Are you an NFL football player? A Navy Seal? A top-ranked mixed martial arts fighter? No? None of these? Then why would you do their workouts?
Professional football players, top ranked MMA fighters and Navy SEALs are not like you and me. They are far superior to us in athletic abilities, durability and how quickly they can recover from exercise. Training like them is a recipe for frustration and eventual failure but people try to all the time.
Why do the workouts of professional athletes fail for mere mortals? Because the workouts of the pros are designed for their sport and--this is the key--they are a workout for that pro athlete not normal people like you and I.
If a workout is not customized for your genetic predispositions and your resolution you will not achieve your goals and likely quit in frustration.
In the first installment of this series Nita and I advised people to think about picking the right fitness resolution. In the second article Nita said 80% of achieving your goals is in your head. Finding and customizing a workout that is perfect for you and your goals is a matter of some simple math and logic.
Fit vs. Firm
“I want to be in shape, I want to be healthy, blah, blah, blah. It gets so annoying that people cannot be honest,” said Lisa Krog, an elite personal trainer who specializes in training men and women physique athletes.
Too many people too often confuse being in shape with looking good. A person can be very in-shape, in terms of how much and how hard they can exercise, resting heart rate, endurance but still look flabby and be over-fat.
This results in people joining a gym, getting a ’starter’ package with a trainer, telling the trainer they want to be ‘in-shape’ and doing an intense workout that improves their cardio-vascular conditioning and muscle endurance but has little to no effect on their appearance.
This situation can be cured with the trainer asking a few questions or a little self examination on the part of the resolutioneer (what do you really want?)
What is more pernicious is the large segment of resolutioneers who really want to look better and improve their appearance but won’t admit it.
“Self deception is why so many people fail. They insist they are exercising for function, but what they really want is form and then they fail,” Lisa said.
Lisa Krog and her husband Glen run a high-end personal training gym in Johannesburg, South Africa. Before opening their business Glen was in the South African military and Lisa was an accountant. This has lead to a very focused, direct, quantifiable program for their clients.
It invariably works--but only if the client knows what they want, states it directly then works toward that goal.
“I’ve had clients complain that they weren’t losing any body fat and didn’t look any better. I then go back to their goal statement and show them that nowhere, at no time, did they state a goal that involved lower body fat, or looking better in a bikini,” Lisa said. “Then I have to ask them point blank: Do you want to be ‘fit’ or look hot?”
The fit vs. firm body conundrum is one that baffles many novice exercisers. It would seem that frequent bouts of intense exercise should lead to a fat loss and a better physique, but that is not true.
The reverse can also throw a person off--a firm body does not mean a person is actually very fit in terms of cardio vascular endurance. This is especially true in people who are genetically predisposed to being lean and muscular. People who are not so genetically blessed who have a lean muscular physique tend to be way above average in terms of fitness.
The idea of fit equating to firm is akin to the error of an average person doing the workout of a professional athlete or Navy SEAL. Fit would logically seem to lead to firm, but Lisa says that very few people can change their physique with a workout geared toward cardio vascular conditioning.
“If you want to be fit, power walk or go jogging,” Lisa says, “if you want to be firm, lift weights.” And be honest and open that your goal is to be firm and look better and actually think about what you want your workout to accomplish.
WHY SOME WORKOUTS NEVER WORK
Several times a year I find myself working out large corporate chain gyms. I treat these as an opportunity to watch personal trainers. Invariably I see overweight men and women being thrashed in the most bizarre ways imaginable by the corporate trainers.
Then, over in the free weight area, I see men and women doing conventional weight lifting. There are also many who are slaving away on cardio machines.
Some of the weightlifters look good, some do not. Some of the cardio crew look good, some do not. Invariably there are more weightlifters than cardio types with firm bodies. The poor souls getting thrashed by the trainers look the worst.
But what is more important is to understand that those who look good have found the workout that works for them.
A work out is not an end in and of itself, it is the means to the end. To reach the end you want, the resolution to be achieved, you have to use the proper means--a workout that works specifically for you. Not the workout of professional athlete, not something you saw in a magazine or on TV--you need to find the workout that is specifically for you.
Take a look at the bell curve below.
It is amazing how much of human physiology conforms to the standard distribution of the bell curve--in fact the curve was created to analyze human physical and biological traits like hypertrophy, the ability to increase muscle tone and size.
In the curve above each dot represents a person. The ones on the left have less ability to increase muscle tone and size. The ones on the far right are naturally muscular and can build muscle doing any workout.
The people in the middle though are not all the same, their ability to recover from a workout, for the muscle fibers to repair is a little less or more by degrees.
The standard advice given to novice exercisers falls somewhere in the middle and does not address the degrees of difference. Your workout has to match where your genetic predispositions or it will not work.
The people on the right can do insane, long hard workouts thrashing their muscles because their bodies repair quickly. If a person on the left or middle does that type of workout they will make very little progress.
Professional football players and Navy SEALS tend to be on the far right side of curve.
The people who are successful in getting a firm body have found the workout system that works for them through trial and error, dumb luck or they are on the right side of the curve.
The people who never make progress are doing a workout that does not match where they are in the bell curve--they are working out too much or too little or too often.
All workouts are good--but they only work if they match your genetic predisposition. A workout plan that doesn’t work is any that does not match your genetics. To find the workout plan that works for your genetics you need to understand what a workout plan is--just a means to and end--made up of three basic elements.
