.Performance Supplements

As opposed to the general use supplements which are meant to support basic health, etc. performance supplements are those that have (or are purported to have) direct impacts on performance in training or competition.

In this section, I’ve listed a handful of products that are supported (to one degree or another) by at least some type of strong research into their efficacy. This is basically what separates supplements in this category from the esoterica category discussed last. When products in the esoterica category have sufficient research behind them, they move into the performance supplement category; this happens rarely.

With that said, I’d like to look at the handful of current performance oriented supplements that mixed sports athlete might consider using. These are all products with at least some amount of supporting research (in healthy human athletes) which make them a worthwhile consideration. Again, this should only occur after the daily diet and other aspects of around workout nutrition and general use supplements are being implemented consistently.

Creatine

If there is a single dietary supplement in existence that can be said to work, creatine is probably it. With several hundred studies supporting it’s effectiveness and safety, creatine is arguably with one the must-have supplements for most athletes including team and mixed sports athletes (with a few notes made below).

Creatine has been shown to positively impact all manners of performance measures ranging from repeat sprint performance to weight room performance and others (if creatine has a negative impact it is typically on endurance due to a slight weight gain that occurs). Most of the reported side-effects of creatine have not been borne out by research (see comments on cramping in the previous chapter) and the biggest danger of creatine use is a slight weight gain of 1-2 kg due to water retention.

For athletes who need to make weight, this can be a problem and, as noted in the chapter on hydration and cramping, will increase fluid requirements. Even those athletes who need to make a certain weight class can use creatine supplementation during their main training phase and go off at least one month before competition; this will give the body time to get rid of the extra water and drop the weight.

While a number of ‘high-tech’ creatines have come and gone, for the most part bulk creatine monohydrate works as effectively, if not more effectively, than the other types. The only possible exception is a micronized creatine which can be useful for athletes who have stomach problems with the standard monohydrate. All of the other variations on creatine (i.e. creatine ethyl-ester) are no more effective but do cost more.

Traditionally, creatine has been supplemented one of three ways, which I’ve described below:

• The method used in the studies was to consume 20 grams of creatine in 4X5 g doses per day for 5 days. While this loads the muscle with creatine the fastest, it can also cause stomach upset in some people.
• A less aggressive protocol would be to consume 10 g/day of creatine for 10 days. While this will take longer to reach saturation levels, most people report less stomach problems.
• Finally, creatine can simply be taken at a dose of 3-5 grams per day for roughly a month.

The only difference in approaches is the speed of loading. Athletes may simply wish to put 3-5 grams of creatine in their pre- or post-workout shake and be done with it. Maintenance doses are 5-10 g/day depending on the athlete’s size after loading has been finished (larger athletes need more to maintain muscular levels).

I should mention that some percentage of athletes are creatine non-responders. For various reasons, they receive no benefits from creatine, no performance improvement and no weight gain. If an athlete uses creatine in one of the above dosing patterns and no weight gain occurs, they are a non-responder and can discontinue use.

As noted above, after loading, creatine levels will drop gradually over a period of about a month if no more is consumed. Athletes who need to drop water weight should discontinue creatine supplementation at least 30 days prior to the weigh-in of their event.

Beta-alanine

A fairly recent addition to the performance supplement arsenal for mixed sports is beta-alanine. Acting as a buffer of acidosis in skeletal muscle, beta-alanine can improve certain types of performance, especially in activities that rely heavily on anaerobic metabolism (e.g. maximal efforts lasting roughly 30-60 seconds). At least one study found that beta-alanine plus creatine improved weight room gains; mixed sports athletes looking to increase strength/power or muscle mass may want to consider beta-alanine.

The biggest drawback to beta-alanine is the required dosing schedule which is 400-800 mg of powder 4 times per day (for a total dose of 1.6-3.2 grams per day). In some people, beta-alanine can cause a tingling/itching/flushing sensation. This isn’t dangerous, simply irritating. And the dose must be split in this fashion for optimal effects.

Branched-chain Amino Acids (BCAA)

The BCAA are leucine, isoleucine and valine, three amino acids that have a branching chemical structure (hence their name). Many studies have found that BCAA and specifically leucine is critical for stimulating skeletal muscle growth and protein synthesis and for this reason BCAA are often suggested for athletes trying to gain muscle mass.

Other aspects of performance have also been measured with early work suggesting that BCAA might decrease fatigue during high-intensity exercise; an equal amount of work found no effect. In some situations, BCAA may actually hurt performance through one of several mechanisms (e.g. ammonia production).

I’d note that BCAA are found to some degree in all high quality proteins with the highest concentration being found in the dairy proteins: whey and casein. This is yet another reason for athletes to consider adding those specific proteins (either in powder or food form) to their diet; this will help to ensure that BCAA intake is optimal.

In that vein, my general feeling is that, if sufficient dietary protein is being consumed (e.g. you’re following the recommendations in this book), additional BCAA is unnecessary and will have little to no effect. In most studies where BCAA had a benefit, it was on a background of inadequate protein intake.

As noted above, BCAA may protect immune system and athletes involved in very heavy training might consider extra. BCAA are fairly expensive, with daily doses running from 10-20 grams per day and supplements can be bitter tasting. I would consider BCAA supplementation as something for athletes to use only when everything else in their diet was taken care of.

Joint Supplements

Depending on the specifics of their sport, mixed sports athletes often undergo a tremendous amount of joint pounding, either as a function of running around the playing field or due to other athletes slamming into them (e.g. football, mixed martial arts). While keeping joints healthy isn’t strictly a performance issue, clearly an injured athlete won’t be performing well, if they can perform at all.

A number of supplements are potentially beneficial for overall joint health (and or to deal with certain types of injuries). The most common cocktail is chondroitin sulfate and glucosamine sulfate, both of which provide the building blocks for connective tissues and have been shown to help heal certain types of joint injuries (especially arthritis).  MSM (methylsulfonylmethane) may also have some benefit.

One problem with these supplements is that they often take 4-6 weeks to start working. In that vein, people who report no benefit after 4-6 weeks of proper dosing don’t ever seem to get a benefit. Put differently, if the supplements haven’t worked after 4-6 weeks, they aren’t going to start working and you can stop taking them. Dosing for glucosamine and chondroitin are in the range of 1.5 grams per day of each, MSM is often added in amount of 1.5 grams as well.

Additionally, papain and bromelain, the enzymes found in raw pineapple have been shown to have beneficial effects, probably by controlling inflammation. I’d mention fish oils here again as they can help control inflammation, which is key to keeping injury rates down. This is yet another reason to ensure adequate fish oil intake on a daily basis.

Pre-workout Stimulants

Stimulants of varying sorts have been popular with athletes for decades and for good reason, they work. Stimulants before training or competition can improve performance in a variety of parameters important to athletes. These range from direct performance improvements (e.g. increased strength or power output) to glycogen sparing due to increased fatty acid use to many others.

I would note that a potential drawback and this is especially true of excessive stimulant use is cramping. As well, under the wrong conditions (usually dehydration plus heat and humidity plus intensive training), there have been deaths associated with excessive stimulant use. If there’s a lesson to be learned here it’s that more is not better.

The old standby as a pre-workout stimulant is simply caffeine, perhaps the most used compound on the planet. Doses of 3-5 mg/kg (so 180-300 mg for a 60kg athlete) taken 30-60 minutes prior to training or competition can improve certain types of performance, and certainly those important to mixed sports.

Caffeine hits peak levels in 60-90 minutes and lasts several hours so, unless training is exceedingly long, a single dose is usually sufficient; you won’t run out. Here again, even ignoring the cramping issue, more is not better and very high doses of caffeine, especially on an empty stomach can cause stomach upset.

I would mention that, in theory, stopping caffeine for several days prior to an important competition will make it work more effectively; in practice, individuals used to using caffeine on a day to day basis won’t ever do this due to negative effects such as headaches and performance decrease. So a neat idea in premise but almost impossible to accomplish in practice.

There are numerous other stimulant type products, with perhaps ephedrine the most well known, available to athletes and companies continue to look for pre-workout boosters. Many show up on the banned list (caffeine is not banned since it is so universally used) and, as noted above, excessive stimulant use can cause problems with cramping.

Before trying any stimulant product, an athlete must check to see if its banned and test it during training to see if there are any negative effects. As noted above, never try anything new on game-day.

For the most part, I recommend athletes simply stick with good old caffeine. For standardization I prefer tablets (usually available in 100-200 mg doses) as the caffeine content of coffees can vary widely and the amount that needs to be consumed to hit the 3-5 mg/kg dose above usually means excessive fluid intake which causes problems with having to pee all the time.

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Esoterica

Pretty much everything else in the world of supplements falls into this category. Hundreds of products come out yearly and 99% of them fade away to never be heard of again. While I remain optimistic that a true new ergogenic compound will come along, the history of the supplement industry simply doesn’t support it.

When you have your daily diet, around workout nutrition and everything else dialed in, you can worry about the stuff in this category. Just realize that, 6 months from now, it will probably be long-forgotten because it never had any chance of working.

As I noted above, occasionally a product that starts out in the esoterica category will have sufficient research appear to move it into the performance supplement category. While athletes always tend to think that the newest magic pill will be the one that this will happen with, the statistics simply don’t bear this idea out.

As I mentioned above, easily 99% of the products in this category disappear within 6 months to never be heard from again. Waiting to see if the newest magic bullet actually pans out is the only thing that makes logical sense.

For the record, this is actually the near entirety of Chapter 11 from the soon to be completed project: Applied Nutrition for Mixed Sports.  I had mentioned this in the last newsletter and the final files are being processed right now, after one more edit it will be made available.  Probably in about 2 more weeks.

The project actually started life as a seminar I did in Vancouver last year  for the Simon Fraser University soccer and football athletes. When completed, the product will include 2 DVD’s along with the original Powerpoint slides as well as a complete 80 page stand alone book examining the topic that I wrote to go along with it (the book started out as handouts I gave to the athletes but I decided to write an entire book around the handouts).  As always, newsletter subscribers will get first crack at it at a discounted price so go sign up if you haven’t already.

And with that out of the way, here’s a quick look at the topic of supplements, while the information was originally aimed at mixed sports (think team sports, boxing, MMA, anything that requires a mix of strength, endurance, etc. for performance), what I have to say pretty much applies to other areas as well including bodybuilding and pure strength training.

Of course, I’m sure readers will have some pet supplement that they take for some very specific reason (e.g. B12 because they lack the absorption factor, or something to control blood cholesterol or whatever).  The list below isn’t meant to be comprehensive.  Rather, it’s meant to look at the supplements that have the most broadly generalized use and application (for all types of athletes) along with having research or backing to support their use.  So please don’t get edgy in the comments if I left out something that you just swear by for some very specific use.

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Chapter 11: Supplements

If there is a single area of sports nutrition that is constantly changing (in terms of the products being marketed) and which athletes are always interested in it’s dietary supplements. As I mentioned in Chapter 2 of this book, I consider supplementation to be the third tier of the pyramid (after overall daily nutrition and around workout nutrition) in terms of what athletes should concern themselves with. Even there, I divide dietary supplements into several categories and want to present another pyramid for dietary supplements, shown in Figure 1 below.

Just as with the overall nutritional pyramid, I put supplements into three categories in terms of their relative importance. The first is simply general supplements, either acting as nutritional insurance or essential nutrients (such as fish oils) that almost all mixed sports athletes can benefit from. Once those have been taken care of consistently, supplements that directly impact on performance and which have good research backing should be considered. Once that tier has been taken care of, various supplements which I term esoterica (this category is always changing) can be considered.

The tip of this pyramid should only be considered by athletes who have all aspects of both their overall diet, around workout nutrition and other supplements taken care of. Simply, esoteric products can, at best, provide the last tiny percentage point for performance and recovery. Worrying about that when the majority aspects of diet and supplementation have not been taken care of consistently is pointless.

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General Use Supplements

As noted above, general use supplements are those products that basically all athletes can not only benefit from but probably should at least consider. Short of correcting a frank deficiency, they don’t generally have vast noticeable improvements in performance per se; rather they simply support overall health and daily nutritional requirements.

Many of the nutrients discussed below are simply those that are commonly deficient among athletes, others (e.g. vitamin D, fish oil) are usually deficient in just about everyone. Generally, these supplements should be taken with meals and doses can be split morning and evening and taken with meals.

Multivitamin/Mineral

As I mentioned in a previous chapter, there are both reasons to believe that athletes need increased amounts of vitamins/minerals due to their heavy training as well as that they get more due to increased nutrient intake. I consider a basic one per day multi-vitamin/mineral a cheap nutritional insurance. It won’t hurt and may correct and/or prevent any minor deficiencies.

For the most part, I see little need to purchase super expensive formulations, athletes who are obsessed with such can buy cheaper and simply take two (split morning and evening). I would note that men, especially those who eat a lot of red meat, may want to find a product that does not contain iron. Women, due to their propensity to develop anemia (due to both dietary choices and monthly blood loss) should choose a product containing iron.

As a final note, under no circumstances should athletes assume that they can ignore important aspects of their overall diet because their multi- will ‘cover it’.

Protein Powders

As discussed in a previous chapter, protein powders have been staple of athletic nutrition for decades and exist somewhere between food and a supplement. While obtaining all but the highest intakes of protein can generally be done with nothing more than food, protein powders can provide convenience and flexibility for athletes having problems meeting their protein needs. They can be especially valuable when athletes travel and may have their normal food patterns disrupted. Specific types of protein powder are discussed in Chapter 4.

For the most part, buying protein powders commercially is a losing proposition, you will pay twice as much for half the product and I recommend that athletes find reliable online suppliers to purchase protein powder in bulk. I’ve provided a few online resources at the end of this book that I trust to provide quality product at a good price.

Fish Oils/Essential Fatty Acids

If there is a single nutrient that is almost impossible to achieve adequate amounts of with the modern diet (outside of the handful of people who eat a lot of fatty fish), it’s the w-3 fish oils. In a very real sense, fish oils ‘do everything’ and impact on not only overall health but help to control inflammation, promote fat oxidation, inhibit fat storage and a host of others. It’s a list of benefits that seems almost too good to be true but the research is there.

Due to their general unavailability in the food supply, supplementation is almost necessary and both pills (containing varying amounts of the active EPA/DHA) and liquids are available. Both are acceptable and some people simply prefer the liquids (which can be used on salads or in blender drinks) to pills (which often cause burps).

Years ago, flaxseed oil was suggested as a source of the essential fatty acids as it contains the parent fatty acid that can be converted into EPA/DHA. However, that conversion is exceedingly inefficient in most people (vegetarians appear to be an exception to this for some reason) and I do not feel that flax is an acceptable substitute for fish oil supplementation. I suggest that athletes find an omega-3 fatty acid source that they like and consume it daily (again, consuming cold water or fatty fish is also a possibility).

While little research has examined athletes, I recommend a total intake of EPA/DHA of 1.8-3.0 grams per day. A fairly standard capsule of fish oils may contain 120 mg EPA and 180 mg DHA (300 mg total fish oils) so that daily dose would require 6-10 capsules per day which should be split at least morning and evening (taken with meals).

