Laying a Solid Foundation to Build on With Power Training
Before a structure can be built it must have a strong, solid, stable base to build on that will support all further materials added to it.
When a tree starts out its life, it first puts down roots until they run deep and thick enough to support the coming height and weight so it can not be easily uprooted, even in strong winds.
The same has to be done when building up your physique, there must be sufficient amounts of base core strength, time spent thickening the tendons and ligaments, building general size in the major skeletal muscles.
This can best be accomplished with power training, the lifting of heavy weights in looser but not reckless or sloppy form for reps of ten to three using basic multi joint exercises for each muscle group for a limited amount of sets.
The objective of power training is just that, to build power in your muscles and put on basic size, yet with an eye to not causing muscle imbalances by overworking only some sections of a muscle group to the exclusion of other sections that will make it difficult to rectify later.
Therefore in the case of chest and back training it will not always be the most basic exercise performed first in the routine due to the fact that it is more difficult to build the upper portion of the pectorals and add width to the back.
To qualify this, power training is the lifting of heavy weights, heavy being relative to the individual.
Do not compare yourself with someone else, if they are using more weight than you, use this as positive peer pressure and motivation but you must still get there honestly by making your muscles do the work, not by using momentum and recklessly manhandling weights that are too heavy to control, you will get nowhere doing this, no gains in strength or size, just injuries.
Power training is not the moving of as heavy of a weight as you can any way you can, but the determined effort to move as heavy a weight as you can through a controlled path of movement in somewhat relaxed form by employing the muscles of the body as they apply to the exercise at hand, the prime movers working in unison with the helping stabilizer muscles, while the muscle groups not directly involved acting as a solid support base without excessive body sway, arching, bouncing, twisting, or completely abandoning safe body position, form, or pathway of execution.
There must still be discipline, this is not an excuse to start piling on plates to every exercise, I hope I have emphasized this enough because I know how guys can be when ego and impatience dictates progression rate and poundage use, scary.
Now for the nuts and bolts of power training, the sets and reps.
For big muscle groups like chest, back, and thighs, reps of six to ten for three to four sets of two to four exercises.
For medium sized muscle groups like shoulders, calves, traps, and triceps, reps of six to ten for two to three sets of one to two exercises.
For smaller muscle groups like hamstrings and biceps, reps of six to ten for one to two sets of one to two exercises.
For abdominals, reps of ten to twenty for two to three sets of two to three exercises.
Always error on the side of less than more when deciding on the amount of sets and exercises you will use in the given perimeters set for the various muscle groups, never do today what you can't repeat tomorrow.
Remember too that as the poundages start to rise the stress to the muscles, joints, tendons, and ligaments will rise, increasing the stress on your central nervous system and cutting deeper inroads into your recovery ability which if breached and overwhelmed will put you in an overtrained state, increasing your chances of injury, compromise your immune system, and halt all progress.
Also it is a good idea to work the whole upper body in one workout and try to stay at the lower perimeters of your set and exercise guidelines to minimize the overwork of your shoulder, elbow and wrist joints and their tendons, and ligaments to prevent overuse injuries of bursitis and tendinitis that make training painful and miserable and if ignored and trained through will become chronic and haunt you through future stages of your training and prevent you from benefiting from many useful exercises used later on to complete your development.
One of the most effective workout splits for this form of training in the three day rotating two way split.
You will train your whole upper body as stated earlier in one workout and your abdominals and lower body in the other workout.
you will train on monday, wednesday, and friday and rest tuesday, thursday, saturday, and sunday.
One week you will train upper body on Monday and Friday and abs and lower body on Wednesday, the next week you will train abs and lower body on Monday and Friday and upper body on Wednesday and back and forth you go, one week you train upper body twice and lower body once and the next week you train abs and lower body twice and upper body once, this sequence rotates each week giving your muscle groups three to four days of rest between workouts.
On the weeks you do abs and lower body twice it is advised to limit your quadricep training to one exercise of two to four sets of a less intense exercise on the Friday workout because of the intense nature of hard leg training and its impact on the nervous system.
The upper body workout may go like this, incline barbell bench press-3 sets, parallel bar dips-3 sets, dumbbell pullovers-3 sets, overhead barbell press 3 sets, close grip barbell bench press-3 sets, Shoulder width under grip chins-3 sets, barbell rows-3 sets, T-bar rows-3 sets, barbell high pulls-3 sets, barbell curls-3 sets.
