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What is Muscle Hypertrophy?

Samuel Stephens — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 20:42:00 +0000

What is Muscle Hypertrophy?

Hypertrophy is the growth of a tissue due to the enlargement of its cells. Different tissues in the body can experience hypertrophy, so this term does not exclusively refer to muscle growth. A second term to know is hyperplasia, which is also the growth of a tissue, but hyperplasia is caused by an increase in cell number, not cell size. So to answer the original question, skeletal muscle hypertrophy is an increase in muscle size caused by an enlargement of muscle cells.

So if we don’t gain more muscle cells by lifting weights, what’s growing in the muscle cell to make it bigger? And what is a muscle cell? To answer these two questions, we need to learn just a little bit about muscle anatomy. If we know what our muscles are made of, we can better understand how and why they grow.

On the far right in the image below, we have the entire muscle belly and you see how the full muscle attaches to bone through the tendon. In the middle, we have a cross-sectional view that shows what’s inside the muscle. As you can see here, our muscles are made of fascicles that contain many muscle fibers. And it’s the muscle fiber that is the muscle cell. Each cell, or muscle fiber, consists of bundles of individual myofibril strands that are formed by a series of linked segments called sarcomeres. Inside every sarcomere is an interlaced arrangement of the contractile proteins actin and myosin. Muscle contractions occur when myosin binds to actin and slides the two structures past one another, drawing each end of the sarcomere closer to the middle of the segment.

When we lift weights or do any type of resistance training that causes muscle hypertrophy, our muscles can add new sarcomeres to the middle and/or the ends of myofibrils. This is called adding sarcomeres added in series. Sarcomeres can also be added in parallel when existing myofibril strands split lengthwise to form entirely new strands. But whether we’re adding sarcomeres in series or parallel, the growth of new physical structures is called myofibrillar hypertrophy. Myofibrillar hypertrophy occurs through a process called muscle protein synthesis, and it’s what drives our growth and training progress. The more sarcomeres we add through muscle protein synthesis, the greater our strength output and total muscle mass will be. However, sarcomeres gained through myofibrillar hypertrophy are not the only contributors to cell size.

We can also experience muscle hypertrophy through an increase in the size of the sarcoplasm of each muscle fiber. This is called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. The sarcoplasm is the fluid, nutrient, and fuel-rich interior space of each muscle fiber and it surrounds all of the myofibrils within a cell. While our muscles can grow through sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and this adaptation does offer some great benefits like increased glycogen storage, it probably shouldn’t be the singular focus of our training. A well designed strength and hypertrophy program will inevitably induce sarcoplasm growth, but exclusively chasing the pump with a high-rep, high-damage routine may miss out on some of the myofibrillar hypertrophy caused by heavier weight and the mechanical tension it creates.

However, sarcoplasmic hypertrophy isn’t entirely useless. It’s possible that the expansion of the cell due to sarcoplasmic hypertrophy may help aid in the growth of future myofibrils. It is theorized that the expansion creates more “empty” volume in the muscle cell and that unused space makes it easier to add sarcomeres in parallel. Think of it as a path of least resistance type of thing. I’ve got that paper linked below if you’d like to read more.

This is a quick and easy post that just covers the basics of hypertrophy and muscle growth. If you’d like to check out some workout programs that help put theory into practice, head over to the Workout Programs page and have fun.

References

Roberts, M. D., Haun, C. T., Vann, C. G., Osburn, S. C., & Young, K. C. (2020). Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy in Skeletal Muscle: A Scientific “Unicorn” or Resistance Training Adaptation?. Frontiers in physiology, 11, 816. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2020.00816

The post What is Muscle Hypertrophy? appeared first on Fitstra.

Nutrition: Fueling for Fitness

Samuel Stephens — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 21:49:39 +0000

Get the Full Book

This guide is one chapter from Fitness & Nutrition Programming for Beginners. If you enjoy reading it, consider purchasing the full book either as a PDF or paperback. Thanks!

Nutrition: Fueling for Fitness

How nutrition habits affect exercise performance and research-based dietary strategies to help maximize muscle growth, efficiently lose fat, and get the most out of your workouts.

Hunger Gains

If you were to pick up a skill-based hobby at a young age and practice it multiple times a day for the rest of your life, you’d get pretty good at it. You’d learn all of the secrets that take years to discover and even longer to master. Practice makes perfect and you’d have no shortage of that.

Our dietary habits are quite a bit different. We eat every day, yet most of us have little to no understanding of our nutritional needs. Instead, we rely primarily on taste and satiation for food choices. Without a solid grasp on the very basics of nutrition, every aspect of our exercise progress can be negatively impacted. Luckily, eating is a skill that we can excel at with practice.

This chapter covers basic macronutrient information, includes a simple dietary strategy for general exercise success, discusses how to maximize muscle growth through diet, provides a sustainable fat loss diet, and is written to help anyone better understand the relationship between food and fitness.

There’s a lot to cover. Let’s dig in.

My Educational Limitations & RDs

As a personal trainer, I believe my primary teaching focus should be placed on program development and the mechanics of exercise. General fitness stuff. Because I prioritize movement over food, my dietary knowledge is limited compared to highly qualified nutrition professionals. I know more about a performance-based diet than some but less than others. The science of exercise and nutrition are both so fascinating, complex, and ever-evolving that an attempt to master both would be a bit ridiculous.

I believe this chapter will be informative and a helpful resource for many, but I’m not a nutrition expert.

To get the most out of your diet and reach your performance potential, work with a registered dietitian (RD). A registered dietitian will help you design a solid nutrition plan that’s custom built for your individual goals, genetics, and lifestyle preferences. A great RD is an invaluable asset to your fitness education. We’ll dive into some of the services RDs offer and how they can drastically impact your training performance later in this chapter.

Energy Intake, Expenditure, & Balance

The foods we eat and their macronutrient contents shape our bodies in specific ways, directly contribute to our fitness capabilities, and have noticeable effects on our overall health. To achieve our goals, we need to eat the right foods in the correct quantities at the best times. But before we discuss the details of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, it’s important to take a step back from food and cover the basics of weight loss, weight gain, and weight maintenance.

The graphic below illustrates energy balance (EB). Energy balance occurs when total daily caloric intake equals total daily caloric expenditure. EB is weight maintenance and our reference point for all future changes in weight.

Modifications to this equilibrium will result in corresponding changes in body mass. Weight loss occurs when energy expenditure exceeds intake (burn more than we eat), while weight gain is the result of intake outpacing expenditure (eat more than we burn). To specifically gain muscle mass or lose body fat, it’s important to have a deeper understanding of energy expenditure. Changes in body composition rely on a more complex strategy than calories in versus calories out.

Our bodies are sophisticated, high performance, organic machines that require a constant supply of fuel to operate. Regardless of the fuel source used (food versus stored body mass), the total amount of energy we burn per day is our total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). TDEE is measured in calories. A calorie (Calorie or kcal) is a unit of energy used to measure the thermogenic potential of food, or how much energy a particular substance provides per gram. There’s not a special calorie molecule in our foods. It’s a metric we use to measure energy density and energy expenditure.

Differences in height, weight, eating habits, exercise routines, and metabolism result in significantly different TDEEs from person to person. For example, an elite cyclist will have a much higher TDEE than someone who is sedentary. Metabolic testing is the only way to accurately determine your TDEE, but it can be estimated with some simple metrics. An online search for “TDEE calculator” will give you great options.

Take a moment and estimate your TDEE right now.

Despite differences in total expenditure, we generally all burn calories for the same reasons. Our total daily fuel consumption can be broken down into three basic categories. These are basal metabolic rate, thermic effect of activity, and the thermic effect of feeding.

The first component of TDEE is basal metabolic rate (BMR). BMR is a measurement of the minimum amount of energy used to power essential bodily functions when we’re at rest. Brain activity, metabolism, body heat homeostasis, respiration, blood circulation, and many other autonomic internal processes require fuel to operate. Basal metabolic rates vary from person to person due to physiological differences, but this baseline idle fuel consumption accounts for 60-80% of daily energy burned by most people. BMR is a major factor to consider when attempting to change body composition because it can be manipulated to our advantage.

The thermic effect of activity (TEA) is next. As the name implies, TEA is a measurement of all energy expended during movement. Walking the dog, chopping up vegetables for dinner, running, lifting weights, fidgeting your leg while sitting at work, etc. If you’re moving in some way, you’re using energy to fuel activity. The bulk of TEA will be from exercise for most fitness enthusiasts.

BMR and TEA are largely dependent on body size, weight, and composition. For example, a 6’5” 275 lb person will have a higher BMR than someone who is 5’2” and 120 lbs. Taller and heavier people burn more calories per minute than their shorter and lighter peers, but neither BMR or TEA are permanent. As we gain or lose weight, BMR and TEA change and our intake will need to be modified accordingly.

The thermic effect of feeding (TEF) is the last part of TDEE. The thermic effect of feeding is a measurement of the energy cost required to digest different macronutrients. For most people, TEF is roughly equal to 10% of their total daily energy expenditure. The foods we eat need to be broken down into their smaller subcomponents before they can be used by the body, and these catabolic (breakdown of a substance) reactions require different amounts of energy depending on the macronutrient being metabolized. The following percentages are estimated digestive energy requirements for each macronutrient, relative to their caloric values –

0-3% for fats
5-10% for carbohydrates
20-30% for proteins

For example, if you eat a 500 calorie meal of pure protein, 20-30% (100-150 calories) of the calories contained in that meal will be burned to metabolize it. This high energy cost of protein metabolism makes it a very useful tool for weight loss and an important factor to consider when trying to gain weight.

TDEEs are calorically expensive and daily energy demands can vary drastically from person to person, so it’s critical that energy intake (EI) reflects our goals and fuel requirements. We need to ensure our diets consist of the right foods and that these foods are consumed in ideal quantities. If we understand how carbohydrates, fats, and proteins affect our fitness progress, we can easily build the muscle we want and drop the pounds we don’t.

But before diving into food, let’s discuss macronutrients. What are carbohydrates, proteins, and fats?

Carbohydrates - Overview

Despite the popular trend of carbohydrate slandering in many health and fitness social circles, this macronutrient is an essential component of a balanced diet. The terms starch, carb, and sugar are often villainized as weight gaining, health destroying substances, but our bodies can’t reach peak performance without them. If you’re serious about your fitness goals, you need carbohydrates.

