Thread: Calling all Fitness Gurus!

Note: This post was in response to a woman with very similar goals as you and very similar stature.

The Conceptual Side of Weight Lifting


Let's get you a quality routine down on paper. Realize that when I throw specific routines out there, it's not set in stone. It's simply a baseline of what I consider optimal. Optimal is a spectrum. You can slide to the left or right and still be in the optimal range. What's optimal is simply doing things in a way that covers the fundamental, foundational principles that are inherent in all quality "programs."

Nowadays people are too caught up in the program mentality - they never stop and think, "What principles are behind this routine and do they make sense?" They simply see it as a selection of magical exercises promising super results.

A list of these foundational factors might look something like:

- BALANCE - we want to be sure to maintain an optimal balance of the bodies muscles. Often times people will train the muscles they see "harder" than the muscles they don't. In doing so, the chest, shoulders, biceps, abs and quads get overworked while the back, glutes and hamstrings get under-worked. This can cause some problems. A good way of fixing this problem is always balancing out pushing with pulling movements for upper and lower body.

- OVERLOAD - We have to force the muscles into getting stronger and bigger. Simply working them isn't enough. You need to work them *enough*. The load must be above what it's ordinarily accustomed to (overload). If it's not, you're not providing your body with a reason to positively adapt.

- PROGRESSION - What's an overload today won't be an overload next week, month or year. We adapt to overload by getting stronger. If 100 lbs is an overload now and you use it sufficiently, your body will work to better handle said 100 lbs in the future. Once it's adapted, 100 lbs will be the new maintaining load rather than an overload. This is known as accommodation. Therefore, to elicit further change, you have to progress the overload - and this is a term many have heard before, progressive overload. How quickly your body adapts and thus how frequently you have to progress depends on many factors such as training age (how long you've been training), nutritional status, type of exercise, etc, etc.

- INTENSITY -This is tied in with overload. There is a certain threshold that's required if muscle is going to grow (during sufficient calories) or maintain itself (during dieting). This is the whole concept of "giving your body a reason to hold onto the muscle while dieting by lifting sufficiently heavy weights." It's a good idea to have a loose definition of intensity. Many people confuse it with "working hard." That's not intensity though... that's intensiveness. Intensity, as defined by most strength coaches as simply the percentage of maximal strength. Take the squat for example. If you're maximum effort allows you to squat 100 lbs, training with loads in the 80-95% range of your max effort is more than likely going to be a stimulating or maintaining load. Anything below that is more than likely under this threshold and while it can burn calories and prompt some adaptations in the metabolic/oxidative qualities of the muscle, it's not going to provide you with that overload you're seeking. So intensity of 70-80% and below is really going to be insufficient in terms of building or keeping muscle and this is why the whole "pump and tone" mentality is something I've spoken out against in many instances around here.

- VOLUME - Not only do you need to be above a threshold to get stronger/bigger muscles, you also need to do enough work above this threshold. Using the above example of squats, obviously 100 lbs is providing an overload since it's your max effort ability in the squat. So going in and doing one set of one rep would essentially overload the neuromuscular system. However, you have to take the total amount of work into consideration. Overload is primary, but you also need enough work at said overload if that makes some sense. Without getting too in depth, something like 20-60 reps per muscle each time you train is probably about right in terms of providing adequate work. So call it 30 reps... that can come using 6x5, 5x6, 3x10, 10x3, etc.

- FREQUENCY - Above I mention "each time you train." Our muscles respond to the stress of training by first decreasing its "state." It's like when someone is sick. Their state declines. Then their body responds by fighting off the sickness. More often than not, before all is said and done, their state actually reaches a point above and beyond what it was prior to their sickness. And this is the general stress-response mechanism of the body. Our bodies handle all stress (physical/mental/etc) similarly.

I liken it to a wave (see below). I can't believe I am bored enough to spend the time typing this ridiculously bad graph out... it would save me tons if we were able to embed images here, lol... but the black line is your maintenance "state" or homeostasis if you will. The red line is your actual state in response to training. At first it's at maintenance. Then you train and the state declines due to the stress of training. Then, it comes back up eventually "supercompensating" above and beyond it's original maintenance. I'll attach a picture too so you can better see what I'm talking about:

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Now every factor of the body really responds on its own separate wave. What we're concerned about most in terms of muscle's response to training though tends to come back to baseline 2-3 days after you train. That's why the normal body building splits where you're hitting each muscle once per week are sort of silly. We want to build on top of what we already did previously, which would mean hitting that muscle again somewhere along the line where we're supercompensating above baseline. There are many different ways to structure "routines" to fit that time line.