Higher concentration fish oils are available (at a premium cost) but may be preferred by athletes who don’t like swallowing pills.   Again, the goal should be a total EPA/DHA intake of 1.8-3.0 grams per day regardless of how it is obtained.

Calcium

As I mentioned previously, calcium deficiencies are not unheard of in athletes; this is especially true if athletes can’t or won’t consume dairy products. And from an overall health issue, calcium is critical, perhaps more so for female athletes to ensure good bone health later in life. Of course, telling athletes to take something on health grounds is often a losing proposition so consider that a great deal of research suggests that calcium (and dairy calcium more than other forms) may improve body composition.

A minimum daily intake of 1000mg calcium is recommended and I’d note that a single serving of most dairy foods will contain roughly 300 mg. If you consume 3 servings per day of dairy, you needn’t supplement. If your intake is less than this, you may need to consider a supplement (multi-vitamin/mineral pills never contain sufficient amounts).

Calcium citrate is the preferred form and most calcium products will contain some Vitamin D as well (see next). Calcium supplementation should be split into two doses consumed morning and evening with meals as this provides better overall uptake.

Vitamin D

It’s not an exaggeration to say that concerns about Vitamin D levels are currently a ‘hot-topic’ in nutrition. And while Vitamin D can be made by the body (through exposure of the skin to sunlight), it’s turning out that Vitamin D deficiencies are absolutely epidemic, especially for people who work indoors and/or live in cold weather countries where sun exposure is minimal.

Athletes who are forced to train indoors for weather reasons are potentially at risk as well. This is true even of athletes who train outdoors part of the year as Vitamin D levels in the body fall fairly quickly when regular sun exposure is eliminated.

It also looks like maintaining adequate Vitamin D status may be a key to optimal athletic performance although direct research is lacking. Unfortunately, determining serum levels of Vitamin D intake to determine optimal levels of supplementation requires blood work. Athlete with access to testing should strive for levels of 50 ng/ml or higher. It requires 100 IU’s of Vitamin D to raise serum levels by 1 ng/ml and athletes with access to blood testing can determine their daily dose that way (e.g. to raise levels from 30ng/ml to 50 ng/ml would require 2000 IU’s per day).

Failing that, a daily supplementation level of 2000 IU’s should be safe and reasonable for most. Blood work is still preferred and this is another place where mega-dosing (greater than perhaps 10,000 IU’s per day) can be problematic. More isn’t better.

For athletes who don’t want to take yet another pill, tanning once or twice weekly provides another way to obtain Vitamin D. Don’t go nuts with it (as excessive UV skin exposure carries its own health risks) but small amounts during cold weather or periods where sun exposure is minimal are not harmful and may help.

Zinc/Magnesium

As mentioned previously, both zinc and magnesium are often deficient in athletes; zinc is often low in athletes who forego red meat and magnesium losses increase with heavy training. Both are critical for optimal performance and various processes important to athletes. As well, many find that the combination of the two taken at bedtime helps with sleep, a process critical to overall recovery.

On average, a daily supplement of 25 mg of zinc (any form is basically fine) with 400-500 mg of magnesium (citrate is the preferred form) taken 30 minutes before bedtime helps many go to sleep. While many commercial zinc/magnesium products contain B-6, this seems to hurt sleep for some people and I suggest buying the ingredients separately if they are taken. I’d note that magnesium oxide, which is the most commonly found form of magnesium is poorly absorbed, as noted above citrate is the preferred form.

Glutamine

A supplement that is insanely popular with bodybuilders (who think it builds muscle, which it doesn’t), glutamine is an inessential amino acid that is heavily involved in immune system function. Given the propensity of athletes to suffer problems with their immune system secondary to heavy training, anything that helps support the immune system is potentially good.

The research on glutamine and immune system function is actually rather mixed, some finds that it works while other work has not. It’s more likely that branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) supplementation, discussed in the next section, works as well if not better.

From a purely experiential standpoint, I have found that the consumption of high doses of glutamine and Vitamin C at the first sign of a cold tends to stop it in its tracks. Two to three grams of glutamine with 500mg of Vitamin C taken multiple times throughout the day seems to do the trick.

Anti-Oxidants

The term anti-oxidant actually refers to a massive number of different compounds (including but not limited to Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Vitamin A, Beta-carotene and many others) that help to scavenge free radicals in the body. Free radicals are formed during heavy exercise and early ideas held that this was damaging to the body.

And while it is true that excessive free radical production can cause problems, research actually has found that free radical production is critical in signaling adaptations to training; blocking free radical formation can actually inhibit proper adaptation to training, especially endurance training.

Additionally, while research on diets that are high in anti-oxidants (e.g. whole food diets containing lots of fruits and vegetables) often find health benefits, studies using isolated anti-oxidants have generally not found the same results. This again points to the importance of obtaining most nutrients from whole foods rather than isolated pills.

For the most part I do not advocate the intake of high-dose isolated anti-oxidants for mixed sports athletes under most circumstances. An exception is the high-dose Vitamin C mentioned above with glutamine when an athlete starts to feel a cold coming on. This is especially true during primary training phases where excessive anti-oxidant supplementation have the potential to impair optimal adaptation.

However, during the season, when the goal is primarily to survive competition (which may be very frequent depending on the sport), supplementation may be useful. Some athletes report decreased soreness and improved recovery. Since the goal in-season is competition and not improving fitness or training adaptations, this may be worth considering.

So while avoiding anti-oxidants during the main training period is probably the best course of action, there may be some merit to supplementation to survive a heavy competition season.

On Friday in Supplements Part 2, I’ll continue with Performance Supplements and Esoterica.

Early research into post-workout nutrition focused almost exclusively on endurance athletes and, really, the only issue of importance was refilling muscle glycogen and re-hydrating the athlete.  For this reason the focus was on carbohydrates and fluids with little else considered.  At some point, I recall it being the mid-90’s some early work suggested that adding protein to post-workout carbohydrates was beneficial in terms of glycogen re-synthesis and a new dietary trend started to form.

Now, it turns out to be a bit more complicated than that whether additional protein actually increases glycogen synthesis depends on a host of factors, primarily how much carbohydrate is provided.  Simply, if sufficient carbohydrate is given following training, adding protein has no further benefit in terms of promoting glycogen re-synthesis.

In situations where insufficient carbs are consumed (by choice or otherwise), extra protein helps.  Which isn’t to say that additional protein following training isn’t valuable for endurance athletes even if carbohydrate are sufficient but that’s not really the topic of today’s article.

While individuals involved in the strength sports and bodybuilding were quick to jump onto the post-workout carb/protein bandwagon, the research wasn’t really aimed at them.  As well, there has always been a bit of a disconnect in using work on endurance athletes (who may be doing hours of exhaustive work) and trying to apply it to individuals in the weight room.

Differences in volume of training, fuel use and goals make using data on one group inappropriate for application to the others.  It’s still common to see well-meaning nutritionists use the same guidelines for both strength/power athletes (including bodybuilders) and endurance athletes but that is simply silly.

In any case, work examining the impact of various combinations of post-workout nutrients in terms of promoting strength or hypertrophy would come later and, at this point, a huge amount of work has been done.  I’m not going to get into every detail (the issue is discussed in absurd detail, 35 pages worth, in The Protein Book) of post-workout nutrition and will focus the article simply on the issue of protein, carbohydrates and the combination of the two in terms of how they impact on post-workout recovery and muscle growth.

To understand what I’m going to say and why I think some current recommendations (especially the one saying that you only need protein post-workout) are not consistent with the research, I need to get into a few details regarding how training impacts on muscle growth and how nutrients impact on this.  Don’t worry about the dense text, there’s a pretty graphic below to help explain it all.  A pretty, pretty graphic.

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How Does Muscle Grow?

Endlessly on the site, I’ve talked about how the primary stimulus for growth is progressive tension overload (with fatigue being a secondary factor) but, believe it or not, that’s not what I’m going to talk about here.  Rather, I want to get a bit deeper into the processes of muscle growth.  I’m not going to get full-blown molecular on you, just a bit more detail than I usually go into.

Now, the ultimate goal of getting bigger muscles is, well, getting bigger muscles.  But what does that actually mean?  Skeletal muscle is composed of a variety of different elements including protein (about 100-120 grams of actual protein per pound of muscle and yes I’m mixing grams and pounds), water (making up the majority), connective tissues, glycogen, minerals and a few other things.  I’m going to focus on the actual protein component of it since that’s the bit that actually generates force, etc.

Protein in your muscle is no different than the protein found in dietary protein, it’s a long-chain of amino acids that have been attached to one another in the structure that makes up skeletal muscle (the various fibers and such).  But how does this process work?

Simply, there are two competing processes that go into what ultimately happens to muscle mass which are protein synthesis and protein breakdown.  Protein synthesis is simply the act of attaching amino acids into one another and making them into muscle.  This is an energetically costly process and occurs through the actions of ribosomes (little cellular messengers that you learned about in 7th grade biology) acting under the instructions of mRNA (something else you forgot about from high school).  So training turns on genes which get translated into mRNA which tell the ribosomes what to build and how to do it.  That’s protein synthesis and you can think of it as ‘good’ when it comes to muscle growth.

The competing process is protein breakdown which is the opposite.  Various specialty enzymes work against you, cleaving off amino acids from the already built skeletal muscle. This happens under the influence of hormones and other factors.  Most tend to think of protein breakdown as ‘bad’ in the sense of muscle growth but it’s a touch more complicated than that.  The ability to break down and rebuild tissues in the body (a process which is ongoing constantly, even when you’re ‘at rest’), provides the human body with a lot of adaptations flexibility.  That is, it allows the body to adapt to changing demands and remodel itself based on the signal it gets from whatever is going on in your life.  In that sense, protein breakdown is not ‘bad’.

Now, what happens to your muscle mass ultimately depends on the balance between these two competing processes.  I’ve tried to illustrate this below with three possible scenarios.

1. Protein synthesis > Protein breakdown = Muscle mass increases
2. Protein synthesis = Protein breakdown = No change in muscle mass
3. Protein synthesis < Protein breakdown = Muscle mass decreases

Assuming your goal is bigger muscles, clearly 1 is the goal.  But this also means that there are two primary ways that we can potentially impact on muscle growth.  We can either increase protein synthesis, decrease protein breakdown or do both at the same time.  And doing both at the same time would be expected to have the biggest impact.

There’s one more factoid you need to know which is this: heavy resistance training increases the rates of both protein synthesis AND breakdown.  That is, training doesn’t just turn on one or another, it turns on both.  This is probably a mechanism to help with the previously mentioned remodeling process.  But both happen following training.

And with that background, now let’s look at how nutrients interact with all of this.

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Protein, Carbohydrates or Both, Oh My!

While athletes are rarely that interested in technical details and only want the practical applications, to understand everything I want to talk about I need to look at a bit more detail, specifically how protein and carbohydrates interact with the processes of protein synthesis and breakdown discussed above.  And it basically works out like this:

1. Protein (amino acids) stimulate protein synthesis but have no impact on protein breakdown.
2. Insulin (secondary to carb consumption) inhibits protein breakdown with no impact on protein synthesis.

It’s actually a touch more complex than this.  Protein can impact on protein breakdown under certain conditions and insulin can impact directly on protein synthesis (and there happens to be a big difference in terms of what happens at rest vs. after training).  But for the most part, following training, the above will hold true.

Which leads us towards an ideal of post-workout nutrition. First and foremost I should point out that if you train and don’t eat anything afterwards (and this assumes you haven’t eaten a few hours before), the body will actually remain in a net catabolic state.  That is, protein breakdown will be greater than protein synthesis.  That’s bad.  But only really applies if you’re training first thing in the morning after a fast (how many studies are done) and haven’t eaten anything.

But let’s assume that you eat something following training.  Should it be protein, carbs, both, or some other combination?  First let’s look at the single feeding studies.   That is, let’s say that you could only choose one or the other following training, which should you choose.  The answer there is clearly protein alone which will be vastly superior to carbohydrate alone.  Because while consuming carbohydrates will decrease protein breakdown, only protein will increase protein synthesis (and provide the building blocks for building new muscle).

And this is also where a rather silly idea has come from in the post-workout recommendations.  Folks will often state that “You only need protein post-workout because carbs don’t effect protein synthesis.”  This is true but ignores the impact of decreasing protein breakdown on net protein gain.

Certainly increasing protein synthesis appears to be relatively more important than decreasing protein breakdown but the simple fact is that you get the biggest overall effect if you target both at the same time.  Which means a combination of protein and carbohydrates.

I should probably mention dietary fat and the simple fact is that fat intake post-workout is woefully understudied.  One study found no difference in anything with a meal containing fat vs one not-containing fat (so you folks insanely obsessed with not slowing gastric emptying by consuming dietary fat can stop worrying) but beyond that there’s little research.  One study did find that full fat milk promoted protein synthesis better than skim milk following training but nobody is sure why.  It wasn’t because more calories were consumed because the researchers also tested enough skim milk to match the calories of the whole milk; whole milk was still superior.

In any case, that’s the overall conclusion that I draw from looking at the body of literature: while protein alone is superior to carbohydrates alone, the combination of the two will have the greatest impact on promoting muscle growth (as well as having other beneficial effects on muscle glycogen, etc).  How much of each?  Well that depends on a host of other factors that will have to wait for a later article (or see The Protein Book).

I’ve shown this schematically in the graphic below, showing how both training and nutrients impact on the processes discussed above.

Arrows are neat!

So that’s that: protein is better than carbohydrate following training but protein plus carbohydrates is optimal. Good luck with your muscles.

In Beginning Weight Training 2, I examined in some detail what some of the primary goals of beginner weight training are including developing an overall base of strength (and/or muscularity), developing work capacity, learning how to perform the lifts, etc.

Finally, in Beginning Weight Training Part 3, I looked at some of the research (and experience) dealing with the loading parameters that are appropriate for beginners.  I’ve summarized them below as a launching off part for today’s final article where I’ll lay out three different basic weight training programs and talk about things like progression, when to change things, etc.

1. Intensity (percentage of 1 rep. maximum): 60% or a weight that could be done for ~20 repetitions to failure
2. Volume (# of sets): 1-3 sets per exercise/muscle group.
3. Reps/Set: Variable depending on the circumstances and both high and low reps can be appropriate here
4. Frequency: 2-3X/week
5. Workout design: Generally a full body routine
6. Exercise Selection: Highly variable depending on the circumstances

And with that I want to jump straight into examples of three different beginner programs.  The first is the Starting Strength program as developed by Mark Rippetoe (and reproduced here in full with his permission).  The second is a beginner program as outlined by my mentor, it would represent another standard approach to a barbell based routine based around the big compound movements.  Finally, and primarily to offend the barbell purists, I’m going to reproduce the basic machine-based program that I used with the majority of my beginners.

For each routine, I’ve indicated the overall routine (in the case of Rip’s Starting Strength, there are two workouts alternated each day) and the sets and reps used.  I’ll make some comments below the chart before getting into other topics relevant to beginners.

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Notes on the Above

Sets and reps in the Starting Strength Program only include work sets, warm-up sets (ranging from 1-3 sets) are not included.  I’d strongly suggest that anyone interested in that program purchase Mark’s excellent book Starting Strength 2nd Edition.