This section covers the very basics of carbohydrate structure, digestion, storage, and its effect on exercise.

Carbohydrates are abundant in most diets, provide roughly four calories of energy per gram, and are one of the body’s primary sources of fuel. Carbohydrates consist of various numbers of individually linked sugar molecules (saccharides) that are made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Carbohydrates range in saccharide complexity depending on how many sugar molecules are linked together.

As shown above, a simple monosaccharide consists of a single sugar molecule, disaccharides contain two, oligosaccharides range from 3-10, and polysaccharides can be formed by hundreds or thousands. Some carbohydrate sources like high-fructose corn syrup should probably be limited, but others are necessary. For example, cellulose is a non-digestible polysaccharide found in plants that can improve gut microbiome health, digestive regularity, and is an important component to any diet. Eat your fibrous vegetables and prebiotics.

Despite wide ranges in sugar structure complexity, our digestive system eventually breaks down all carbohydrates into the same monosaccharides through enzymatic and chemical reactions. These catabolic processes allow glucose to diffuse through intestinal cell walls and enter our bloodstream. However, some carbohydrate sources are digested and disassembled into glucose more rapidly than others. This results in significantly different rates of blood sugar elevation and energy availability. Complex carbs are typically thought to be better than their mono and disaccharide counterparts due to superior blood sugar regulation, but blood glucose levels don’t always scale proportionately with saccharide complexity. Meaning, both simple and complex carbs can cause similar blood sugar responses.

To maximize exercise performance and efficiently change body composition, our carbohydrate selection process should factor in saccharide digestion speeds and how they affect blood sugar levels. But because we can’t rely exclusively on mono/di/polysaccharide labels to predict carbohydrate metabolism rates, we need to learn about the glycemic index.

The glycemic index (GI) is a measurement of how quickly and to what degree specific foods raise blood sugar relative to a pure glucose control test. Using a 100 point scale, high GI foods are scored at or above 70, moderate ranges from 56-69, and the low end is less than or equal to 55. As shown in the graph above, high GI foods quickly spike blood sugar levels before rapidly declining, while low GI foods slowly ramp up and sustain moderate concentrations for longer.

Some popular carbohydrate examples and their GI scores are listed in the table above. Notice how glycemic index values vary across all saccharide complexities and food types. For example, watermelon (76) and apple (36) are both fruits on the simple side of the carbohydrate spectrum, yet their GI scores are very different. The same disparity is also seen in complex carbs like boiled potatoes (78) and whole wheat spaghetti (48).

Significant differences between glycemic responses can make the process of carbohydrate selection feel overwhelming, but this enormous amount of nutrient variety is actually quite useful. A high number of saccharide options, each with their own slightly unique digestive properties, give us more control over our blood sugar levels and all subsequent physiological responses. By consuming the right quantity and quality of carbs at specific times, we can significantly increase muscle growth, improve fat loss efficiency, and maximize energy storage to help fuel future workouts. Strategic carbohydrate ingestion allows us to manipulate insulin, one of our most potent anabolic hormones.

Insulin is responsible for a wide range of growth responses. This section’s main focus is carbohydrate storage.

When dietary carbohydrates are disassembled into their monosaccharide components through digestion, glucose enters our bloodstream. In response to elevated blood glucose levels, beta cells in our pancreas secrete insulin and this peptide hormone instructs our muscles and fat cells to absorb nutrients. Glucose molecules that are not immediately consumed as energy are absorbed by the body and transported into short-term storage locations for future use. Unlike free fatty acids or amino acids, our bodies don’t have a way to store large amounts of carbohydrates for extended periods of time, but we can briefly store smaller amounts (1-2 lbs) as glycogen.

Through a process called glycogenesis that occurs in the muscles and liver, our bodies can synthesize their own polysaccharides. This homegrown, complex carbohydrate that’s unique to humans and animals is called glycogen. Once formed, glycogen is stored in the liver and muscles so that it can be used as an immediately available, local fuel source for moderate to high-intensity exercise. With carbohydrate deposits spread all throughout the body ready to assist in strenuous muscular contractions and high levels of force production, the metabolic pathway of anaerobic glycolysis can quickly turn this stored fuel into spent fuel. Glycogen is one of the fuel sources that allows us to consistently apply a high level of intensity to our workouts.

As discussed in the Strength & Hypertrophy chapter, we cumulatively recruit more motor units in an ascending order of size until all fibers in a single muscle are active. Under demanding conditions, type 2 fibers rely primarily on anaerobic glycolysis (carbohydrate metabolism without oxygen) to achieve their maximum output potential. And with adequate glycogen stores, these fibers allow us to lift more weight, produce more consistent force, and generally perform our best in most fitness environments. Conversely, exercise intensity can suffer without sufficient carbohydrate consumption to saturate glycogen stores and fuel fast-twitch, hypertrophy-prone fibers. Studies show that high-intensity exercise performance can drop off significantly when dietary carbohydrates are restricted. This means low-carbohydrate diets can drastically impact muscle growth and anaerobic output.

Glycogen can also help regulate resting blood sugar levels outside of exercise environments. These polysaccharide stores provide a steady supply of carbohydrates to fuel glucose-dependent brain activity, reduce fluctuations in testosterone, assist in hydration (2-3 grams of water are stored per gram of glycogen), and help prevent hypoglycemia.

Pretty sweet.

Carbohydrates help us perform at high levels and reach our anabolic potential, but their absence can be equally beneficial in certain situations. We can speed up fat loss progress and improve endurance exercise performance by systematically restricting carbohydrate intake and pairing that macronutrient deficit with carefully programmed cardiovascular exercise. We’ll dive into that later.

To get the most out of resistance training and anaerobic conditioning, we need to utilize dietary carbohydrates as a primary fuel source. Carbs allow us to consistently work hard and push our bodies to the edge of their limits. However, brutal workouts can take a very real toll on us if we don’t recover properly between sessions. To address this, let’s shift gears and talk about a different macronutrient that plays a vital role in post-workout recovery and muscle growth.

What is protein and how does it affect exercise performance?

Protein - Overview

Unlike carbohydrates, there’s little debate regarding the necessity of protein. We can’t be healthy without it. Neurotransmitter production, DNA replication, blood cell formation, tissue repair, and many other processes rely on protein. Dietary protein is required for muscle growth and aids in strength development, which are two attributes that can improve our quality of life as we age. To build muscle, recover from demanding workouts, and sustain a multitude of essential bodily functions, we need this macronutrient.

This section covers the basics of protein structure, quality, and the relationship between protein intake and muscle growth.

Protein provides about four calories of energy per gram, but these calories are not typically a source of fuel. Instead, this valuable macronutrient functions as a multi-purpose building material used to construct enzymes, hormones, bones, muscles, and nearly everything in between. Proteins contribute to the formation of many different compounds and tissues due to the versatility of their subcomponents, which are mainly composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. The super adaptable building blocks that link together and form whole proteins are called amino acids (AA).

There are hundreds of different amino acids found throughout nature, but only 20 are used in the human body and consumed in our diet. These 20 standard AAs are categorized as either essential amino acids (EAA) or non-essential amino acids (NEAA). Essential amino acids cannot be synthesized by the body without sacrificing existing muscle tissue and must be acquired from the foods we eat. Muscle protein breakdown is how the body produces EAAs. Nonessential amino acids can be synthesized under normal conditions and are not required to be present in our diet.

Out of the nine EAAs, three of them are unique and play critical roles in the development of muscle tissue. Leucine, isoleucine, and valine are branched chain amino acids (BCAAs). All three BCAAs are required for tissue growth but leucine has the greatest effect on muscle protein synthesis.

While many different amino acids are used to form new proteins, leucine is the main catalyst for MPS. The presence of leucine in our blood is primarily what instructs muscles to initiate the process of MPS. Some studies have shown that only 10 grams of BCAAs (with a high leucine content) can activate MPS to the same degree as a whole protein meal. Because muscle growth is so dependent on leucine, a chronic deficiency of this EAA can result in decreased muscle mass, minimal strength development, longer recovery times, and generally poor performance across a wide range of physical activities. Luckily, these undesirable side effects can be prevented by consuming a diet rich in high-quality proteins.

All dietary proteins contain a mixture of essential and nonessential amino acids, but specific AA concentrations vary widely from food to food. These discrepancies make some protein sources better than others. With so many different protein options to choose from, it’s important to have a basic understanding of essential amino acid availability. This can help us make informed dietary decisions regarding protein intake, which can lead to better overall fitness progress and improved general health. To make the best choices, we need to know the difference between complete and incomplete proteins.

Proteins are classified as complete or incomplete depending on their EAA profiles. Incomplete proteins do not contain all nine essential amino acids. Most plant-based proteins are incomplete, but there are some exceptions like soy and hemp. In contrast, complete proteins do provide all nine EAAs, usually in high quantities. All animal proteins are complete proteins. Because of this pretty consistent quality difference between plant and animal sources, the easiest way to consume adequate amounts of EAAs is to simply include animal products in our diets. When paired with plant-based fats and carbohydrates, animal proteins eliminate amino acid availability concerns and allow us to focus on flavor, meal variety, and other enjoyable aspects of eating.

Plant proteins may be incomplete on their own, but we can create complete plant-based meals by combining multiple incomplete plant sources. The pairing of rice and beans is a popular example of this strategy. As standalone plant protein sources, neither rice nor beans contain all nine essential amino acids. But where one is lacking, the other is sufficient. These complementary amino acid profiles work together to fill in the nutrient gaps that would normally be present if either food was consumed alone. If your nutrition goals are primarily focused on general health, this mix-and-match tactic can make plant-based proteins fantastic alternatives to traditional animal sources. But if you’re trying to maximize muscle growth and exercise performance, excluding all animal products from your diet can put you at a significant disadvantage compared to your meat-eating peers.

In addition to being complete proteins, animal products also possess higher EAA and BCAA concentrations than their plant-based counterparts. Even complete plant protein sources like soy and hemp don’t have the same EAA content of whey when measured gram-for-gram. Plant proteins just can’t compete with the leucine content found in animal sources when consumed in equal quantities. However, these issues inherent to plant proteins can be resolved by eating slightly more plant protein per meal or by supplementing with protein shakes and BCAA supplements. Animal sources have the initial advantage, but the playing field can be leveled if we know how to address it properly.

