May 4, 2017

Progression for hypertrophy and fat loss

Progression für Hypertrophie und Fettabbau

Progression for hypertrophy and fat loss

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/progressions-for-hypertrophy-and-fat-loss

There are many essential elements that should be included in any effective exercise program. Obviously, you need to be smart when choosing your exercises. I usually favor multi-joint exercises, but isolation exercises also have their place. Regardless of your exercise selection, however, it is essential that you use a progression plan.

It is very difficult to make any substantial progress if you do not know how to force your body to do something it is not used to doing. An exercise program is only as good as the planned progression that comprises that program. The problem, however, is that a progression plan is often not included in the program.

As someone who designs training programs, I can understand why a trainer may not "prescribe" a progression plan. Here are a few reasons why:

1. individuality

In a perfect world, I would know exactly how your body adapts to the training parameters. But in the real world, I don't know this. And even if I did know, the progression plan might be too much for some or too little for others.

2. lack of experience

There are many trainers who set up internet programs, but sometimes I wonder how many clients these trainers actually train. I often suspect that internet programs are designed for nothing more than the internet.

3. laziness

It's not easy to "prescribe" different progression plans. You need to have a pretty good understanding of how a person will generally adapt to each phase. It's much easier for a trainer to simply tell you to do "X" sets and reps and hope the rest takes care of itself.

The simplest progression recommendation is to pack more weight on the bar. This works well for beginners and for the first few weeks of a training program, but eventually it will stop working. And maybe you have plenty of strength but need to increase your work capacity. Or maybe you're one of those who responds best to increasing reps, while your buddy responds best to moving heavy weights. Or perhaps you are in a fat loss phase. In this case, constantly increasing the weight on the bar is a futile endeavor.

For these reasons, I want to outline the most effective progression plans for hypertrophy and fat loss within this article. The purpose of this article is to help you understand which methods should be used and why. There are many factors that need to be considered - and also a whole host of factors that you may not be aware of.

Let's get started!

Goal 1 - Increased muscle mass (hypertrophy training)

If you are training for hypertrophy, then you need to consume more calories each day than you expend. This beyond maintenance calorie eating plan allows you to cope with the more extreme types of progression because your body is getting plenty of nutrients. In other words, you are in a phase during which overtraining is less likely to occur. For this reason, I recommend the three most intense progressions in this situation.

Load progression

Increasing the load aka training weight with each training session is one of the most effective but also most demanding types of progression. This type of progression takes the biggest toll on your joints and nervous system. The key is to increase the training weights in small increments. This forces your muscles to do more work, but doesn't overload your brain, muscles and joints.

Many trainers, including myself, often recommend increasing the training weight by 2% when you repeat a training session. But many people are anything but ecstatic about this approach. Let's say that on Monday you did five sets of lying tricep presses of five repetitions (5 x 5) with 20 kilo dumbbells.

The next Monday you pull the calculator out of your pocket and you realize that you need to increase the weight by 0.4 kilos (I probably don't need to go into much further detail until you realize the problems with the 2% approach, but I will anyway). You immediately face a huge challenge because your gym only has dumbbells with weight jumps of 2.5 kilos. So you are forced to use a 12% load progression instead of a 2% load progression.

And this is one of the many reasons I favor multi-joint exercises. If you had used close bench presses at 112.5 kilos to train your triceps, then the 2% progression would have equated to 2.25 kilos. Without a leap of faith, you can assume that increasing the training load by 2.5 kilos is a relatively accurate and effective progression. If you are working with the 2% progression and ever find yourself with a 3.75 pound progression, then you should always round down instead of round up (increase the weight by 2.5 kilos instead of 5 kilos).

I like the 2% progression, but its applicability is limited to multi-joint exercises where the weight is above 100 kilos. With less weight, you'll end up running into a wall. Platemates (small magnetic weights) attached to dumbbells and barbells can help, but this does not eliminate the problem.

This brings us to the next progression.

Repetition progression

I like repetition progression for isolation exercises with lighter weights. With a repetition progression, you're not forced to work with minimal weight progressions, but you can still overload your muscles. There are two ways to get the most out of repetition progressions.

