Learn the three stages of effective strength training. Jim Karas, the bestselling author of The Cardio-Free Diet, demonstrates using a classic bicep curl as an example.
Stage 1: Working Repetitions
When you begin a strength training exercise with either free weights, an SPRI exercise tube, or a strength-training machine, as soon as you curl your fist upward, you are placing some force against your bicep muscle. The first stage of any strength training exercise is called working repetitions.
During working repetitions, you’ve just started the movement, and it doesn’t feel very hard. You are maintaining good form and slowly working a full range of motion, which means fully contracting the muscle on the way up and slowly lowering it all the way down. Always work the full range of motion, as that is what produces long, lean, calorie-burning muscles. Your working repetitions should make up five to six repetitions of a ten-rep set.
NOTE: If you are approaching the eighth, ninth, or tenth rep and you are still comfortable in working repetitions, then the weight/tension is too light. This is the most common mistake and the reason most people — especially women — miss out on all the benefits of the strength training.
Stage 2: Fatigue
Then, when you start to feel the muscle straining and each repetition is getting harder, you begin to enter stage two, fatigue. Your bicep muscle is getting tired. You may feel the need to cheat a little, but you fight to maintain good form, which you should always strive to achieve. The fatigue stage should last three to four repetitions, or reps six or seven to eight or nine of a ten-rep set.
Stage 3: Failure
Suddenly you can no longer move the weight, band, or machine. You just hit the final and most important stage: failure. When you hit muscular failure, you are no longer physically capable of performing even one more rep. This should happen on rep nine or ten of a planned ten-rep set.
Failure is a concept that most people understand, but very few actually implement in their workouts. This is a shame because without it, you are truly wasting your time. I want you to always apply this phrase to your strength-training exercise program:
You Succeed When You Fail
When you hit failure, you produce tiny tears in your muscles. Don’t be frightened by that thought. Creating little tears is a good thing, because, over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, the bicep muscle is going to repair those tears. But before starting the repair process, the brain says to the bicep muscle, “Hey, the next time you are asked to perform that bicep curl, I want you to get better at it. So, when you are down there repairing the little tears, go ahead and add just a little more lean muscle tissue so that you don’t fail next time.” Failure during strength training is the only thing that builds lean muscle tissue. Soon thereafter, you will have to increase the resistance so that you continue to fail, which is called progression.
With cardio, we never, ever hit muscular failure. Your muscles may get tired, but they are never pushed to the point where they are required to grow, and you never get the benefit of maintaining and building lean muscle tissue. The same thing happens when we stick with five-pound weights and never even attempt failure or progression. If you’ve had the same dusty set of five- and eight-pound dumbbells since the Reagan era, you know what I’m talking about. You don’t start at a heavy weight, as that would lead to a potential injury. You should start out with a comfortable weight and then build up over time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jim Karas, author of The Cardio-Free Diet (Copyright © 2007 by Jim Karas), Named one of the best personal trainers in the country by Allure magazine, Jim Karas is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Business Plan for the Body and Flip the Switch. He is a graduate of the Wharton School and the founder of Jim Karas Personal Training, LLC, which has trained more than five hundred clients in Chicago and New York.
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I really enjoyed this article, Jim. Well written. The key is to build gradually and not rush it.