The big question is, which is best? Animal proteins allow us to be more efficient with meal prep and are more nutritionally dense, but both options can work. If you’re OK with consuming animals and animal-based supplements, eat them. They’re delicious, nutritious, and contain the EAA content needed for muscle growth. Animal products make meeting amino acid requirements easy because they’re so rich in BCAAs/leucine. However, if meat isn’t on your menu, no problem. But be sure to address the potential deficiencies associated with plant sources. Adequate amounts of all nine essential amino acids are necessary to maximize muscle protein synthesis potential regardless of where you fall on the flora versus fauna protein intake debate.

Now that we know a bit more about protein, let’s dive into the relationship between diet and MPS. How does dietary protein make us better in the gym?

After eating a nutrient rich meal full of essential amino acids, various digestive enzymes and chemical reactions work together to break down whole proteins into smaller polypeptide chains. These di and tripeptides are then separated into individual amino acids as they diffuse through intestinal walls and enter the bloodstream. Similar to the intake response of carbohydrates, circulating levels of amino acids stimulate the release of insulin, which assists with nutrient absorption. And just like glucose, amino acids are sent to the liver and taken up by our muscles.

When AAs enter our muscles, high blood concentrations of leucine are detected and the MPS alarm is triggered. Under non-exercising conditions, muscle protein synthesis rates peak at levels that primarily aim to combat the normal breakdown of muscle tissue. Depending on our diet and activity levels, synthesis and breakdown could be in equilibrium, but it’s more likely that breakdown just barely exceeds MPS. This results in a slow loss of muscle tissue each year. If you’ve taken extended time off from lifting, you’ve experienced these vanishing gains firsthand.

A gradual decline in lean body mass due to a sedentary lifestyle can negatively impact our quality of life. This issue is evident to an unfortunately high degree in elderly populations. Without resistance training or adequate protein intake, muscle mass will disappear along with functional mobility for everyday tasks. Fortunately, this problem is resolved relatively easily with the application of exercise and a protein-rich diet.

As discussed in the strength and hypertrophy chapter, both resistance exercise and cardiovascular conditioning drastically increase protein synthesis rates, leading to significant muscle growth. Protein synthesis rates can jump 200% above their normal levels when we add intense physical activity to our routines. This subsequent boost to MPS will prioritize muscle growth (myofibrillar protein synthesis) if our workouts are more focused on lifting weights, while a cardio emphasis can increase our aerobic efficiency and fat burning capabilities (mitochondrial protein synthesis). And if our programming includes both resistance training and cardiovascular conditioning, we get to simultaneously enjoy more muscle mass, better strength output, improved cardiovascular endurance, and a leaner physique.

Whatever our fitness goals are, we need strong and well developed muscles to be our best. A protein-rich diet helps us build the tissue we want.

With carbohydrates and proteins covered, let’s move on to the last macronutrient.

Fats - Overview

Fat used to be a pretty bad word in dietary conversations. It was associated with clogged arteries, obesity, and excessive indulgence. You only live once, so use real butter. Fortunately, newer research has changed society’s opinion of this essential macronutrient. Advancements in nutritional sciences have helped us further understand the role dietary fats play in cognitive function and development, hormone production, lipid soluble nutrient transport, energy availability, and many other vital bodily functions. Fat is important for our health and an amazing energy source to fuel our workouts.

In this section, we’ll cover the basics of dietary fats, fat metabolism, fat storage, and how lipids can improve exercise performance.

Fats primarily consist of carbon and hydrogen, are the most energy dense macronutrient at nine calories per gram, and are our primary fuel source for low to moderate-intensity activity. If you’re reading this while seated at your desk, you’re probably using fat for the majority of your energy. Dietary fats exist in a few different forms that vary in structure and function depending on molecular composition, just like carbohydrates and proteins. The three primary types of lipids we consume in our diet are cholesterol, phospholipids, and triglycerides. Triglycerides are the main fat focus of this section, but it’s important to briefly cover cholesterol and phospholipids.

Cholesterol is a type of steroid produced by all animal cells and found in most animal products. Although cholesterol is contained in the foods we eat, blood cholesterol levels are mainly regulated internally and synthesized by the liver, not directly due to diet. Diet influences overall health and overall health affects blood cholesterol. This lipid is used for many different purposes in the body, but its main exercise performance contributions are hormone production and food digestion.

Our anabolic potential is largely dependent on cholesterol availability because cholesterol is a precursor to so many hormones (testosterone, estrogen, DHEA, etc). Cholesterol is also used to synthesize bile salts which help with the digestion and emulsification of fats, allowing us to absorb this energy-rich macronutrient more efficiently.

Recent studies have changed long-held beliefs of cholesterol and given us a better understanding of its role in the body. Dietary cholesterol is no longer the primary suspect in the development of cardiovascular disease. Too much of anything can be harmful, but when our fat intake composition follows certain healthy guidelines (reduced saturated fat intake and no trans fat), dietary cholesterol isn’t something to stress about. A diet rich in good fats can help keep our blood cholesterol levels in check and provide us with the fatty acids needed to maintain healthy hormones.

Phospholipids contribute to cell structure, function, and nutrient transport. Because we’re ultimately just a conscious collection of cells, overall cell health is pretty important. Our bodies synthesize the majority of all phospholipids needed for cellular function, but some studies suggest that phospholipid supplementation can have beneficial effects on tissue inflammation, cancer, cardiovascular disease, cognitive ability, and immune function. By consuming phospholipids and certain helpful fatty acids, cell membrane compositions can be remodeled, leading to greater levels of membrane plasticity and better overall cellular performance.

Cholesterol and phospholipids are present in the foods we eat and essential for certain bodily functions like hormone production and cell membrane integrity. However, our diets contain relatively small amounts of these two lipid forms compared to triglycerides.

A triglyceride (TG) is a fat compound made of glycerol bound to three fatty acids (FA). Nearly all of the fats in the foods we eat and those that are stored in our bodies are triglycerides. Depending on the structure of the fatty acid chains, triglycerides are categorized as either saturated or unsaturated.

As seen in the image above, saturated fats have neatly aligned FA chains and unsaturated FA chains look messy in comparison. The bends in the fatty acid chains of unsaturated fats are caused by double carbon bonds within the lipid structure. Unsaturated fats that contain one double bond are called monounsaturated fats, and those with more than one double carbon bond are polyunsaturated. For every double carbon bond, one molecule of hydrogen is removed from the FA chain, making unsaturated fats less full of hydrogen than they potentially could be. Saturated fats don’t contain any double bonds in their fatty acid structure and have carbon-hydrogen bonds at every molecular junction along the chain, resulting in a 100% hydrogen saturation of the fatty acid chain.

Because saturated fats lack double bounds and are uniform in shape, the triglycerides in them can pack together tightly and form solid fat substances, like butter. In contrast, the bent tails of unsaturated fatty acids prevent these TGs from neatly aligning with one another and usually result in fats that are liquid at room temperature, like olive oil. This difference in triglyceride structure is one of the factors that can make certain fats healthier than others.

Some newer studies have challenged the link between saturated fats and heart disease, but the majority of current research still strongly supports the idea that saturated fat consumption should be limited. The generally accepted position held by many different health organizations and medical professionals places saturated fat intake at ~10% or less of total daily dietary fat. Due to these upper limit recommendations, our fat intake should consist primarily of poly and monounsaturated fats.

Monounsaturated fats are associated with a wide range of health benefits, and they should be included in our diets. However, we can synthesize all of the monounsaturated fatty acids needed for normal, healthy bodily function. Because of this internal production capability, there’s not an intake requirement for monounsaturated FAs. Flavor and basic caloric needs can drive consumption. Polyunsaturated FAs are a little different. Our bodies are unable to synthesize linoleic acid (an omega-6 FA) and alpha-linoleic acid (an omega-3 FA). These two important FAs are called essential fatty acids and must come from our diet.

Similar to how important the amino acid leucine is for protein synthesis, omega-3 fatty acids like alpha-linoleic acid can drastically improve our health when regularly consumed. The three omega-3 fatty acids used in the body are alpha-linoleic acid (ALA), docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Our bodies can synthesize DHA and EPA from ALA, but the conversion rates are so low that additional supplementation is usually recommended. Fish oil with high DHA:EPA ratios (2:1) is an omega-3 supplement that can help solve this problem.

When polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids are plentiful in our diets, we can benefit from –

Increased cognitive function
Decreased depression
Increased synaptic plasticity
Increased neuroendocrine function
Increased memory in aging adults
Increased child brain development
Improved vision/retinal development
Increased nutrient absorption
Decreased cellular inflammation
Increased bone health
Increased muscular recovery
Increased immune function

Omega-3 fatty acids also indirectly improve exercise performance because they can help reduce cellular inflammation.

Inflammation is an immune system response to damage, stress, and/or disease that results in localized swelling. If you ever sprained an ankle or suffered an injury that resulted in a bruise, you’ve experienced inflammation. It’s pretty easy to understand how the inflammation of a sprained ankle can limit our mobility. We can clearly see and feel that we’re impaired to some degree. However, many other forms of inflammation are subtle and can become chronic exercise performance issues if ignored and allowed to persist. Nearly all of our cells are susceptible to the side effects of inflammation, but we want to avoid it most in those that are responsible for digestion and cognition.

Whether external stressors from work, a suboptimal diet (food sensitivities, allergens, etc.), or other environmental factors are to blame, central nervous system and digestive tract inflammation can negatively affect almost every aspect of life. Although our minds and stomachs are responsible for very different bodily functions, they’re a linked system called the gut-brain axis. The gut-brain axis is collectively responsible for the synthesis of many different essential compounds (neurotransmitters, hormones, enzymes, and proteins), the absorption of food needed for energy and muscle growth, the strength of our immune system, our emotional health, and all baseline cognitive abilities. While only a two organ system, the gut-brain axis controls our quality of life. If this system is impaired, so are we.

Fortunately, an adequate intake of omega-3 fatty acids (specifically DHA) can help reduce whole body inflammation. Like ice on a swollen joint, the anti-inflammatory properties of this super useful fatty acid can help eliminate cellular swelling and return organs/systems back to peak productivity. A diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids (less than 4:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3) can help us think clearly, fully utilize the foods we eat, and recover from intense workouts.