For the basic barbell program, generally only one movement would be picked from each place there is a list.  Note that, initially, deadlifts would be performed at each workout, as the weights got heavier over time, deadlift would be alternated workout to workout with shrug.  One could easily set up a more ‘balanced’ routine with more movements as well (e.g. squat, deadlift/shrug, flat bench, rowing, overhead press, chin up/pulldown, abs).

The numbers next to the exercises in the machine routine are the workout at which I taught them.  So in workout 1, they’d do leg press, chest press, row and crunch (which I’d note pretty much hits everything).  In workout 2, they’d perform the first 4 movements and add the movements with the number 2 after them (calf raise/shoulder press/lat pulldown).  In workout 3, they’d add the final movements of leg curl, arm work and low back.  At that point, what happened depended on whether or not I was still working with them but building it up in this fashion allowed me to get them performing the full set of movements by the end of a single week of training without feeling like they were being completely overloaded with information or exercise.

Before you leave me nasty comments below, please remember this routine was being used typically with older folks with no previous (or bad experience) with exercise and my goal was to break them in without breaking them.  So I used a very gradual and easy progression to ensure that they didn’t feel overwhelmed and weren’t wrecked with soreness.  As well, in many cases, I never moved them past a single work set.  This allowed them to complete the entire routine in roughly 30 minutes leaving time for cardio/etc. without requiring endless time in the gym.  For those individuals with those goals, this was an appropriate approach.

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General Comments on the Above Programs

If you look at the above three programs, you can see that they all share some basic generalities.  They hit the entire body in some form or fashion and use a variety of movements. Certainly the number of movements varies a bit from routine to routine.  Starting Strength uses the fewest movements, the generic barbell routine more and my machine approach the most (since I’m a bit obsessive about balancing out pushes and pulls and people always bitch if you don’t give them direct arm work).

Perhaps the biggest visible difference is the choice of sets and repetitions per set: Rip’s Starting Strength using multiple sets of low repetitions, the barbell and my machine program use fewer sets of higher repetitions.  I discussed the relative merits of each approach in What’s the Best Way to Teach/Learn a New Exercise – Q&A and, as always, there are pros and cons to each.

In terms of overall volume (total sets), the Starting Strength and general barbell program are closer than they look; the first uses more sets of lower reps (and again warm-up sets aren’t indicated above) on fewer movements and the second uses fewer sets of higher reps on more movements.   This is especially true by the time you factor in warm-up sets for the Starting Strength approach.  As well, and as discussed in the highly recommended Starting Strength 2nd Edition, there are other movements (Romanian deadlift, rowing of some sort etc.) that can be added to the basic Starting Strength program later on to make it a bit more ‘well rounded’.

As noted above, my machine based program was aimed at total beginners seeking, usually, general health/fitness.  They were generally older, had no previous experience in the weight room and had limited time to exercise.  So I needed something that was time efficient, got the job done and that I could get them to a basic level of competency on quickly without overwhelming them.  Again, in different contexts, either with individuals with different goals or who had had previous lifting experience, or what have you, a different approach was used.

And if you’re wondering why I’m beating this particular dead horse, it’s because I predict with 99% certainty that someone will read this article series and state that “Lyle McDonald only advocates a single set of machines for everybody.”  And that’s simply not the case.  Rather, it’s simply that I take into account the Importance of Context when it comes to training.  And the context of a 35 year old female with no training experience and limited time to exercise is different than a 19 year old male who eventually wants to compete in powerlifting.  And what I’d do in that each situation would be completely different.

Finally I’d note again that all of the above assumes an injury free individual with no major imbalances coming into the gym, an assumption that is often incorrect.  In specific cases, very different approaches (with more remedial work on stretching or almost rehab type movements) might be indicated or necessary but that is far beyond the scope of this article.

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Warming Up: General

One thing I briefly mentioned  above and want to touch on again is the topic of warming up.   Now, I did a rather detailed look at warming up for the weight room in Warming Up for the Weight Room Part 1 and Warming Up for the Weight Room Part 2 but want to touch on it again here.  Generally speaking, some type of general warm-up (cardio, body weight movements) would be done to generally warm-up the body.

With beginning clients, I often had them go ahead and get their cardio out of the way at the front of the workout.  Yes, this is usually thought of as taboo, certainly generating excessive fatigue with cardio prior to lifting isn’t usually a good idea.  But it was a way to ensure that they did it, gave me time to talk to them about various topics relevant to training (e.g. explaining fundamental concepts to them), etc.  As well, many couldn’t do a full 20 minutes at the outset anyhow, by doing 10 minutes of cardio up front and another 10 minutes at the end of the workout, they were able to accumulate 20 minutes at that first workout without feeling overwhelmed.  Over time, they would work up to a full 20 minutes continuously.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t have them do cardio on alternate or off-days, the simple fact is that I learned that most wouldn’t do it.  Sure, they’d tell me that they would but it would somehow never get done.  So I’d make them do it while I was there.  Yes, it’s a waste of their training time to pay me to watch them on the treadmill but that’s better than it not getting done at all.

Now, at the time, the major types of flexibility imbalances that many see these days didn’t seem as prevalent (or I wasn’t smart enough to recognize them) and I never actually did any sort of mobility or stretching work with clients.  To a degree, at least, full range weight training acts a stretching stimulus but, in the modern world, given the situations many deal with, this would be the place for any type of dynamic warm-up or whatever to come.

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Warming Up: Warm-Up Sets

Which brings us to warm-up sets for the exercises themselves.  As I discussed in the warming up articles linked above, warm-up sets serve a number of purposes not the least of which is technical practice.  However, for rank beginners, effectively the warm-up sets are the work sets.  That is, the weights are and should be so light to begin with that there is really no major difference between warming up and work weights.

Of course, over time, as trainees grow stronger, this will change.  Put differently, looking at the general barbell routine above the three sets of 8-12 or what have you are all the sets that are being done.  In the initial stages,all three sets are effectively warm-ups; this is especially true in the first few weeks of training where the focus should be on proper performance of the movements rather than weight increases.  After a month or so (may be more, may be less), one of the three sets may become a true warm-up set prior to two heavier work sets.

The same basic concept held for my beginner machine routine.  Even in the case where I didn’t add a second set (and I often didn’t for total beginners simply seeking general health and fitness), when things started to get heavier a month in, I’d add  a single warm-up set to the main movements (leg press/chest press/rowing).

For more about warm-ups for the Starting Strength program, I’d suggest you get Rip’s book since the topic is discussed in some detail there.

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Where to Start?

As I discussed in Beginning Weight Training Part 3, beginners not only should start with light weights and a relatively low volume but will make rather significant strength gains from doing only that.  Which brings up a question about starting weights and what to begin with.  While I have seen various systems that gave specific suggestions for starting weights (e.g. squat with 1/2 body weight or whatever), I don’t think they are a good idea for total beginners.  Because even if they represent some reasonable average of where to start, they can’t possibly represent everyone.

And, since I tend to be rather conservative in a lot of things, I always believe in erring on the side of too little than too much.  You have little to lose and everything to gain and it generally doesn’t work in the opposite direction.  Basically, if  you start too light, you can always add weight over the first couple of workouts (or even first couple of sets of that first workout if more than one are being done).  Start too heavy and things go wrong fast; the person might get injured, or they get so sore that they never come back to the gym or they simply have their form go down the toilet which is demoralizing (which also might drive them out of the gym).

So where to start?  Even that depends and what I’d start with for a young male would be very different than for an older female.  In the first case, starting with a 45 lb bar for a bench press might be appropriate.  For a female a 45 lb bar might be far beyond what she has any chance of lifting and I often started beginner females with 5 lbs per hand on DB bench press or on the lowest setting for the chest press.  But, again, this is very context dependent.  Age, gender and whether or not the person has a competent coach all feed into this.

I’d note that in some cases, going too light can be detrimental to proper technique.  I’ve found that some trainees simply have trouble ‘feeling’ what’s going on when things are too light (e.g. a young male might find that squatting with just the bar is harder than squatting with some weight).  In that case, adding weight until they can feel what is happening is necessary but the weight may not be increased very much beyond that initially.

Finally, there is one major exception to starting weights that I should mention and that is the barbell deadlift (a similar comment could apply to the powerclean from the floor).  For proper performance of either movement, it is critical that the bar start at the appropriate level; starting too low (as a function of using small plates) simply won’t allow the trainee to use proper form.  If training plates (either wooden plates or light plates with the same diameter as 20 kg/45 pound plates) aren’t available, then the trainee either has to find a way to start the bar at the right place (e.g. off of blocks or pins in the power rack) or start with 135.  What won’t work is starting with 85 lbs with a 45 pound bar and 10’s on the end; the bar will be too low to do the movement correctly.

When in doubt, in the beginner stage, I would suggest starting lighter and building up as appropriate.  The weight needs to be heavy enough that the trainee can feel what’s going on but not so heavy that they can’t handle it in good form for the entirety of the sets.

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What to Add and When to Add It?

The name of the game in improving all aspects of fitness is progression.  Essentially the stimulus that made you fitter the last workout (or week, or month, or year) may no longer be sufficient now.  Something has to increase at some point in time; that doesn’t mean every workout necessarily but if nothing ever progresses, fitness will never improve.

Now, how often and what to increase would be the topic of another series of articles since there are many options that are relatively more or less relevant depending on the situation.  With regards to strength training specifically, I’d highly recommend  Mark Rippetoe, Lon Kilgore and Glen Pendlay’s excellent Practical Programming for Strength Training as one of the better written and more easily accessible looks at progression in the weight room.

But specific to beginner training, I’m going to focus primarily on increasing volume and/intensity while ignoring other possibilities (frequency or density mainly).  Now, whether or not you progress the number of sets really depends on where you start.  In the case of Starting Strength and the general barbell program described above, increases in volume would be inappropriate since they both start at a volume that is more than sufficient for beginners. That is, since the trainee is starting with roughly 3 work sets for each exercise, there would be little point in increasing that, especially in the first weeks or months of training.

In the case of my machine program, you’ll note that it lists 1+ sets of 8-12 repetitions and I should probably explain that.  With that population, a single set was generally more than sufficient given their goals and time demands.  But in other situations, increasing volume (to a maximum of 3 sets per movement) would have been appropriate. In that case, my approach would have been to first build them up to the full set of exercises over the first week of training.  Then in the second week, I’d have added a second set to the 4 main movements (indicated by the #1) in the fourth workout, then a second set to the #2 movements, etc.  Basically, it would take about 3 weeks to build them up from a single set of 4 movements to 3 sets of all of the movements (and I’d probably stop at 2 sets on stuff like arms and crunch/back extension).

An example of that might be an older individual (in their 40’s) with no previous exercise background.  Even 3 sets of 6 exercises on the first day might completely destroy them and I do not find that to be a good way to introduce people to the weight room or exercise in general.  In contrast, a single set of 4 movements done after a bit of cardio on the other hand is more than tolerable and gets them started on the right foot.  It might only be 30 minutes of activity but that’s 30 minutes more than they did the day before, they come out of it without feeling exhausted or miserable and, sometimes, even look forwards to the next workout. And that’s how you get them to keep coming back.   Increases to volume can follow later as they adapt to the training.

But outside of that specific situation where you start with a single set and build up to multiple sets over the first few weeks, that is, when you’re starting with multiple sets of a bunch of movements, the main focus will be on increasing the weight on the bar.  Which brings up a discussion of how best to do that and when and by how much.

In my mentor’s barbell program, his suggestion was this:

Don’t add weight to any lift until you can complete all of your sets while maintaining good form. It is normal while learning to have some wobbling, and it would not be unreasonable to stick at the same weights for a month (when you first start) before adding weight. You want to be in control. After you have that control, you should be able to add weight at least once per week.

Essentially you would be working with relatively light weights and perfecting form for the first month.  After that, you might move to increasing weight once/week (e.g. every Monday) and then keeping it the same for the entirety of that week.  Then you’d increase again.

In  contrast, Rip’s Starting Strength Program typically focuses on adding some weight to the bar at almost every initial workout.   I’d mention that, by and large, it tends to be easier to add weight to lower repetition sets and this explains at least part of the discrepancy between the routines.  As well, there is a huge difference here in the coached vs. un-coached lifter.  Having a coach watching and cueing you on every set, and knowing that you can safely add weight to the bar is far different than adding weight to the bar yourself when you’re completely out of control technically.

As noted in previous parts of this series, clearly both approaches can be effective depending on the situation.  My experience is that most (especially young males) have poor impulse control and always add weight far in excess of what they can handle properly; before they know it, they’re ‘moving’ a lot of weight but in terrible form.   They may benefit from only attempting a weight increase weekly and/or using a higher repetition range to protect themselves from themselves.  In contrast, people with a good coach and/or with better self-control may be able to make lower repetitions and adding weight more quickly work.

In my machine approach, you might have noticed that I gave a fairly broad repetition range of 8-12 reps per set and this ties into this bit of the discussion.  A relatively generic approach to progression in weights is something called a double progression.  In that approach, you first add repetitions to the set; when you hit some top end of reps, you then add weight.  And that’s what I did with the program: when the trainee got to 12 repetitions:

1. In good form
2. Without massive struggle on the last 2 repetitions

I’d add weight at the next workout.  Depending on the movement and the amount of weight added, they might get to 12 again or be dropped back to 8-9 reps (very occasionally lower).  Over the next workout or two, I’d have them build that back up to 12 and apply the same rules.  Basically, it was sort of auto-regulating, their actual performance on the exercise determined when they went up.

I’d note that #1 above is the key, I always taught my trainees to only perform the number of repetitions that they could do properly; that they should never break form to get the next rep.  If that meant that they only got 10, so be it.  When they got to 12 with a repetition or two left in the tank, the weight would go up.  If they got to 12 but it was clearly still a struggle, I’d usually have them repeat the weight again at the next workout; at that point it would always be much easier indicating time for another increase.

This actually ended up having a number of benefits relative to this article series.  First and foremost, it provided for fairly easy progression.  With a handful of exceptions (usually overhead press and leg curls), folks would make progress at every workout.  Not only would their form improve workout to workout, they’d see that they were getting stronger as weight on the bar built.  That provided a massive amount of positive reinforcement which was so key in keeping them coming back.

As well, over the first few weeks of training, I’d start to gradually push them a bit more out of their comfort zone.  So while the first two weeks were invariably super easy, at about week 3, I’d start pushing them a bit harder encouraging them to get one more rep where they might have previously stopped.   As well, as they learned the movements and got better at pushing themselves a bit harder (and they usually wanted to get to 12 reps to get the next weight jump), they’d start to develop that ability to push.  But it would happen so gradually that they never felt overwhelmed or exhausted; this was another aspect of ensuring that they kept coming to the gym long enough for it to become habit.  Invariably by the end of 8 weeks, they were working harder than they ever thought possible, but had never really noticed that increase in intensity.  It just sort of happened.

Which isn’t me saying that that’s the best way to do it, clearly the approaches discussed above regarding Starting Strength or my mentor’s approach work.  And, again much of it depends on the technical complexity of the movement (e.g. squat takes longer to learn than leg press) and whether or not the person has a coach.

