Training methods used in personal training to grow your muscles!

This blog is part of the series that I started earlier last week about structuring your strength training efficiently in order to maximize your results, no matter what your goals are.

Muscle growth is not just important for guys but also women who want to tone their arms and other body parts. In personal training we come across the misbelief a lot that women bulk up. No worries, unless you train like a bodybuilder in volume and intensity that won’t happen. Women do not have the hormone levels required to “beef up” that much.

The method of “Exhausting Submaximal Strength Training” sounds complicated but it is not really.

  1. Make sure that the motion is done smoothly (no pauses, steady without momentum).
  2. The intensity should be submaximal between 70-95% of your One-Repetition Maximum. The motion can be at a slow to  moderate pace.
  3. The goal is total muscle exhaustion, which should result after 5-10 repetitions (different training variations suggest 3-18 reps) or 20-30 sec.
  4. Your breaks are fairly long with this kind of training and should be around 2-5 min between sets (working another muscle group is suggested)
  5. You should have roughly 5-10 sets per exercise if you have 2-3 different exercises resulting in 80-120 single repetitions/muscle group

An example of this would be the following:

  • 1. Set Pec Flys, 2 min break, Lat Pull
  • 3-5 min break
  • 2. Set Pec Flys, 2 min break, Lat Pull

During personal training I don’t have the time to waste 3-5 min standing around. I usually substitute it with other exercises working on totally different muscle groups. If you have 2-3 hours to spend at the gym you can go ahead and do this 🙂

The effects of this training are the following:

  1. an increase of muscle diameter (fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers)
  2. an increase in phosphat depots (energy depots for ATP, CP) which will help you to perform better at submaximal-maximal levels of strength training.
  3.  as well as glycogen-depots (helps prevent early onset of fatigue )

I hope  this information will be helpful to either understand what your personal trainer is doing with you or will help you improve your own training 

Have a great workout,

Michael

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