Warm up thoroughly on incline barbell bench press with three to five sets of ten reps with a lighter weight that allows increased blood volume, joint mobility, and comfort through the entire range of motion without tiring out the muscles involved for the work sets to come.
Rest one minute between warmup sets and two minutes after the last warmup set and the first work set of inclines.
Rest two minutes between all other sets until you reach the end of the push portion of the routine then rest five minutes before warming up on chins, following the same warm up and rest time protocols for the pull portion of the routine as you did for push.
The abs and lower body workout may go like this, standing calf raise-3 sets, leg press calf raise-3 sets, leg press-3 sets, barbell squats-3 sets, stiff legged deadlifts-3 sets, hanging kneeups-3 sets, roman chair situps-3 sets.
Use the same warmup protocols as upper body on standing calf raise and leg press, resting two minutes between all other sets until you finish the last set of stifflegged deadlifts then rest five minutes and begin ab training resting one minute between all sets.
Use a lifting belt on overhead presses, leg presses, barbell squats, and stiff legged deadlifts and keep the poundage the same for all the sets of a given exercise and the reps will decrease naturally as fatigue from the previous sets forces you to do less reps on successive sets and in this way you will get variety in your rep range and work harder on all the sets letting you accomplish more with less than you would if you pyramid the weights on sets because you would not be coasting on lighter sub effort sets before hitting a true working set.
In power training your mind plays a major role in keeping your ego in check, monitoring exercise form, bolstering courage to overcome doubt and intimidation of the poundages you will eventually be handling, keeping you aware of the danger of injury, reinforcing the importance of being in control of the weight at all times, keeping you honest as to your ability to handle a poundage correctly and if not being able to drop weight and work back up to it again under true muscular effort, realizing that is the only way of making real gains in size and strength.
Power training can be very enjoyable in its simple, basic, primitive nature of pitting raw strength against heavy iron.
Done correctly with your head firmly set in reality, power training can take you to the upper limits of size and strength, laying the foundation for refinement later on, in building your body the right way, from the ground up.
When a tree starts out its life, it first puts down roots until they run deep and thick enough to support the coming height and weight so it can not be easily uprooted, even in strong winds.
The same has to be done when building up your physique, there must be sufficient amounts of base core strength, time spent thickening the tendons and ligaments, building general size in the major skeletal muscles.
This can best be accomplished with power training, the lifting of heavy weights in looser but not reckless or sloppy form for reps of ten to three using basic multi joint exercises for each muscle group for a limited amount of sets.
The objective of power training is just that, to build power in your muscles and put on basic size, yet with an eye to not causing muscle imbalances by overworking only some sections of a muscle group to the exclusion of other sections that will make it difficult to rectify later.
Therefore in the case of chest and back training it will not always be the most basic exercise performed first in the routine due to the fact that it is more difficult to build the upper portion of the pectorals and add width to the back.
To qualify this, power training is the lifting of heavy weights, heavy being relative to the individual.
Do not compare yourself with someone else, if they are using more weight than you, use this as positive peer pressure and motivation but you must still get there honestly by making your muscles do the work, not by using momentum and recklessly manhandling weights that are too heavy to control, you will get nowhere doing this, no gains in strength or size, just injuries.
Power training is not the moving of as heavy of a weight as you can any way you can, but the determined effort to move as heavy a weight as you can through a controlled path of movement in somewhat relaxed form by employing the muscles of the body as they apply to the exercise at hand, the prime movers working in unison with the helping stabilizer muscles, while the muscle groups not directly involved acting as a solid support base without excessive body sway, arching, bouncing, twisting, or completely abandoning safe body position, form, or pathway of execution.
There must still be discipline, this is not an excuse to start piling on plates to every exercise, I hope I have emphasized this enough because I know how guys can be when ego and impatience dictates progression rate and poundage use, scary.
Now for the nuts and bolts of power training, the sets and reps.
For big muscle groups like chest, back, and thighs, reps of six to ten for three to four sets of two to four exercises.
For medium sized muscle groups like shoulders, calves, traps, and triceps, reps of six to ten for two to three sets of one to two exercises.
