Year: 2007

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The Importance of Rest

One factor that is often forgotten by hard training athletes is the importance of rest.  Rest for the body, the mind, and most importantly the joints.  If you go into your gym and look, you’ll probably see lots of people training with knee braces, wrist wraps, elbow braces, etc. who refuse to take time off.  Alternately you may see folks who are just there going through the motions.  If you think about it, you might be one of those people.

The Importance of Rest Days

I want you to ask yourself how many days off you take each week. And when I say off I mean off. Not “I do an hour of aerobics but that doesn’t count.” I mean off. One, maybe two. Probably not that many. How many people (the ones wearing the various braces) are in there every day, sometimes more than once? Either they are doing weights multiple times per week and cardio on the off days or they are doing both each day.… Keep Reading

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Calories, Nutrients, or Food?

In this article, I want to look at a somewhat fundamental aspect of general nutrition; that is the distinction between calorie intake, nutrient intake, and food intake. This is relevant for the simple fact that the average person doesn’t think in terms of calorie intake, and they probably don’t think in terms of nutrient intake. Rather, they think in terms of eating food; thus it’s important to examine the distinction between those three “categories” of intake.

Calories

Ignoring the fringe that claims that the calorie counting theory is invalid or doesn’t work, most diet books deal predominantly with calories (everywhere but the US, joules are used). They’ll discuss caloric intake (from food) or caloric expenditure (from activity) or compare the two. In discussing what is happening to the body (weight gain or loss), they’ll compare the energy balance equation which compares calories in to calories out.

So what, you ask, is a calorie?… Keep Reading

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The Impact of Bodyfat Percentage on Body Composition Changes

For many years (decades?) a common suggestion was that one should attempt to gain some muscle mass mass (through resistance training and possibly overeating) prior to beginning a diet. Well meaning individuals would suggest you spent 3-4 weeks or more training hard and eating well to gain muscle mass. The goal was to raise metabolism so that the diet would go more effectively.

In that current data indicates that each pound of muscle might burn an additional 6 calories (as opposed to older values of 25-40 cal/lb or even higher), this argument is no longer tenable; to significantly affect metabolic rate would require a monstrous gain of muscle mass, far more than you could gain in 3-4 weeks.

Even if you gained 10 pounds of muscle, that would only add up to an additional 60 calories burned per day, hardly enough to worry about and certainly not enough to affect the following diet.… Keep Reading

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Periodization for Bodybuilders: Part 3

Now that you’ve read Periodization for Bodybuilders: Part 2 and understand the different training zones, I want to start to apply all of this information with explanations of how to set up workouts and training programs.

Training Zone Recap

I finished the second part by giving some volume recommendations for both training and maintaining loads for the different components (4 of them) of training: pure strength, intensive bodybuilding, extensive bodybuilding and really extensive bodybuilding. Without recapping that entire article, I’ll simply summarize the loading parameters for each below.

Summary of Loading Parameters for Different Training Types

Notes: Tempo reads X/Y/Z where X is the lowering speed, Y is the pause, Z is the lifting speed. Some coaches add fourth value for the pause at the top. Rest intervals are in minutes, set length is in seconds. The really extensive zone should be timed for 1 to 2 minutes (up to maybe 3 if you’re a masochist) without focusing so much on reps.… Keep Reading

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Periodization for Bodybuilders: Part 2

In Periodization for Bodybuilders: Part 1, I discussed some basic periodization concepts and mentioned some of the major writers on the topic. Yet, somehow I managed to miss one of the primary proponents of having bodybuilders perform different types of training to maximize appearance: Fred Hatfield.

With his concept of Holistic Training, Dr. Squat may have been one of the first to formalize the idea of training different ‘components’ of a muscle to maximize/optimize growth and appearance. So let’s look at that briefly.

Fred Hatfield’s Holistic Training

In his original holistic training schema, Dr. Hatfield proposed using three different intensity/rep ranges to optimally stimulate a muscle. This included sets of 4-6 done explosively, sets of 12-15 done rhythmically and sets of 40 done fairly slowly. Different types of workouts were done in a fairly complicated cycling pattern (Hatfield called this ABC training) and, frankly, keeping everything straight was a huge pain in the ass.… Keep Reading