From hormone production to brain function, cardiovascular disease prevention to inflammation reduction, dietary fats are absolutely essential for optimal health. By consuming the right fats in the correct quantities, we’ll generally be better at life. Fats indirectly improve our exercise performance in a variety of ways, but they’re also an amazing source of energy.

How do dietary fats directly improve exercise performance?

After being ingested, dietary fats work their way through a lengthy lipid digestion process. Through different forms of triglyceride breakdown, free fatty acid transport, lipoprotein and cholesterol synthesis, and triglyceride reconstitution, most of the fats we consume eventually work their way into our fat cells as triglycerides for long-term energy storage.

Low to moderate intensity exercise primarily oxidizes fat through aerobic energy pathways. As we increase workout intensity, we shift from fat oxidation to anaerobic glycolysis and start metabolizing glucose for energy. Put simply, we burn more sugar and less fat the harder we work during cardiovascular exercise. This means our ability to use dietary and stored fats can significantly impact our performance in endurance-based activities. For many distance competitors, increased dietary fat consumption can result in more sustained energy at steady state heart rate ranges, decreased lactate production, and an overall improvement in pace time. We’ll dive more into fats and cardio later.

From brain health to endurance exercise performance, fats make us better at life.

With macronutrient basics covered, it’s time to shift the discussion from education to application. Building muscle, losing fat, and fueling peak exercise performance all depend on diet quality and consistency. So, let’s cover a diet that’s easy to understand and implement.

Meal Timing, Macronutrient Intake Quantities, & Food Sources

We can’t all follow the same diet and expect identical results. Total daily calories and meal compositions need to reflect our individual goals, lifestyles, and genetic differences. Effective nutrition plans must be tailored to the specific needs of the user, and this custom approach inevitably results in a wide range of dietary variation from person to person. Luckily, all good diets share a common outline that’s healthy, sustainable, and simple.

This section covers a realistic meal frequency strategy, how to estimate total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), recommended ranges of macronutrient intake quantities, and some whole food sources of carbohydrates, protein, and fats.

To start things off, let’s talk about meal timing.

While it might not seem like the most important factor to fitness success, eating frequency matters. The timing of carbohydrate and protein rich meals can affect energy availability, muscle growth, recovery, weight loss progress, and the regulation of many internal functions. An easy to follow eating schedule also gives our diet consistency and predictability, allowing new routines to become habits. By eating at predetermined times, rather than impulsively and in response to hunger, long-term diet adherence is easier and general program satisfaction is higher.

I recommend most people consume four meals per day, each separated by four hours. This results in 12 hours of feeding and 12 hours of fasting daily. Some example schedules are listed below. This suggested routine can fit into nearly any schedule as it essentially breaks down into a breakfast/lunch/snack/dinner split. At least three of these meals should come from whole food sources, not shakes or bars.

Our four empty plates are ready to go. How much food should each contain?

As covered earlier, our total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) represents all of the calories we burn per day, while energy intake (EI) is the total number of daily calories we consume. Calories in versus calories out is ultimately what determines changes in weight, so our total daily intake should reflect our daily expenditure. This means that before we can discuss which foods help us gain muscle or lose fat, we need to calculate TDEE and establish energy balance.

Total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) can be estimated in two easy steps.

Keep a detailed record of your normal diet for at least one week by using a free calorie tracking app (Lose It, Cronometer, MyFitnessPal, etc) and reading food labels. During this seven day period, refrain from making major changes to your diet. Record absolutely everything you put in your body. At the end of each day, look back over your eating habits and take note of the caloric totals along with the macronutrient contents of each meal. Are you eating more or less than you thought? Are certain macronutrients dominating your diet while others are nearly absent? This number can help explain any recent changes in body composition and/or energy levels.
Estimate your total daily expenditure by using a simple online TDEE calculator. For the most accurate number, have your body fat percentage measured at a local gym or university. How does your estimated TDEE compare to the seven day tracking average? If this calculated TDEE is lower than your tracked intake average and weight gain is an issue for you, this difference could explain the problem. If you have a pedometer, use it. Keep track of your step count throughout the day and use this activity data to help form your TDEE estimation.

By combining these two data points with what you intuitively know about your dietary needs and the way your body responds to certain meal sizes, you should be able to narrow down your TDEE to a reasonably narrow intake window that can be further refined over time. It will require a little experimentation to dial in energy balance intake correctly, but this discovery process shouldn’t take too long if you pay attention to what you eat and how those dietary habits make you look and feel. It’s important to note that neither one of these two TDEE calculation methods are perfectly accurate on their own. They’re only estimations. If your gym offers metabolic testing and can provide you with an accurate assessment of your BMR, take advantage of it. The more information you can gather, the better.

Now that we know how to calculate our intake requirements for energy balance, let’s discuss the composition of those calories from a macronutrient perspective. The table on the next page contains my recommended intake ranges for each macronutrient. 2000 and 2500 total daily calorie versions are listed as examples. These examples illustrate how caloric totals affect macronutrient quantities, both on a per day and per meal basis.

As seen above, each macronutrient is associated with a recommended intake range. 25-40% of the 2000 calorie daily total should come from protein, 20-45% from carbohydrates, and 20-50% from fat. Notice that none of these ranges include a 0% intake option. All three macros should be present in significant quantities. A 30% protein, 35% carbohydrate, and 35% fat split is my recommended starting point if you have no idea where to begin. However, there are many different viable macronutrient intake combination possibilities, so feel free to experiment with your meal compositions to find what works best for you.

These caloric percentages can be converted into grams of food to make meal preparation and tracking easier. The gram (g) is our unit of measurement for macronutrient intake quantities. Let’s use the low end of protein intake (25%) as an example of this conversion process.

25% of 2000 calories is 500 calories (2000 x 0.25 = 500) of protein. Those 500 total daily protein calories are then divided by 4 kcal/g (energy density of protein) to determine their weight in grams. 500 calories divided by 4 kcal/g equals 125g of protein per day. We then divide 125g of protein by four to evenly distribute daily protein content across each of our four meals. 125g of total daily protein divided by four meals equals roughly 30g of protein per meal.

This conversion process can be used to calculate the intake quantities of all three macronutrients. Be sure to remember the specific energy densities of protein (4 kcal/g), carbohydrates (4 kcal/g), and fat (9 kcal/g) when converting units.

If you enjoy maximizing exercise performance and tracking fitness progress, you’ll likely find the process of macronutrient intake experimentation enjoyable. Discovering your unique meal composition sweet spot is a satisfying feeling. However, if a majority of the content in this chapter is new to you and the subject of nutrition is a relatively foreign topic, it’s not necessary to obsess over the intake information listed above.

Food should be fun and a source of joy during preparation and consumption. If we fixate on the macronutrient percentages of everything we eat, we’ll inevitably develop an unhealthy relationship with food. Use my suggested intake ranges and your newly acquired calories-to-grams conversion skills to help shape your diet, but don’t let either of these things control you. Try to be aware of what you eat, do your best to make smart choices, and keep working towards your goals. Aim for structure and consistency, not perfection.

To help make smart choices a bit easier, the table on the next page contains some foods from each macronutrient category. Vegetable/fiber sources are included. This is not a comprehensive list of suggested foods to eat.

Notice that most foods listed contain a mixed macronutrient profile and only a handful of items consist solely of protein, carbohydrates, or fat. It’s important to be mindful of nutrient composition differences as you plan out your meals.

For example, 100g of chickpeas contain 6g of fat, 61g of carbohydrates, and 19g of protein. Chickpeas are a great source of protein but this food’s nutrient profile can lead to excessive carbohydrate intake if that particular macronutrient is not accounted for. Most foods also vary widely in the composition of their macronutrient subcomponents. Almonds and walnuts both are great sources of fat, but they contain very different levels of mono and polyunsaturated fats. Use your tracking app and read food labels to know what you’re eating.

Along with protein, carbohydrates, and fats, the table also includes a list of non-starchy and leafy green vegetables. I recommend that 1-2 of your daily meals include healthy portion sizes of items from that list. A fiber-rich vegetable source at lunch and at dinner easily accomplishes this. Track these foods.

With so many different foods to choose from and macronutrient intake ranges to work with, there are endless combination possibilities for your diet. If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed by the thought of using the information in this section to completely restructure your diet, that’s normal. It’s a lot to take in. Limitless variety is great for some, but it can be mentally paralyzing for others. Most lifestyle changes need to be easy to implement or they’ll never last long enough to become long-term habits. Let’s take the key points from this section and condense them down into a simple, step-by-step plan.

Start tracking your current diet with a calorie tracking app and by reading food labels. If you put it in your body, count it.
Compare one week of your normal eating habits with my recommendations and note the differences between the two. Assess which factors will be easy to fix and those that will take more discipline. If you don’t know what intake ranges to aim for, start with a 30% protein, 35% carbohydrate, and 35% fat split. Try to consume at least 30g of protein per meal.
Over the course of a few days or weeks, gradually restructure your meals until their contents and timings fall in line with my suggestions. For example, is your protein intake a little low? If so, slightly increase your portion size per meal. Focus on a transition process that occurs along a realistic timeline and promotes long-term program adherence.
When you finally hit your intake goals and are able to meet them consistently, assess your energy levels and exercise performance. Do you feel mentally sharp and energetic, or have these recent changes resulted in fatigue, mental fog, and/or undesirable changes in body composition? If you don’t feel amazing, play with your food options and intake percentages. Experimentation is essential here.
Keep tracking your food and trying new things. Use this documentation process to truly learn the macronutrient contents of your meals. Calorie counting apps are incredibly useful because they teach us about our habits, but we do not want to manually track intake forever. Teach your eyes to accurately identify what you’re consuming.
When you feel confident that everything’s dialed in for energy balance, start playing with a slight deficit for weight loss or a surplus for weight gain. Building muscle and losing fat will be simple because you took the time to understand your individual dietary needs.

Some will find the process of TDEE calculation and meal remodeling to be easy and straightforward. If you’re currently mindful of what you eat, transitioning to something slightly more structured won’t be too difficult. However, this won’t be the case for everyone. Nutrition can be a difficult subject to understand and breaking bad dietary habits is even harder. If your relationship with food has historically been more problematic than beneficial and you’ve felt discouraged by a lack of progress, focus on the little victories moving forward. Take your time as you form new habits. It’s not a race.

