For the Ladies: A Guide to Physique Training – Part 1
2008 December 28
This is my old and popular (if the web stats are anything to go by) series on training for women. I first wrote this almost two years ago. It was originally intended to be a three-parter, but I got a bit burned out on it and it never really made it that far. I’ve decided to port the first two parts over to the new site layout, so you can still read them. A few things may be updated, but for the most part little’s changed.
Women in general don’t need to do anything crazy, stupid, or outlandish in order to get in shape. In terms of stress-response from the body, which is all training and diet are, women respond nearly identically to men.
What this means is that any training or diet regimen that works for men will work for women. Yet, you never see this advertised. Quite the opposite in fact.
I can’t help but feel bad for women that are trying to get in shape. Men, although still bombarded with rampant idiocy, have it relatively easy compared to women. The training of women by necessity falls into two categories:
1. Women are different than men, and thus should train differently.
2. Women respond to physical activity in the same way as men, and thus should train the same as men.
The old-school train of thought is that number one is true. In this context, I mean the masses of men that inhabit most commercial gyms and assume they know what women should do based on the advice propagated by women’s magazines. This is what “everybody knows” women should do.
There’s also a lot of women that fall into this category as well, generally adopting this stance based on the one 21-year old girl that’s “hot and sexy”. That girl trains a certain way, so therefore her appearance must be due to that. It certainly can’t have anything to do with genetics; the factors that control how the body develops and reacts to outside stimuli. Nah, that’d be dumb.
These training approaches often emphasize a lot of high-rep work with isolation-type exercises, stuff that is affectionately referred to as “pump and tone crap”, and a major emphasis on endless spans of low-intensity cardio.
This would be a perfectly valid training strategy to take, except for one crucial fact: the vast majority of women training will see little to no results training in this way. There’s a laundry list of reasons as to why, but the gist of it is simple: the body is never pushed sufficiently into making any real changes. If you provide no stimulus, you get no response.
Compound this with often idiotic dietary recommendations, which are usually way out in left field in regards to what and how much should be eaten, and you’ve got a recipe for failure.
Then of course you get the other side of the pendulum. Recent years have shown a resurgence of a more intellectual, logical, and science-based approach to training, which has led to many more sound practices. Relatively speaking, at least.
The result is a greater emphasis on strength training and overall conditioning, as opposed to “pump and tone” alongside endless cardio sessions.
This, on the surface, is a good thing. As the general base of training knowledge has become more readily available, smart coaches and smart women have begun to adopt these practices with much more favorable results. Truthfully, intelligent training benefits both men and women. In this world view, women are maximizing their results just as much as men are.
However, even point two has problems. Firstly, the “new paradigm” of intelligent training has its share of misapplication and misinformation, to include the famous paralysis by analysis issue. Secondly, some still can’t let go of premise one from above, and will try to subtly sneak in “pump and tone” crap under the guise of intelligent propositions. Thirdly, some are capitalizing on this market with material just for the sake of material. This can lead right back to stupidity.
The first issue applies globally to men and women; the second is still a matter of men assuming that women will respond differently. This attempt at rationalization has rested upon the idea that men and women need to train identically when the goals are the same, but that women have different goals, which justifies bringing out different training approaches.
Do they now? This is a hefty assumption, and one that’s resting on shaky grounds. However a more in-depth look at things can shed light on both the “old school” approach as well as this newer incarnation hiding behind the mask of science.
Women and the Mythology of Strength Training
First, we need to understand exactly what goes into developing the physique. At heart, it’s two key things: the development of the musculature, and the removal of subcutaneous fat stores.
If you’re an uninitiated woman, you just read “development of the musculature” and ran straight to the treadmill because for years you’ve been bombarded with the idea of toning with light weights so you don’t get bulky.
Here’s where a little science comes in handy. Men get large because they have about ten times more testosterone in their bodies than women do. It just so happens that the particular type of muscle fibers that are the most susceptible to massive growth are also the ones that are most responsive to testosterone and other androgens.
What this means is that while women can grow muscles to an extent, without taking androgenic (male) drugs they won’t experience massive hypertrophy (muscle growth). That huge bodybuilder girl you saw in a magazine? Her body contains more androgenic chemicals than (at least) 4-5 average men, and is likely more receptive to them on top of that. Unless that applies to you, you just aren’t going to become a huge muscle-bound beast.
