Category: Training

This is a little bit of an odd article.  I’m going to start by discussing low load (LL) training then do a truncated ‘research review’ and use that to go into what amounts to an opinion piece about current research studies on weight training.

What is Low Load Training?

LL training is a relatively ‘new’ (by which I mean in the last 5-10 years) type of training it. During low load training, subjects lift a fairly light weight , typically in the realm of 30% of 1 repetition maximum to failure.  Various studies in varying populations have shown that this generates the same muscular growth as heavy load (HL) training at 80% of max. … Keep Reading

While the reality is that most people generally want to exercise to improve their body composition (or more bluntly “to look better naked”), this is not all the case.  In some cases, individuals just want to know how much and what type of exercise they should to do develop general health and fitness.

General Guidelines for Health and Fitness

And the answer is not much.  The basic American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) guidelines are going to be more than sufficient. These guidelines target the primary factors in basic health and fitness.  These are cardiovascular health, muscular strength, flexibility and balance.  I’ll only address the first two.

I’ve presented the general ACSM guidelines below and you can see that they include flexibility and balance  Honestly, full range resistance training tends to do most of the work to improve both. … Keep Reading

So I’ve already covered a lot of information in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series on muscular tension and believe it or not I’ll wrap up here.  Let me try to rapidly summarize the previous 2 parts (rapidly meaning like 6 paragraphs).

High mechanical tension for some number of “effective” contractions is the primary initiating factor in muscle growth; this occurs via the FAK/PA/mTOR pathway.  Activating this pathway requires that muscle fibers are first recruited and then exposed to enough high tension contractions (the amount needed per set, per workout or per week are currently unknown).

You can get to a number of high tension “effective” contractions in numerous ways: heavy weights (80-85% or heavier) for lower repetitions or moderate/lighter weights for moderate/high repetitions so long as the sets are near or to failure.

We can’t measure mechanical tension easily in the gym (yet) and need some objective marker we can use. … Keep Reading

Ok, so in Muscular Tension Part 1 I looked at the topic of muscular tension in overview.  What it is, what it represents and why it is important (i.e. as the primary initiator) in terms of muscle growth.  This had to do with high-tension skeletal muscle contractions activating mechanosensors which turned on the protein synthesis pathway via mTOR .

This requires two factors which are recruiting the fibers and then exposing them to some (currently uknown) number of contractions to activate the mTOR pathway via mechanosensors.

This can occur in a number of ways including lifting heavy weights (80-85% of max or higher) which recruit all fibers from repetition 1 or by lifting lighter weights near or to failure.  Both may end up achieving the same or a similar number of high tension repetitions.

All roads lead to tension.  It’s just a matter of how you get there.

I ended up by addressing the idea of “effective reps” the number of reps of a set or workout that occur under full recruitment and activate mTOR. … Keep Reading

While I’m waiting until I get the energy to get aggro again, and I will, I wanted to write about a topic I’ve been meaning to address for a while,  a detailed look at the idea of muscular tension.  What it is, why it’s important, how we can or cannot measure it and what confusion comes out of the concept in a practical sense.

I’ve sure as hell typed up most of this in my Facebook group enough times to make this easier for me: I can type it up once and just link to it in the future.  Honestly, that’s why I write most of what I write.  Write it once, link to it forever after.  Eventually, maybe put it in a book.  This series will certainly be long enough.

As well, this article is going to act as a background piece for some stuff I intend to write about going forwards regarding training, muscle growth and what the actual PRIMARY driver on growth is (hint: it’s still not volume). … Keep Reading