With energy balance requirements calculated and new healthy eating habits formed, our dietary foundation is built. We now know what, when, and how much to eat because we took the time and put in the effort necessary to discover what our body needs. This equilibrium between intake and expenditure is a great place to start a fitness journey, but it can also be an acceptable endpoint for many different training goals. A diet that focuses on energy balance can be a fantastic nutritional strategy to gradually lose fat and build lean tissue at the same time. However, ambitious fat loss and muscle growth goals require more aggressive strategies.

Let’s talk about building muscle.

Maximizing Muscle Growth

Maximizing muscle growth through diet requires a bit of work and planning, but the overall strategy is super simple. Eat more food and eat more often. This section is written to help you understand why eating frequency is critical for hypertrophy and how different macronutrient quantities affect our growth potential.

Don’t try to follow everything in this section perfectly. Focus on the broad strokes and general concepts.

We now know that muscle protein synthesis (MPS) is how our bodies create new muscle tissue. And by combining resistance training with protein-rich meals, we stimulate MPS to a significantly greater degree than that of muscle protein breakdown (MPB). This leads to muscle growth. To maximize our muscle building potential, we need to follow a great exercise program and eat as frequently enough to keep MPS active all day. But we can only utilize this anabolic response to feeding so often.

After being stimulated to peak levels by a meal of 20-40g of protein, MPS rates drop back down to baseline levels after ~90 minutes and the process enters a 3-5 hour refractory period. During this recovery time, the pathways responsible for growth cannot be re-stimulated and any protein or BCAAs consumed between meals will not be used for tissue synthesis. This brief dormancy of MPS activity following stimulation is known as the muscle full effect and it’s the main factor that limits our eating frequency. Because dietary protein is unable to activate MPS for a short amount of time after a meal, it’s important that our eating schedule takes advantage of every feeding opportunity we have. We want to eat as soon as we can fully utilize a meal but not before.

My suggested 4X4 frequency for energy balance does a great job of stimulating muscle protein synthesis throughout the day, and it can be a fantastic plan for most people. But if our goals are to maximize lean tissue development and get the absolute most out of our diet, we can do better. We can theoretically achieve five or six MPS stimulating meals per day by shortening the gaps between meals. This results in a 25-50% increase in MPS activation over the standard 4X4 strategy.

As shown in the examples above, both the 5X and 6X versions are pretty ambitious eating endeavors. Each requires a serious level of dietary dedication. You won’t be able to consistently hit either of these frequencies with an improvised eating schedule. Eating every three hours to achieve six high quality meals per day requires meal preparation, an obsessive level of scheduling, and the elimination of most spontaneous social activities. This eating routine will rule your life and isn’t realistic or emotionally healthy for anyone who isn’t a competitive bodybuilder. However, five meals per day is more manageable and can be accomplished relatively easily by introducing one super useful supplement, casein.

Whey and casein are the two proteins in milk. Whey is more commonly used in protein supplements due to its high BCAA content, quick digestion, water solubility, low cost, and general availability. Casein is also a complete protein, but has slightly lower concentrations of BCAAs and a significantly slower digestion rate. This makes it less desirable for most recovery and meal replacement applications, but casein can be incredibly beneficial when used in the right setting.

Unlike the rapid digestion process of whey, casein coagulates in the digestive tract and drastically slows down nutrient metabolism and transport. When taken before bed as a fifth meal, a casein protein shake mixed with water allows us to stimulate MPS while we sleep without hindering the normal nighttime metabolism of fat. Other protein sources like whey and solid foods can cause an insulin response that interferes with lipolysis (fat metabolism). If you don’t have a dairy allergy and are looking for a simple fifth meal solution to maximize lean gains without putting on extra fat, the slower digestion speed and sustained MPS activity from casein can make it a great option.
Regardless of your meal frequency goals or the strategies you use to accomplish them, you’ll grow faster the more often you stimulate MPS with protein-rich meals.

With our modified meal timing schedule covered, let’s shift gears and look at the macronutrient quantities and caloric distributions necessary to maximize growth.

To build muscle, we need to maintain a daily caloric surplus that’s mainly achieved by increasing our intake of protein and carbohydrates. This surplus should elevate caloric totals ~10-20% above baseline energy balance. If you’re using my recommended starting macronutrient split (30% protein/35% carbohydrate/35% fat), the extra calories may restructure your daily intake percentages to something closer to 35-40% protein, 40-45% carbohydrates, and 20-25% fat. The overall concept here is pretty simple, but to get the most out of this strategy and find long-term success, we need to understand why protein and carbohydrates are so important for growth.

Starting with protein, how much is enough?

A 20-40g serving of quality, complete protein can maximally stimulate MPS. Some studies show there’s only a ~10% difference in MPS activity between 20g and 40g intakes, regardless of body size, with no significant increase seen above 40g. Therefore, doses that exceed this range do not necessarily result in higher rates of MPS. But excess protein is not wasted. High intake quantities don’t stimulate MPS much more than normal (20-40g) doses, but additional protein supports overall tissue development by suppressing the breakdown of existing muscle mass. This means a little extra protein intake can maximally stimulate MPS and suppress breakdown. We can keep more of what we have while building new tissue.

However, completely suppressing breakdown with a high-protein diet might not be the best long-term plan. The normal catabolic process of tissue breakdown likely serves an important role in the maintenance of muscle quality. The MPS/MPB cycle of breaking down structurally compromised muscle mass and replacing it with newly synthesized tissue might be critical to overall muscle health and performance. So, it’s probably not the smartest idea to disrupt this internal regulation system. Therefore, our intake should aim for quantities that help us get the absolute most out of MPS and provide a little extra to slightly suppress MPB.

Most people looking to maximize muscle gains should aim for roughly 30-60g of protein per meal. This range falls in line with my macronutrient intake percentages listed earlier, keeping everything consistent and simple. Studies show that higher protein intakes can be a safe dietary choice as long as you don’t have any kidney health concerns. As always, use this information as a guide to help find what’s best for you.

With protein covered, let’s discuss why we need carbohydrates for maximum muscle growth.

Nutritional choices shape our physiques in drastic ways, but we can’t build bigger and stronger muscles without resistance training. It’s important that each workout is as productive as possible because lean tissue development is largely dependent on the quality of our exercise sessions. Carbohydrates assist with hypertrophy in many different ways, but they contribute to muscle growth most directly by serving as an unrivaled fuel source for high-intensity and high-volume workouts.

Fully saturated glycogen stores in the muscles and liver provide an immediate source of fuel for high-intensity fitness activities that rely on anaerobic glycolysis. Anaerobic glycolysis is a rapid energy delivery system that quickly metabolizes carbohydrates without oxygen. A properly fueled glycolytic energy system helps us lift heavier weight for more reps, stimulate MPS to a greater degree, run farther and faster, and generally improve performance of all max effort exercise endeavors. Carbs give us the energy to get the most out of our muscle building workouts, and we lose top end performance when they’re restricted. If hypertrophy is the goal, consuming an adequate intake of carbohydrates should be a top dietary priority.

Carbohydrates also aid in post-workout recovery and help us sustain an anabolic state outside of the gym. Despite the popularity of the idea, there’s not a small anabolic window for protein consumption immediately following a workout. Studies show that total daily protein intake and overall feeding frequency contribute significantly more to long-term muscle growth than the proximity of any single meal to a workout session. This means if we simply stick to a solid eating schedule and exercise between regularly planned meals, protein timing will be taken care of and no gains will be lost. However, post-workout carbohydrate intake is a little different.

As we increase muscle mass and our bodies become more familiar with carbohydrate fueled lifting, our storage capacity and metabolic efficiency of glycogen increase. Conditioning our muscles to use glycogen results in great workout sessions, but it also creates a metabolic dependency. If we burn through a significant amount of our glycogen stores during a workout, our bodies will recognize this depletion and prioritize carbohydrate replenishment over other post-workout anabolic processes.

Gluconeogenesis is the synthesis of glucose from non-carbohydrate substances. This commonly involves the conversion of amino acids to glucose. Gluconeogenesis can occur following any protein-rich meal but is more common after high-intensity workouts. This means if we don’t place an emphasis on restoring depleted glycogen stores after a tough workout, our bodies will take post-workout protein and turn it into glucose/glycogen. This can reduce MPS activity and increase muscle protein breakdown. Luckily, it’s easily avoidable by consuming carbohydrates and protein together post-workout.

I recommend you consume roughly 35-40% of total daily carbohydrates in your post-workout meal. The examples listed below focus on a 5X feeding frequency, but the same general concept of glycogen replenishment applies to all eating schedules.

As seen above, carbohydrate intake percentages are distributed across five meals. Post-workout meals contain 40% of all daily carbohydrates, while the other meals hold 20%. The last meal of the day is a casein shake mixed with water, so it contains little to no carbohydrates. Don’t get too hung up on the exact percentages here. Focus on the overall strategy.

Carbohydrate sources with higher glycemic index values might be better options for post-workout recovery, but some studies indicate total quantity is the most important factor in glycogen restoration. The opposite may apply to our other meals throughout the day that don’t immediately follow a workout. Lower glycemic index carbohydrates that digest a bit slower can help regulate blood sugar and hormone levels (primarily insulin and testosterone) during the day, leading to a more anabolic environment for muscle growth. Many different strategies can work. Be sure to experiment and stay open minded with your carbohydrates.

There are many other hypertrophy related nutritional factors not covered here, but these few points on protein and carbohydrate intake should give you a great place to start. When combined with an effective weight training program, proper hydration, and a smart sleep schedule, the suggestions listed in this section can help you build the muscle you want.

Now that we’ve covered some of the major dietary factors for growth, let’s discuss strategies for efficient and sustainable fat loss.

Periodized Nutrition for Fat Loss

Weight loss is really simple. Eat a little less and burn a little more to create a daily caloric deficit. This can be accomplished in a number of different ways if you only care to see the scale go down. However, if you want to selectively target fat, keep the muscle you’ve worked so hard to build, and actually feel good during the process, things become more complicated. An effective fat loss strategy requires a personalized approach that promotes healthy and sustainable dietary habits.

In this section, we’ll cover some of the most important components of a fat loss diet. With a little self-control, intake consistency, and nutritional knowledge, you can drop those unwanted pounds and keep them off with less effort than you may think.

To begin, let’s address the section title. Periodized nutrition?

