Pump Up The Volume! VOLUME: Training volume is best understood as the total number of sets and reps. INTENSITY: Training intensity is what percentage of your one rep max you are using. E.g. if your max bench press is 100kg and you are doing sets with 50kg your intensity level is 50%. TRAINING STIMULUS (TS): The stress your training session places on your body. 1. The amount of TS will be the product of the volume and the intensity in your training session. 2. If the TS is too low your body will not adapt by getting stronger. 3. If the TS is too high you will not recover before your next scheduled workout. 4. It is normally the case that you increase the weight that you lift between your training sessions at a faster rate than your body grows stronger. This will increase the intensity and as a consequence the TS. That is why people burn-out on programs that they used to be able to cope with. 5. In regards to volume the fewer sets you do the closer you must push to your maximum possible reps in each set to achieve a good TS. 6. It is thought that intensity levels over 90% are best for developing the skill of demonstrating strength. 7. As the intensity moves downwards from 90%, hypertrophy is more efficiently triggered, especially as volume increases. These intensity ranges are typically thought of in terms of number of reps per set. That is misleading, for example a triple at 90% has a very different effect than 10 triples at 70%. 8. Although training at high intensity levels is necessary for the powerlifter to develop the ability to demonstrate strength it is very demanding on the nervous system. Care must be taken that the TS does not become too high. 9. The small volume, high intensity training mentioned in 8 will not develop the musculature optimally. Lower intensity, higher volume work should also be included in the program for building strength. Wise programming for any strength sport is really a case of balancing volume and intensity to match the frequency with which you have time available to train. You should also have the goal of increasing your work capacity over time so that you can cope with more, heavier training. Next time we’ll work through an example of how these principals can be applied by a typical powerlifter. Roy
Posted on: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 16:32:01 +0000