.
Intensity
Let’s get one thing clear: you
could hire the best strength specialists available to author your
training program; you could hire the best nutritionists, use the
best supplements, you could even resort to using anabolic steroids,
however, if you don’t execute your workouts with all-out ferocity,
it’s all for naught. The more experience you have, the more
this applies.
N o w, when I say “intensity,”
I don’t mean the sports science definition (i.e., how close
you are to 1RM), but instead, the application of effort during worko
u t s .There’s an old story about how the Egyptian pharaohs
managed the slaveworkers who built the pyramids: 1000 workers were
instructed to haul a massive stone block up an incline to the top
of the pyramid. At the end of the day, it was brought to the pharaohs
attention that they had failed. So the pharaoh had 500 of the workers
killed and told the remaining workers to get the job done, or he
would kill off half of the remaining workers and they would try
again. They accomplished the task.
The moral of the story is that often,
we think we’re applying maximal effort when in fact we are
not. Although both volume and intensity are both components of successful
training programs, no amount of volume will compensate for insufficient
intensity. If you had to choose between the two, go with intensity.
Period.
Intensity must be tempered with discipline
as well. If you’re on the leg press and allowing your low back
to round so that you can get that last rep, you’re not being
disciplined. The application of disciplined effort means that you
get every rep humanly possible within the confines of perfect technique.
Optimizing The Time
Between Workouts: The Essentials of Recovery
Progress occurs not during workouts,
but in the spaces between workouts. Fill these spaces properly,
and progress will be swift. The three areas I’d like to specifically
address are post-training nutrition, massage, and the concept of
active rest.
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Post- Workout
Nutrition & Supplementation
Eating properly can be difficult
even for very serious athletes, because compared to training,
the results are often more subtle and take more time to
see. Nevertheless, I’d like to urge you to make a commitment.
Right now. Make the decision, based on the fact that you
know it’s important, to clean up your diet. Not tomorrow,
NOW. A good place to start is your post training nutrition.
After a hard training session, your muscles are glycogen-depleted.
This means that they are “open
for business” to use the words of my colleague Will
Brink. What he means is that the muscles will quickly uptake
any simple carbohydrates you consume immediately after the
workout. The neat thing about this is that you can use a
high-glycemic drink to “deliver” creatine, branched-chain
amino acids, vitamins, etc., directly into your muscles
by taking them with the carbohydrate drink. This is the
concept behind EAS’s Phosphagen HP, incidentally.
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About The Author
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His colleagues call him an iconoclast,
a visionary, a rule-breaker. His clients call him “The
Secret Weapon” for his ability to see what other coaches
miss. Charles calls himself a “geek” who struggled
in Phys Ed throughout school. Whatever you call him, Charles’
methods are ahead of their time and quickly produce serious
results. His counter-intuitive approach and self-effacing
demeanor have lead to appearances on NBC’s The TODAY
Show and The CBS Early Show.
Currently, Charles competes
in Olympic-style weightlifting on the master’s circuit,
with a 3-year goal of qualifying for the 2009 Master’s
World Championships.
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