Priscilla Xu

Reading Time 9 Minutes

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1. What are the principles of strength training?
2. What are the variables you can modify for progressive overload? 
3. How to put the Exercise Modified Variable in action during Strength Training?
4. How to recover and plan your frequency when training for strength and hypertrophy?
5. How to apply Modifiable Variables in Weight Training for Hypertrophy?
6. How to activate your muscles?
7. How to breathe in weight training? 
8. How to train your Endurance?
9. Exercise, Eating, and Drinking Water? 

What are the principles of strength training?

• Progressive Overload Principle: You increase the workload of your workout sessions.
  • Adaptation is a by-product of stress when you push the system. 
  • Do not expect much improvement if you do the same workout over time. 
• What can you improve with exercising?
  • Technical Motor skill: To train yourself to move your body exactly the way you want.
    • Skills include anything from running techniques and posture to swinging a tennis racket. 
  • Speed: moving as fast as possible. Speed is very low intensity, very low rep range, very high rest.
  •  Power = function of strength and speed
  • Strength (is intensity in scientific terms)
  • Hypertrophy: Physical size increase of your muscles. 
  •  Muscular Endurance: How many pushes up can you do in one minute. 
• Cardiovascular system
  • Anaerobic power: ability to produce a lot of work over 30 seconds to 1 minute. 
  • VO2 max: The same thing as above, but the time span is longer (3-12 minutes) 
  • Long Endurance: How long can you work? 30 minutes +
• Exercise Choice
  • Exercise choice means that: If you do this, you will get a different result. 
  • Exercise itself does not determine the adaptation.
    • Application of the exercise is more important for strength training. Sets, reps, range?
  • You can ask yourself
    • What muscle groups do you want to more?
    • If you don’t have a coach, you can do an exercise that has less technical to it. 

What are the variables you can modify for progressive overload? 

• There are 9 variables you can modify to increase “stress” for your body during exercise.
  • A more straightforward phrase is what modifiable variables mean. If you do X, you will get Y. 
• Exercise Choice 
  • Exercise choice itself does not determine the adaptation. 
  • If you do not execute the exercise correctly, you will not get what you want. 
  • The application of the exercise is what matters. 
• Intensity: Not perceived effort. It is measured in 1 rep max or VO2 Max. 
  • One reap max: the maximum weight you can lift with one repetition with the correct technique of the exercise choice. 
  • VO2 Max: the amount of oxygen that your body uses when exercising as much as possible. 
  • Volume: How many reps or set you are doing. 
  • Rest Intervals: How long you rest between each set. 
• Progression: Increase by reps, weight, the complexity of the exercise, or frequency?
  • Beginners need to learn correct movement patterns and slowly develop tissue tolerance. 
• Frequency: How often do you train

“In general, soreness is a terrible proxy for exercise quality. It’s a bad way to estimate whether it was a good or bad workout.”

Dr.Galpin

• Your exercise soreness post-workout should be around 3 out of 10. 
  • You can train a sore muscle. 
  • If you go too complex for a workout, you can decrease your overall training frequency, which means you train less and slows you down towards your goals. 
  • Depending on what you want out of exercising, you can start to run those variables in your mind and get the result you want. 

How to put the Exercise Modified Variable in action during Strength Training?

• All joints go through a full range of motion throughout the week is how you can maintain good form. 
  • You should have a good form of exercise. 
  • Your body should be in a neutral position, especially the spine. 
  • Choose an exercise you are comfortable executing.
•  Push vs. Pull exercise. 
  • A squat is a push because you push yourself away from the floor. 
  • The deadlift is a pull because you pick a weight off the ground. 
• For a single workout session, select
  • 1. Upper body push,
    • Push up 
  • 2. Upper body pull
    • Pull up 
  • 3. Lower body hinge exercise
    • Deadlifts, hamstring curl, glute bridges, Good mornings 
  • 4. Lower body press.
    • Squats, lunges, side squats 
• Henneman’s size principle: the relationship between motor neurons and muscle fiber recruitment. More force exerted, more motor units recruited.
  • When you look at the fiber’s cross-section, you will see a mixture of Type I, Type II, and Type IIX muscle fibers. 
  • If you want to pick up a pen, your brain will recruit your “lazy” muscle fibers. They are more resistant to fatigue. In exercise physiology, they are called Type I fibers. 
  • If you lift something very heavy, the brain will recruit your strong muscle fibers. Those are Type IIa and Type IIX fibers, but they fatigue faster. 
• Injuries happen when force is exerted on the part of the body where it cannot handle that much force. 
• If you want strength, you need to produce more force with your muscles. Why? Because of the SAID Principle. 
• Specific adaptation to imposed demand (SAID): the result of your workout is detailed to the activity or demand you impose.
  • If you want to get strong, you want to impose strength (intensity), not repetitions (volume) 
  • Intensity (kg) drives strength, not volume (reps). 
  • Good reps of strength training are only 5 reps or less in one set. 
• Classic training schedule for strength: you won’t build up the intensity of the weights.
  • Strength training target: twice per week for each muscle group. 
  • 1. 10 reps at 50% of one-rep max 
  • 2. 8 reps at 60% one rep max 
  • 3. 5 reps at 75% one rep max 
  • 4. 2-3 working sets at 85% 
• Rest and Supersets 
  • You need long rest times between sets: 2-4 minutes. 
  • However, you can do something called supersets. 
  • Supersets: training another group of muscles while the other group recovers. 
  • You will decrease the strength training benefits using supersets (just by a slight amount), but an average person probably will want to end their workout earlier. 