A related question is how much weight to add to the bar when you do go up.  Again, I recommend conservatism, there is usually little to be lost by adding weight in smaller increments initially (e.g. I’d rather see someone add 5 lbs per workout and do it three times per week than to throw on 15 lbs at one workout and have their form fall apart).

Certainly, younger males tend to be able to add more to the bar than older females (or females in general).  As well, the movement being done affects things (primarily as a function of how much weight the person is using).  You can add more weight to a 135 lb squat than to an 65 lb overhead press.  This ends up being a judgement call; I’d only suggest that, when in doubt, add less rather than more.  It may simply mean that you add weight more often but that’s still not a bad thing.

.Variety for Beginners

It’s taken as almost an article of faith that ‘variety in training’ is required for optimal performance.  This is something I’ll write about at a later date, for now I want to focus on beginners.  For the most part, I don’t advocate variety in training for beginners, at least not over the first 2-3 months.  The reason, again has to do with motor learning and this is especially true if you’re performing complex exercises like squats, deadlifts, etc.

In the initial stages, nearly constant practice is needed on those movements to learn and start to perfect technique.  At the same time, some trainees do start to get bored and I mentioned that one goal of the beginner stage (especially for physique oriented folks) is finding out what movements work best for them.

Now with my general health/fitness trainees, since I didn’t usually teach them complex stuff and their goals were different than other folks, I wasn’t so concerned with keeping them on the same movements forever; let’s face it, you can do a competent leg press in a workout or two.  Usually around week 8 or so, after they’d basically mastered the first set of movements I’d showed them and made some nice gains, I’d introduce them to some other movements or variants of the same movement.

So a chest press or dumbbell bench press would get swapped out for an incline dumbbell press or a flye movement.  Or if I had started them on machine chest press, I’d teach them the DB equivalent.   Shoulder press would get swapped out for lateral raises. I’d show them some other arm movements or abs or low back.  Or whatever.  Sometimes I’d swap out everything in total, other times I’d swap out one of the workouts and keep the other one the same.  In some cases, if they had decided that they wanted more intensive training than general health/fitness now would be the time to start the process of teaching squats and such.  It simply depended on the specifics as to how I approached it.

But what about other goals, the aspiring physique competitor or powerlifter or what have you?   If after 2-3 months of basic training someone is still progressing/shows affinity on the big movements, my tendency would be to keep them in to at least some degree and some coaches simply stick with those big movements seemingly for eternity with the main variety coming from differences in loading and programming.   Technical training is ongoing and keeping practice of the big movements in only continues to reinforce good technique.

However, swapping out one of three weekly workouts for a different set of movements would be appropriate as well.  If nothing else, the new movements will have to be programmed lighter and this would make the third day (perhaps Wednesday on  Monday/Wednesday/Friday approach) a light day surrounded by two heavier days.  This tends to allow a bit more recovery and may help to keep the heavier days progressing better.  For folks still oriented towards the major barbell movements, front squats, Romanian deadlift, variations on rowing (bent over barbell row) or what have you could be brought in on the alternate day to provide variety not only in movement choice.  In some routines, where the rank beginner might have been doing both squats and deadlifts in all three workouts, they might continue to squat on Monday/Friday and deadlift on Wednesday.

Another approach would be to add a single set of an alternative movement after the big movements.  So back squats could be followed up by a single set of leg press or front squat, flat bench by an incline pressing movement.  Note that this wouldn’t even be considered until maybe 3 months of consistent work on the basics had been performed but would start to represent a bridge towards higher volume intermediate routines.  I’d mention that this can lead to really long workouts depending on how many movements are being done.

Alternately, someone who just wasn’t built to squat or hadn’t made much progress on it despite doing everything ‘right’ might consider dumping the big movements (yes, I know blasphemy) and trying something else.  This is especially true for physique oriented types who don’t have to do any exercise beyond that which makes them bigger.  Anyone interested in PL’ing and to a lesser degree strongman better learn to deal with squats/bench/deadlift or pick another sport.

If you simply suck at squatting and aren’t ever going to not suck at squatting, find something else.  Could be leg press, could be one of a million one legged barbell movements (that often corrects for poor back squatting mechanics), could be a lot of stuff.  But if you don’t have to squat by dint of your sport choice, and only care about being buff, now is the time to find out if your more suited to other movements.

Even in that case, if someone is at the stage where they have given the big compound an honest effort and simply aren’t cut out for them, I don’t recommend massive variety at this stage.  Pick a new set of movements (or at least swap out one workout), start them light to learn them and stick with them for 6-8 weeks to see if they work better (you can gauge by progress in terms of weight on the bar or growth or whatever).  Then, if desired, you can consider swapping out again for another 6-8 weeks block.

This also has the benefit of putting in an informal de-loading period since you always have to start the new movements lighter.  I don’t generally worry about deloads for rank beginners, at least not in a structured fashion.  Rather, they should be allowed to progress (or not) as they get used to training.  But swapping out at least some movements at the 8-12 week mark can introduce a brief delaoding period since the weights on the new movements will become very sub-maximal again for at least the first few workouts.

I would note and this is just because I saw the question come up on a forum regarding this series that applying the type of gradual progression I’ve outlined above is really all that is particularly important in terms of the connective tissue adaptations that I mentioned as being important in Beginning Weight Training 2.  With continuous progressive stress (that doesn’t exceed the tissue’s capacity), those tissues will adapt. But the key is keeping your ego in your pants and adding weight gradually over time.  As mentioned, connective tissues adapt the most slowly and the main criterion in being able to handle heavier loading later on is simply patience and time.

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Other Stuff: Cardio and Stretching

A quick word on other stuff relevant to beginning training.  Although it depends entirely on goals, the inclusion of moderate amounts of low intensity cardio at this stage can help with overall training tolerance and improve recovery and such.  For those eventually seeking size gains (and especially those who have a poor appetite), some cardio can often help to increase appetite (as discussed in Cardio and Mass Gains).  As well, for those seeking fat loss, the introduction of cardio not only burns some calories (not nearly as many as you’d hope) but can start to get sluggish fat burning pathways working again.

Stretching can also play a role, as I’ve mentioned in toher parts of this series.  Many folks these days have massive inflexibilities or imbalances (e.g. tight hip flexors and tight pecs/anterior delts are common) and fixing these is part of  the whole package.  That’s on top of often being required to perform certain exercises safely in the first place.  Stretching can be performed at various times around workout or on off days (or before bed), and each has it’s pros and cons that are beyond the scope of this article.

Moving to the Next Level

As I noted in Beginning Weight Training Part 1, a true beginner may remain in the beginner stages of training for a solid 3-6 months (with some variance depending on the specifics).  In the above, I outlined at least the first 2 blocks of 8-12 weeks (if you count the second block as being a place where you potentially switch out some movement).  At that point, 6 months down the road, the trainee would either be a very advanced beginner or ready to move to the intermediate stages of training.  For some, the beginner stage might last as long as a year.

Again, this would depend on the specifics of the individual and their goals and all the rest.  But, as a generality,  if someone were still making solid progress with beignner routines (progress = increases in strength and/or size), I wouldn’t change anything. If gains had slowed or stopped, a variety of things could be tried.  One would be a simple deload, backcycle the weights for a few weeks and build back up.  That often gets people past early plateaus and making progress again.

If not, moving to a split routine or more volume or slightly heavier loading might be considered (at some point I’ll put up my intermediate bulking routine in article form).  I’d only remind people of the comment I made in Beginning Weight Training Part 1, training should always be focused around making the most gains from the least training.  Don’t move to an intermedaite level of training simply because you want to.  Do it because beginner stuff has stopped working.

I’d make the point again that one huge assumption that is going into what I’m going to write is that the individual has no underlying issues (such as muscular imbalances or injury) that are oh so common in the modern world.   In those specific cases, an ‘imbalanced’ program may be required to fix things.  But since I can’t cover that in any detail, I’m going to draw up what is basically a ‘balanced’ beginner routine.

Today, I want to look at some issues related to loading parameters for beginners including intensity, volume, frequency and exercise selection.  Quite a bit of research has actually looked at these topics in beginners (I’m unaware of much on exercise selection) and that goes a long way towards guiding the development of proper beginner programs.

Since I ran a bit long (as usual) today, on Friday, I’ll finally put all of this together and present some fairly ’standard’ beginner routines along with suggestions on how to start, progress, when to change things up, etc.

Intensity

As I discussed in What is Training Intensity? there are a number of different definitions of intensity that are often used in the weight training world; for the purposes of this article, I’m going to be using the definition of intensity as percentage of 1 repetition maximum (1RM).  Now, 1RM refers to the absolute maximum weight that you can lift for one repetition.  You can think of it as 100% of capacity.  Training loads have often been set relative to that in terms of the percentage 1RM used.

And in the context of beginning training, research has routinely found that beginners will make the same strength gains whether they work at 60% 1RM or 90% 1RM.  That is, heavy or light doesn’t matter, it all generates the same strength gains.     And this fact ties into several of the comments I made in the earlier parts of this article series.

First and foremost, recall from Beginning Weight Training Part 2 that most of the initial gains in the weight room are strength gains due to neural adaptations with the real growth coming later.  Second, it’s usually easier to learn technique with lighter weights (I’d note that often a weight that is too light can be more difficult because lifters can’t feel what’s happening).  Third, lighter weights are safer for joints and connective tissues which have to adapt to handle heavier loads (a slow process that occurs primarily through consistent gradually progressive training).

Basically, there are a lot of advantages to working at lighter weights (but increasing them over time) in the initial stages of training and, as it turns out, beginners will get the same strength gains regardless of what they do.  60% of 1 repetition is very light (most could do 20+ repetitions with it if they had to) but, as noted, will generate the same strength gains as working with 90% of maximum (which most might get 3 repetitions with).  In that vein, being able to do more repetitions with a given weight (a topic I’ll come back to in a second) is a good way to get in a lot of practice and that’s a huge part of the motor learning that goes on with new skills.

I would note that, over the first weeks and months of training, weight will need to be added to the bar as the trainee gains strength and conditioning.  Depending on how progression is performed, the percentage of 1 repetition maximum the trainee is actually using will tend to gradually go up over time.  Still, there is likely to be no real benefit for folks in the beginner stages to be working much over 80% of 1 repetition maximum (a weight most could do 8 reps to failure with).  Essentially, start light and add weight gradually as long as technique stays solid.

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Volume: Number of Sets and Reps/Set

In the same way that training intensity can have multiple definitions, people use volume to refer to different things.  For some it refers to the number of sets, others count reps, others count tonnage (sets * reps * weight on the bar).  Here I want to first discuss the number of sets and then look at the issue of repetitions per set.

And, in general, research in beginners has found that a single set of an exercise will provide the same basic strength gains as multiple sets of an exercise. I’d note that not all studies find this and some still support the idea that multiple sets provide better gains than a single set even in the initial stages (I’m not going to touch the issue of number of sets for non-beginning trainees in this article).

Now, both a single set and multiple sets of an exercise can have benefits for total beginners.  Single sets are time efficient (a full body workout may only take 20-30 minutes) and an easy way to break into training without getting broken for those with a low fitness background.  At the same time, multiple sets provide more times to practice the movement which tends to facilitate motor learning (assuming the trainee can do all sets without becoming too fatigued).

Multiple sets of an exercise also go towards building up work capacity (i.e. the ability to handle higher volumes of training).  A practical compromise on this issue might be to start with a single set at the first workout (this is what I always did with beginning personal training clients) and then add sets over the first few weeks of training.  I’ll come back to this a bit more on Friday.

Moving on to sets per repetition, a general tendency for beginning weight training routines was to use highish repetitions; with beginners, I generally used a rather standard 8-12 reps per set with beginners but some advocate even higher.  The basic idea is that this keeps the weight on the bar low and allows the trainee to get more reps (e.g. 3 sets of 20 gets 60 repetitions per exercise).

The problem, as I discussed in What’s the Best Way to Teach/Learn a New Exercise – Q&A, is that high reps, even with very light weights can cause a lot of fatigue and form breaks down.  Some advocate using multiple sets of lower repetitions (e.g. Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength approach uses sets of 5 with anywhere from 1 to 5 work sets depending on the movement) to avoid this problem.  As I noted in the linked article, the danger with that approach (especially for un-coached macho trainees) is going too heavy too quickly.

So what’s best?  I’d say if you have poor impulse control, staying with a lower number of higher rep sets (e.g. 1-3 sets of 8-12 repetitions) may keep you from doing something stupid like going too heavy too fast.  If you have decent self-control or a competent coach (to keep you from doing something stupid), more sets of lower repetitions can clearly be very effective and may be the way to go.

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Training Frequency

Training frequency refers, rather simply, to how many days per week a given type of training is performed.  As you might guess, this impacts on a number of different things relevant to beginners.  Research on the topic suggests that, contrary to more advanced individuals (who seem to get the best strength gains with an average training frequency of 2X/week per muscle group), beginners get better strength gains with a frequency of three times per week.

Research has also found that lifting twice per week for beginners will provide approximately 80% of the strength gains of lifting three times per week (I’d note very tangentially that cardiovascular training needs to be done three times per week to generate adaptations).  I can’t recall seeing anything to suggest that lifting more often than 3X/week is better for beginners in terms of gains in strength.

From the standpoint of motor learning, a higher frequency is probably better; the more often a trainee can practice something, the faster that they’re going to learn it (again, assuming that practice is occurring under non-fatigued conditions).   I’d mention here that the most common approach to training beginners is to use the same full body workout (e.g. the entire body is trained at once) at each of the three weekly workouts.

Of course there are exceptions (Mark Rippetoes Starting Strength alternates two basic full-body workouts so that each workout gets done 3 times every 2 weeks) and, again from a learning standpoint, I think there is much merit to this approach.  Performing the same basic set of exercises at each workout gives beginning trainees the most practice on them, this is key to proper motor learning.

For the most part, I don’t like split routines (where the body is split into various parts) for beginners  for a number of reasons although they can be appropriate under the right conditions..  A basic upper/lower split type of routine can be made to work but trainees have to keep the volume and intensity well under control in the beginning stages or they will get themselves into problems.  As well, split routines do reduce the opportunity to learn the movements with frequent practice.  This may be outweighed by other potential benefits.

I would never use a typical bodybuilding split (where only one or two muscle groups is hit at each workout) with a beginner.  NEVER.  Of course, I’d almost never use them with anybody but for beginners they accomplish nothing relevant to beginner goals.  They allow volume to be far higher than necessary and they don’t give the trainee sufficient practice since each exercise is being done perhaps once every 7 days.

Drawbacks to training three times per week are scheduling, especially when a full body routine is being used.  That generally necessitates training on alternate days per week (e.g. Monday/Wednesday/Friday or Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday) and for some trainees that causes problems.  Moving to twice per week avoids this as more training flexibility is allowed.  A basic split routine can also avoid these problems since they tend to allow a little more flexibility in terms of what days can and cannot be trained on.