But this is the rational behind my normal recommendations of training each part and/or movement 2-3 times a week with the basic barbell exercises, focusing on something between 5 and 10 reps for 3-5 sets per exercise, and striving to improve your weights over time (not necessarily every workout).

It's pretty hard to go wrong with anything that falls into that realm.

What you don't see here as foundational, necessary principles for all programming are things like muscle confusion, toning with high reps, training a muscle to concentric failure, etc. Though these sorts of things are passed around all the time as Very Important... it's simply not the case. People who don't understand exercise physiology say a lot of things that sound rational and people grab onto it passing it around like wild fire in high winds.

Understand the basics. If you don't - ask someone who does to clarify it until you do. If one is going to confidently navigate his or her way through training in the long term, you need to understand these short-term fundamentals I mention above.

Beyond these fundamentals, there are longer term factors that come into play. We're mainly talking about short-term (acute) adaptation to training above. When you start factoring in the long-term (chronic) and couple it with the individual training needs, that's when you get into periodization which entails altering stress over time in relation to your body. That's a different topic for a different day.

Suffice to say, throw out the that extends beyond the basics I mention above. Armed with that information you can start seeing what's behind each and every "program" and you'll be able to decipher the ones worth trying or paying attention to from the ones that are garbage.

It should be mentioned, too, that a critical thought process as well as tools of logical reasoning are things I consider far more important than any particular training knowledge or style or program.

People are too quick to pigeonhole "types" of training. The body doesn't care what you call your workout - it "cares" about (in the sense of, 'responds to') what's happening to it.

Same goes for programs. So many people consider "the program" to be a fundamental "unit" of exercise. A program is just somebody's expression of underlying principles. In itself, it's meaningless, but people make it into such a rigid thing.

When I'm designing a "program" I take into account the individual. His or her goals, her current level of body fat and muscle, her experience, equipment availability, nutritional status, etc.

So when other people read something like this, it's probably a good idea to stop and ask yourself, "Does the person for whom this workout was attended share similar 'qualities' as me?"

If not, it's probably smart to take what you can from the program but also fit it into a model that better fits you.

With a woman who isn't carrying a lot of fat, is interested in losing a bit more, and likes the idea of muscle... some basic ideas come to mind:

* The template will almost always be based on 2-4 sessions a week

* The strength sessions are always oriented around limited volume and economy of training.

* Emphasis on basic exercises, with some accessory isolation-type work thrown in as individual needs dictate. This means your squats, deadlifts, rows, benches, etc, are the mainstays.

* Focus on using heavy loads, which means typically the use of reps in the 5-10 range. Sometimes heavier, sometimes lighter, but again as a generic baseline that's where to put your foundation.

* Metabolic type training is thrown in as assistance work after the muscle-preserving workouts are handled. (most get this backwards)

* Accessory exercises can be thrown in as follow-ups in a single session or on a different day; this is also where I'd throw in your metabolic work.

* The key factor to me in a dieting individual is stress management. Recovery is at a premium on lowered calories, and this only becomes more pronounced as you become leaner and have to further reduce calories.

Metabolic work is simply your basic conditioning/cardio type work. This can include, steady state cardio, tempo running, interval training, low intensity circuit training, complexes, etc. If you aren't familiar with some of them, don't worry about it now. This type of work includes aerobic and anaerobic (HIIT for example) types of cardio.

Where relatively lean people trying to get leaner (especially women) go wrong is, metabolic work is, at best, an accessory to dieting. It works as a calorie sink... meaning it allows you to eat a bit more food. Granted, there are other benefits associated with it such as improved work capacity and possibly some positive influences on body composition which are always good things, but they're not the make or break it factors in terms of getting lean.

"Dosage" of metabolic work really depends on the individual. Someone who has problems with dietary compliance more often then not needs more metabolic work (or a swift kick in the arse ). Someone who doesn't handle a lot of volume well b/c their recovery ability just sucks will typically do better with less metabolic work, especially the higher intensity stuff like HIIT.

As always, this is a touch & feel process.

Accessory stuff, as mentioned above, is simply the smaller, non-economical movements people often times have problems giving up. This would include the likes of bicep curls, tricep extensions, crunches, calf raises and you could even lump shrugs in there if you'd like since I know you are doing those. Is accessory stuff stupid and pointless? No, not at all. If it's going to be part of a "program" though, it should be limited and certainly not be a focus.