How to recover and plan your frequency when training for strength and hypertrophy?

• The answer is it depends on what your outcome is. 
• You can blunt the response of growth if you don’t rest enough and continue to train again.
• With training, changes happen at all levels of the biomechanics, neuro-pathways, muscle contraction, and connective tissue.
  • You can change things with connective tissue (tendon), pathways, and muscle but not increase your muscle size (hypertrophy).
• You want to rest 2-3 days for hypertrophy training because muscular protein synthesis and growth take time.

How to apply Modifiable Variables in Weight Training for Hypertrophy?

•  Hypertrophy is driven by volume. 
• Hypertrophy is idiot-proof because
  • The target of the hypertrophy workout is 5-30 reps, 10 sets for each muscle group every week. 
  • You need to take your muscles to failure. 
  • If you recover slower, recover less frequently. 
• You will have hypertrophic effects as long as you get the total volume. 
  • Other drivers of hypertrophy: metabolic stress, mechanical tension, and muscular damage. 
  • If you train less than the total volume in one week, you won’t hit your quota. 
• Should you train to fail for hypertrophy?
  • The answer is both. 
  • Don’t go to extreme failure. You have to get close.
• Look for three things in your workout.
  • Did the glute contract 
  • Did you feel a big pump?
  • The next day, did you feel soreness?
  • Did you burn when you are working out? 
  • 3/10 is an excellent place to be. 
  • If you feel nothing, other muscle groups can be involved. 
• The 3-5 training concept for speed, power, and strength: 3-5 exercises, 3-5 reps, 3-5 sets, take 3-5 minutes rest, train 3-5 days per week

How to activate your muscles?

• This is the mind-muscle connection. This means that you are thinking about the muscle and contracting it harder.
  • Someone can touch the muscle you are training, and you can pay more attention to it. 
• The intent of movement is more important than the actual movement velocity.
• Thoughts and Mental effort matter!
  • If you are moving at the same velocity, whiteout having the intent to move, the same velocity will result in a different outcome when the intent is other. 
• You cannot use your triceps to guide the movement when you are doing a row. You should start squeezing your shoulder blades, and you will feel it more in your back.
  • Exercise’s execution (technique and form) leads to adaptation, not the exercise you select. 
• You want to activate your core. Your core is a cylinder. 
  • Putting you on a belt can help you activate your back muscles. The belt is “touching” your back. 

How to breathe in weight training? 

• During the workout, you breathe out when you are pushing away. And breath in when you lower the weight. 
• You want to maintain intra abdominal pressure.
• What to do breath in between sets, down-regulation, or calming strategy.
  • Athletes have a breathing strategy. 
  • One inhale to two exhale ratio. 
• 5-minute down-regulation routine. You can recover faster, so do not look at your phone.
  • There can be a 4-5 hour post-workout drop in energy. That is because of the adrenaline. 
  • You need an internal signal to tell your body that you are safe. 

How to train your Endurance?

• Eccentric landing means more muscle damage. Eccentric landing is something like running. 
• Concentric exercises are biking, swimming, pushing a sled, or walking on a hill. 
• Pick the endurance workout that you enjoy the most because you will do it for a long time. 
• Zone 2 cardio is training above the easy zone. There are 5 zones of cardio in total.
  • Focus on nose breathing when you are doing zone 2 cardio. 
• Endurance training and combining it with strength?
  • No, most people will not have the interference effect. You can train in zone 2 cardio every day when training for strength and muscle size. 
  • If someone is an endurance athlete, adding muscle training can benefit them. 
• You want to get to maximum heart rate once a week.
  • 220- your age = your max heart rate. 
  • Stress increases adaptation. But warm-up for those intense sprints. 
  • Get your phone calls moving. Move when you are on phone calls. 
  • It would be best if you had a lot of conversational cardio (meaning you can talk when you workout) to be beneficial.
  • Interval training: Warm up to 80% heart rate for 2 minutes and then rest for 2 minutes. Do this for 4-12 minutes.

Exercise, Eating, and Drinking Water? 

• Workout out can do both fed and not fed. 
• Water is required for all living things. 
• Dehydration and high sodium in the body are harmful. 
• Half your body weight in ounces is the amount of water you should drink per day. 
• If you open water during a workout, you want to drink 125% of that amount. 
• Galpin equation: begin exercising with hydration and reasonable amounts of electrolytes.
  • Every 15 minutes, drink water. 
  • The amount of water (in ounces) is calculated by your body weight divide by 30.