I’d also note that training frequency is probably a place where differences may be seen depending on the ultimate goals of the weight room.  Someone only looking for general strength health/fitness may be more than served by only lifting weights twice/week with no need nor desire to move past that.  Other days are then freed up for cardiovascular conditioning or other types of exercise. The gains obtained by adding that third day of weight training may be more than outweighed by the time requirement/scheduling or what have you.

Athletes using the weight room to improve performance may also be well suited by only lifting twice/week although this depends massively on the demands of their sport and what else they have to do each week.  If nothing else, they may simply lack the time to get into the weight room more often than that, even in the beginning stages.  Once again, this depends on what else is being done in training.

For those aspiring to either the physique sports or powerlifting/strongman or what have you down the road, getting into the weight room three times per week is probably mandatory.  Since lifting makes up the primary training in those types of activities, developing good technique/work capacity/etc. in the weight room is going to be relatively more important.  And unless trainees get used to training three times per week in the early stages, they’ll have trouble adding a fourth or fifth day later down the road.

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Exercise Selection

And finally we come to exercise selection.  I made a few comments about this in Beginning Weight Training Part 2 and, again, don’t want to do a hugely detailed look at the topic in this article.  For now, I’m simply going to repeat my comments from Part 2 in that exercise selection for beginning trainees is a bit more complex than ‘compound is better’ or ‘isolation is better’ or ‘free weights are better’ or ‘machines are better’.  Honestly, I’m not aware of much research on this topic and rather want to look at some of the pros and cons for beginning trainees.

Certainly, compound free weight exercises (e.g. squat, bench press, deadlift, etc.) have most commonly been used for beginning weight training programs.  The Starting Strength program, for example, is a rather classic example of this  and is based around squat, bench press, deadlift, power clean, and overhead press.  And for anyone who’s been involved with weight training for as long as I have, it’s hard to see problems with those exercise selections.  Other programs (and the ones I typically use) often include more movements such as rowing or chinning/pulldowns; mind you, (male) trainees always want to know where the direct arm work is.

Make no mistake, I’m a huge fan of squats, bench press, deadlifts, overhead press, RDL, etc.  These are movements that I think most should have at least some competency with and the beginning stages of training are a good time to get that competency.  How much of a given training program they will make up down the road, of course, depends but at least learning how to do those movements is important.  If for no other reason than to learn that they aren’t a good fit for a given trainee (you won’t know until you try).

Yet, for many trainees, trying to do so may be an exercise in either futility or pointlessness.  And, as noted in Part 2, unless someone is competing in powerlifting (where squat, bench and deadlift must be done) or Olympic lifting (where clean&jerk, snatch must be done), there is no single exercise that anyone must do for either general strength or hypertrophy.  Rather, the optimal exercise for a given trainee for a given goal simply depends on so many factors that I’m not going to get into much detail here.

Some of this is simply one of levers.  As I discused in Squat vs. Leg Press for Big Legs – Q&A, some trainees have horrible levers for squatting and get very little leg stimulus out of it for either leg strength or size.  In that case, another movement or *gasp* a properly performed leg press can be superior.   There are plenty of other examples and I’m sure I will lose much credibility by admitting that, when I was personal training, I almost always started beginners with machines.

Now, before you jump down my throat in the comments section, I want folks to honestly consider something as I go off on a bit of tangential rant: in all the time you’ve been in the weight room, how many people have you ever seen with good squat, deadlift or bench press form (I’m assuming here that you know what good form is yourself)?  How about power cleans?  Ever seen much of anything in most commercial gyms that didn’t make you cringe?

Because unless you train in a serious powerlifting gym or with Olympic lifters, the odds are that you’ve seen very few people performing those movements anywhere close to correctly.  But honestly take the time to count them up in your head, the ones who were doing it even close to correctly.  How many have you seen.  10, maybe 20?   If that.  And that’s out of how many hundreds of people you’ve seen training.

Hell, I’ve been training since I was 15 and coaching since my early 20’s in one form or another; I can’t imagine the thousands of people I’ve seen attempt those movements.   And the number using proper form…let’s say that most of them I coached myself and the exceptions are just that.  But let’s be generous and say that 1% of people squatting, benching or deadlifting are using anything approximating decent form.

I’m probably being very generous here since I can remember most of the exceptions I’ve seen explicitly (I always go talk to the person to find out where they learned how to do the movement so well); that’s how few of them I’ve seen.  With one or two exceptions of people who managed to self-teach themselves proper form, invariably every one of them had had a competent coach in their past making them learn proper form.  Or I was training them.

The sad reality, and if you step back from dogma that ’squats and deadlifts rool’ for a second, is this: most wouldn’t know proper form on a squat or deadlift if it bit them on the ass.  Personal trainers sure don’t know how to teach them as a matter of course; the reality is that most personal trainers don’t even have good technique themselves.   Hell, go look at Youtube, there are plenty of ’strength coaches’ that couldn’t teach a competent powerclean if their jobs depended on it (which, if you sort of think about it, should, but I digress).

And while there is an enormous amount of information on how to learn those movements out there, the fact is that teaching yourself anything is very difficult.  Can it be done?  Sure.  Can it be done by most?  Well…..

Of course, you can use terrible form on machines as well and the real fact is that the form seen by ~99% of trainees on ~99% of movements in ~99% of commercial gyms is usually crap.  But, assuming that the person is going to be using crappy form at least machines will keep them from getting crushed under a bar or (probably) blowing out their low back like a poorly performed deadlift will.

Which brings me back to my point about exercise selection and why I typically used machines with beginners.  Some of this was, mostly, practical.  I often had only three sessions with trainees before they were going off on their own.  And you can’t get someone to level of safety and competence in complex movements like a powerclean, squat, bench or deadlift in that time frame.   But I could do it with leg press, chest press and row machines or whatever.  And since most of those trainees had general fitness/health as a goal, I wasn’t terribly concerned; that they got into the gym was arguably more important than what they did.

When I knew I had longer to work with someone (e.g. the powerlifters I trained in Austin or one of my current trainees who can’t decide whether she wants to Olympic lift, powerlift or just be buff), or someone had loftier goals, mind you I would take the time to teach the big movements.  But only because I knew I’d have the time to get technique to where I wanted it with those people.

This is actually a point I’ll come back to in Part 4 in terms of deciding how to set up a beginning weight training program: are you being coached (competently) or not. Because someone who is being coached hands-on for their first 3-6 months of training will likely be doing something very different than someone who is going it on their own from Day 1.  And I’d make different suggestions/recommendations for those different situations.

As well, many beginners, especially folks who are older (and especially if they are overweight) are intimidated enough going into the weight room in the first place.  Giving them activities that they could ‘get’ quickly was part of providing the positive reinforcement that they needed to keep them coming back.  Put differently, if at the first workout you give a brand newbie trainee something that does nothing but make them feel like an uncoordinated spaz, odds are they won’t come back.  So you have to give them tasks simple enough to do well right off the bat.

Mind you this gets into a whole separate discussion of psychology and personality.  My experience is that those who aspire to bodybuilding or performance sports are often a bit more driven and, in that situation, even starting with more complicated things may not be so offputting. Given their ultimate goals, I’d be a lot more adamant about teaching them the big movements first (and, again, starting to determine optimal assistance movements down the road).

Basically, the point I’m trying to get at regarding exercise selection for beginners is that it depends.  And you will probably see the most variance here depending on the ultimate goal.  Do I think learning the big compounds are useful for most trainees?  Yes, of course.  However, that doesn’t mean that they are always appropriate in the beginner stages.  Issues of technique, coaching, psychology go into that and what I’d suggest for someone would depend very much on the specific circumstances.

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Summing Up

And that wraps up Part 3 where I looked at loading parameters for beginner training routines.  Since there is no benefit to be gained by going heavier compared to lighter (and many benefits in terms of going lighter), that’s the best approach: start light and gradually add weight as technique and strength improve.

In terms of volume, anywhere from 1 to 3 sets can be effectively used and both low and higher volume training have benefits in terms of time requirements, motor learning, work capacity, etc.  A reasonable compromise is to start with a low volume of training and build it up (if that is required by the ultimate end goal of training).

In terms of sets/repetition, both higher and lower repetitions can be used depending on the specifics.  higher repetitions keep the weight on the bar lower and may allow for more practice; this is offset by the potential for fatigue to make technique go badly.  Lower repetitions avoid issues of fatigue but people who have poor impulse control or who aren’t being coached tend to add weight too quickly and get themselves into trouble.

Frequency of training for beginners should be between 2-3 workouts/week generally of the full-body type.  There are exceptions to this but I’m going to stick with generalities here.

Finally there is exercise selection which, Internet dogma be damned, is more complex than ‘do squats, deadlifts and bench presses’.  I addressed some specific issues relating to exercise selection here and this will hopefully all make more sense on Friday when I truly wrap it up with some specific workout examples along with guidelines on how to progress things over the beginning stages of training.

Read Beginning Weight Training Part 4

Today I want to continue by looking at what the specific goals of beginner training are, that is what specific adaptations and things are trying to be accomplished when setting up a beginning routine in the weight room.  As I’ll come back to when I finish up next Tuesday in Part 3, those goals desired, along with some science I’m going to bore you with go a long way towards helping to design a good basic beginning weight training program.

Now, as I mentioned in Beginning Weight Training Part 1, people have varying and myriad goals for why they get into the weight room.  And while the specifics of training certainly need to reflect that at some point, at the beginner stage, I believe that their training programs will look more alike than not.  Whether the ultimate goals are the physique sports (bodybuilding, fitness, figure), powerlifting or some other strength related sport, lifting for sports performance or general health, beginner routines will all look basically the same.  The big exception, as I also mentioned before, would be Olympic lifting training but setting that up is between you and your coach.

But hopefully the point is made and that point is this: in a conceptual sense, the goal of all beginner weight room training is to develop a base upon which to perform more specialized training.  But now you’re wondering what exactly I mean by ‘developing a base’ upon which to perform more specialized training which is, of course, the topic of today’s article.  I’ve summarized the primary adaptations that are important to beginners below:

1. Develop a general balanced whole-body base of strength and/or muscle mass to allow for specialization later on
2. Improving neural mechanisms of strength production/Learning to lift weights
3. Determine optimal exercise selection for targeting individual muscle groups
   
4. Condition connective tissues to handle heavy training
5. Improve work capacity/recovery
6. Behavioral stuff: pain tolerance, determination, consistency, etc.

I suppose I should also mention diet here since that is, as much as anything, a key aspect of many weight room goals (whether physique or athletically oriented).  Starting to develop good basic nutrition skills can and should be done during the beginner stage, it’s all part of developing fundamental habits for later down the road.  I won’t say much about this in this series; instead I’d point readers to The Baseline Diet 2009 Part 1 and The Baseline Diet 2009 Part 2 for a look at setting up a basic athletic type of diet.

And with that out of the way, I want to look at each of the 6 topics above in some detail.

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Goal 1: Develop a General Balanced Whole-Body Base of Strength/Muscle Mass

While developing monster muscles isn’t the goal of everyone entering the weight room, I’d certainly say that increasing muscle mass to some degree (whether it’s for health, vanity or performance purposes) is generally at least one goal of going into the weight room.  Sure, some folks fall into the ‘I don’t want to get bulky’ mentality but, truth be told, given the slow rate of muscle mass gains, waking up huge is not a rational fear that anyone should have.

Mind you, if there’s anybody who wants to get huge fast it’s generally (young) males; females are more commonly in the ‘I don’t want to bulk up’ camp (and often engage in endlessly pointless training in an attempt to avoid something that isn’t going to happen anyhow).  The simple fact is that, with few exceptions (usually underweight teenage males put on a program of squats and milk), rapid gains in true muscle mass don’t happen in the first place and certainly not for beginners (and certainly certainly not for women).

In a  similar vein, increasing strength to some degree is also a common goal of going into the weight room whether it’s for performance/sport reasons or just a desire to lift minimum macho poundages and impress one’s buddies (again, this is usually common among younger males).  I’d note, and I’ll come back to this in more detail in Part 3 of this series on Tuesday that the desire to lift as much weight as quickly as possible gets a lot of beginners into a lot of problems.

But again, the point is sort of made: at least a primary goal of beginner training (whether by desire or simply end result) is to have some increase in both muscle mass and strength levels.  Both are clearly key for anyone interested in performance or physique competition and even for general health carrying a bit more muscle (or at least limiting the common age-related loss of muscle) and having more strength tend to improve overall health and wellness (e.g. you can pick up the bag of groceries/take out the big garbage can that was once too heavy).

I would note that developing any muscularity/strength in a reasonably balanced fashion across the body might be considered a sub-goal here.  Put differently: just training the pecs and guns (guys know what I’m talking about) or whatever isn’t what I’m talking about.  Rather, developing some muscle mass and strength throughout the body in some sort of roughly ‘balanced’ fashion should be one goal of beginning training.

In a related vein and this is something that will be far outside the scope of this article is the fact that, as often as not, beginning strength training needs to address the massive imbalances that are often caused by our modern life.  Folks who sit all day at a computer/in a cubicle or do various and sundry jobs often enter the weight room with strength and/or flexibility imbalances that need to be corrected.  Pelvic tilt issues, shoulder rounding issues, neck issues and others are common as a function of what most of us do all day long and early training is a good place to address these.

However, addressing all of them in any detail in this article would be impossible; in Part 3 I’m going to make the (probably incorrect assumption) that no corrective work need be done.  But that is a consideration and something that usually needs to be addressed to at least some degree in the beginning stages of training.  Unfortunately, it’s a consideration that is hard for people to deal with without some form of competent coaching or training.  I would suggest folks read Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson’s excellent Neanderthal No More series for a rather thorough look at the topic.

But ignoring that last bit, that’s the first primary goal of beginning weight training; regardless of your ultimate goal down the road, developing a good base of all-around whole-body strength/muscle mass to provide a ‘base’ upon which to lay more specific training down the road (whether it be jakkedness, hottiness, strengthiness, general healthiness or what have you).

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Goal 2: Improve Neural Mechanisms of Strength Production/Learn to Lift Weights

To address Goal 2, I have to bore you with a bit of physiology about how the body adapts in the very initial stages of a weight training program.  For context, simply realize that how much weight you can lift in a given exercise is determined both by muscular size and a variety of neural factors.  Of course, levers and such affect this but you can’t change those for the most part so I’m going to focus on the neural and muscular factors here.

Simplistically, we could write:

Strength Output = Muscle Mass * Neural Factors

Where muscle mass is the size of the muscle (technically the cross sectional area) and neural factors refers to a host of adaptations that I’m not going to detail (if you’re really interested, I discuss them in my first book The Ketogenic Diet; I’d note that a lot of additional research on this topic has been done since that book was written so some of the information is probably a touch out of date).

Now, early studies repeatedly found the following phenomenon: when people started lifting weights, they would increase their strength without significant/any increases in muscle mass.  This was taken to mean that the body first made improvements in neural mechanisms with gains in muscle mass coming later; this was eventually almost extended to the idea that the only initial adaptations to training were neural and that actual gains in muscle mass happened later.  However, there’s a problem with this interpretation which is that studies also show that, even in total beginners, training clearly turns on protein synthesis (one of the key aspects of gaining muscle).  What’s going on?

