Excellent question.
You will note that Ahtianinenetuses the term "
relative exercise intensity"?
"Relative exercise intensity" is the single most important factor for uninterrupted progress toward a training goal, if all other basic factors (diet, hydration, managed stress, nutrient levels, rest, recovery, average to no supplementation) are maintained, that I know of.
Ok, so lets define that!
Relative refers to the fact that your progress or program should have
progression (
periodization) - that is
progress RELATIVE to what you were doing immediately prior to the program variation.
Let me throw in some information to fill in the back-end knowledge base before finishing this off, so we have some of the same concepts on the table...
The key is to stimulate ongoing growth (or other adaptation such as strength, power, speed, etc).
This means keeping the body in a state where it has to continually adapt or more accurately "acclimate"....and is supported in doing so.
Plateau is a word to describe when you have fully adapted to training and have continued to train in a manner that is not stimulating further progressive adaptation. One will tend to
regress after this point if no Relative exercise intensity changes are used.
Research has shown that changing your training each subsequent session for the same body part leads to more muscle growth than changing it every 4 weeks. (That means ongoing changes in your relative exercise intensity!)
Note however, that you do not have to use this frequency of variation. You can determine how quickly your body responds by tracking your progress through different approaches. Once you learn how YOU work...you know what you need to do to succeed! (see my journal for an example of tracking :
http://www.discussbodybuilding.com/fb.ashx?m=170774 )
Focus for muscle growth should be on 80-100% compound (multi joint) movements and 0-20% isolation (single joint) movements.
Proper form is king. Lear to do each movement properly and safely FIRST!
Do not train beyond the threshold of recovery and diminished returns ...instead train muscle with more intensity variations (Drop sets, supersets, etc). (Don't do 40 sets for a bodypart when you only need a few! Don't train for 2 hours when you could gain more with half the time!)
You only need to challenge the body and muscle sufficient to bring about the desired adaptive response...then support recovery as completely as possible.
Cycle your training (i.e. endurance, strength, hypertrophy) and vary the progressions in every cycle!
This mega-progression (endurance, strength, hypertrophy) demonstrated greater muscle growth than it's reverse.
Within each phase of the progression, there should be macro-progressions
Example: Current mega-progression = endurance, strength, hypertrophy
Current macro-progression = hypertrophy Phase
Micro-progressions: (
primary variations are rest between sets and Accelerating the pace of concentric (lifting/pushing/pulling) portion of lifts in perfect form. Using control on eccentric portions (lowering) of movements...then
The revers of the above (this is also very powerful and research shows it also gives excellent results)...that is DECELERATE an accelerated eccentric/lowering/releasing portion of a movement under control. Followed by a 2+ second pause at the end/bottom/extension to allow the muscle to de-load the stretch-reflex...then an accelerated concentric (lifting/pushing/pulling) portion of lifts, as fast as you can. )
Feel full contractions at both isometric ends extended and flexed. )
long rest/high weight/slow Eccentric-Concentric
long rest/high weight/Fast Concentric
long rest/high weight/Fast Eccentric-pause-Concentric
Medium rest/high weight/medium Eccentric-Concentric
Medium rest/high weight/Fast Concentric
Medium rest/high weight/Fast Eccentric-pause-Concentric
Low Rest/medium-high weight/medium Eccentric-Concentric
Low Rest/medium-high weight/Fast Concentric
Low Rest/medium-high weight /Fast Eccentric-pause-Concentric
Finally, within each micro progression there are tiny variations from routine to routine (such as varying barbell curl with dumbell curl, preacher curl, changin grip width, ...etc)
The point to all this?
Because the body adapts quickly to stimuli, you need to vary the challenge
to get the body to continue to respond with desirable adaptations.
Start with the least amount of work to get the desired result...including both diet and training.
This allows you a longer range of progressions and progress, in contrast to making huge changes in your training and diet.
(start with 1 or 2 sets and exhaust that set range before you use 3 sets!)
In hypertrophy training, shorter duration rests resulted in increased hypertrophy compared with longer rests. (as a change in Relative exercise intensity.)
In hypertrophy training high set volume (6) did not result in additional muscle growth or hormonal response over moderate set volume (4). Though additional muscle growth and hormonal response was higher in moderate set volume (4) than for low set volume (2).
The body adapts to protein intake, facilitating more waste as protein intake increases. Therefor start with a lower intake than "normal" and progress it. When lowering protein intake there is a loss of beneficial protein use as the body continues to waste high amounts of protein and lags in acclimation to lower intakes ...however this can be mitigated through protein timing and availability. When cycling protein, drop your protein during the endurance phase when the body is not so intensively needing proteins for recovery.
OK?
Just for kicks, here is some of the actual research that is behind this information.
these are not stand alone research, but are rather a sing piece in a large body of research that has reinforces these concepts again and again.
Muscular adaptations in response to three different resistance-training regimens: specificity of repetition maximum training zones
European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2002 Nov;88(1-2):50-60. Epub 2002 Aug 15.
Subjects were divided into four groups:
- a low repetition group performing 3-5 repetitions maximum (RM) for four sets of each exercise with 3 min rest between sets and exercises,
- an intermediate repetition group performing 9-11 RM for three sets with 2 min rest,
- a high repetition group performing 20-28 RM for two sets with 1 min rest,
- a non-exercising control group
Maximal strength improved significantly more for group 1 compared to the other training groups.
Maximal Endurance significantly increased at the end of the study for only group 3.
All three major fiber types (types I, IIA, and IIB) hypertrophied for Group 1 and Group 2,
No significant increases were demonstrated for either Group 3 or 4.
The percentage of type IIAB fibers increased for all three resistance-trained groups 1-3.
Muscular adaptations to combinations of high- and low-intensity resistance exercises
The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2004 Nov;18(4):730-7
Tested long-term effects of resistance-training regimens with 3 types of regimens on serum growth hormone (GH) concentration and muscular size cross sectional area:
- hypertrophy type medium intensity (approximately 10 repetition maximum [RM]) short interset rest period (30 s)
- strength type - 5 sets of high-intensity (90% of 1RM) and low-repetition exercise
- combi-type - and a single set of low-intensity and high-repetition exercise added immediately after the strength-type regimen
Postexercise increases in serum GH concentration showed a significant regimen dependence:
hypertrophy-type was greater than
combi-type which was greater than
strength-type Muscular size cross sectional area showed a significant regimen dependence:
hypertrophy-type was greater than
combi-type which was greater than
strength-type Skeletal muscle fiber area alterations in two opposing modes of resistance-exercise training in the same individual. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 1990;61(1-2):37-41.
Two groups took turns participating in both of two 7.5-week regimens. Muscle samples were analyzed for area changes.
- performing a muscular strength program (high-resistance, low-repetition)
- performing a muscular endurance program (low-resistance, high-repetition)
Group A did Program-1 followed by Program-2
Group B did Program-2 followed by Program-1
The results showed that the Group-B progression maximized muscle fiber area growth continually, while Group-A increased then decreased muscle fiber area.