STICK TO THE BASICS TO ENSURE PROGRESS
Stop following your favourite Instagram influencers, they are not you, they have different goals, strengths, weaknesses, and training history. Just like different cars use various parts unique to the model, the same should be done with our training and nutrition. This is why having a structured program and nutrition approach based on your goals
If you are looking to build muscle and stack on mass, but your legs are disproportionally smaller than your upper body, your program will have to focus on bringing up those weak areas. Nonetheless, we should not overcomplicate the processes of building muscle, reducing body fat, and managing nutrition, for both training and nutrition quality of our input is important, and we should place a large emphasis on this rather than focusing solely on quantity.
The notion of doing more equates to greater results in the gym and kitchen is not always the case, yes there is a time for more work to be done but it is not always the answer. We should shift our attention to the quality of our training. The first and most important principle for building muscle and ensuring progress in the weights room is progressive overload, this simply means doing more over time. It does not mean you have to increase the weight on every exercise by 20kg each week because that will potentially lead to injury. Our bodies do not know how much weight is on the bar or machine, it just knows tension in muscles. If last week you did 100kg on the leg press for ten reps to progressively overload that movement and muscles you can do the same weight but aim for 11–12 reps or you can slow down the tempo/ add-in pauses (carrying the weight for longer) or increase the weight by smaller amounts 5–10kg. These are ways to easily increase the demand on our body over time, week after week. If you do the same weight/reps/tempo week in and week out your body has no reason to change/grow/adapt. The increments of additional weights vary per exercise, it is not recommended to throw on an extra 20kg to your shoulder press in a week as it can be unstable, the shoulder is a small joint, etc, you could add 2.5–5kg pretty safely. Whereas you could add 10kg on squat as it's more stable and uses more muscles to lift the load. Focusing on the quality of work over quantity and numbers will yield better long-term yield.
WHAT IS QUALITY TRAINING?
Quality of training refers to multiple factors including, tempo, pauses, range of motion, and intensity. The majority of people in the gym use their egos to lift weights, stacking on plate after plate and moving a total of three inches. Is this going to place a large stimulus on the muscle just because the weight is heavy? Not really. Ideally, we want to train a muscle through its entire range of motion i.e.: doing a bench press from straight arms, down to your chest, and back to straight arms, with small variances depending on goals and type of exercise but you get the drift.
That is just one aspect, let us turn our attention to tempo, this refers to the speed of a movement. We are sure you have seen someone at the gym with a super heavy weight using their ego to lift it rather than their muscles. But isn’t heavy weight good for helping build muscle mass and won't it give more of a stimulus? Yes, but not always. It is usually more beneficial to control the weight using slow negatives (the way down/stretch) and pauses in all exercises, this allows us to ensure maximal amounts of tension is placed on the target muscle without using momentum and therefore reducing the risk of injury. So it is a win-win. We recommend you pick the heaviest weight that you can control for the target amount of reps without sacrificing appropriate form and technique. using slower tempos also helps give our muscles a bigger stimulus to change/grow by placing tension on them for a longer period of time hence more micro-tears and weight being loaded over a greater period. This principle is known as time under tension (TUT) and is a straightforward way to progress over time.
Here is a loose example:
Fast tempo: 100kg bench press, 10 reps, 2 seconds per rep. 2 seconds multiplied by 10 reps equals 20 seconds of tension
Slower tempo: 80kg bench press, 10 reps, 4 seconds per rep. 4 seconds multiplied by 10 equals 40 seconds.
So even though the weight is in fact lighter, you are still smashing the muscle just as much, if not more which is beneficial for growth, alongside with full range of motion and close proximity to failure. We are not saying use a noticeably light weight that is easy for you and use a slow tempo, we are recommending picking a challenging weight that is able to be controlled rather than ego lifting
The next and most crucial factor is intensity. ou need to push yourself, push past the burn, the pain, let your mind take over and continue, one rep at a time. Our muscles will begin to burn and feel pain early on in our sets but if we just stop our sets at the onset of pain we are capping our potential gains. When weight training for muscle growth it is usually beneficial to train close to failure to maximise our bodies response to our training. Failure, in this case, means you genuinely could not do any more reps, zero reps in the tank. An easy example of complete failure and zero reps left in the tank is when the bar gets stuck on someone’s chest during bench press, and they cannot lift anymore. You do not have to take every exercise and set to complete failure, but we should go close, only leaving a couple of reps in the tank this ensures we pushed our muscles enough to provide a stimulus for change. Simply when we push our sets hard and work close to failure our body recruits more muscle fibres in order to lift the weight as we are fatigued, the more fibres we recruit, the more of a stimulus we put on the muscles to adapt.
One of the last factors that gym-goers usually push aside is range of motion. The majority of the time, depending on the exercise and goal we should opt for a larger range of motion with a range of different exercises. This allows us to work the muscle in all its lengths, shortened, mid-range, and lengthen, this may help with muscle growth and build a full muscle belly. Do not be that person that does half curls, quarter squats, and half bench press using momentum. Using full ranges of motion can potentially reduce the risk of injury as well, here’s how. Simply, we become weak in the range of motion that we do not train/use, meaning if we do go into those ranges occasionally with a heavy load the body may not be stable enough to carry the load, and the risk of injury increases.
WHAT SHOULD I EAT?
There are basic principles of nutrition that we should follow, first eat in alignment with our goals. If you are trying to gain muscle you must eat in a calorie surplus, meaning more energy than your body requires to sustain itself/ more energy than your burning. i.e., if your maintenance calories are 2000 then begin at 2250 and only increase again by a couple hundred once the weight has plateaued for a few weeks. The same principle is applied in reverse for fat loss. For example, you could start your calories at 1750 and then slowly decrease them once your weight stops decreasing for a few weeks. Do not drop your calories too low as it can impact your general wellbeing. Always seek professional advice, message us on Instagram @Relentless.Strength and we can help you out. The next nutrition principles are the distribution of our macros (protein, carbs, and fats). Protein is always most important, during fat losses phases we want to aim to keep protein around the two grams per kg of body weight, do not drop your fats below 0.7g of fat per kg of bodyweight then fill the rest of your calories with carbohydrates. The distribution will vary per person based on their weight, diet history, medical conditions, and goals. These are vague guidelines to use as a starting point to align your eating with your goals.
Train hard, push yourself, eat well and repeat. Thank yourself later.
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