First, if you're using traditional set/repetition schemes like 5 x 5, you can simply add one repetition per set when you repeat the workout. Depending on how close your first training session was to muscle failure, you may not be able to perform an extra repetition on each set. For example, if you performed 5 sets of 5 repetitions on Monday, you may only be able to perform six repetitions on the first three sets the following Monday. You may even only be able to do four repetitions on the fifth set.

That is perfectly fine. All that matters is that the total number of repetitions is higher. 5 x 5 equals 25 total repetitions. 6, 6, 6, 5, 4 equals 27 repetitions. Stay with the repetition progression until you can do two more reps on each set (5 x 7). At this point, increase the weight to the next available weight level and start the process again with a new set/repetition range that you can complete with the heavier weight.

The second way to use repetition progression is based on a target number of repetitions. Let's say you want to do 25 total reps with a weight that you can move four to six times when you are rested. The next time you perform the workout, increase the total reps by 2 to 3. Continue this progression until you reach 35 total reps.

At this point, increase the weight and start again. I prefer this approach because I feel like exercisers get too obsessed with target numbers of reps and sets. What they should really be focusing on is the total number of repetitions per exercise per training session.

Frequency progression

Increasing the number of workouts for a specific exercise is the most effective progression I've ever used for hypertrophy. But frequency progression is not for everyone. First, you need to have the luxury of training more frequently. Second, you need to understand the levels of the movements.

For simplicity, I break down exercises as follows:

Upper body pull and push exercises on the horizontal plane
Upper body pull and push exercises on the vertical plane
Squats and deadlifts

If you don't know which muscles are emphasized in which exercise, this information is probably too advanced for you. But if you understand that wide grip pull-ups primarily work your latissimus and upper back muscles, then you should read on.

Frequency progression is not complicated if you don't make it complicated. If you struggle with pull-ups and want a bigger upper back, then you should increase the frequency of pull-ups. However, if you were to simply add more volume, then you would only increase your recovery time. Start with three pull-up sessions in the first week. Add a fourth pull-up training session the next week and a fifth training session in the third week.

Increase the number of your pull-up training sessions to six in the fourth week. Maintain the frequency of six pull-up training sessions during the fifth week. Perform one pull-up workout during the sixth week before going back to anything between three and six pull-up workouts in the seventh week.

Here's an overview of what the pull-up frequency progression looks like:

Week 1: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Week 2: Monday morning, afternoon, Wednesday, Friday
Week 3: Monday morning, afternoon, Wednesday, Friday morning, afternoon.
Week 4: Monday morning, afternoon, Wednesday morning, afternoon, Friday morning, afternoon.
Week 5: Monday morning, afternoon, Wednesday morning, afternoon, Friday morning, afternoon.
Week 6: Wednesday
Week 7: Continue with your pattern from any week between weeks 1 and 4

Note that I did not increase the number of training days per week. Instead, I increased the total number of workouts by doing morning and afternoon workouts. I found that two workouts in one day worked better for hypertrophy than increasing the frequency to six days per week. There should be at least six hours between each morning and afternoon training session.

In week 7, you have a few different options. If your upper back is still lagging in its development, you can go back to six workouts. Just make sure you take an off-load week every fourth week and only do pull-ups during one training session. The other option is to go back to three, four or five training sessions per week. Again, every fourth week should be a de-load week. The frequency you should use depends on what your schedule allows.

Summary

Use the 2% load progression for multi-joint exercises, use the repetition progression for isolation or light exercises, and use the frequency progression for the exercises that work lagging muscles in their development.

Goal 2 - Burning fat (metabolic training)

When training for fat loss, you need to consume more calories than you consume each day. This diet plan with a calorie intake below maintenance calories requires less demanding types of progression, as the risk of overtraining is higher if your nutrient intake is low. For this reason, I recommend progression methods that don't require you to move heavier and heavier weights, but instead increase your metabolic rate by increasing your excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC).

Before I get to the progression, let me first explain what EPOC is.

After you finish your workout, your body needs more oxygen. When you train with weights or just run outside, your body uses a lot of oxygen. Your body needs to pay off this oxygen debt to maintain homeostasis. Basically, your body needs to return to its pre-exercise state. It does this by replenishing energy stores, reoxygenating the blood, restoring circulating hormone levels, lowering body temperature and bringing breathing and heart rate back to normal.

All of these steps are known collectively as EPOC and all of these steps consume energy. Therefore, the higher your EPOC, the more calories you will burn after your workout. EPOC is also known as the afterburn effect of exercise.

