Someone recently referred to Richard Winett's site in another thread, and so I thought I'd post one of his archived articles here, for discussion purposes: http://www.ageless-athletes.com/faulty_tactics.php Stop Undermining Your Own Progress! As practiced around the world, resistance training is one of the few activities where people act in ways that directly undermine the goals they are trying to reach. In the name of making progress, the sad irony is that virtually all the tactics that are used do not help progress, they actually undermine progress. These tactics are largely promoted by mass media publications but in the defense of magazines, the tactics have a long, long history in gym lore. The magazines are only spreading the lore. The tactics seem to work because many people with outstanding physiques and strength use some or all of these tactics. But, what isn't always appreciated is that a small percent of people, "bodybuilding geniuses", can do virtually anything and everything and respond remarkably well. Such people, however, often are successful not because of how they train; rather they are successful despite how they train. I'm not preaching from "on high". Every tactic that is listed below is something I've done at one point or another in a long training career. The fact that I'm pretty responsive to training often obscured the folly of my ways. Here is a list of faulty tactics for you to consider. They are presented in no special order since it is difficult to put some absolute value on each one. Doing many sets and believing that volume training is the key. If you're doing more than one set per movement and more than two or three movements in one workout per muscle group at the least you are wasting time and more than likely preventing gains through overtraining. There is virtually no evidence that the volume of training is related to gaining strength and increasing muscle mass. Moving quickly to "activate fast twitch fibers". Quickly accelerating and decelerating movements often leads to injuries. But it doesn't make sense as a training modality even if it was safe because you are simply loading and unloading muscle groups. The long established size principle indicates that muscle fibers respond to intensity and tension and that when intensity is high, fast twitch fibers are readily activated. When you move slowly with a great deal of focus and intensity, you are activating fast twitch muscle fibers. Consider anything faster than 3 to 4 seconds to raise the weight and 3 to 4 seconds to lower the weight too fast. In gyms around the world, the speed of each rep is closer to a 1,1 cadence - exactly the opposite of what is really optimal. Limiting the range of motion. Unless you are in physical therapy and recovering from an injury, then doing as large a range of motion as is comfortable is what needs to be done. Doing leg presses with gigantic weights but where the weight only moves a few inches is not impressive. Moving rapidly with squats to at best a half-squat position also with a huge weight is also not impressive. It's really quite meaningless and a good way to destroy a lower back. Training too frequently in the hopes of gaining more. When your body is a bit sore and nonresponsive, it is telling you something. It's saying: " I need some rest. You shouldn't be training!" You simply can't force your body to respond. Few motivated people have ever not succeeded because they trained too infrequently but many have failed because they trained too much. Training instinctively and having no plan. Most people can't improve by constantly improvising and training basically in an unplanned, clueless way. What, if anything, in life really works that way? Grimacing, using body English and screaming and grunting to make the reps. This tactic only suggests that you are not effectively targeting the muscle group and are using other muscle groups and momentum to move the resistance. So, who is fooling whom here? Gaining a great deal of weight to lift a great deal of weight. Clearly, this is mostly a "guy thing" where the goal is the bigger the better. People who exercise but are obviously overweight and overfat are again not impressive. For a man, for example, weighing between 200 and 250 in order to squat with 400 proves nothing except that the guy is likely overweight and not that strong for his size. The idea is to gain muscle - difficult to be sure - and to be strong for your size at a healthy, relatively low body fat. Getting fixated on the "numbers". Exactly how much resistance you can use in any given exercise depends a great deal on such factors as leverage and neuromuscular efficiency (genetically mediated factors not subject to change), range of motion, repetition cadence, acceleration and deceleration in reps, order of an exercise in a routine, and time between exercises. Your muscles respond to intensity and tension not a specific force as represented by resistance per se on a bar or machine. If you practice the absolute best form, you may not be using "big" weights in various movements but you will be providing your muscles with an optimal stimulus. Planning your nutrition around supplements. There's virtually nothing in any "nutritional supplement" that you can't obtain at a fraction of the cost from real food. Plus real food has many other nutrients not found in supplements. Most supplements have little or no scientific data to back any claims made and it's doubtful that any supplements ever took an "average Jane or Joe" to star status. Further, various hormone derivatives sold over-the-counter as "nutritional supplements" are basically untested, unproven, potentially dangerous substances. Believing what the trainers in gyms and health clubs tell you. Many trainers are sincere and honest but if any of the things they tell you are on this list, the best advice is to walk away while you're still intact.