We know, at least in terms of what to do in the gym, what it takes to develop the muscle. It’s pretty simple really; the use of progressively heavier weights that are above the minimum threshold required to stimulate growth. The typically assigned optimal range is 60% to 80% of your single-rep maximum in an exercise. This has been evaluated and re-evaluated to death in both the research and in real-world gym results.
In practice, this means you’ll be using anywhere from one rep to 20 reps, averaging somewhere in the 4-12 range depending on personal responses, preferences, and exercise choices. It also means that over some time frame, you’ll be working to add working weight to those exercises. It is this progressive overload that is the ultimate determinant of muscular development.
Since it is muscle that gives the body its look and shape, it is muscle that you’ll need to attain a “lean and sexy” look, as so many have taken to calling it.
So women have different goals? From the look of things so far, women have the same goals. They need to develop muscle in an efficient manner; the physiological realities of the female body preclude “getting bulky”.
Some have suggested that exercise selection plays a role. It does, but not as some would have you believe. What is required is a selection of basic barbell and bodyweight exercises that are practically universal for every goal, and a pool of assistance exercises that can be added into a workout for the sake of variety.
In other words, what you want is to have the various muscle groups of the body stimulated with your workout.
The basic exercises will vary according to who you ask, but since you’re asking me, my list is the squat, the deadlift, the overhead press, the bench press, and the barbell row. Assistance lifts in this instance would include things like pullups (using varied grips), back raises/hip extensions, lunges and other forms of single-leg training, and whatever mess you feel you need to do for your arms. Arms are a vanity thing for most people, so adding in a little work for completeness won’t hurt anything.
This list isn’t comprehensive. It covers basic movement patterns, but as far as variations on the exercises, things like grip, implement used (barbell, dumbbell, whatever), range of motion, stuff like that really isn’t that critical so long as the movement patterns are accounted for. Some degree of variety here is a good thing, so don’t get caught up in the details.
This brings me back to the original point. If you’re using major exercises that cover every muscle in the body, where are you going to develop weak points? Where are you going to “overdevelop” any single muscle group?
Imbalances occur in the kids you always see at the gym doing 30 sets of bench press and 30 sets of curls. They might have a big chest, shoulders, and arms (most likely not), but nothing else is developed. On a woman, that same sort of syndrome exists in terms of working the legs/butt/abs, and in some cases you might see imbalances occur.
But in a balanced routine? You start to see the fallacy of the logic.
This isn’t to say you never ever need to do any bodypart-specific exercises, or never need to change your larger exercises. These are still useful strategies, and depending on how much time you’ve got under your belt and what your goals are, you may need more or less of this kind of thing. The take home here is that this should not be the focus of your training. This is considered accessory work, something to add on to your foundational training. Your physique is largely going to be built by getting stronger in the basics.
The key point to remember is that the body doesn’t like imbalances, and ultimately how you end up looking is going to be determined by your genetics. Even drugs can only manipulate physiology so much when compared to what genetics will determine.
So really, the outcome of “looking good” isn’t so much a factor of training in a certain fashion; you’re not going to shape your muscles to any significant degree (while this isn’t entirely true, but unless you’re a very advanced lifter with a lot of experience, it’s not something you need concern yourself with).
What it boils down to is the proper use of tools to 1) build and maintain muscle across the body with a balanced routine and 2) drop body fat using a combination of nutritional and exercise strategies. In terms of training for physique goals, that’s all you’re doing. How you end up once you’ve built muscle and gotten lean is determined by the genes you inherited.
Strength Training
Ok, with that out of the way, how do you go about starting this process?
It can be very tricky, and as mentioned, there’s a lot of conflicting information. Some of it is right, a lot of it is wrong, and some of it is quasi-correct, meaning that it has an element of truth but is being used incorrectly. Sometimes even the correct stuff gets overcomplicated, becoming useless since you can’t actually do anything with it at the gym.
Here’s a quick rundown of the basics.
Keep your exercises balanced across the body
This means practically speaking, you have a handful of options for your weekly training, since ideally all the basic movements would be targeted multiple times in a week.
Split Body Routine
A split body routine is what almost everyone does, if you go by the people you see in gyms. Splits are heavily publicized by magazines and professional bodybuilding/figure competitors. As a consequence, this is how “most” people train.
That does not, however, make it the best.
There are pros and cons to split training just as much as full body.
