If there is one thing that tops the list when it comes to High Intensity Training it is the question of maximum progress. Due to the intensity of going to failure and beyond, the body can quickly go into a state of overtraining. You must understand how to manage your progress. This has led me to create hybrid routines that incorporate high intensity, low stress techniques while also incorporating advanced high intensity techniques that are in many cases high stress but super effective at making maximum progress in the shortest amount of time.

STRESS

Stress is one of the biggest contributors to overtraining because most don’t take into account all the different types of stress the body faces, both good and bad, that affect recovery ability. Let’s take a moment to understand, in a simple way, how the body builds muscle. But first let’s lay down some ground rules…

1- Training must be intense to stimulate muscle growth.

We really don’t know what percentage of intensity is necessary to best stimulate muscle growth… is it 80% or 94%… which is it? So 100% is a reasonable starting point because we’re asking the body to adapt to something it’s never done.

If you do the same thing over and over again, there is no need to change. This is why you see people in the gym who never change!

2- The training should be brief.
Because we have the ability to increase our strength by 400% or more…yet our recovery ability can only increase by 50%…we must be very cognizant of what is minimally required to stimulate an increase .

Since the body is very intelligent, it is not necessary to stimulate it over and over again with endless sets or an exercise. You only need to do it once. More than what is minimally required to stimulate this increase, while putting the adaptive machinery into gear, is detracting from the recovery and overcompensation process, which can only be considered overtraining.

Once established an exercise is all that is required. It’s not how much you do but how you do it.

3- The training must be infrequent to allow the increase.

It’s no secret that after intense training something has been taken away from you. You can feel it when you walk out of the gym when you’re done…if you really trained to fail an intense workout. Don’t confuse volume with intensity. They are opposites.

This is exactly what has happened. When you do a high-intensity training workout, you dig a ditch in your system’s ability to recover. This is a good analogy and will make sense to you.

Since the body recovers as a whole and not by part of the body, which most practitioners do not yet realize, the rest required before loosening up the muscles is based on a two-step process… recovery and recovery. overcompensation.

If you return to the gym before you’ve accommodated both processes, you’re disrupting your progress and most likely going into a state of overtraining.

This process can take anywhere from 4-5 days for a beginner… to 7-14 days for an advanced athlete. You must first fill the trench before you can build on top of it. Once the trench is filled, what is left goes to building the mountain or, as we say, building muscles.

You have to be at 100% first before you can be at 120% or put another way, until you’ve compensated for the exhausting effects of training, you won’t put on any additional muscle. So how do we know when to train?

THE TWO-DAY RULE

This is possibly the most important concept you will learn if you are a high intensity training athlete. Here it is in a nutshell… Once you’re feeling 100%, feeling energetic again and feeling great, then and only then, insert two more days of rest before hitting the gym for your next workout.

The reason for this is simple. You’ve compensated 100%, but we’re not here to break even, are we? No, we are here to build strength and muscle up to our genetic potential. To do this, we must pay attention and “ride the lightning” without getting burned… which brings me to the next topic and that is…

How to incorporate high-intensity training techniques without tipping the scales by stress, allowing for uninterrupted progress

HYBRID TRAININGS

We hear a lot about hybrids these days.

There are hybrid boats that use motors that are electric, but powered by a diesel generator that allows for a larger reserve of fossil energy while efficiently and quickly propelling the boat to its destination.

There are hybrid cars that do the same thing and allow higher mileage without hitting oil supply as hard as it would if they had monster 500-cubic-inch engines under the hood. This is not very different from what we are doing here.

What we are doing here is combining a high-intensity, low-stress technique with infrequent high-intensity, high-stress techniques that allow for more intense and longer contractions in most cases, allowing for more adaptation and progress.

As one grows older and stronger, the body requires a more intense contraction to go from its status quo to a place it hasn’t been. The thing to keep in mind is this… as implied above, the stronger you get, the shorter and shorter your training should be.

Many athletes, because they don’t understand how to insert these most effective techniques and read their body correctly, generally avoid them because they inevitably overtrain.