Diet will rule above all else for losing fat. Weight training applied as I laid out will preserve muscle mass. Limited cardio will help skew where calories are coming from and going to (in terms of fat and muscle) in a somewhat positive way. The rest is all up to diet and your genetic tendencies towards fat and muscle losses.

So with all the above in mind (from my previous post and this one) let's look at ONE WAY of setting up a weight lifting routine to match your goals. Keep in mind, which should be obvious by now, that this is merely one slice of a much larger pie... the pie being the total, optimal approach to losing fat and keeping/adding muscle.

In essence, you could get away with doing something as simple as:

Squat - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Bench - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Row - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps

You could do that 2-3 times per week and be golden. It's plain. It's simple. And when applied using the above... it'll work in terms of increasing strength and preserving muscle.

Granted, many would get bored with it pretty fast. That's why I'll typically add some variety. This could be accomplished by merely changing up the exercises each day you train. You could do something like an A program and a B program and alternate the two. You could extend that to an A, B, and C program if you'd like.

For instance, using the A/B template you could do:

Template A

Squat - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Bench - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Row - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps

Template B

Deadlift - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Overhead Press - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Chinup - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps

And that could work well for a long while.

Personally, I like to vary the intensity and volume over the course of a week though, which the above is not doing. I find my clients like this better too, and to be honest, it's probably a good idea to avoid stagnation and work a the muscle using a variety of loading parameters.

With that in mind, I might do something like:

Template A

Squat - 3-5 sets of 4-6 reps
Bench - 3-5 sets of 4-6 reps
Row - 3-5 sets of 4-6 reps

Template B

Deadlift - 2-4 sets of 8-12 reps
Overhead Press - 2-4 sets of 8-12 reps
Chinup - 2-4 sets of 8-12 reps

So that would be the core of the "program" for the time being. I'm going through this to *sort of* show you the steps that go through my mind when I'm thinking of this, assuming you're interested in that, lol.

Once the core is established you can add in accessory stuff which might make it look something like:

Template A

5-min jog on treadmill
Foam rolling and dynamic mobility stuff
Squat - 3-5 sets of 4-6 reps
Bench - 3-5 sets of 4-6 reps
Row - 3-5 sets of 4-6 reps
Single Leg DB Romanian Deadlifts - 2 sets of 8-12 reps
Bicep Curls - 2 sets of 10-12
Planks - 2-3 sets of 30-60 seconds

Template B

5-min jog on treadmill
Foam rolling and dynamic mobility stuff
Deadlift - 2-4 sets of 8-12 reps
Overhead Press - 2-4 sets of 8-12 reps
Chinup - 2-4 sets of 8-12 reps
Single Leg Squats - 2 sets of 8-12 reps
Tricep Extensions - 2 sets of 10-12 reps
Pallof Presses - 2-3 sets of 10-15 reps

Are you starting to see the rationale here?

To fit this into a weekly format, you could do something like:

Monday: Template A
Tuesday: Metabolic Work
Wednesday: Template B
Thursday: Metabolic Work
Friday: Template A
Saturday: Metabolic Work
Sunday: Off

The following week everything would be the same, however the resistance training would be BAB instead of ABA.

And this is only a suggestion - again not written in stone at all! You might need more or less metabolic work. You may do more high intensity metabolic work in which case you'd likely want to group sessions of high intensity stuff on the same day to allow for more recovery. You may want to make an ABC template rather than an ABA-BAB template. The list goes on and on.

You could ride this out until you stop making gains, are burned out, mentally bored, etc. At that point, you could back off the weight lifted in each exercise which would let some fatigue dissipate, than start back at it focusing on progressing from that point. Or you could change your exercise selection, rep/set selection a bit, etc, etc. The possibilities are endless.

Hopefully you're starting to see the point here.

A follow up question was asked in my journal in response to this and it was a good question as it exemplifies what I mean by foundational principles.

The question was:

In the post above and most of your posts you put ROW as an exercise. I have always done the classic seated row on the cable machine. Is that the exercise you would do for a row? I know there are a lot of variations of that exercise and just wanted to know which one is the best.

The magic isn't in the exercise. Your body doesn't know if you're doing a seated cable row, a standing barbell row, or some other variation. Granted, there are minor differences in each, but that's why I like to say no "program" is etched in stone as far as exercise selection goes.