Pros: It’s easy to concentrate a larger amount of work on a specific muscle group or exercise. This is good for people that need to devote work to developing a muscle, or maybe an exercise (such as powerlifters).
Cons: If done improperly, it can be very hard to ensure appropriate frequency of training for all body parts, which can lead to too much or too little being done.
Full Body Routine
Full body routines on the other hand are more commonly used by athletes and competitors in sports that occur outside the weight room. They can be just as effective for bodybuilding and physique purposes however.
Full body routines are a type of horizontal or sequential organization, which means you train the entire body with a single quality. In athletics, this can be a number of things. For physique emphasis, in most instances it will be limited to simple intensity fluctuation, which will affect things like volume, rep range, etc, but not truly training different motor abilities.
Pros: Easy to control and manipulate stress across a week by altering intensity. Can train parts frequently without issues.
Cons: Only allows a limited volume of work for any given part or exercises.
Which you pick isn’t that important, so long as it is balanced and provides an appropriate frequency of exposure per part (more on this below). In fact, just out of simple practicality, factors such as boredom, and other issues, it’s probably just as good an idea to rotate between the two from time to time.
Train often
This one is pretty critical. Going by the research available, the average frequency is two or three sessions per week, for any given muscle group.
This is further supported by what we know about the processes of growth that occur at the cellular level. In most cases, they tend to peak around 24 hours after a session, and are largely returned to normal within 2-3 days.
What this means is that in order to ensure optimal growth conditions, you’ll want to follow this trend.
There are instances where this may not hold true, and using less frequency might be called for. However, these are generally special cases that are used for those that have plateaued and are using more advanced methods of planning.
For those of you just starting out or otherwise not at an advanced method, such approaches are usually not called for, and you will have the best results by training frequently.
In those new to weight training, the exercises can be thought of as a skill that improves as your strength does. The best way to improve a skill is to practice it frequently.
Train with weights that are between 70% and 85% of your maximum
This is one area where the research and the anecdote pretty much agree. You need heavy weights to stimulate muscular growth. In virtually all the academic literature, the loads used to stimulate the fastest gains in muscular cross-section fall into this range.
Now in most instances, you see this written as a percentage of the one-rep maximum. Depending on how trained you are and the exercise in question, this may be fairly easy to test or it might be so difficult and risky that it’s not worth it.
For practical purposes, this means you’ll be handling anything from 3-5 reps on down to 12-15 reps, assuming these sets are at or near the rep maximum (meaning, the most you can do before fatigue sets in). This, not coincidentally, also happens to be how the biggest and the strongest train, so in this instance research and reality coincide.
This doesn’t mean you need to be out squatting and benching huge amounts of weight right off the bat. Heavy is always relative. Progression of load is always something to keep in mind as well; if you start out squatting with just the bar and improve to 200 lbs with the same form, I can guarantee you’ve improved not just your legs, but your entire body.
Women, specifically, tend to be able to do more reps at a given percentage of 1RM than men. So a man might be able to get 6-8 reps at 85%, whereas a woman could do 8-10. This can slant things somewhat, but the general idea is still the same.
As long as you’re working with a high degree of effort in your chosen rep range and striving to add weight whenever possible, you’re in the ballpark.
Train with a good degree of effort
Somewhat linked to the above, you’ll also want to be doing reps until you are either incapable of doing any more due to fatigue, or very close to this state. This is something that has been referred to as “workout intensity”, and although this isn’t quite accurate (the appropriate word is “intensive”) , it gets the point across.
Heavy weights are only part of the equation. Having a relatively high degree of exertion is important also.
Train with an appropriate volume
This is, in conjunction with the above two points, is one of the critical areas where people mess things up.
Volume is the amount of work done. This is expressed in several ways. Firstly, you have the total number of reps performed. If you do 4 sets of 6 reps, you’ve done 24 reps. If you do 3 sets of 10, you’ve done 30 reps. And so on.
Secondly, you have tonnage. Tonnage is simply the number of reps multiplied by the weight used. 4 sets of 6 at 100 lbs is 24 * 100 = 2400 lbs. 3 sets of 10 at 90 is 2700 lbs.
What the research on this matter shows, and generally in agreement with observed trends among physique competitors, is that the average number of reps per part per session is around 40-60. Good results have been shown with 20-40, as well as 80-100 and even higher.
In the case of 40-60 reps per part, this is not outlandish. Five sets of 5 for one exercise, then three sets of 8 for another would yield you 50 reps for a part, while falling into the required intensity zones.
