Training principles and laws

Contrary to what most people believe, weight training is not about just lifting and lowering the weight; anyone who has spent some serious time in the gym are going to tell you that. Okay, maybe initially it is, when we are new and are not accustomed to the additional resistance to the normal movements, but as we spend some good amount of time in the gym, we realize that weight training and its impact on the physique has its own patterns, its own ins and outs, to the point that some of them can be, and have been made into generic training principles, principles that will apply to anyone who is training with weights.

The reason behind such predictable nature of weight training is simple: Training with weights is a means to force the body to adapt, and there are patterns to adaptation. If we do a certain movement, the body will always adapt in a certain way. There are no two ways to it.

In this article, I will be explaining such training principles in as much detail as I can. I am sure that some of them will sound familiar, just because of their extremely generic nature. Have a read, and let me know your opinions in the comments.

Training to failure

Training to failure means continuing to perform the reps in a set until you are unable to churn out a single more rep without stopping to take some rest.

Training to the point of failure is of utmost importance to stimulate new growth in the muscle fibres. As I will be explaining in the next point of progressive resistance, muscles adapt to an overload. Now if the muscles have the strength to perform 7 reps with a particular weight with ease and you do those 7 reps every time, they won’t grow; they don’t need to grow because what they have is sufficient to lift the weight for 7 reps.

But if you go beyond that, do 9 reps and take the muscle to complete failure, those extra reps will cause overload. It is these last 2-3 reps which actually are difficult to execute, and cause muscle fibre damage on a microscopic level. It is this muscle damage that body repairs and results in growth of new muscle tissue. So everytime you are overloading the muscle by training to failureand then taking enough rest and keep your diet in check, everytime you are becoming little bigger and stronger.

Progressive resistance training

Progressive resistance training dictates that you need to progressively increase the amount of stress that you are putting on the muscles, in order to make gains in strength, size or endurance. The increase in stress can come from additional weight, additional sets, additional reps etc.

The reason is simple: muscles respond to overloading. There is a nice statement that I have heard in one of Joe Weider’s videos, which goes something along these lines: “If you have a 100 Watt motor and you subject it to 120 Watt load, it will burn out, but if you have 100 Watt muscle and you subject it to 120 Watt load, it will adapt, grow and will become 120 Watt muscle in due time”.

Say your leg muscles are currently capable of squatting 80 kilos and you overload it by forcing it to lift 85 kilos (of course, still maintaining the correct posture and form). Your legs will adapt in due time by becoming stronger and bigger so it can lift that 85 kilo weight. Never ever stay with the same weight in a workout once you feel you are comfortable with that, and keep increasing the load. That’s the only way to make gains.

One point worth mentioning is that while increasing the weight, you still need to follow the proper technique and form of execution of the reps, and for that you need to overload it only slightly every time. You are simply wasting time if you are adding too much resistance and just throwing the weights around for the sake of doing it; it simply will not get you the desired results and can cause injuries in the long run.

Law of diminishing returns

Law of diminishing returns for weight training is basically derived from the actual law of diminishing returns, which states that: “It is the decrease in the marginal (per-unit) output of a production process as the amount of a single factor of production is increased, while the amounts of all other factors of production stay constant.” (Source: Wiki)

With regards to weight training, we see very dramatic and visible gains in the musculature when we begin training. Just the feel of additional resistance is such a shock to the body that it responds by becoming bigger and stronger in almost no time.

However, as time progresses and we keep doing the same exercises over and over, we see that the progress slows down, even as we are increasing the intensity, no. of sets, amount of weight etc. If we still keep doing the exercises, gains stop coming and eventually becomes stale.

The reason behind such an outcome is twofold: 1) Body is very adaptive to the changes that are taking place, and 2) As we start making more and more gains and reach closer to our genetic potential, the more our body resists any further change. Let me explain.

When we start lifting weights, we do a set of exercises. Initially our body is not accustomed to such movements and the extra weight, so it tries to adapt to it by having muscle growth and training the nervous system to learn the movement. But after sometime, when the body gets accustomed to the movement pattern, the movement or the extra resistance is no longer a stranger to it, so adaptation stops.