There are many types of intensity techniques; Here are some that I like…

forced repetitions
break
Omni Contraction
negatives
Pre-Exhaustion
shrinkage holds

Each of these goes beyond failure and because of that…increases the intensity. However, there is a couple that stresses less than the rest.

I’m going to set up an example of how you might proceed using a low-stress, high-stress technique in a 4-set split workout routine. We will be using:

1- Pre-exhaustion (under stress): PE is done by starting with an isolation exercise and moving relentlessly directly to a compound exercise, thus pre-exhausting the target muscle with isolation and then using fresh muscle to push the target muscle beyond the point. creating an adaptive response.

2- Contract Holds (High Tension) – CH focuses on either the strongest part of the movement and/or the fully contracted muscle. We are going to use both here. It is the intense contraction that is the stimulus for muscle growth.

All sets that are not contraction sets are taken to complete muscle failure. All sets that are contraction hold sets require a workout or two to experiment with the proper weight to hold the specified position safely. It’s important to note that in most cases you’ll be using much more weight than you normally would with a set of reps taken to complete muscular failure.

Here it goes…

TRAINING 1

Chest, Shoulders and Arms

Dumbbell flyes (before exhaustion) – 6-10 reps
Incline Smith Machine Bench Press – 3-5 reps (no rest between sets)

Smith machine seated press crunch hold (one inch below lockout) – 7-10 seconds

(These are done seated with your back supported with the snap hooks engaged. Don’t lock out completely, just lift the pins to allow your shoulders and triceps to contract against the weight)

Curl Machine Contracted Hold (performed in fully contracted position) – 7-10 seconds

NOTE: As stated above, holds contracted this way employ much more weight than would normally be used for reps, take the time to move safely into this technique and of course have a good spotter and safety clips on the stand when you do. this is a lot of stress. If you have any questions about your health to perform such an exercise, first get checked out by a medical professional.

TRAINING 2

legacy and back

Leg Press – 10 – 20 reps

Toe Press (on leg press machine): 5-8 reps with a 10 second crunch at the top between each rep

Barbell Rows: 6-10

Smith Machine Barbell Row Hold – 7-10 seconds

(Place the smith machine pins and latch midway between the floor and your waist so the bar sits on them before starting. Lean over and stand up from the pins and hold)

TRAINING 3

Chest, Shoulders and Arms

Smith machine incline bench press with contracted grip (1 inch from lockout) 7-10 seconds

Dumbbell Lateral or Lateral Machine – 8-15 reps

Barbell Curls – 6-10 reps

Lying Triceps Extension – 6-10 reps

TRAINING 4

back and legacy

Jumpers (pre-exhaust with) – 6-10 repetitions

Pull downs (palms towards you) – 6-10 reps

Sustained leg press (one inch from lockout) 10 – 20 seconds

Stiff-legged deadlifts or hyperextensions or back machine (i.e. Nautilus) – 10 – 20 reps

As you can see, we’re mixing pre-exhaustion with tight grips, which would use much more weight than you normally would on miss.

So be sure to experiment with jumping jacks and weights. A good example would be if you can normally incline bench press 200lbs, you can most likely start with 275 or 300lbs for tight grips, 1 inch from lockout. Also, remember that you don’t lock your elbows; rather, you just remove the bar from the pins and keep it.

It is imperative that when using an example routine similar to the one I have given here (I have tried this exercise routine for the last 2 months with excellent results for both size and strength) enough rest is provided.

I would suggest training once (not the full 4 workouts but one workout) every 5 days to start until you complete all 4 and then start again unless you are extremely advanced. If so, you may need to insert additional rest days (7-10) and/or remove one exercise per workout to reduce it to 3 sets instead of 4.

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE: Eliminate the following exercises:

WO1 – Earrings
WO2 – Barbell Rows
WO3 – Laterals
WO4 – Jerseys or Stiff Dead/Hypers

Remember, you’re not doing anything more than managing stress here. So manage it as you get older and stronger and remember to use the two day rule!