Various explanations for this phenomenon have been thrown around ranging from the idea that beginners also ramp up protein breakdown in the initial stages to the simple fact that most methods of measurement are not accurate enough to pick up changes in muscle mass in the early stages.  I tend to go with the latter interpretation, I think muscle mass gains are begin stimulated in the beginning stages of training, they are simply too slow and small to show up with the methods we have to measure them. In that vein, in my experience with beginners was that gains were simply too slow for anything to show up on body composition measurements until about week 4, and by week 8 there were always measurable changes in something (usually an increase in muscle mass with some fat loss).

Regardless, the point is made that many of the early adaptations to weight training are neural in nature.  Simply, when you start lifting weights, you get stronger initially without necessarily getting bigger.  Which is great if your goal is to get stronger without increasing muscle mass but not so great if your goal is to get jakked as quickly as possible.  But ultimately you sort of don’t have a choice in the matter, you have to go through the neural adaptations one way or another before the real gains muscle mass start to occur/show up (and there are relatively better and worse ways of getting them to occur as quickly as possible which I’ll talk about in Part 3).

I’d mention that weight training tends to cause increased carbohydrate storage in muscles and this also causes water to be stored; and this probably explains why some people do feel as if they are ‘bulking up rapidly’ when they start training.  Women especially tend to feel like they are ‘getting huge’ when they start lifting (and freak out because of it) from this mechanism but it always goes away by about week 3 as the body gets back into water balance.

At least part of these ‘neural adaptations’ is that you’re basically learning proper technique for the different exercises.  That is, without going into all of the details, a lot of initial training is ‘learning to do the movement properly’ and a majority of this is neurologically based.  And, as I noted in Beginning Weight Training Part 1, while much of what’s done in the weight room isn’t as technical as many sports, the point is that proper technique is still generally superior to improper technique when you’re looking at making long-term progress.

I would mention here that lifting technique is actually one place that pure bodybuilding/physique training and pure strength training can potentially differ (and often athletes training for improved performance may be doing something a bit different from either of those two groups).  To make a massive generality, bodybuilders have often attempted to perform exercises in a way that maximally stresses the muscle, based on the idea that it is that stress that causes growth.  Exercise form is often subtly different in bodybuilding and attempting to beat the hell out of the muscle is a big part of how bodybuilders train.  In essence, they try to make the exercise as inefficient as possible, to put the maximal stress on the muscle they want to grow.

In contrast, pure strength athletes tend be more about lessening muscular stress in the sense that the less work the muscle does, the more weight you can move for the same amount of effort.  In essence they are looking for ways to maximize efficiency as this allows them to lift the most weight with the least effort.  So specific techniques or what have you are often made in the strength/power sports to lessen muscular work.  Somewhere in the middle, athletes who are lifting for performance reasons often use lifting techniques somewhere between the two extremes used by bodybuilders or pure strength athletes.

As an example of the differences, I would point you to my article on Bench Pressing Variations where I contrast a ‘bodybuilder’ bench press to a generic power bench (what most performance type athletes would do) to a pure shirted (sort-of) powerlifting bench press.  You can see that you’re moving from one extreme to another with the generic power bench being right in the middle.

Now, as I have mentioned several times already, I feel that this type of specialization or difference is fairly academic in the beginner stages: whether someone is an aspiring physique athlete, aspiring strength athlete, general athlete or simply in the general public, I tend to stick with the middle of the road exercises with a focus on learning how to actually train the target muscles.

That is, whether or not a powerlifter will eventually use a shirt, I think they should learn the technique of Benching with the Pecs. And even if a bodybuilder type eventually moves to an elbows flared ‘pec-tacular’ bench press, I still would start them with a generic power bench in the beginner stages.  Athletes, with few exceptions will be doing the middle of the road variations as a matter of course (there are always some exceptions).  Of course, anyone lifting for general health/fitness or what have you is going to get the middle of the road variations.

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Goal 3: Determine Optimal Exercise Selection for Targeting Individual Muscle Groups

In addition to the basic goal of ‘learning to lift weights’, there are other important goals of this phase of training. Related to the idea of learning to lift weights in general, I’d suggest that folks interested in physique based activities start figuring out what exercises are best for their individual mechanics and such.  This can also be relevant for those who eventually want to pursue strength or performance related activities, figuring out exercises (usually assistance stuff) that best targets a given muscle group or muscle groups (or improves the primary lifts) is important.

Now, I’m not going to get into a big discussion of exercise selection for hypertrophy here as that will be the topic of a future article, sufficed to say that any exercise that generates sufficient tension overload can make you get bigger and/or make the muscle you’re training stronger.  And Internet flame wars to the contrary, exercise selection for hypertrophy or strength is not as simple as “Compound is better” or “Isolation is better”.  As discussed in the highly contentious Squats vs. Leg Press for Big Legs – Q&A article, differences in mechanics and weak points make it more complicated than that and what usually happens is that people project what’s best for them onto the entirety of the training universe.

And, similar to what I wrote above regarding what exercises to first learn, exercise selection tends to be where pure physique sports and pure strength sports often diverge the most.  With athletes it gets even more complicated depending on your overall philosophy (e.g specific vs. general) in the weight room but I’m not going to cover that here.

It should be fairly obvious that anyone who wants to powerlift has to learn to squat, bench and deadlift (or just bench/deadlift if they go into that type of federation).  Obviously Olympic lifters have to do the competition movements (and most would argue some form of squatting) although philosophies can differ drastically beyond that.  Due to the demands of something like strongman competition, squats, deadlifts, overhead pressing of some sort and possibly the Olympic lifts will generally be an important part of training.  While they may not be strictly required, good luck getting very far without them.

But what about folks with physique aspirations (whether competition or just looking better naked)?  As much as many will disagree with me here, there is no exercise that someone with physique aspirations is required to do in their training since it’s simply not part of their performance package.    How much you squat, bench or deadlift doesn’t matter on stage for a bodybuilder or fitness competitor (or for someone just trying to ‘tone up’ or whatever), it’s simply not what you’re judged on.  Rather, muscularity, symmetry, balance, leanness (mainly a function of diet) are what matter.  And as noted above, any exercise that provides sufficient tension and overload can contribute to those things.

Put more directly: the best exercise for hypertrophy of a given muscle group is the one that targets that muscle for a given individual and provides sufficient tension overload to trigger a growth response.  There are other requirements (mainly revolving around safety and the ability to progressively load them) but beyond providing tension overload, no one exercise is mandatory or inherently superior for all people.  Certainly, for some people heavy compounds fit the bill well in this respect; however, for others they are drastically inferior.  Differences in levers and mechanics along with neurology all contribute to this.  Again, this is something I’ll address in more detail in a future article.

But again, no single exercise is mandatory when gains in muscularity are the goal.  Certainly no single exercise will possibly be the best under all situations for all trainees.  At best, a given exercise might be best for an individual trainee under a given situation.  But even that can change depending on the specifics of the routine and the goals.  For example, what if you want to train chest without training triceps for some reason (maybe your triceps are overdeveloped relative to your pecs and you want to bring pecs up without further triceps growth)?  A pec isolation movement would be superior to compound chest in that specific context.

As a more specific example, one of my trainees gets absolutely nothing out of rows for mid-back.  She’s very lat dominant and ends up substituting out when she does cable rowing: her mid-back isn’t targeted optimally regardless of it being ‘the best compound movement for back’.  Rather, a more isolated reverse pec deck with scapular retraction is a far superior movement for her.  It takes her lats out of the movement and it takes her arms out of the equation as well.  And it trains her mid-back better (which is all that matters).  Of course for someone else, the exact opposite might hold true: the reverse pec deck w/scapular retraction is the inferior movement to a compound cable row.

In any case, one thing that can start to be done during the beginner stage is to determine what exercise might or might not be best for you as an individual trainee.  Of course, this brings up the question of how to tell what’s better or worse.  Often you simply go by feel; many have used soreness as an indicator and even acute fatigue or a pump during training would be at least a rough indicator of the muscle being worked (note: this isn’t perfect).  If you have a training partner (or a competent coach) partner, they can check for muscular activation during the exercise.   Various types of touch training can be used to not only help the trainee focus their attention on the target muscle but also to check for activation and such.

In any case, on top of the overall goal of ‘learning to lift weights’ in terms of overall technique, starting to determine what exercises are going to be important is something that can start to be done during the beginner stage.  Note that this is a process that will be continuing for much longer than the beginner stage as well.

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Goal 4: Condition Connective Tissues

While it’s cliche these days to throw out that “[Insert buzzword of the week] is the forgotten part of weight training” I’d suggest that one factor that goes almost completely ignored in the weight room is the status of connective tissues.  Tendons, ligaments and such can all adapt to heavy training; quite in fact they need to do so to be able to handle heavier loading down the road.  But, unlike muscles which often show rapid gains in strength (especially initially), connective tissues adapt very slowly.  Trainees who jump into training that is too heavy or too frequent often come up with joint injuries.

And once injured, connective tissues tend to re-injure fairly easy.  Develop elbow problems early on and they may annoy you for most of your career.  In fact, you can see people in any commercial gym with knees and elbows wrapped simply to get through training with minimal pain.  That’s a sign that their connective tissues are beaten up, either because they didn’t give things time to adapt early on or are training too heavily too often for too long in their current routine.

But this is something that is critical to long-term success (many old time strength athletes talked about the need to ’strengthen the ligaments’ for maximal strength performance) and avoiding injury.  Just realize that it’s a slow process that takes time (months).  Go too hard too fast and you’re likely to pay a hard price.

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Goal 5: Develop Overall Work Capacity

In Beginning Weight Training Part 1 I mentioned that one criterion for having moved past the rank beginner stage would be the ability to handle a full 60-90 minute workout without the trainee being absolutely crushed by fatigue and that brings us to Goal 5: improving overall work capacity and training tolerance.  In essence, when starting out in almost any activity, trainees have to get into shape to be able to train. Yes, this seems like a contradiction but bear with me.

Intense training is a stress to the body.  And requires that certain base fitness quality be developed.  This is usually referred to as work capacity, others simply call it the ‘training base’.  You can think of it as having worked up to the point that a given workout, while stressful, doesn’t overwhelm you completely.  As well, recovery capacities can be improved over time and this means not only better recovery during a workout (between sets for example) but between workouts.

Beginner trainees, unless they are coming from some other sport into the weight room, have to gradually develop their ability to handle training volume.  This, like connective tissue, tends to be slower than other adaptations.  And it’s not sexy to develop basic fitness which is why nobody wants to take the time to do it.  But it’s crucial for long-term progress.  Quite in fact, in many more performance oriented sports, phases to improve work capacity are often performed between phases of performance improvement.

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Goal 6: Behavioral Issues: Pain Tolerance, Consistency, Focus, etc.

A final goal and one I’m not going to spend a ton of time on today or next Tuesday I’m going to simply group under behavioral stuff.  This includes pain tolerance, training consistency, focus, determination, etc.   These are all things that trainees often lack when starting out but which can be developed with practice.  Because nobody reaches much of a goal when they skip every second workout.  And nobody but nobody reaches their goals when they are unwilling to put forth at least some effort in their training.

While I’m not saying that trainees need to kill themselves in training, anyone not willing to work outside of their comfort zone and push themselves a bit isn’t likely to get very far.  And this can be trained over time (by gradually pushing yourself a bit harder over time and resetting what you thought of as a previous limit).  Discussing all of this would require more space than I have but it is important and can be improved by training progressively in the weight room.  It’s also where a good coach or trainer can be valuable as they will know how to push just enough to get the person to the next level without destroying themselves.

For example, beginning (and even some intermediate trainees) often think that they are far more fatigued than they are; a good coach can spot this and have the athlete successfully complete something that the athlete/trainee thought that they were too tired to do.  Which has the end result of teaching that athlete that their limits are higher than they thought.  And at some point in the future, when they reach what they perceive as another limit the coach will have them do it again, further raising the bar.

Similarly, many beginning trainees tend to give up quickly when things get even the slightest bit uncomfortable.  In many ways, this makes sense, pain is a sensation that usually means ’stop doing that’.  But learning how to tolerate the discomfort endemic to productive training is a huge part of long-term progress; without it folks will hit an early wall since they won’t be able to push hard enough to generate further gains.

Again, a good coach can play a role here; when an athlete starts to give up, the coach can get them to go a little bit further.  The athlete learns that they didn’t die, that the pain wasn’t really that bad.  Ultimately, this teaches them to push a bit harder.  And, again, later on the coach can do it again, raising the athlete’s ability to tolerate discomfort a bit higher still.

I think you get the idea.  And while the above is certainly easier with a competent coach available, some of it can be trained during the beginner stages by following the guidelines I’m going to give you.

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Summing Up

And that’s a look at the primary goals of beginner training.  From developing a basic base of muscular strength and size (and possibly dealing with imbalances due to lifestyle) to learning how to lift weights to determining optimal exercise to others, these are all factors that are important to pretty much all trainees regardless of their ultimate goal.  Which is why beginning training, by and large, won’t be terribly specific.  Since they all have to accomplish the same things during their earliest stages in the weight room, the training will be essentially identical.  Specialization will come further down (even as early as the intermediate stage of training).

And that wraps it up for today, on Tuesday I’ll bore you with some more science and then look at some different approaches to drawing up beginner training programs with some specific examples.

Read Beginning Weight Training Part 3.

Not only is this not terribly productive, it can actually be detrimental to long-term progress.  Even if the person doesn’t get injured or burned out by doing too much too soon, they run into another big problem: by using advanced methods early on, trainees are limited when they do manage to reach a more advanced stage.  That is, if someone jumps into high volumes or advanced training methods right out of the gate, they run into problems later on when they actually need to increase something.  If volume is already high, increasing it further is difficult if not impossible.  And if advanced methods are being used too early, there’s nothing left to break plateaus when they occur later on.

Put a little bit differently, one goal of all training should always be to get the most adaptations/gains in performance with the least amount of training.  That way, when gains slow down, there is actually room to increase things.  Start too high to begin with and you’ve got nowhere to go when you actually need to do it.

Put a bit differently, if you can get the same gains out of 3 hours/week of training vs. 6 hours/week of training, you’re better off training 3 hours/week.  That way, when 3 hours/week stops working, you have room to increase to 4 hours/week then 5 hours/week then 6 hours/week.  If you start at 6 hours/week and stop progressing, you’ve got nowhere left to go.

An additional factor contributing to this problem is this:  a lot of beginners (and this holds for non-weight room activities as well, runners and cyclists do the same thing) tend to fall into a trap of thinking “If I want to be as good/big/fast/whatever as [insert name of currently top level individual here], I should do what they do in training.”

But what’s forgotten is that what said top level individual is doing now, 10-15 (or more) years into their career is absolutely not reflective of what they did when they started.   Rather, assuming they were coached in some fashion or another, they started with a very beginner approach to training and have only built up to their current level of training (in terms of volume, intensity and frequency) over years and years of training.   But since folks rarely see or hear about what those folks did when they started, and only see what they are currently doing, they tend to assume that that is the proper way to train.