Doing many sets and believing that volume training is the key. If you're doing more than one set per movement and more than two or three movements in one workout per muscle group at the least you are wasting time and more than likely preventing gains through overtraining. There is virtually no evidence that the volume of training is related to gaining strength and increasing muscle mass. This brings me back to the question I asked in another thread and never got a solid answer which leads me to believe that most people are doing what I do when it comes to warming up. We're winging it. If you only going to do one set I imagine you're doing that set at whatever is your maximum intensity for a selected weight. Right? I cannot believe that anyone is going into that without being properly warmed up. So how many warm up sets do you do before that ONE real set? Do you perform all the various movements you're planning for the day, or just warm up for the one, then warm up again for the next movement? Right now I'm probably pretty close to just doing this one set, but I'm counting all the other sets I do in preparation. So when I say I'm doing 3-5 sets per movement, that's counting all the lighter weights and sets I'm doing prior to that last final set. Typically, I will go through my entire routine I have selected for the day with two sets each, then start over again adding more weight and fewer reps. The real question is, am I gassing myself out doing all that warm up, or am I willing to risk injury not doing the proper warm up? Where is the sweet spot? I realize this is more subjective than not, but there must be some rational approach to this.
Speaking only for myself, I do very little in the way of warming up. Presently, I start with legs, so I do 2 warm-up sets, one of which is only 20 body weight squats followed immediately by one set of pistol squats with light dumbbells. I then take a 3 minute break and do my single work set at full weight, resting 3 minutes before doing the other leg. For pull ups, dips and the rest, I'm pretty much warmed up by then, and I find I only need a slow 2- or 3-rep warm up for each exercise, just to get in the groove. Since I am employing a relatively slow rep speed and I don't do low reps, I don't need more. Even when I was doing a more conventional volume workout back in the day, I only did one warm up set, except for bench press (now a distant memory), for which I would normally do two. But that was then. The exercise literature and the other people in the gym tended towards a number of warm up sets, but I found that if I did more than the absolute minimum, I would compromise my best work set, which was always my first work set. (I did a number of work sets per exercise in those days.) It's good to get input from others for perspective. But then you have to decide what feels right and what allows you to maximize your exercise performance safely.
What's interesting is I always considered my warm up sets are part of the workout. As time goes on I'm learning that I'm not really doing all that many "real sets" for lack of a better term, which I think would put me more in line of what you've always been suggesting. I do find that less frequency does have me feeling stronger when I do workout. I'm still doing every other day, but fewer sets and fewer muscle groups targeted for those days. My last workout I did try to take some more time between sets, and while I did feel like I had ants in my pants, it wasn't all that difficult to do. It does appear to be true that less can be more, but we all have to find our own sweet spot. Most difficult thing for me is I actually like going to the gym. It's like I'm jonesing for a workout on the days off.
Clarence Bass does only one work set after a quick warm up, and has done quite well with it over the years: "...It's more whether you like doing set after set with short rest intervals - many people love the pumped feeling - or do you prefer a quick warmup and one all-out work set. The latter approach has always appealed to me. I groove on really drilling a set, and then moving on to the next exercise. I don't enjoy doing the same exercise over and over. I also prefer to use my time as efficiently as possible. I've never wanted to spend my life in the gym." https://www.cbass.com/ONESET.HTM If you're feeling antsy between sets, then either take shorter breaks or make the sets harder so that you have to rest longer. That's my suggestion, anyway. No sense in doing something that doesn't feel right. I also liked going to the gym more frequently. Remember, I've been doing so for pretty much my entire adult life. So the once a week workout, to which I tapered gradually from 3x/wk to 2x/wk to 3x/2wks to 1x/wk, took a bit of getting used to. At first, I didn't know what to do with myself, but then I got to appreciate the freedom. Also, when I was working out more frequently, especially the 3x/wk, there were days that going to the gym felt like punishment; I didn't look forward to it. Not always, but sometimes. Now, I'm always looking forward to my next workout and am less tired between workouts because I'm actually recovering. At one point, you may wish to give it a try for a month or two, if only for the sake of comparison. But remember that if you only do one lifting workout a week (or even 3 every 2 weeks), with relatively few total sets, you really have to make it count.
Planning your nutrition around supplements. There's virtually nothing in any "nutritional supplement" that you can't obtain at a fraction of the cost from real food. Plus real food has many other nutrients not found in supplements. Most supplements have little or no scientific data to back any claims made and it's doubtful that any supplements ever took an "average Jane or Joe" to star status. Further, various hormone derivatives sold over-the-counter as "nutritional supplements" are basically untested, unproven, potentially dangerous substances. I also like this section. I'm not at all sold on the supplement industry. I do take some essential vitamins, but for protein I am now 100% real food.
I don't like number 1 and 4. I have the feeling that this archived article is from a (very?) long time ago.