However, this is a case where calling upon gym wisdom is useful. In my personal observation, going much over this for long periods of time is counterproductive. It can be done for short periods, or alternated with less stressful workouts (which is the preferred approach), but is not something that should be employed each and every session.
The body’s ability to handle stress is limited. You need to trigger that response to a degree, but then back off of it to allow the body a chance to respond and recover. If you don’t ever allow this to happen, you simply spin your wheels.
With that in mind, the gist of it is to shoot for a range of around 40-60 total reps per part trained. Other workouts, you can do more than this. Some workouts you can do less.
There’s been a couple of review papers out recently that looked at the dose-response effects of training volume in terms of “optimal” responses, and they all seem to agree, and this also happens that it coincides with what does tend to work best in the real world.
The median number of reps is 40-60, with the total “range of effectiveness” being 20-100 reps, per part, per session.
If you sit down and do the math, the high-end of the median reps would be right at 5 sets of 5 (25) and 3 sets of 10 (30) for a total of 55. More moderate approaches like 3 sets of 5 (15) and 2 sets of 10 (20) would still put you right up there with 35 reps.
If you have the work capacity for 80-100 reps a session (hint: most of you don’t need this much stimulus) you could do something like 5 sets of 6 (30), 3 sets of 10 (30) and 2 sets of 15 (30) for a total of 90 reps.
On another tangent, it has also been displayed that training with really heavy weights and an eccentric overload can create muscular gains with very low volumes of work, meaning 15 reps or less per session.
An eccentric overload means that on the lowering phase of the lift, the portion where the muscles are lengthening (as in the portion of the bench press when you bring the bar down to the chest) is being exposed to a large amount of weight. This is important, as it has been shown that the eccentric phase has a couple of neat effects. For one, it alters how the muscle recruits its fibers, bringing in more of the high-threshold fibers that are responsive to growth, and for two, it stimulates the fibers in a fashion that is positive for growth.
This type of work is employed by powerlifters seeking to improve their strength on a handful of barbell exercises, and has been used in the past by bodybuilders in a technique called negatives.
The idea here is to find the lifts that allow you to use a ton of weight, the aforementioned things like back squat, deadlift, the bench press, and barbell rows, then work up to very heavy sets of one to three reps over the course of a workout. This approach, called the maximal effort method, has been used to great success among powerlifters.
Bodybuilders using the negative technique have loaded up a barbell with more weight than they can lift on their own (typically 10-30% over the 1RM), then lowered the bar under control with a partner raising the bar back to the starting point. These are going to be very stressful on the system, and should not be attempted without a training partner.
As a rule, the maximal effort workouts are the preference, as they involve a pronounced eccentric phase on each lift just by the nature of it being very heavy, and tend to be less stressful on the body as a whole (albeit not by much).
Typically speaking, both approaches should be used with a spotter or two, and are not for the beginner. In any event, if you use such approaches, be aware that it is quite easy to do “too much”, As noted previously, the total number of reps done should be less than 15. Keep in mind the body’s recovery ability. Doing too much too often is not the trend to follow in nearly all instances.
Metabolic Conditioning (aka Cardio)
Of all the misconceptions out there, this is easily the biggest and the worst. From fitness mags to the average guy in the gym, “everybody knows” that cardio is what women have to do, and lots of it.
In order of importance on the list of things that actually make a difference in changing the body, aerobic endurance cardio is dead last. As far as I’m concerned, spending hour after hour on the treadmill is all but worthless if the remaining pieces of the puzzle aren’t in place.
This does not mean that there is no use any time ever for low-intensity cardio. What it means is that you need to be smart about it. Smart beats hard for the sake of hard every single time.
Let’s go over a little cellular energetics so that things make a little more sense.
At the cellular level, the body has two basic processes for obtaining energy, the anaerobic (oxygen independent) pathway and the aerobic (oxygen dependent) pathway.
The pathways are intensity dependent, with oxidative metabolism providing energy at rest and anaerobic metabolism providing energy as the intensity of movement increases.
The difference is the availability of energy. Anaerobic processes can readily provide energy over short time periods, whereas aerobic oxidation is slower from a metabolic standpoint. Intense activity uses up energy faster than aerobic metabolism can provide it. Anaerobic metabolism can provide energy quickly, but only in finite amounts before it needs recharging.