Of some relevance to this article is the fact that top level athletes in almost all activities often have periods where they ‘return to the basics’.   So they might spend some amount of their year or season training in at least a similar fashion as they did as rank beginners.  That’s on top of the fact that, almost without exception, top level individuals in all sports are always working on the fundamentals to one degree or another (a topic I’ve discussed variously on the site).

In fact, I might go so far as to argue that, in most activities, a big part of what separates the top level guys from the wannabes is the willingness to always work on the basics.  That is, wannabes tend to want to only do the sexy and fun stuff; it’s the guys who reach the top who consistently and constantly hammer away at the fundamentals.  If you don’t believe me, find a place where athletes of different levels train.  One difference will be that the higher level guys always do the basics: they warm-up properly, do their drills with attention and focus, pay constant attention in training, cool-down correctly, etc.  The guys skipping all of the stuff that isn’t fun are the ones who not only don’t make progress but usually waste their careers looking for Training Secrets.

And while we might argue that many activities done in the weight room (with the exception of the Olympic lifts) aren’t nearly as technique heavy as many sporting movements, the fact is that proper performance in the weight room does impact results.  The folks flailing about with the weights are not only putting themselves at a higher risk of injury but probably aren’t training the target muscle effectively in the first place.

You can contrast that to successful bodybuilders who often have some of the most beautiful technique you’ll ever see (I should mention that it’s not uncommon to see really big guys with totally awful technique).  If you ever get a chance to watch a good powerlifter train, you’ll see what I’m talking about: laser focus and absolutely dialed in technique (that they continue to try to improve throughout their career).  And if you know anything about Olympic lifting technique, you’ll know when one is training in your gym; he’ll be the one squatting and pulling with form more impressive than you’ve ever seen.  And while I’m not saying that you have to spend eons figuring out how to do the ‘perfect rep’, developing good technique in the early stages of weight training pays massive dividends later on (ask anybody who’s had to fix technique after years of doing it wrong).

But I’m getting off topic.

My point with this introduction is that, whether folks get into the weight room for general health/fitness purposes or to pursue bodybuilding or strength training (e.g. powerlifting) or are simply using the weight room to improve their performance in some other sport, the same dynamics tend to hold for rank beginners.  Folks want to be more advanced than they are and jump into advanced routines far before they have developed the fundamentals of training.

So, for the purposes of this article, I’m going to talk about all forms of beginning strength training as sort of a generalized whole, whether the ultimate goal is bodybuilding (or physique changes more generally), general health/fitness or some strength sport.  I’ll make comments about differences in each activity as necessary since there are some.  Since this will get long, I’m going to divide the article into three parts.

Today I’m going to focus on some of the basic ideas about why people get into the weight room in the first place in terms of goals along with what defines a beginner.  On Friday, I’ll look at the major adaptations that beginner routines are trying to achieve.  And finally on Tuesday of next week, I’ll look at how to set up a good basic beginner routine and how to progress it until someone is ready to move to the intermediate stage.

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Body Composition vs. Strength vs. Performance vs. Fitness/Health

People lift weights for a variety of reasons.  I imagine the majority reading this site do it to improve body composition, usually to look better naked.  Some of course eventually want to compete in one of the physique sports, whether it be bodybuilding or fitness/figure.  Some may want to get into something like power or Olympic lifting (probably not a lot of the latter and I won’t make many comments about that).  Some may be doing it only for general health and I imagine some do it because they feel that they are ’supposed to’.

Now, there are certainly differences in training for each of those goals and I want to make a few comments about them before moving on (I’ll make more comments as needed throughout the article series as well).

Clearly the goal in physique/body composition oriented activities is primarily geared towards increasing muscle mass and/or losing fat (for more commentary on that, please read Weight Training for Fat Loss Part 1 and Weight Training for Fat Loss Part 2).  Those who eventually want to compete in the physique sports have to worry about other things such as symmetry, balance, etc.  Getting their diet in order is clearly a big key.  Of course, fitness competitors have to worry about the fitness routine itself but that’s far outside of the scope of this article.

Those who eventually want to pursue something like powerlifting have as their goal lifting the most weight for a single repetition in the competitive lifts (squat, bench, deadlift or bench/deadlift if they go that route); at some point the gear/raw question comes up as well.  Folks eventually targeting something like strongman also need a base of strength although they will eventually need focus on the implements (and the huge strength/endurance component) that are required in competition.  Olympic lifters are in a similar position with learning the competition movements along with building base strength also required.

Weight training for athletes gets more complicated as what’s needed depends on the requirements of the sport, the individual, weight classes, etc.  For the general health/fitness lifter, the goals are typically much more modest, developing a basic level of strength fitness along with developing bone health, staving off negatives associated with aging are typical goals and I’d only note that weight training for general fitness/health tends to be the least intensive/extensive of all weight training programs.  They are often kept short and focused (even if some ‘optimality’ in terms of gains are sacrificed) to take into account the goals.

And clearly each of those goals will ultimately require a different approach.  However, for the most part, I’d argue that most of those differences are completely academic at the beginning stage of training.  Most beginners needs the same basic things out of training initially (which I’ll discuss on Friday) and the routines will, by and large, look more or less identical.  Although I won’t say much more about it, beginning Olympic lifting routines would tend to be the most divergent from what I’m going to describe but your coach should be handling that.

Rather, the differences will start to become more relevant/prevalent once trainees get out of the pure beginner stage of training and start moving into more involved and focused training as an intermediate level trainee.  Essentially, all trainees, regardless of ultimate goals need to develop a base of training while achieving a number of adaptations that I’m going to discuss below.  That base will provide a launching off point for more specialization down the road.

So, for the most part I’m going to treat beginner training for all of the above more or less identically.  Slight differences will tend to be that (slight) and I’m sure I’ll be addressing questions about it in the comments section.

.What Defines a Beginner?

Perhaps the first question to cover is what actually defines a beginning trainee.  Clearly anyone just starting out in the weight room is a beginner and what I’m going to write would apply there; in that situation, beginner training might be done for 3-6 months before anything more advanced was either appropriate or needed.

I’d also suggest that, as I discussed in Returning to Training After a Layoff – Q&A, anyone who has had a large break from training (perhaps 3-4 more weeks or more) should start back to training with a beginner type routine.  The biggest difference in the second situation is that the time spent performing beginner training would be much shorter.  Perhaps 2-4 weeks of complete beginner training might be necessary before that person (assuming that was their goal)  moved into something more advanced.

Individuals who were once trained but have taken a very extended period of time off (say a year or more) should consider themselves rank beginners again.  They may not need the full 3-6 months of beginner training but they should expect to take proportionally longer on that type of training before moving into anything more advanced.

I’d also offer and I know that people reading this won’t like it, that most trainees out there are not nearly as advanced as they thought.  Even someone who has been ‘lifting weights like a bodybuilder’ for 2 years may still be, strictly speaking, a beginner in that their form sucks, they’ve made little to no gains in actual muscle mass, their overall training structure sucks, etc.  This is more common than you think and I’ve seen it for years in the weight room and the forums.  Despite the apparent training age, those folks have to train like beginners for a while before being allowed to do anything more advanced.

To give specific examples, one client of mine, who had literally 20 years of weight training under his belt, had atrocious form on everything he did.  Quite literally none of it was correct and it was limiting his ability to make progress.  So despite the 2 decades in the weight room, he was essentially a beginner in many ways.  And I trained him as such in many ways, forcing him to fix his technique and form (at least on key exercises) before going heavy again.

Another trainee, despite having lifted for 2-3 years by herself was in a similar situation: except for RDL’s, her form on everything was horrible (she made the mistake of mirroring the form she saw in her own weight room, which was all fundamentally awful).  So, in addition to fixing some injury stuff, she trained basically as a beginner until it was fixed.

I’d finish by noting that, even if it seems like you’re taking a step backwards, even ‘really advanced’ folks often benefit from returning to the fundamentals for a while.  As I noted above, many athletes do this in other sports and reinforcing the basics for a bit never hurts. So all of you super advanced Internet trainees, the ones who keep looking for harder and more intense and more advanced, at least consider a short phase of training on the basics.  You might learn some useful stuff.

A follow up question to “What defines a beginner?” would be “When do I know when I’ve moved to the intermediate stage?”  This latter question is a bit harder to answer.  Generally speaking, I’d expect a beginner to show proper form in the major weight training exercises  and be capable of handling a full workout (which would typically last from 60-90 minutes) without getting murdered with fatigue.

Some muscle mass would clearly have been gained at this point but, as discussed in What’s My Genetic Muscular Potential?, a beginner might still be gaining at a fairly nice rate of 2 lbs muscle/month (females might get half that).   When that slows (and a beginning male has gained perhaps 10-12 pounds of muscle (again, females cut that in half) over a 6 month period), the person should probably start considering an intermediate routine.

This would tend to assume that bodybuilding or one of the performance oriented goals of weight training was being pursued.  A general health/fitness trainees might be happy with a few pounds of the good stuff at appropriate places on their body and not want to make much more in the way of muscular gains.

Perhaps most simply, the time to move to an intermediate program is when beginning training is no longer stimulating progress or gains.  Basically, milk the beginner gains for all they’re worth; it’s one of the few times when you get to make progress without having to work depressingly hard.  When those gains dry up, it’s time for something more intense.  But, in my opinion, there’s no real hurry.  As I mentioned above, the goal should be to get the maximal gains out of the least training (this holds for all training mind you).  Increase training volume, intensity, etc. when you need to do it, not simply because you want to (or read some really cool routine in a magazine or online).

And with that I’ll wrap it for today.  On Friday, I’ll look at some of the specific goals of beginner training which will lead into a discussion of how to set up a beginner routine next Tuesday.

Read Beginning Weight Training Part 2.

Is there an optimal macronutrient ratio for mass gains?

Answer: Certainly there are some general tendencies in terms of setting up macronutrient intake for mass gains and I discussed many of them in some detail in The Baseline Diet 2009 Part 1 and The Baseline Diet 2009 Part 2.

However, those articles were meant only as a starting point and there is actually a fairly wide variability in what might or might not be optimal for a given individual.  Part of the problem in answering this is that folks have made a lot of different approaches work to greater or lesser degrees and, just as with fat loss dieting, you can usually find someone who’s succeeded with just about anything.

While that doesn’t mean that ‘everything works’, what I do think it means is that there is sufficient variability between people to make absolute statements about optimality rather incorrect.  As I recently rambled about, a lot of it simply depends.  Never forget the Importance of Context.

With that said, let me look at some of the issues that go into determining what might be optimal for a given individual.

.Calories

Although you asked about macronutrient (carbs, protein, fat), I have to at least mention caloric intake. In the same way that generating fat loss requires the creation of a caloric deficit, gaining any sort of body mass (whether muscle or otherwise) requires a caloric surplus.  Many trainees seem to think that they can gain muscle on air and wishful thinking (and maybe creatine) and fail to gain any appreciable muscle mass for the simple fact that they aren’t eating enough calories to support growth.

How much of a surplus is too complex of a topic for me to address here, I will be doing a future article on the issue.  But sufficed to say you need some amount of caloric surplus to support growth.  A decent starting place for many is roughly 18 cal/lb (39 cal/kg), representing perhaps a 10-20% increase over maintenance caloric intake.  This can be too low for some and too high for others depending on a host of issues.  But you’ll have to wait for the future article for more detail.

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Protein

It’s probably safe to say that most people wanting to gain muscle mass know the importance of protein.  Muscle is made out of protein, right?  Actually, no, muscle is mostly water and the protein content of a pound of muscle mass is only about 100-120 grams or so (the remaining weight being water, glycogen, minerals, etc.).

Protein recommendations have varied throughout the years and intakes ranging from a low of 0.8 g/lb to 1.5 g/lb lean body mass have been thrown out and successfully used by athletes to gaining muscle mass.  In The Protein Book, I actually argued for erring on the side of higher rather than lower (for various reasons discussed in that book) and recommending taking protein up to 1.5 g/lb (3.3 g/kg) when muscle gain is the goal.

But that doesn’t change the fact that many have grown well with less protein.  Whether this represents individual variability or some interaction with the rest of their diet I can’t say.  But protein somewhere in that range is generally sufficient (I consider the recommendation of 2 g/lb to be useful only for individuals using anabolic steroids).

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Carbohydrates

Traditionally, bodybuilders have advocated fairly high-carbohydrate diets for gaining muscle mass, at least in relative terms.  A common recommendation for gaining might be on the order of 2-3 g/lb (4.4-6.6 g/kg), contrast that to a common dieting recommendation of perhaps 1 g/lb (2.2 g/kg).  As discussed in How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need, there is quite a bit of variability in this value.

Empirically, while many grow best (while staying relatively leaner) on higher carbohydrates (and lower fat intakes, discussed next), there is also a group that seems to do better with the opposite, relatively moderated carbohydrate intakes with higher fat intakes (or higher protein).

This likely represents at least two major variables (and a host of lesser variables): training volume and genetic insulin sensitivity.  A lot of the high-carbohydrate intake recommendations seemed to develop during the 80’s when bodybuilders did massive volumes (the 40-60 set marathons popularized by Arnold and his ilk).  In modern times, few do that amount of volume and, frankly, the amount of glycogen used on a workout per workout basis isn’t really that massive.

You can find the calculations in my first book The Ketogenic Diet but, very roughly, for every 2 moderate rep sets, you might need 5 grams of carbohydrates to replace the glycogen used.  For a fairly ‘long’ 24 set workout, that’s only 60 grams carbs (24 sets * 5 grams/2 sets) to replace the glycogen.  Of course, you need more calories than that to cover growth but I think the point is made: carb requirements from weight training simply aren’t that big unless volume is very high.

Additionally, genetic insulin sensitivity (which can vary 10-fold) at the same level of body fat is another factor.  Successful bodybuilders seem to have a propensity to more effectively store calories in muscle (as opposed to fat) better than less successful bodybuilders.  Part of that is their training volume but part of it is assuredly genetic (and please note that there is more to this story than just insulin sensitivity, you can think of it as nutrient sensitivity perhaps).

As discussed in Insulin Sensitivity and Fat Loss, people with good insulin sensitivity do better with higher carbs but people with poorer insulin sensitivity often do better with lowered carbs and higher fat intakes.  They tend to not only feel better but grow as well without gaining as much fat.

And while training certainly improves insulin sensitivity (it’s arguably the most powerful tool we have to do so), for folks with truly shit-poor genetic insulin sensitivity, carbs may still have to be kept fairly moderate even while gaining.  They may do better with perhaps 1 g/lb (with a minimum of perhaps 150 g/day) with the remainder of their caloric intake coming from fats after protein intake has been taken care of.

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Fat

And fat makes up the rest.  As you can guess, fat intake tends to vary inversely with carbohydrate intake.  That is, folks who do better with higher carbohydrates, usually do and feel better with lower fat intakes and vice versa (as carbs go down, fat goes up).  Some of this just reflects the need to keep calories sufficient, if you’re eating less calories from carbs, fat has to go up to compensate.

So what’s high and low?  In the bad-old days, diets containing as little fat as possible were recommended, with 10% or less being common.  I consider that too low for a number of reasons.  I generally use 20% as an absolute low cutoff point for dietary fat intake with 20-25% being more common, some coaches I know stick to 15% but I think that’s pushing it on the low-end of things.  On a fairly typical 18 cal/lb gaining diet, this comes out to about 0.5 g/lb (1.1 g/kg) of fat per day.  For a 180 lb individual, that’s 90 grams.