ELEMENTS OF A WORKOUT PLAN
When people resolve to begin exercising or achieve a specific fitness goal they err in thinking about workouts, the individual exercises and activities but rarely think about a workout plan.
I am constantly being asked “what exercises should I do?” But the individual exercises, as long as a person is exercising every muscle group frequently, are not important. (For a quick guide to muscle groups and correlating exercises, stop by fitnessdirectives.com.)
What is more important, for finding a finding the workout that works for you is understanding the three elements of a workout plan--Volume, Intensity and Frequency.
Volume is how many exercises, sets and repetitions you do. Intensity is how hard you are working. Frequency is how often you work a muscle group.
Volume and Intensity work together as it is the exercises themselves that cause micro-trauma to the muscle fibers. The repair of the micro-trauma is what leads to muscle tone and increased muscle size.
More volume generally equals more micro-trauma. Higher intensity also generally leads to more micro-trauma. One set of an exercise with heavy weight, to maximum failure can lead to more micro trauma than several sets with a lighter weight that do not end in complete failure.
What do I mean by maximum failure? I think it is easier to show than explain.
Three to five sets of biceps curls once a week with this level of intensity works well for me. In our book Fit for Combat, Nita and I recommend people start out with only two sets once a week at that level of intensity.
As illustrated in the bell curve chart, everyone is a little different. Some people get more results by doing less, some get more results from doing more.
After years of training competitive physique athletes Nita is has found that maximum failure training works best when the volume and frequency are dialed in.
Whenever you train with weights or machines you inflict micro-trauma on the muscles. These are itty bitty little pulls and tears on the muscle. Your body then repairs the micro-trauma making the muscle firmer and a little larger. The fancy word for this is muscular hypertrophy.
The time it takes to repair is different for everyone. Some people, like those on the right side of the curve, repair faster, some repair slower. If you work the muscle before it is fully repaired, you could actually lose muscle tone and size!
People who make progress in the gym do so because they are in their hypertrophy zone. Their workout plan has the volume and intensity that inflicts enough micro-trauma to stimulate muscle growth and tone and the right amount of frequency to repair properly.
Everyone’s optimal hypertrophy zone is a little different. Some people do better with less micro-trauma and working the muscle more frequently. Others get results with more micro-trauma and less frequent workouts.
When thinking about your workout plan, don’t just think about exercises think about volume, intensity and frequency. Finding the right mix of the three is not very complex it only requires a little math, a few measuring tools and a few minutes ever two weeks.
FINDING YOUR HYPERTROPHY ZONE
The hypertrophy zone is the combination of volume, intensity and frequency in a workout plan that allows you overload a muscle, inflict some mirco-trauma and be repaired before the next time the muscle is worked.
If your muscles are not fully repaired before you work them again, you are over training. If they are fully repaired then have to wait around a few days before they are worked again you are under training.
The simplest way to know whether or not you are in your hypertrophy zone is muscle strength. If you are able to lift heavier weights in the gym you are probably on the right track. But strength gains do not always correlate to appearance, they can be just like the fit versus firm conundrum.
A lot of a person’s strength has to do with myelin tissue, the sheath around nerves that allows for muscle memory. The more you do a motion or action, the better your muscles become at firing in sequence.
You can get stronger but not be building any muscle tone or size. People who are under or over training can also get stronger.
To find your hypertrophy zone you want to measure muscle. To measure muscle accurately you have to control for a few variables like fat and bone.
The best way to gauge muscle mass is with a full body DXA scan combined with hydrostatic body fat testing and a gas exchange measure of metabolic rate.
Or, you can use a cloth tape measure, body fat calipers and the mathematical constant of pi.
With a pair of spring loaded body fat calipers, pinch the fat on the front of your bicep. This will give you a measure of the fat thickness in millimeters. Next, measure the circumference of your flexed bicep in millimeters.
For me, right now this is:
Fat thickness 2mm
Circumference 452mm
Divide the circumference by Pi (3.14) to get the diameter: 452/3.14=143.94mm
This is the diameter of your bicep.
Subtract the fat thickness which for me is 2mm: 143.94-2=141.94
I refer to this number as the Lean Tissue Diameter.
Now, we all know the bicep is not a circle, it is an odd oval or bean shaped on many people, but this measure, as rough as it is, can keep you on track to determine if you are in your hypertrophy zone.
The changes in lean tissue diameter are slow. Do not expect immediate results. But if your lean tissue diameter is decreasing, you are doing something wrong. If it is increasing you are doing something right.
If it stays the same, you need to adjust the volume, intensity or frequency of your program slightly. Flip a coin and either increase or decrease the volume or frequency or intensity. Adjust only one of them so you can dial in on what works with precision. If you adjust more than one, you will know it was the combination that failed or succeeded, which is fine, but the more precise the better the better the dialing in over the long-term.
The people who have successfully reshaped their bodies may not have used a precise system like this. Many people, by dumb luck, find a workout that works for them. And the genetically blessed--well, everything works for them. For the rest of us, a systematic approach works best.
The best way to find the workout that works for you is to keep track of measures like lean tissue diameter and make minor adjustments to volume, intensity or frequency until you have dialed in on the workout program that is perfect for you to achieve your goals.
In the next installment of the series, Nita and I will explain why diets don’t work and how you can become a successful anti-dieter.
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