Over very short, very intense intervals, the primary energy substrate is ATP/CP, the so-called alactic or phosphagen anaerobic system. ATP, short for Adenosine Triphosphate, is essentially the energy currency of the cell, directly fueling all processes that require energy. The entire energetic system of the cell is designed around the creation and management of ATP. CP, creatine phosphate, is a short-term reserve of ATP, a compound that can almost immediately restore ATP levels.
The ATP/CP pathway is depleted after roughly 30 seconds of continuous activity, which means that very high intensity activity as a rule will not last longer than this. Athletes such as short-distance sprinters, powerlifters, and Olympic weightlifters are alactic-anaerobic dominant in their events.
The next step down is the glycolytic-anaerobic pathway. This involves the breakdown of muscular glycogen stores to provide a supply of ATP to the working muscle. Glycogen is simply blood glucose stored as a supply of energy, and “glycolytic” refers to the breaking down of glycogen. The by-product of this is lactic acid (or lactate), which results in the “burn” you feel when doing continuous exercise. Glycolytic-anaerobic work can sustain continuous work for around 90 seconds to two minutes, give or take. Most athletes competing in non-endurance competitions, such as most team sports, will fall into this category, as do strongmen competitors and the weight training of a great many bodybuilders.
Finally we have oxidative metabolism, which is where fatty acids in the blood are directly oxidized (“burned” if you will) for energy. This is the slowest pathway, and as such it is not able to sustain activity of any meaningful intensity, at least as compared to what the anaerobic pathways can handle. Aerobic/oxidative metabolism is operative at rest, or during low intensity activities of long duration.
It’s important to note that these are just generalizations, and in reality some measure of all three are working at any given time. It’s just a matter of which pathway is dominant in any given activity.
It might be very tempting to look at aerobic exercise, with the fact that it burns fatty acids exclusively, and think, wow, that burns a lot of fat! You’d be both right and wrong. Yes, oxidative metabolism burns fat almost exclusively. The problem is, it doesn’t burn a lot of it. Have you ever looked at the calorie usage indicators on any cardio equipment? The amount you burn is ridiculously low. There’s around 3500 calories in a pound of fat. You’ll see numbers like 300-400 calories per hour for low intensity work. That’s not a lot of fat being burned, especially not in return for an hour of your life wasted on a treadmill.
If anything, aerobic exercise, at least for physique training purposes, should be used as an adjunct to your diet. If you’re burning 300-400 extra calories a day, then that’s potentially 300-400 more calories you don’t have to cut out of the diet. Of course, if you hate low-intensity cardio as much as most do, cutting your diet might end up being the easier route.
Look at something like a 200 meter sprint on the other hand. The activity itself is dominantly glycolytic, with a comparatively smaller ratio of fatty acids used. However, something interesting happens when you deplete glycogen stores in the muscle.
There’s a molecule in cells called AMPK. Without going into detail, AMPK is a sort of “thermostat” for the energy status of a cell. When energy is low, AMPK activates. It has two general effects, to decrease energy expenditure and to increase energy scavenging. The biggest relevant effect is that the body stops using up glycogen for fuel, storing it instead from blood glucose, while increasing the use of fatty acids for energy. This is known as improving insulin sensitivity, and AMPK increases this when activated.
That has interesting implications. It means that even though the activity itself doesn’t use much in the way of fatty acids, the interval following the activity can potentially use up a ton of them. You’re also more likely to burn up a ton more calories from a session of hard anaerobic-interval training than you are even with an hour of low-intensity aerobic work. A higher energy expenditure coupled with a preferential increase in the use of fatty acids is a good combination.
Anaerobic workouts are performed as intervals, which are alternated periods of work and rest. This takes advantage of the fact that anaerobic output has a limited time frame to operate. By stressing the glycolytic pathway, then resting briefly to allow recovery, you’re training that pathway to become more efficient.
High-Intensity Interval (or Intermittent) Training
This is likely the most commonly known variant of interval training. HIIT as it is widely known involves the use of intervals of maximal intensity, which means that each work set is taken to the limit of your ability to handle.
In research, HIIT has shown itself to be devastatingly effective at changing body composition. It’s also quite good at improving cardiovascular elements such as VO2 max, due to the intensity of work performed.
However, HIIT doesn’t differ much from high intensity strength training in regard to recovery. As a result, HIIT has to be used judiciously, and planned into a weekly program accordingly. Do too much, too often, and you’ll risk burn out.