One way to again force the body to adapt would be to add additional resistance; adding additional weights start the adaptation again to the added resistance, thus resulting in more gains.

But everybody has a genetic potential as to how much the muscle the body can put on, naturally. The more gains we make, the closer to our genetic potential we get and the harder it becomes to make additional gains. And once body adapts to the entire concept of progressive resistance, adaptation stops and so does the gains.

One good way to avoid such a scenario is to keep the training dynamic, i.e., making some changes to the training schedule and the workouts every 5-6 weeks, to keep the body guessing. Changing the order of the exercises a bit, replacing 1-2 exercises with new ones, changing the routine altogether are ways to keep the training dynamic and avoid hitting a position where no more gains are coming.

Priority principle  

Priority principle focuses on prioritizing the workout sessions and the weekly routine based on one’s goals and the way his/her body responds to training.

Lets face it: no one is perfect, and neither are their genetics. There has not been a champion and probably never will be a champion who can claim that he had the perfect genetics, and all of his muscles have grown equally and they have responded to weight training in the same fashion.

Our genetics dictate how the different muscle groups will grow in response to training. After spending some time in the weight room and observing the progress keenly, one can find that there always will have muscle groups that respond extremely well and grow fast, whereas some other groups lag behind and are very difficult to grow, and it varies from person to person. In order to have a well balanced physique, the necessity of proportionate growth of all the muscle groups cannot be ignored. 

This is where priority principle of training kicks in. It simply states that one needs to schedule the weekly schedule in such a way that the muscle groups that are difficult to grow are trained on the first day of the weekly cycle. Because we are rested enough on the first day of the weekly cycle, those tough muscle groups can be trained harder, than when they are hit later in the week when we are tired and need rest. Again, how the training will be scheduled varies from person to person. Personally for me, back is a weak point, so I train it first during my weekly cycle, followed by other muscles later in the week.

The priority principle can also be used for planning your daily workouts, depending upon how you want to develop that muscle group. If your back is wide like a cobra but is lacking in thickness, the back training day can be started with heavy free-weight rows to slab on muscles in the back and making it thick, followed by some pull ups or pulldowns to maintain the wideness in the back. Similarly, if you need more volume in upper chest, start your workouts with incline presses and destroy those upper pecs. You can then move on to flat and/or decline bench presses, for hitting the other parts of your chest.

Cycling of training

A trainee must not do the same type of training all year long. Because muscular growth involves so many different factors, consists of so many different parameters, the type of training needs to be cycled on a periodic basis.

The training type must be cycled between low weight, high rep endurance type training, bodybuilding type training with moderate weights, and heavy duty low rep power training. The workouts can be shifted from free weights to machines and cables, in order to bring variety and put the muscles against a different type of resistance.

Such variations in training, where one is covering all rep ranges is optimal for complete growth of muscle fibres. Since our muscle fibres consist of fast twitch white fibres (for high intensity activities, but have low endurance) and slow twitch red fibres (for low intensity activities, but have high endurance), covering all rep ranges makes sure that all aspects of the muscle fibres are given proper attention.

There is a psychological aspect also: such cycling of training keeps away the monotony from the sessions and keeps them interesting, thus maintaining the drive. This indirectly helps with progress.

Mind-muscle connection

While executing a rep of a given workout, one must concentrate on the movement and instead of just going up and down with the weight, must actually feel the weight flexing and tensing his muscles. This kind of mind-muscle connection while executing a rep is very important, and can be the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful workout.

Just like any other work, maximum output comes from a workout session if you put your complete attention to it. Focussing on the muscles being worked upon and not just the amount of weight that is on the bar provides the optimal condition for muscle growth. So if you are seeing that you are able to lift a weight but not getting that beautiful sensation in the muscles, you might want to reduce the weight a bit. After all, progress in a workout is always more desirable over your bragging rights with the amount of weight that is being lifted.

NOTE: The above tip is more suited for bodybuilding type training regimen, where the focus is muscle hypertrophy, rather than power training or weight lifting training, where the intention is to become stronger and be able to move as much weight as possible. If you are in for such a training, ignore this tip since its not in line with your goals.