For individuals for whom excess carbs make them feel dopey and bloated, obviously a higher fat intake would be recommended.  How high would depend on total caloric intake and how low carbs are. But for a diet containing set at 18 cal/lb with 1.5 g/lb protein and 1 g/lb of carbs, dietary fat would have to be just under 1 g/lb (2.2 g/kg).  So 180 grams for our 180 pound guy.

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Summing Up

So that’s a look at ‘optimal’ macronutrient intake and, as usual, it depends.  There are a host of variables that determine what might or might not be optimal but, at best, it can only be said to be optimal for a given individual.  Training volume, genetics, and other factors all go into this.  But to give a general picture of the range of intakes that might be optimal for a given individual under a given set of circumstances:

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Some seem to grow just fine with fairly moderate protein intakes but high-carbs and low fats.  Others feel and perform better with higher protein intakes, lowered carbs and higher fats. And some do best with moderate amounts of everything (e.g. something approximating a Zone type setup or Duchaine’s old Isocaloric 33/33/33 diet for folks who remember it).

Of course, the obvious follow up question is how to know ahead of time what might be optimal for a given individual. I’ve given some of the factors that go into the decision above but, for now at least, it remains a bit of trial and error beyond that.  You’ll have to start with some of the generalities above and then tweak them to find out what might be optimal for you.

So Monday: upper, Tuesday: lower, Wed/Thurs: off, Fri: upper, Sat: lower, Sun/Mon: off.

It requires more freedom in scheduling, but just curious if you thought this type of consistency was somehow advantageous as opposed to the every 3rd/4th day inconsistent recovery…

Answer: The above question actually came up in the comments section of Training Frequency for Mass Gains but I thought it was worth addressing in full.

Before actually addressing the question in terms of the frequency issue, let me make one comment about the above schedule.  Depending on what movements are being done, especially on the lower day, doing upper body the day before lower can be very problematic.  If someone is going to squat or deadlift on lower body day, fatigue in the back and shoulder girdle from the upper body day can cause real problems on the lower body day (clearly if other movements are being done on the lower day, this is far less of an issue).

There are two solutions to this.  The first is to switch the days and put lower body first in the sequence and upper body second (this raises a second issue which is that fatigue from heavy lower body work often makes upper body go poorly but training is nothing if not a series of compromises).  The second is to use a slightly different split.  Doing chest/shoulders/triceps on Monday and legs/back/biceps on Tuesday and keeping that sequence avoids some of the problems although day 1 ends up being a lot easier (and usually shorter) than day 2 (which can be murderous).

Ignoring that, let me get back to the original question about training 2 on/2 off across an 8 day training cycle and the relaive optimality (or not) of that type of training.   And the short-answer to the above question is that…it depends.  Yeah, not very useful so let’s look at some of the things that it depends on and give the long answer.

Perhaps the biggest thing that the above depends on is life.  Most people’s real-life schedules are constrained by a rather standard 7 day work week.  We have Monday through Friday which are the typical work days followed by the weekend.  And this tends to have massive implications for how training weeks can be set up. Note that ‘can’ and ’should’ are not synonymous here.

In fact, it’s a big part of why I tend to default to cycles that run across a standard work week, it simply reflects the reality of the majority of trainees in my experience.  Anyone who has read or done the Ultimate Diet 2.0 knows that I went to lengths to fit the cycle into a standard 7 day work week.  An 8 day cycle actually would have been better in a lot of ways but the reality is that most people can’t make the schedule work because their life situation is set by the standard 7 day week.

But the reality for a majority of trainees is that the above schedule tends to be a huge determinant of not only when they can train but what kinds of schedules that they can follow.   Typically, and this is even more the case if they have family obligations they won’t have a lot of time during the week to train while they will generally have more time available on the weekends.

That is to say, if they get off work at 5:30pm, get to the gym at 6:30 and have some expectation of spending time with their family in the evening, a long training session during the week may simply not be realistic, even weekends may be limited due to this either because they need to spend time with the family or have chores around the house.

I addressed this in a slightly different context in the Q&A on Lifting Six Days Per Week for Mass Gains by offering the option of more frequent (but shorter) sessions during the work week with longer sessions on weekends.  This lets folks get in and out of the gym quickly during the week (to ensure that they continue to have a family to go home to) while training longer on the weekends.

Even with high-level athletes, who often train full time without a ‘real’ job, training schedules still typically revolve around the 7-day work week with Sunday a day off.  Why?  Is it just tradition, some left-over from early religious practices (where Sunday is typically a day of rest) or work scheduling.  Or is it simply because competitions typically are done on Saturday and Sunday in most sports and training needs to sequence with that to some degree.  Probably a combination of those.

An additional factor that often plays a role is facility availability.  Some gyms aren’t even open on Sundays (my weight room isn’t for example).  That constrains training to certain days of the week which makes rotating schedules unrealistic.  It’s no good to have a workout fall on a Sunday if you can’t train on that day in the first place.

The upshot of this is that training usually ends up being modified to fit the week rather than physiological needs dictating when training occurs.  That is, since the work week is constraining things, coaches simply modify loading (volume and intensity) to make recovery fit into the 7 day cycle.

So, if I know you have to train upper body on Monday and Thursday, I’ll modify the loading of both days so that training progresses the way I want.  With only two days rest between Monday and Thursday, I might cut things back a bit; with three days between Thursday and the following Monday, I might push it harder so that recovery takes a touch longer.   Or whatever.

But all of the above has more to do with practical issues, and less physiological ones which I suspect was the genesis of the original question. The body and the adaptations that occur with training don’t care that it’s Sunday and your gym is closed, or that religion dictates that it’s a day of rest.  What ‘must’ be done due to the realities of the real-world have little to do with what ’should’ be done from a physiological standpoint.  It’s simply that you can’t consider the one without dealing with the other.  Setting up training schedules is always an exercise in compromises and this is one of the big ones.

But let’s assume that someone has the life flexibility (and it’s worth noting that bodybuilders have rarely been constrained by the ’standard’ approaches of other training systems) to train any day they want for as long as needed, the gyms are open, and nothing is limiting them from doing what the person asking the question proposed.

That is to train 2 days in a row and then take 2 days completely off before hitting the cycle again so that there are exactly 4 days training between every workout (with the workout days rotating through the week since we’re on an 8 week cycle) rather than having 2 days of rest and then 3 days of rest or what have you.  Is that better, worse, or no different?

And the answer is still…it depends.

But now it depends more on the individual trainee since we’ve eliminated the real-world type obstacles that so often get in the way.  Some trainees have no problem going hard and heavy on back to back training days.  For whatever reason, fatigue from a hard Monday workout doesn’t limit them in any fashion on Tuesday.  They will have no problems with the proposed sequencing.  They can train hard Monday, train hard Tuesday, take Wednesday and Thursday off, train hard Friday/Saturday, take Sunday/Monday off, repeat until huge or whatever.

But that’s simply not true for everyone.  For some trainees, a hard Monday workout leaves them flat and fatigued on Tuesday and they can’t get jack squat done in the gym.  They need a full day off between each workout and working out every other day (even across an 8 day cycle) is a better choice.  Of course, that type of trainee has real problems with training 4 days per week on a 7 day schedule because at least one set of workouts has to come back to back (e.g. Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Saturday or whatever).

The type of training being performed also impacts on this.  Very heavy low rep training is often more fatiguing (generally neurally more than muscularly) and the second type of athlete will often be ‘blown’ from a heavy workout (legs moreso than upper body) and need a full day off before they can go really heavy again.   Trying to squat heavy on Monday and bench heavy on Tuesday just goes nowhere.

Of course, there are ways around that too.  Alternating heavy and lighter workout can still allow two training days in a row before complete days off are taken.  The lighter second day might be speed work of some sort or even higher repetition ‘bodybuilding’ type training (this often helps the second type of athlete recover from the heavier day).   Even for pure ’strength’ athletes, lower intensities (e.g. 70-75% of max rather than 80-85% of max) is often doable on the second day even with fatigue.

I’d note that more moderate intensity bodybuilding training doesn’t tend to be quite the problem in this regards even for the second type of trainee.  Unless they really grind themselves to failure and beyond with the Monday workout, they can usually come back and hit more bodybuilding type training on a Tuesday.  But the intensities have to be moderate, volumes kept in check and failure pretty much steadfastly avoided.

So the answer to the original question is simply it depends.  Certainly it can work for certain athletes under certain situations.  In my experience, most don’t have the life flexibility to make it work and individual physiology will also impact on whether or not it’s workable.

Answer: This is another common situation that comes up, people who work full time jobs and who have families that they don’t want to completely neglect often can’t spend a lot of time in the gym on a day to day basis.  Traditional types of workouts which take 1-1.5 hours per workout simply aren’t realistic (especially during the week), between travel, changing clothes, etc. their entire evening after work is completely taken up.

In that situation there are actually a few different solutions.  One that I have used is to use multiple shorter workouts during the week (using a more traditional split routine) and then longer workouts on the weekends when time is usually a bit more abundant.  I discussed this option in the chart in Training Frequency for Mass Gains.

However, even that can be problematic as folks with families have other obligations that keep them out of the gym or they simply can’t spend extended periods in the weight room even on the weekends.  So I’ll continue answering your question from the standpoint of needing to do 5-6 short workouts and how best to sequence it.

Let me note ahead of time that training with this high frequency can cause problems and there are a number of pitfalls that need to be avoided.  Of course general overtraining is one of them but, more specifically is the issue of connective tissue and general overuse injuries.  Something that is so often forgotten is that connective tissues are the slowest tissue to adapt in the body: if you’re hammering things too often during the week, often trauma accumulates and causes problems.  Even if your muscles are recovering, if your joints or tendons/ligaments aren’t, eventually you’re going to get injured.

In this context what I absolutely would not do with a high training frequency would be to train full body at each workout.  Certainly, some Olympic lifters do this although their definition of ‘full-body’ is a bit different than what individuals seeking muscle mass gains would be doing.

As well, they take years to work up to that level of training and there is typically a lot of intensity cycling going on (with heavier and lighter days).  In the systems where guys are going to max all the time, well…there’s a reason that those countries can’t pass drug tests anymore.  As well, the nature of the Olympic lifts is different in terms of how they hit the body relative to more traditional bodybuilding movements.

So that leaves us with some type of split routine.  As I noted in Training Frequency for Mass Gains I’m certainly no fan of traditional bodybuilding splits where you hit every muscle group once/week.  In my experience, this simply doesn’t generate ideal growth for most natural bodybuilders.  So those types of classic splits aren’t what I’d do either.

One potential option would be to use some type of three way split routine (where the body is split into three ‘parts’) and rotate through it across the 6 days/week. This provides a nice frequency of twice/week for each body part and keeps the workouts short.

However,  this takes very careful scheduling due to overlap and the potential for the shoulder girdle to get worked too hard.  Let me explain with the table below (Sunday is assumed to be a day off) by looking at two different three-way splits.

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Split 1 would be a pretty common way of approaching things since chest and back can be alternate supersetted to save time.  Basically this is just the old Charles Poliquin split crammed into 6 days/week.  But there is a problem which is this: fatigue from delts/arms on Wednesday is likely to really screw up chest/back on Thursday.  If you go hard at all on that Wednesday workout, you simply won’t be able to use much weight on the following day.   As well, shoulder girdle is getting hit pretty hard four days/week which can cause problems in the long-term.  So that is kind of out.

Split 2 is a basic push/legs/pull split and avoids the problems from Split 1 of workouts interfering with one another.  However, the shoulder girdle is still being worked 4 times per week on both the chest/delt/tri and back/bis day.  While this can work for some, there is the potential for overuse issues and/or shoulder problems.  Of the two, this would be my first choice but just watch out for problems with overuse in the shoulder girdle.

If you don’t go with one of the above, that basically leaves with what would be my generally preferred choice which is a stock-standard upper/lower split routine training the full upper body one one day and the full lower body (with abs) on the second day.  This moves direct training for the shoulder girdle from four times per week to three (compared to Split 2 above) and movements can still be alternate supersetted to save time.

As well, since compound chest and back movements work the shoudlers and arms, this allows volume there to be reduced further to save time.  Additionally, due to overlap, warmup for movements later in the workout is usually minimal. If you’ve done heavy flat or incline bench you shouldn’t need much warmup for delts or triceps later on.   This saves further training time.

Of course, volume for each workout will also be low, basically you’re distributing the total weekly volume across the workouts so volume at each workout would be far lower.   After warm-ups, a handful at most of work sets would be done.  You might do 3-4 total work sets for large muscle groups and 1-3 for smaller.  You could either do all of the work sets for a single exercise or distribute them further across two movements (which is what I did in the example workouts below).

A fairly ‘generic’ upper and lower body workout are shown in the table below.  You can make appropriate exercise substitutions as desired or needed.  While I’m not generally a massive fan of exercise variation within a given training cycle (change them every 6-8 weeks, not every few workouts), different workouts of the week could be used to do different movements with this type of frequency.

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Exercises could be alternate supersetted if the gym will allow it (e.g. do one set flat bench, rest 1 minute, do one set cable row, rest 1 minute) but folks who train in the evenings when the gym is busy may not have this option.  With warm-ups, that might take 40-45 minutes in and out the door.  I’d note that the above looks quite a bit like Bryan Haycock’s Hypertrophy Specific Training (he uses more repetition variation across the cycle than I do).  I’d also note that if scheduling allowed it, volume could be increased slightly on the Friday/Saturday workouts due to the extra day of recovery on Sunday.

Finally, I’d note that intensity will need to be controlled with this type of scheme.  As I discussed in Training Frequency for Mass Gains one potential ‘negative’ of higher frequency training is that often intensity has to be reduced somewhat to compensate for the increased frequency.

In general, during the Mon-Thursday workouts, I’d suggest stopping work sets 1-2 reps short of failure.  As with the volume comment above, on the Friday/Saturday workouts, you could push a bit harder (either raising weights or pushing closer to failure) due to the extra day of recovery on Sunday.

Another option would be to use a more formal type of weekly intensity cycling like a Heavy/Light/Medium system of some sort (I’d probably go Medium on Monday/Tuesday, Light on Wednesday/Thursday and Heavy on Friday/Saturday); that’s really beyond the scope of this article and, my experience is that bodybuilder types don’t usually like that kind of training because they hate light days.

As well, you would still want to cycle intensity over the length of the cycle.  So the first 2 weeks would be relatively low intensity and then spend 4-6 weeks pushing a bit harder trying to hit some poundage PR’s at some point in the cycle.  You might simply attempt to add some weight to the bar every Monday/Tuesday workout (or every Friday/Saturday) and then maintain it for the next couple of workouts before bumping it again.

Every 4-6 weeks, depending on how the individual was recovering, I’d probably drop the Friday/Saturday workouts completely to give a sort of ‘unloading’ phase with 4 full days off.  This will help avoid problems both with overuse type injuries as well as cumulative fatigue.