As covered in chapter one, periodization is a way to organize and plan out a schedule. A periodized exercise program is one that implements change by manipulating different variables at predetermined times, creating a cyclic routine when repeated. In contrast, a non-periodized program is the same workout performed forever with no planned changes in weight, reps, or duration. Periodization is most commonly associated with exercise, but it’s also the foundation for many different dietary strategies.

The eating schedules, post-workout glycogen replenishment emphasis, and general macronutrient intake quantities listed throughout this chapter are all components of a structured plan designed to be followed for a set amount of time to achieve a specific goal. That’s periodization. Other areas of fitness, like competitive sports, also employ periodized nutritional tactics by changing up an athlete’s diet to target their in-season versus off-season performance goals.

So, what is periodized nutrition?

It’s a dietary plan that changes over time at predetermined points to help us accomplish specific goals. Periodized nutrition is the opposite of improvised, hunger-driven eating. If not approached correctly, certain dietary habits can wreck our metabolism, make us more likely to gain additional weight in the future, drastically slow down fitness progress, and decrease our quality of life. To keep these unpleasant side effects from occurring, we need to follow an eating strategy that allows us to drop unwanted pounds without slowing us down.

The very basics of this fat loss program aren’t too complicated. We want to combine a slight intake deficit with fat loss cardio, sprinkle in some carbohydrate refeed days, and incorporate ketogenic inspired eating styles at regular intervals to improve fat utilization.

Below is a summary of the fat loss strategy.

Caloric Restriction
Reduce carbohydrate and fat intake ~10% below your normal energy balance needs. Pair this minor caloric reduction with 10-30 minutes of daily fat loss cardio to create a daily energy deficit of 350-700 calories.

Refeed Days
Break up sustained caloric deficit periods with a single carbohydrate refeed day every 4-6 days, resulting in an energy restricted state ~80% of the time. Refeeding back to energy balance or a slight (<5%) surplus allows us to reset the catabolic environment that prolonged deficits create and restore normal hormone balance/sensitivity. This deficit+refeed pattern combined with smart cardiovascular exercise can help us drop 0.5-1% of our body weight per week. Within this range, expect larger losses at the beginning and smaller, consistent progress later.

Macronutrient Split
Most of the time, your diet should be high in protein at ~40% of total daily calories (40-60g per meal) and contain a significant amount of carbohydrates (~30%) and fats (~30%). All three macronutrients are important to exercise performance. Do not eliminate fats or carbohydrates. If you’re lifting weights, eat carbs to fuel and recover from your workouts with the 40% post-workout intake quantity discussed in the Maximizing Muscle Growth section. Experiment with different glycemic-index-value carbohydrates to find what makes you feel the best, perform well, and maintain a consistent rate of fat loss.

Metabolic Flexibility/Keto
Occasionally going “keto” can increase our metabolism of fats and make subsequent fat loss exercise more effective. Every 4th or 5th week, drop carbohydrate intake to ~5-10% (keep fiber rich vegetable intake normal) and increase fats to result in a 40-45% protein, 45-50% fat, and 5-10% carbohydrate split. This mock-keto week maintains energy balance and contains fat loss cardiovascular exercise with no resistance work. If you follow my weight training programs, this ketogenic period occurs during each off week. The last day of the keto week (24 hours before your next resistance training session) should be a carbohydrate refeed day to fuel up for the upcoming resistance workout.

An example calendar is listed below to make all of this a little easier to comprehend. Take note of the day-to-day differences. Some days have lifting and cardio, some only cardio, while the weekends are meant for rest and recovery. This routine follows a Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri lifting schedule with refeed days occurring every fifth day, but the general concept can be modified and adapted to fit any routine.

Fat loss without exercise is totally possible, but that’s not what we’re doing here. This strategy relies on a combination of intake restriction and cardiovascular exercise to create daily energy deficits. By utilizing these two methods, the intensity and demand of each component is reduced. A flexible diet and reasonable exercise program will be easier to adhere to and more effective long-term than caloric restriction alone. You don’t have to starve yourself to lose weight if exercise is included in your weight loss strategy.

For example, reducing a 2000 calorie energy balance diet by 10% is a difference of 200 calories. We can hit this target by simply removing 9g (9 calories/g) of fat and 30g (4 calories/g) of carbohydrates a day, or with a variety of other carbohydrate/fat combinations. When this minor intake reduction is paired with cardiovascular exercise, the total daily energy deficit can easily double. As few as 10 additional cardio minutes per day on top of your current resistance training routine could be enough to move the scale. Achieving a daily deficit is not that difficult if approached the right way. Use diet and exercise together to make it easy.

With the broad strokes of the calendar covered, let’s dive into the why behind the main points.
If a caloric deficit is our main goal and it can theoretically be achieved without too much effort, why can’t we maintain it indefinitely for faster fat loss? Why are carbohydrate refeed days required?

Losing weight is emotionally and physiologically stressful. Eating less and exercising more essentially puts us in starvation mode where our bodies consume themselves for energy. This catabolic environment is essential for efficient fat loss, but we can’t stay in the red forever. When we maintain a long-term deficit or attempt to crash diet our way to a leaner physique, some pretty unfavorable changes can happen to our sex hormones, thyroid function, and cortisol levels. Side effects like decreased testosterone, male hypogonadism, female athlete triad, increased muscle breakdown, decreased MPS, decreased glycogen synthesis/storage, lower insulin concentrations caused by an impaired endocrine system, and dramatically elevated cortisol levels are all significant issues to consider. But our primary areas of concern relate to thyroid function and energy expenditure.

If sustained for too long, a constant caloric deficit can slow down our metabolism and cause a noticeable drop in total daily energy expenditure. This metabolic downshift is called adaptive thermogenesis, and it’s a calorie sparing response that our bodies initiate in times of starvation. To keep losing weight in a state of adaptive thermogenesis, we’re forced to consistently eat less and exercise more. This can cause us to develop quite a few unhealthy and unsustainable habits. Our general exercise performance can also be negatively affected due to limited energy availability (glycogen delivery and synthesis). This can lead to emotional distress and a loss in muscle mass due to a steady decline in workout quality. Adaptive thermogenesis can also cause us to gain more weight than what we started with.

Under normal conditions, our fat cells (adipocytes) shrink when we lose fat and expand to hold more stored triglycerides when we gain fat. This means our bodies maintain roughly the same number of adipocytes during normal fluctuations in weight, but this quantity can change. Adipocytes can become more sensitive to glucose after periods of rapid weight loss. In this hyper-sensitive state, small fat cells absorb glucose faster than they can store it. Instead of expanding in size to hold newly synthesized triglyceride content, some adipocytes will split to form entirely new cells in a process called hyperplasia. When this increased fat storage capacity (more glucose-sensitive fat cells) is combined with a drastically slowed metabolism due to adaptive thermogenesis, rapid weight gain can cause us to exceed our heaviest starting point. This is why many overweight people can successfully lose weight with crash diets, but tend to gain it back quickly when they return to their previously established energy balance diet. We want healthy sustainability, not miserable starvation.

While it’s important to understand what can go wrong if we don’t approach fat loss in a sensible and safe manner, there’s no need to worry about anything mentioned here. We can successfully avoid these issues by implementing carbohydrate refeed days that replenish glycogen stores, acutely spike insulin levels, and reset many of the hormonal imbalances that occur after longer deficits. Refeed days force us to embrace sustainable lifestyle changes, develop healthy fat loss habits, and they eliminate our ability to crash diet down to a smaller size.

Regarding carbohydrate food sources, you may find higher glycemic index complex carbs that acutely spike insulin and blood sugar to be more effective for fat loss than lower GI options that result in prolonged insulin production. Insulin suppresses fat oxidation and it’s possible that lower GI foods might slow down your progress. But you might find the opposite to be true. Experiment with different carbohydrate sources to learn what makes you feel and perform best.

Refeed days are important, but they do slow us down. How much longer will it take to reach our goals with them added?

A weekly body weight reduction of 0.5-1% is my recommended fat loss range, but you’ll probably find yourself on either side of this window during your fat loss journey. For most people, losses will be greater at the beginning then slowly decrease due to a mixture of physiological, behavioral, and emotional factors. That’s totally fine. Embrace this common progress decline, set your expectations accordingly, and intentionally taper your losses as the last few pounds drop and you close in on your goals. Slowly phasing out of a fat loss mindset and into a normal routine can help solidify newly formed healthy habits. Work with, not against, natural changes in energy expenditure.

You’ve accepted this extended timeline. Great. But why isn’t weight loss progress linear?

Fading program enthusiasm can partially be to blame for a decrease in fat loss, but the main culprit is a normal drop in TDEE due to changes in body mass. Whether you successfully lose 10 or 50 pounds, a leaner version of you will expend fewer calories per day than heavier you did. Weighing less means you won’t require as much energy to move around, sustain basic bodily functions, or fuel exercise. This drop in TDEE also means that intake for energy balance will decrease. Many weight-loss diets stall here because changes in energy balance are not considered and intake stays the same despite lower EB requirements. But if we’re consistently tracking our intake, monitoring changes in weight, and regularly assessing energy levels, we can modify daily caloric totals to reflect fluctuations in TDEE. However, we can’t cut all macronutrients equally.

Fat and carbohydrate intake quantities can be modified to help you achieve your desired deficit, but protein needs to stay high due to its effect on muscle retention and appetite control. Protein is arguably the most important macronutrient for fat loss.

Even the best fat loss diets have some issues with muscle protein synthesis and lean tissue breakdown. The catabolic environment induced by energy restriction has been shown to decrease peak MPS rates by over 25% and significantly increase MPB. Less metabolically active tissue slows fat loss progress, hinders exercise performance, and can lead to injury if MPB is severe enough. These issues are minimized with carbohydrate refeed days, but they’re not completely eliminated. We probably won’t experience much muscle growth during extended periods of fat loss, but we can work to maintain everything we’ve built by eating more protein. Aim for roughly 40-60g of protein per meal to maximally stimulate MPS, minimize muscle breakdown, and suppress the most annoying side effect of all fat loss diets, hunger.

