Weight Lifting and Strength Training Frequency
June 17, 2012 by admin
Filed under Strength Training
The basic principle behind weight lifting and strength training is progressive increase in the resistance applied to your exercises, forcing your muscles to adapt and grow. At first, strength and muscle gains are always relatively fast for beginners; however, as you progress with time and experience, the gains slows down, and eventually seems to stop, and you hit the dreaded plateau.
Our bodies are amazingly adaptive organisms. Its primary goal and purpose is survival, and that is it. It could care less how lean you want to get, or how strong you want to be – survival is the only thing it cares about. When your body faces new stimulus, such as having to perform three heavy set of squats for 6 reps every monday at 6pm – it instinctively knows, and adapts to that training stimulus.
There are several ways to get around this and deal with this problem.
One of the key things to do is to change your training frequency.
One of the biggest mistakes many people make is to follow the exact same routine, exercises, training schedule and frequency day in and day out. Your body quickly picks up on your consistent training frequency and training pattern and adapts and adjusts accordingly.
Weightlifting Strength Training Frequency
As you become more advanced and get increasingly stronger, the level of physical stress and exertion increases accordingly. Think of it like this. As a beginner, you might do something like squatting 3 sets of 150lbs for 10 reps. But as you advance and get stronger, you place much higher demands on your muscles and body by using much heavier weights, say doings the same squats for 3 sets, but for only 6 reps with 300lbs.
Now look at the two training sessions and compare the difference in the amount of effort required to complete 3 sets of 150lb squats vs 3 sets of 300lb squats. The difference is massive, and the amount of additional stress your body endures is far greater. With increased workout load and intensity, you must REDUCE your strength training frequency.
This may be somewhat a difficult idea to accept, especially when many people are afraid of taking prolonged rest periods – such as taking one or two full weeks off from training. However, these types of full rest periods will only do your body good, allowing it for a complete recovery. You may also consider reducing the overall training frequency of your strength training sessions. For example, if you previously worked your legs once a week, say on mondays, reduce your training frequency a bit – instead of working your legs once every 7 days, try training it once every 8 days, 9, 10, 11 days or longer.
Train smart and get your body to function at its peak to develop pure strength and muscle.
Learn more about how you can dramatically increase your strength and muscle growth using Static Contraction Training and the Maximum Strength workout.
Snatch and clean technique videos www.californiastrength.com Suzy Powell, an American record holder in the discus, came to California Strength recently with a couple of friends to hone her technique in the Olympic lifts. California Strength owner and coach, David Spitz, helped these track and field athletes improve their form. Now, they can safely and effectively incorporate Olympic lifting into their personal strength training programs.