Therefore, if you are training for fat loss, you should use progressions that force your body to use more oxygen. Here are these progressions.

Rest progression

Progressively reducing your rest intervals without changing the training load is my favorite method for increasing fat loss. Since you're not increasing the load, your muscles won't be beaten down by the lack of nutrients in your diet. Instead, you are forcing your energy systems (mainly anaerobic glycolysis) to work harder.

Before I describe how to use pause progression, I need to get back to my opening statement about the importance of choosing the right exercises. There is no room for isolation exercises in a fat loss training session!

Does this mean you should never do shoulder raises, external rotator exercises or other joint integrity exercises? Of course not. If you need to strengthen your lower trapezius or rotator cuff, then you should include exercises for these areas in your training program. But this is not part of your fat loss training session per se, but additional training that you perform after you have completed your fat loss training.

Beyond proper exercise selection, the pause progression is quite simple. You start with a fairly short rest interval of say 60 seconds between each exercise in a circuit and reduce the rest intervals in 5 second increments with each repetition of the workout. Here is an example:

Week 1, training session A

1A) Pull-ups

o 60 seconds rest

1B) Dips

o 60 seconds rest

1C) Repositioning

o 60 seconds rest and repetition

Week 2, training session A

1A) Pull-ups

o 55 seconds rest

1B) Dips

o 55 seconds rest

1C) Repositioning

o 55 seconds rest and repetition

The first factor you must respect is the initial length of the pause intervals. If 60 seconds is not demanding, then the pause intervals are too long. In other words, if 60 seconds of rest is not enough to make you sweat, then you are not doing yourself any favors. You need to start with an effective plan if you want the progression to work. If 60 seconds was too long for your first training session, you should reduce the rest intervals by 10 seconds on the next repetition of the training session. From this point on, stick with the 5-second pause progression described above.

You can stay with the pause progression for as long as you are training for fat loss. I've worked with people who started with 60 second rest intervals and three full body workouts per week and worked their way up to 10 second rest intervals with the same exercises, same weights and same reps. They all shed a substantial amount of fat by dramatically increasing their EPOC. The pause progression works wonders for most of them.

Set progression

Adding an additional set for each exercise during a training session is another effective progression for metabolic training. This type of progression is effective because an additional set is less demanding than an increase in training load or additional repetitions, but is still enough to increase your work capacity. There are two ways to use set progression, depending on how your workouts are structured.

If you follow the typical set/repetition plan - say 5 x 5 - then you simply add another set each time you perform the workout again. So if you did 5 sets of 5 reps on Monday, the following Monday you will do 6 sets of 5 reps. The weight will not change and the same applies to the rest intervals. You add more sets as long as you achieve results. If you are a beginner exerciser, you may be able to go from 5 x 5 to 10 x 5 over the course of 5 weeks and continue to get results.

If you are an experienced exerciser, it is likely that your body will adapt more quickly. In this case, it may make sense to limit the set progression to 3 weeks and start with a higher volume. You could go from 8 x 3 to 10 x 3 over the course of 3 weeks.

There is another way to use set progression if you have a target number of repetitions for each exercise. Let's say your target repetition count is 25 reps with a weight that you can do 4 to 6 reps with when you're rested. And let's say your pull-up sets on Monday looked like this:

Set 1: 6 repetitions
Set 2: 5 repetitions
Set 3: 5 repetitions
Set 4: 5 repetitions
Set 5: 4 repetitions

The following Monday you will add a sixth set and perform as many repetitions as possible, which would look like this:

Set 1: 6 repetitions
Set 2: 5 repetitions
Set 3: 5 repetitions
Set 4: 5 repetitions
Set 5: 4 repetitions
Set 6: As many repetitions as possible

All in all, I like to emphasize pause progression. For fat loss, three full-body workouts per week is the upper limit for most people. Use the pause progression on Monday and Friday and use the set progression on Wednesday.

Summary: use the pause progression for two training sessions per week and use the set progression for one training session per week. Stick to circuits that consist of multi-joint exercises.

Final words:

It doesn't matter if you're training for hypertrophy or fat loss - you need to implement an effective progression. Use these methods and you will always force your body to do more work over time. This ensures that you will never be treading water.