Elizabeth Tucker - Strength Training: Get Stronger, Leaner, Healthier In 2021

Strength Training:

Get Stronger, Leaner, Healthier In 2021.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The mindset and exercises seem to be very common topics in the United States of America. You will come across several facts about the relationship between body esteem and exercise. Among the most common are:

Below 30% of people meet the recommended amounts of exercises that our body needs. People between 18 years and 24 years are the most likely people who like engaging in exercises.

It is recommended that about 30 mins a day should be spent on exercises for a normal adult. This is with the aim of maintaining a healthy weight.

When it comes to women, above 85% of them, wish or want to lose weight. When you look at men, below 30 % of them, have complained about their body weight.

Over half of the women who are aged between 18 years and 24 years prefer to be hit by lightning compared to being fat, but again, two-thirds of them prefer to lazy around and do nothing and be dumb compared to being fat.

These are some facts that complement what is happening in our society today. On the other side, women are getting a lot of pressure from the media for them to get thin and toned. We have seen this in many shows that are geared to getting fat women into shape in a matter of weeks. We have also seen how other female gym instructors broadcast their sessions live, showing women how they can get their bodies into shape. Apart from these, there are people who are selling products that preach to women that they can get into shape in a matter of weeks, it has become a business that is being sold to women, and they are getting into all manner of programs.

We have also seen how it has been in the media on how the US is an obese nation, and the word about exercises is the salvation of women who dont want to get obese. When you combine these messages, you get a very dangerous cocktail, making women to go to extra miles to be fit and get the bodies they want no matter the cost.

Chapter 1 The basics of building strength workouts

Understanding of split workouts

Now, you need to delve deeper into understanding what strength training is, how it works and how to organize it so that it brings the most out of it. It's time to tell you how you will build your workouts throughout the week.

The distribution of the load on different muscle groups by day as part of your workouts is called a split. How you organize it for yourself depends on three factors. The first is the time you can spend a week on your classes in the gym. The second factor is your fitness level. The third factor is the goals that you set for yourself.

The number of days per week you can devote to training in the gym plays an important role. The frequency of your workouts will depend on this. And this time will dictate to you how to break your muscle groups into different workouts so that you can train your whole body in a week. You can choose from a huge number of splits. You can start with training the whole body at a time (full body workout), and you can continue by dividing your muscle groups in training by upper/lower, into muscles agonists/antagonists, deadlifts/presses, back/front strength chain, or individual muscle groups into every workout. Each of these splits has its own advantages and none of them is a priori better than the other - you should choose them based on your needs and possibilities of practical implementation. Now I will tell you everything in detail and give you examples of the main workout splits, and you can choose the one that suits you, based on your level of training and the tasks that you set for yourself.

1 Full body or circular workout

Training all major muscle groups in one workout is usually a beginner's prerogative and is most often characterized by one exercise per body part over several sets. One of the main reasons is that training volume is deliberately low for less painful adaptation of the muscle group and, most importantly, for adaptation of the nervous system. Rather, you are teaching your body to activate and recruit more muscle fibers, rather than gaining muscle size and strength. This approach requires a higher frequency of training, and since the volume of work is low, this training should ideally be repeated three times a week with a break of 48 hours between them.

Another reason it makes sense to keep volume and intensity low for a beginner is to minimize muscle soreness the next day. For example, the first intense leg workout can cause soreness in the legs for an entire week, which can scare a novice and not make him want to return to the gym after that at all. The table above shows how you can organize full body workout during a week.

2 day split workout for upper or lower parts of the body

When you are following a one-day circuit training split, the amount of work (sets and reps) for one muscle group is low. The next step in increasing efficiency is a two-day split, in which your body is divided into two parts, and you will have to do two exercises for each muscle group. Typically, in this split, the body is divided into the upper part (chest, back, shoulders and arms) and the lower part (quads, glutes, hamstrings, calves and abs).

By increasing the amount of work on each muscle group, you can train the selected group more intensely and more precisely. In addition, you can train one group in two exercises, but with different number of repetitions in sets; one exercise is aimed at increasing strength by 6-8 reps, the second, with less weight, will be more focused on volume and is performed for 10-12 reps.

Since you will be training more intensely in this split, you will need more rest days between workouts per muscle group. The table above shows how you can organize two-day split workout during a week.

3 day split workout - deadlifts, bench press and legs

Developing further, as you gain experience in performing exercises for one muscle group, you can already afford to train the whole body not in two days, but in three days. And although in training you can combine exercises in completely different combinations, but the most popular are the combinations when all the bench exercises are done together in one workout (chest, shoulders and triceps), and all the pulling exercises (back and biceps) are done in another workout. On the third day, legs are trained. You can pump abs and calves at the end of a workout on any of these days.

The meaning of this combination of pushing muscle groups is that in basic multi-joint exercises, many non-target muscles are involuntarily involved in the work. For example, doing the bench press, we purposefully train the pectoral muscles, but in addition to them, the deltoid muscles and triceps are included in the work. Of course, they all get a serious load.

An alternative would be to train the chest one day, the deltoids the next, the triceps the third. But this will seriously harm the process of their recovery, respectively, growth - they simply will not have time to rest, since they will all be included in the work on the following training days.

Adding a third exercise to a muscle group is a good way to increase the intensity and volume of the load on the muscle, purposefully applying the load to it from different angles for its fuller development. You also have more opportunities to diversify the number of repetitions in sets. Short strength sets with low reps at the start of the workout, while you are fresh and energized, are desirable.