For smaller muscle groups like hamstrings and biceps, reps of six to ten for one to two sets of one to two exercises.
For abdominals, reps of ten to twenty for two to three sets of two to three exercises.
Always error on the side of less than more when deciding on the amount of sets and exercises you will use in the given perimeters set for the various muscle groups, never do today what you can't repeat tomorrow.
Remember too that as the poundages start to rise the stress to the muscles, joints, tendons, and ligaments will rise, increasing the stress on your central nervous system and cutting deeper inroads into your recovery ability which if breached and overwhelmed will put you in an overtrained state, increasing your chances of injury, compromise your immune system, and halt all progress.
Also it is a good idea to work the whole upper body in one workout and try to stay at the lower perimeters of your set and exercise guidelines to minimize the overwork of your shoulder, elbow and wrist joints and their tendons, and ligaments to prevent overuse injuries of bursitis and tendinitis that make training painful and miserable and if ignored and trained through will become chronic and haunt you through future stages of your training and prevent you from benefiting from many useful exercises used later on to complete your development.
One of the most effective workout splits for this form of training in the three day rotating two way split.
You will train your whole upper body as stated earlier in one workout and your abdominals and lower body in the other workout.
you will train on monday, wednesday, and friday and rest tuesday, thursday, saturday, and sunday.
One week you will train upper body on Monday and Friday and abs and lower body on Wednesday, the next week you will train abs and lower body on Monday and Friday and upper body on Wednesday and back and forth you go, one week you train upper body twice and lower body once and the next week you train abs and lower body twice and upper body once, this sequence rotates each week giving your muscle groups three to four days of rest between workouts.
On the weeks you do abs and lower body twice it is advised to limit your quadricep training to one exercise of two to four sets of a less intense exercise on the Friday workout because of the intense nature of hard leg training and its impact on the nervous system.
The upper body workout may go like this, incline barbell bench press-3 sets, parallel bar dips-3 sets, dumbbell pullovers-3 sets, overhead barbell press 3 sets, close grip barbell bench press-3 sets, Shoulder width under grip chins-3 sets, barbell rows-3 sets, T-bar rows-3 sets, barbell high pulls-3 sets, barbell curls-3 sets.
Warm up thoroughly on incline barbell bench press with three to five sets of ten reps with a lighter weight that allows increased blood volume, joint mobility, and comfort through the entire range of motion without tiring out the muscles involved for the work sets to come.
Rest one minute between warmup sets and two minutes after the last warmup set and the first work set of inclines.
Rest two minutes between all other sets until you reach the end of the push portion of the routine then rest five minutes before warming up on chins, following the same warm up and rest time protocols for the pull portion of the routine as you did for push.
The abs and lower body workout may go like this, standing calf raise-3 sets, leg press calf raise-3 sets, leg press-3 sets, barbell squats-3 sets, stiff legged deadlifts-3 sets, hanging kneeups-3 sets, roman chair situps-3 sets.
Use the same warmup protocols as upper body on standing calf raise and leg press, resting two minutes between all other sets until you finish the last set of stifflegged deadlifts then rest five minutes and begin ab training resting one minute between all sets.
Use a lifting belt on overhead presses, leg presses, barbell squats, and stiff legged deadlifts and keep the poundage the same for all the sets of a given exercise and the reps will decrease naturally as fatigue from the previous sets forces you to do less reps on successive sets and in this way you will get variety in your rep range and work harder on all the sets letting you accomplish more with less than you would if you pyramid the weights on sets because you would not be coasting on lighter sub effort sets before hitting a true working set.
In power training your mind plays a major role in keeping your ego in check, monitoring exercise form, bolstering courage to overcome doubt and intimidation of the poundages you will eventually be handling, keeping you aware of the danger of injury, reinforcing the importance of being in control of the weight at all times, keeping you honest as to your ability to handle a poundage correctly and if not being able to drop weight and work back up to it again under true muscular effort, realizing that is the only way of making real gains in size and strength.
Power training can be very enjoyable in its simple, basic, primitive nature of pitting raw strength against heavy iron.
Done correctly with your head firmly set in reality, power training can take you to the upper limits of size and strength, laying the foundation for refinement later on, in building your body the right way, from the ground up.
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