Healthy appetite suppressing strategies are key components of long-term fat loss success because losing weight ultimately depends on intake control. When macronutrients are listed in order of most to least satiating, protein is first, carbohydrates are second, and fats are third. Fats slow down gastric emptying, delaying hunger, but they do not produce the same satiety hormone response as protein or carbohydrates. This means high-protein meals, especially at breakfast and lunch, can help us feel more satisfied and stay full throughout the day. Some studies have shown that slightly shifting calories to the front half of the day can reduce evening cravings and improve self-control during nighttime hours. We shouldn’t have to suffer through ravenous hunger to see progress in our weight loss journey, and a high-protein diet can keep that from happening.

Feeling more satisfied and full helps us adhere to new diets and maintain deficits with less effort, but the emotional response to dietary fulfillment is just as important. This is especially true for those who struggle with mild to severe eating disorders. The satiating effect of high-protein meals can decrease reward style eating habits, produce fewer incidents of mindless snacking, decrease emotion fueled binging, lessen symptoms of eating addiction, and help us establish healthier relationships with food. Protein won’t solve all of our problems, but it can help us consistently make smarter choices.

The last component of this fat loss diet is nutritional ketosis.

When fasting, exercising, or in a carbohydrate restricted state, our livers produce water soluble molecules called ketones. Ketones are synthesized from free fatty acids and glycogen in a process called ketogenesis. Ketones are used by our muscles, heart, and brain for energy. This makes them a viable fuel alternative to glucose for many different biological functions. However, when carbohydrates are consistently present in our diet at moderate to high intake quantities, ketone production will be low because our bodies won’t have a reason to abandon glycolysis. As long as carbs are present, insulin will suppress ketone production and glucose will support brain function and physical activity. Ketosis requires us to starve the body of carbohydrates long enough to force a metabolic shift away from glucose to ketone bodies. This is typically accomplished by following a diet that’s high in fat, very low in carbs, and contains a moderate amount of protein.

After multiple weeks (4+) of strict adherence to a low-carbohydrate diet (less than 25-50g/day or 5-10% of daily calories), our metabolism can shift into a state of nutritional ketosis. When in ketosis, fats and ketone bodies are our primary fuel sources and carbohydrate reliance is minimized. With fats being burned for the majority of our mental and physical energy, blood levels of ketones rise, insulin levels drop, fat oxidation enzyme (lipase) production and mitochondrial activity is increased, and glycogen utilization declines. We basically become supercharged, fat burning machines. And because most of us carry around at least a few pounds of stored body fat, we have a nearly endless supply of energy to fuel daily activities.

A successful ketogenic diet combined with a slight caloric deficit or certain fasting techniques can help us rapidly drop weight, but the health benefits of ketosis are not limited to fat loss. Improved blood lipid profiles, cancer growth suppression, fewer epileptic symptoms, better blood sugar control, increased endurance exercise performance, and a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease can all result from this dietary change. When incorporated correctly and in the right situations, a ketogenic diet can be an excellent alternative macronutrient split for some people.

If nutritional ketosis is potentially a superior fat loss strategy and associated with an impressive list of health benefits, why are we implementing it so infrequently?

Unfortunately, true nutritional ketosis can be very difficult to achieve and even harder to maintain. It can take a minimum of one month for our bodies to metabolically switch from carbohydrates to fats and ketones. This means our diet has to be nearly perfect for at least four weeks before we can reach a state of ketosis, and that same level of intake precision must be sustained for the adaptation to be maintained. If we don’t successfully force a fuel swap during that time, our keto diet can turn into an unpleasant, low-carb diet that leaves us fatigued and unmotivated to exercise.

Due to these demanding requirements, I don’t believe nutritional ketosis is a realistic strategy for most people. A ketogenic state is achievable and far from impossible, but there are too many obstacles in the way of a sustained metabolic adaptation for me to recommend it as a long-term dietary plan for the average person. Instead of trying to implement difficult, high-maintenance diets, I’d rather you focus on realistic fat loss practices that give you more intake flexibility.

Along with being difficult to adhere to, a high-fat diet can also lead to weight gain because fat is the most calorically dense, yet the least satiating macronutrient. Some studies show that long-term high-fat diets can decrease the satiety hormone response to fats by lowering the sensitivity of gut lipid receptors. This means if we have a tendency to eat until we’re full and consume large quantities of fat, we could easily exceed energy balance. Research shows that high-fat diets do not result in more fat loss if our eating habits put us at a caloric surplus. Because weight loss ultimately depends on an energy deficit, a high-fat diet might not be the best plan for long-term fat loss success if you struggle with intake control.

Eliminating carbohydrates and going keto can also drastically limit our high-intensity exercise performance. Because resistance training is a key component to any good fat loss program, it’s important that we have the energy to lift weights well. Fats and ketones are incredible fuel sources for endurance exercise and low-intensity activities, but they can’t compete with carbohydrates for hypertrophy training or HIIT style workouts. A long-term ketogenic diet that hinders the anaerobic glycolytic energy system could cause us to chronically underperform in many fitness settings, build less muscle, lose strength, and see fewer top end cardiovascular improvements.

Carbohydrates are essential for high-intensity exercise, but it can be beneficial to periodically remove them. How can systematically reducing carbs make us better at burning fat?

A long-term ketogenic diet might not be the best nutritional strategy due to its strict intake requirements, weight gain potential, and possible negative effects on exercise performance, but short term applications are very different. Some studies show that lipid oxidation activity can be increased in as little as five days when a ketogenic diet is paired with endurance focused cardiovascular exercise. This research suggests it’s not necessary for us to achieve true nutritional ketosis to improve fat utilization. We most likely won’t reach ketogenic levels of fat oxidation in a week, but 5-10 days can cause a slight metabolic adaptation and train our bodies to rely a bit more on fat and a little less on carbs for energy. This can be easily accomplished by implementing a keto recovery week within a resistance training program. A keto week allows us to drop carbohydrate intake without interfering with resistance training performance. This low-carb period improves fat utilization through a combination of cardio and macronutrient manipulation.

We can theoretically get better and better at using fats for fuel by repeating this pattern. This makes subsequent post-resistance training cardio even more effective. An entire month of keto might be tough to complete successfully, but most of us can handle a week of limited carbs. And we’re not actually trying to achieve nutritional ketosis with this approach, so minor setbacks or accidental high-carb days won’t completely derail progress. When paired with intermittent fasting, this a more realistic and sustainable implementation of a ketogenic diet that allows us to simultaneously pursue resistance training at a high level.

To summarize, focus on a slight daily deficit, incorporate carbohydrate refeed days, and play with keto while lifting weights and following a smart fat loss cardiovascular exercise program. Be smart about your intake levels so you can properly fuel yourself to perform well in the gym and in life. Food is not your enemy, exercise is not a punishment, and this fat loss strategy should be temporary. Reach your goal and work to maintain it. Take the time to learn what your body needs and form healthy habits that will last a lifetime. Change takes time and a considerable amount of effort, so be sure to celebrate every minor victory along the way.

I believe the plan outlined above is an effective fat loss strategy, but you should do what works best for you. Follow this plan perfectly, modify it slightly to fit your needs, or take a few ideas and add them to your existing routine. Whatever you choose to do, take the time to track your eating habits so you can accurately calculate your individual needs. This approach doesn’t work if you’re guessing.

Fasting & Fat Loss

I don’t recommend regularly occurring, extended periods of fasting for most people. However, moderate fasting strategies can be effective for heavier individuals looking to safely expedite their fat loss progress.

If you’re interested in fasting beyond 12 hours daily, consider modifying the 4X4 outline to 3X4 and implementing a 16:8 (Hours Fasting : Hours Feeding) fasting routine. This results in three meals per day, each separated by four hours, with 16 hours of fasting. Pay close attention to any changes in exercise performance or mood/energy levels during this time. Modify your eating windows to fit what’s best for you. I personally like to begin my fast 3-5 hours before bed.

Alcohol & Exercise

Alcohol is fun. An occasional drink or three can be a great way to unwind after a long day, celebrate a special occasion, or be more social in a group setting. And when consumed in moderation, alcohol and fitness can coexist peacefully. Alcohol might not be part of the food pyramid, but it’s common enough in most of our diets to deserve brief attention.

In this section, we’ll quickly cover some major side effects associated with excessive alcohol consumption.

At about seven calories per gram, alcohol is an energy-dense substance. And because we typically don’t chug pure ethanol, the extra calories in our drinks can add up fast. Gaining a little extra weight might be your only drinking concern, but alcohol is a powerful drug that can disrupt fitness progress if intake is too high.

Some possible side effects include –

Decreased lipid oxidation can hinder fat loss progress and endurance exercise performance.
Decreased glycogen storage/synthesis can negatively impact resistance training intensity.
Decreased baseline hydration/rates of rehydration can impact exercise performance, cognitive ability, and recovery.
Decreased blood flow to muscles can hurt exercise performance and recovery.
Decreased MPS can result in slower muscle growth/recovery and possibly muscle loss.
Decreased CNS excitability can negatively affect motor unit recruitment and fiber activation, resulting in strength and size losses.
Decreased brain phospholipid levels can negatively affect cognitive ability and mood.
Decreased immune function can keep us out of the gym due to frequent illness.
Increased inflammation can slow down recovery, hinder exercise performance, impact digestion, and hurt cognitive ability.
Decreased sleep quality can alter hormone levels, mood, energy, and recovery.
Decreased testosterone can limit growth and general exercise performance.

It’s important to note that nearly all of these issues are caused by frequent, high volume consumption and aren’t common with moderate intake. While that’s probably a comforting point, there isn’t a clear line between low and high quantities of alcohol. Differences in body size, composition, hydration levels, and stomach food contents mean the same drink can affect us all differently.

So, how much can you drink and still see progress? That’s for you to figure out.

If fitness really matters to you and you’re determined to completely eliminate all of the problems listed above, don’t drink. Alcohol can’t slow us down if we don’t consume it. To avoid hangovers and the speed bumps caused by drinking, abstinence is by far the most effective strategy. But that approach is unrealistic for many.

Life is all about priorities and choices. Reaching your performance potential requires a high level of self-control and restriction. To be the best, you can’t afford any missteps. In contrast, exercise goals that are centered on being healthy, generally fit, and looking good have plenty of room for fun. You don’t have to avoid alcohol to get the most out of your workouts, but you can’t drink excessively and expect to see consistent progress either. So, if you aren’t willing to give up your favorite vice, be a responsible adult, drink in moderation, stay hydrated, and avoid getting drunk.