The idea behind all interval training, including HIIT, is to sequence periods of high-intensity work with low-intensity work or rest. In practice, you’ll see things like 30 seconds high, 30 seconds low, or 60 seconds high, 90 seconds rest, and so on.
A high-intensity interval might have different meanings, but in most cases it means that either i) the work intervals are maximal or ii) the rest intervals are short so as to prevent complete recovery in between sets.
Tempo Training
Tempo training would be best described as “moderate intensity interval training”. Tempo runs have been used by sprinters as a means of achieving a high volume of work, as opposed to the maximal efforts of HIIT. I’ve used these workouts to great success among figure girls after getting the idea from Charlie Francis’ sprinting workouts, especially once the pre-contest diet becomes restrictive and recovery becomes a premium.
Tempo runs are performed at around 75% of maximum. What this means is that if your best time for a 100 meter sprint is 11 seconds, you’d want your work sets to take around 15 seconds (75% of 9m/s is around 6.7-6.8m/s).
If you aren’t out running sprints on the track and have no idea of how your maximal performance compares, have no fear. There’s a pretty easy way around that.
On whatever cardio machine you’re using, simply divide your work:rest ratio into fairly equal increments. Say 30s:30s, or 45s:45s, whatever you prefer, and alternate between them.
The idea is to avoid complete recovery between each work interval in a set, and focus on the overall volume of work. Just remember to keep your work interval intense, but not all-out.
Beginner Level
Set 1: Work, Rest, Work, Rest, Work
Take a 60-90 second rest interval between each set.
Repeat 4-6 times.
Intermediate Level
Set 1: Work, Rest, Work, Rest, Work
Set 2: Work, Rest, Work, Rest, Work
Set 3: Work, Rest, Work, Work, Rest, Work
Set 4: Work, Rest, Work, Rest, Work
Rest interval of 60-90 seconds between each set
Repeat 2-3 times
Advanced Level
Set 1: Work, Rest, Work, Rest, Work
Set 2: Work, Rest, Work, Work, Rest, Work
Set 3: Work, Rest, Work, Work, Rest, Work, Work
Set 4: Work, Rest, Work, Work, Rest, Work, Work
Set 5: Work, Rest, Work, Rest, Work
Rest interval of 60-90 seconds between each set.
Repeat 2-3 times
Depletion Workouts
A depletion workout is a weight training session that is designed to stimulate anaerobic metabolism for the purpose of depleting intramuscular glycogen stores.
This can be done in the context of specific dietary schemes in order to produce a specific effect, but it has the benefit of doubling as a form of anaerobic cardio training.
Depletion workouts have long set times, slower tempos, and will use lighter weights accordingly. With a moderate tempo, depletion sets will typically go for 12 to 15 reps. If you move faster, 15-25 might be necessary. You’ll also use a correspondingly higher volume of work, in the neighborhood of 4 to as many as 20 sets (depending on goals) with very brief rest intervals between sets.
Depletion workouts are performed with muscle-specific exercises in order to cause preferential usage of glycogen throughout the body. This can double as a form of local lactate-tolerance training, for those interested in the performance quality of specific muscular endurance.
Depletion workouts can be performed in a circuit fashion, doing one set of an exercise, then moving on to the next, then the next, going through the entire string before returning to the original exercise and repeating. This is generally the recommended fashion.
However, I’ve found from experience that circuit training in commercial gyms, especially at peak hours, can be a pain in the ass if not impossible. In those cases, you can try either a modified circuit (ie, do three sets of an exercise before moving on, to cut down on the time spent at each station), or as I’ve done before, just complete all the work at each station before moving on.
The number of sets and exercises you’ll do largely depends on the goal. For a full-body depletion, you’ll need somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-20 sets per part. Fortunately, barring few instances (such as Lyle McDonald’s Ultimate Diet 2.0), you won’t need this much to see the cardio training effect. Generally speaking for that role you can get away 4-6 sets of 12-15 per part. Since the volume’s lower, you can go a little heavier, but still keep the rest intervals short.
Upper Body Depletion
Dumbbell Bench Press, 4×15
Pulldown, 4×15
Incline Chest Press, 4×15
Cable Row, 4×15
This workout and all the others listed, as mentioned, can be performed as a circuit (you’d go through each one four times), or you can just do straight sets of each.