Simply put, exercise selection isn't one of the foundational principles one needs to concern him or herself with. Sure, we should choose economical movements - meaning movements that call on the highest number of muscles/joints to execute. But a row is a row is a row.

Typically one way to move past a sticking point in progressive overload once one arises (which it assuredly will) is by changing up some of the exercise selections.

I mentioned in one of my previous posts that if/when you hit a plateau in strength, a good idea is to back off the weight a little bit which will, in turn, allow some fatigue to dissipate. Well, by switching exercise selection slightly, you're indirectly forcing yourself to back off the weight a little bit since you're aren't going to be able to go right into a brand new exercise full throttle.

Make some sense?

With that in mind, it should be obvious that one row isn't superior over the other. They each have their own positives and negatives. Vary your exercise selection when the time is right.

I personally use cable rows (at various widths), basic standing barbell rows, what's commonly called pendley rows, dumbbell rows, etc.

I'll add to this that if it helps, ditch the idea of specific exercises and think along the lines of planes of motion. For instance:

Template A

Squat
Bench
Row

Template B

Deadlift
Overhead Press
Chinup

These two templates can be viewed similarly as follows:

Template A

Quad dominant movement
Horizontal Pressing
Horizontal Pulling

Template B

Posterior Chain dominant movement
Vertical Pressing
Vertical Pulling

Any compound exercises that "fit the bill" of each given movement plane will suffice. Which are right? Depends on the invididual, skill level, injuries, what you've been doing, equipment availability, etc, etc.

Okay, so now I'm sure you have questions.

And let me say... I'm not one for spoon feeding someone b/c that does them little good at the end of the day. I could simply hand you a list of exercises, sets and reps and be done with it but how far is that really getting you? It's not like you're one of my paying clients who has me hawking over them and tweaking the various factors as needed.

You need a firm understanding of the foundation if you're going to progress forward on your own... which is the ultimate goal.

So sorry if it sounds like I'm preaching. I assure you that's not my intent.

Originally Posted by despero

I know that I'm not going to get "ripped" to to speak.

Guess that depends on your definition of ripped. Ripped to me is lean and toned. Which as noted above, happens when you maintain muscle mass while losing fat.

In that sense... yeah, you'll get "ripped."

If by ripped you mean get huge.... no, you won't, for reasons I'll mention below.

I have large upper arms, most all of it being fat. I do not want the same size arms, even if it is all muscle. I have a small frame, and it makes me look, well, icky, for lack of a better work. I don't want skinny stick arms...I guess what I'm asking is, there are some areas that I don't want to be the same size, even if it is muscle instead of fat, so how do I get around that?

1. You aren't going to build significant muscle. You are dieting and you are female.

Dieting - muscle building is a very costly process. It requires excess energy. If you're dieting, you don't have enough energy (calories) to maintain the tissues you currently have (hence the weight loss) so how to you suppose you gain significant muscle while dieting?

Female - even if you're in a caloric surplus (which facilitates tissue growth) and training appropriately, you're female which means you don't have the propensity to gain muscle at rates and amounts that you're worried about. You don't have the hormonal profile to do such things.

These are very simplistic concepts but profound in that your preconceptions don't have a of weighting at all, don't deserve worry, and can really get in the way of improving your physique.

2. Size of your arms.

Stop worrying about size and worry about body composition. Size is more subjective and arbitrary. It does very little for "quality of appearance." Body composition does amazing things as far as appearance goes.

Frankly, you're worried about the wrong metrics.

That's far too low of a caloric intake.

You're not trying to get below your BMR. The goal is to get below your maintenance level.

Maintenance = BMR + TEA + TEF + NEAT

Don't worry about all that other stuff... just know that maintenance is higher than BMR. Maintenance is the point where energy in = energy out.

13-15 calories per pound of body weight is a decent metric for determining maintenance. So for you, it might be something like 2100-2200 calories. From there, you want to trigger a deficit, so you need to eat less energy than maintenance. In my opinion, more often than not, it's best to eat as much food as possible while still maintaining a deficit that triggers a reasonable rate of fat loss.

Something like 30% is a good place to start.

30% off of 2100 is 1500ish calories.

So yea, you were right above... you want to be shooting for 1500ish per day. It's important to note that what comprises said 1500 calories is also very critical too.

Dropping too much in terms of calories can accelerate things like lean tissue loss, metabolic slowdown, etc.

That said, people almost always under-report calorie intake so there's a good chance you're under-stating what you actually ate. To get an accurate reading you need to use a food scale and a database to track calorie content of all the foods and drinks you consume.