Lower Body Depletion
Leg Press, 4×15
Romanian DL, 4×15
Split Squat, 4×15
Dumbbell Step-ups, 4×15
Calves, 6×15
Other options would include full-body workouts (not fun), or chest/back/shoulders and arms/legs, or really any thing else you care to imagine.
Complexes
A complex is somewhat similar to the above depletion workouts, but I gave them a separate section because they’re different enough to deserve a mention.
A complex is simply a series of exercises performed with no rests in between. In some ways they are similar to a circuit described above, although a complex is generally performed with a barbell and no change in weight.
Whereas a circuit may have you moving between stations, a complex has you moving non-stop with absolutely no rests between all the working reps.
This can be performed in a variety of ways. Dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, even odd objects like sandbags, kegs, whatever else you want can be subbed in. The trick is to have a variety of movements and just keep moving.
For example:
High Pull
Hang Clean
Military Press
Deadlift
Romanian DL
Barbell Row
You’d do one set of say 6 reps for the first exercise, immediately move to the second and do 6 reps, and so on until you reach the last. Or you can do shorter sets of say 3 reps and go through the series 2-3 times as a single set. That’s a complex.
There’s a ton of ways to organize complexes. Since barbells and dumbbells are the most commonly available implements at gyms, these are likely what you’ll end up using most of the time. Fortunately there’s enough exercise diversity that you should have little trouble coming up with effective combinations.
Istvan Javorek, the guy that as far as I can tell invented the idea of complexes, has a book out that details the topic and likely gives a ton of ideas on how to set these up.
Whereas depletion workouts are designed to work on the local muscle groups, a complex on the other hand is more of a systemic workout, training the endurance ability of the body as a whole. This can be valuable to those with performance-minded goals in conjunction with physique training.
Stubborn Fat Protocol
This is an idea that came from Lyle McDonald. SFP cardio involves the sequencing of high-intensity cardio with low-intensity aerobic cardio in order to take advantage of specific metabolic activities.
SFP is ideally performed in the morning on an empty stomach, or at the very least a few hours away from the last meal. Adding in 5-10mg of yohimbine, 200mg of caffeine, and 2-5g of L-tyrosine about 30 minutes beforehand can have positive effects as well, for reasons to be elaborated upon.
When you perform high-intensity cardio, a few neat things happen. The level of catecholamines in the body increases, which is good. Catecholamines are agonists of sympathetic nervous system output, the “fight” part of the “fight or flight” syndrome. Catecholamines also have the nifty property of causing the release of fatty acids into the bloodstream.
Since aerobic cardio feasts upon fatty acids for fuel, having an abundance of them in the bloodstream would obviously be a good thing when performing such work.
So that’s the idea. Start off with a brief warm up, 2-5 minutes or so as your body dictates, then do five minutes of high-intensity cardio. Lyle originally suggested just going five minutes as hard as you can stand, adding that doing five 60s intervals would likely do the same thing. Others have experimented with longer blocks of intervals, with shorter working times, but the original five-minute block is what I’d stick with.
After completing the high-intensity phase, rest for about 5 minutes or so, enough to restore heart rate and generally cool off a little.
Then it’s time for the aerobic portion of the session. Again the original recommendation was to do around 60 minutes of steady-state aerobic work on whatever piece of cardio equipment you choose. If you’re short on time, you could conceivably shorten this to 40 or even 30 minutes, but if at all possible you should complete the entire session.
The reason for the yohimbine: when dealing with adrenal hormones like the catecholamines, you have two signals in the cells, the alpha receptors and the beta receptors. The beta receptors, generally, stimulate fatty acid release. The alpha receptors on the other hand, block it.
You tend to notice stubborn fat the most in areas that have high concentrations of alpha receptors. In men, this is the chest, abs, and lower back. In women, this tends to be from the waist down. Yohimbine blocks the alpha receptors and improves blood flow, but is also counteracted by insulin (meaning, if you’ve eaten recently it’s not likely to work). This makes the SFP cardio a prime case for its usage, to help with fatty acid mobilization from those stubborn areas.
Caffeine and L-tyrosine are added in simply for the sake of having the energy to get through the session (which can be just as important in these scenarios).
For more information, check out Lyle’s book The Stubborn Fat Solution, which goes into all of this in much greater detail.
Up next: Part II – Nutrition and Diet
A Quick Summary
Formerly "Developing the Female Body". A guide to physique training for women. Part 1 - a look at exercise.
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