If you’re consistent in the gym and in the kitchen, but aren’t seeing the results you expect, reevaluate your drinking habits. Track alcohol intake just like carbs, fats, and protein.

Make smart choices.

Registered Dietitians & Supplements

I am not a nutrition expert. My degrees and education are exercise-based, not dietetic. I have multiple personal training certifications, but none of them focus on nutrition. And I’ve never shadowed or interned with any nutrition professional. Yet, I can legally call myself a Nutritionist in the United States because that title is not legally protected. This low barrier to entry means your nutrition coach may be vastly underqualified to give you detailed health advice and might not fully understand many of the topics they’re so opinionated about.

Job opportunities for beginners are great, but so are minimum qualifications. To get the best nutrition advice, work with a registered dietitian (RD). Registered dietitians in the United States must have at least a bachelor’s degree, are required to complete a dietetic internship program, and must pass a state regulated exam to obtain their license. Quality and knowledge will vary between RDs and it’s up to you to research the best reviewed options, but the years of work that are required to obtain those two little letters make most RDs knowledgeable and trustworthy sources of information.

Registered dietitians also offer specific services not available to trainers or general nutritionists. By working with local labs, RDs can order specific blood tests that check for food sensitivities/allergies, micronutrient deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, blood lipid profiles, causes of inflammation, and many other food related issues. A great RD will alter your current eating habits and/or prescribe certain supplements to successfully treat any problems detected.

What about supplements? This chapter is focused primarily on macronutrients because I believe that the overwhelming majority of our diet should come from whole foods and not shakes, bars, pills, or powders. However, there are quite a few dietary supplements that can be really beneficial to our general health and exercise performance.

Some examples of helpful supplements include but are not limited to –

Fish Oil/Omega-3
Vitamin D
Multivitamin
Probiotic
Creatine

These supplements can probably help most people, but results will vary. We’re all unique and require different things. To really know what’s best for your body, where you may be deficient, and how to optimally strategize for nutritional success, work with a registered dietitian.

Final Thoughts

This chapter contains quite a few nutritional suggestions, but many variables were intentionally left open to experimentation. What works best for you will be different than what’s most successful for your neighbor. There’s no one-size-fits-all for food choices, portion sizes, or meal compositions. An effective dietary strategy is one that’s designed to target certain goals, full of all three macronutrients, and built around the needs of the individual following it.

If most of the information in this guide has been new to you, just focus on the basics. Be a little better each day, try to stay consistent with your intake targets, track what you eat, focus on your goals, and don’t beat yourself up if you occasionally get sidetracked.

Dietary goals require dedication and hard work to accomplish, but food should be fun. Keep it that way.

Experiment by manipulating different variables. Find what works best for you. Share what you discover. Have fun.

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Cool Down: Stretching & SMR

Samuel Stephens — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 18:54:28 +0000

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Cool Down: Stretching & SMR

How to build an effective cool down routine and the fitness benefits of self-myofascial release and static stretching.

Chill Out

After a physically and mentally demanding session, it’s easy to pack up and immediately leave the gym. No stretching. No foam rolling. Just rack the weights and get out. It can be tempting to skip the cool down because this portion seems so minimally beneficial compared to the difficult stuff that was just completed. It might only be 5% of our total workout time, but these few minutes can help with so much more than range of motion.

An effective post-workout cool down routine can directly improve hypertrophy, strength, flexibility, and recovery time while reducing soreness, future risk of injury, and joint imbalances. A small investment of time can drastically impact our exercise progress and session effectiveness.

In this chapter, we’ll define cool down, look at some benefits of various stretching techniques, and cover how to build an easy and effective routine.

Cool Down Definition & Benefits

Cool down components and methods vary among different programs and social circles, but they all have the same basic goals. A cool down is a 5-15 minute period that occurs immediately after a workout. It includes exercises designed to improve flexibility, reduce soreness/inflammation, and give participants time to return to baseline heart rates and body temperatures. The term cool down is used here because of its widespread familiarity, not due to any significant emphasis placed on temperature reduction.

A great cool down can result in the following acute and long-term benefits –

Increased flexibility/range of motion
Increased hypertrophy
Increased strength
Increased quality of movement
Increased blood flow
Increased balance
Increased recovery
Increased ATP production
Decreased risk of injury
Decreased soreness (DOMS)
Decreased inflammation
Decreased joint imbalances

An increase in flexibility is expected, but the other potential improvements listed make it obvious that stretching does more than simply affect range of motion. If we want to perform our best in and out of the gym, we need to be following a great cool down routine.

Components of the Cool Down

The Fitstra cool down strategy is very simple. It massages the muscles worked that day then stretches them out. Research shows that both self-myofascial release (SMR) and static stretching techniques can significantly increase a joint’s range of motion when performed independently, but results are greater when these two are combined.

As seen above, the cool down process starts with self-myofascial release and ends with static stretching. To make sure we’re all speaking the same language and understand what’s being discussed, let’s quickly unpack these terms.

Our muscles and all of their major internal longitudinal structures (fascicles, fibers, and myofibrils) are covered in a collagen sheath called fascia. Similar to how skin covers our body, fascia encase our muscles in a thin layer of connective tissue that aids in elasticity, nutrient delivery, and compartmental structure. Fascia also surrounds internal organs, so the prefix myo in myofascial means we’re specifically talking about muscle fascia.

When we apply pressure to our muscles with tools like foam rollers, we temporarily reduce tension and can break up fascial adhesions. Self-myofascial release means that we’re giving ourselves a massage with a tool and releasing tension from soft tissues. Nothing too complicated.

A static stretch is a stretching technique where a muscle is lengthened until noticeable passive tension is achieved, then held in that stretched state for a specific amount of time. Unlike dynamic stretching in the warm up, static stretching does not involve any movement once the stretch begins.

With terminology covered, let’s discuss why these components are so beneficial.

Self-Myofascial Release: Why

There are quite a few great performance benefits associated with self-myofascial release. Some enhancements are due to physical changes within muscles, while others are neuromuscular. These acute responses from massage result in faster recovery times and more effective static stretching. To start things off, let’s talk about soreness and blood flow.

The delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS) is the pain we feel in our muscles after a tough workout. The exact cause of DOMS is not fully understood, but it’s thought to stem from various types of muscle tissue damage and structural disruption. Soreness is common, but it’s not a training symptom we want to experience at high levels. For this damage to be repaired, our muscles need to be taken care of properly. A great diet, adequate hydration, and a healthy sleep schedule can help ensure our bodies are receiving and synthesizing the nutrients they need to recover. But when our muscles are damaged, blood flow can be impeded due to inflammation and changes in tissue structure. Luckily, foam rolling and other self-myofascial release techniques can reduce soreness and speed up the recovery process by increasing blood flow.

When self-myofascial release techniques are performed correctly, fascia, muscles, and arteries are made more elastic through massage. Decreased arterial stiffness and modifications to the viscoelastic properties of tissues result in vasodilation and acute, local improvements to blood circulation. Meaning, when we use a foam roller on a specific area, the targeted muscles and arteries experience better blood flow at higher total volumes because the tissues are more pliable. Damaged muscles recover faster when they receive more blood. Quicker recovery times reduce inflammation, increase growth, improve energy production, and benefit general performance in all future resistance training endeavors.

The same underlying mechanisms and physiological changes that increase blood flow also improve a muscle’s longitudinal stretching potential. Muscles and fascia that are more elastic and less resistant to being lengthened can be stretched to a greater degree. Research suggests that self-myofascial release can increase heat, muscle plasticity/extensibility, and possibly break up fascial adhesions that impede movement. These physical changes can result in greater ranges of motion during a static stretch due to improved viscoelastic muscle properties. SMR makes rope more like rubber.

On the neuromuscular side of things, SMR appears to inhibit the reflex response of a muscle, making it more relaxed and susceptible to stretching. This response is called autogenic inhibition. The broad strokes of this theory state that when we apply pressure to a muscle through SMR, changes in tissue length, tension, and levels of pain are registered by local sensory receptors within a muscle. These signals are then sent to our central nervous system as a warning to reduce muscle contraction force and neuromuscular excitability. This warning signal relaxes muscle tissues and makes them less reactive to minor changes in discomfort, allowing them to be stretched further than if they were behaving normally. To summarize a summary, self-myofascial release causes our bodies to sense a potential risk of injury and respond by relaxing the affected muscles for a short period of time to keep them safe. This relaxed window is when we apply static stretching.

Static Stretching: Why

Similar to self-myofascial release, static stretching produces both neuromuscular and physiological changes that vary in duration. The end result of a great static stretching routine is commonly assumed to only be improved flexibility, but there are quite a few other significant benefits. Static stretching can directly induce hypertrophy, improve strength output, and reduce risk of injury while under load. We can be bigger, stronger, and safer with a little stretching.

In a weight training setting, our muscles contract against resistance and cause active tension to build. This tension loads our muscle fibers with mechanical stress and causes sensory receptors in tissues to stimulate myofibrillar protein synthesis. This overly simplified summary of mechanical loading and protein synthesis is how we increase the size of a muscle when we lift. When static stretching is performed correctly, our muscles relax and don’t generate any active tension. However, they do generate passive tension at longer lengths. This passive form of loading can cause muscle protein synthesis to be triggered.

Static stretching mimics the mechanical stress of an eccentric contraction by lengthening sarcomeres beyond their resting size and loading muscle fibers with enough force to generate a growth response. The elastic nature of muscle tissue is what limits our range of motion and builds passive tension in the tissue. Like eccentric contractions, this style of mechanical loading primarily results in new sarcomeres grown in series (sarcomeres added to the ends of myofibrils). Static stretching alone isn’t going to result in a massive difference in overall size, but stretching can add new tissue. And if it adds mass, that’s a growth opportunity worth taking advantage of.

Stretching can also make us stronger by changing the length-tension relationship of our muscles. The force a muscle generates is partially dependent on its length. Both long and short sarcomere lengths don’t allow for an optimal number of actin/myosin cross-bridges. This means we’re weaker at the top and bottom of a contraction, and produce peak force somewhere in the middle. By increasing the flexibility and functional range of motion of a muscle, we alter the length-tension relationship and create a larger middle section of the force production curve.

As seen above, muscles that are lengthened through static stretching don’t produce more peak force than their tight counterparts. Instead, they maintain maximum strength output at longer lengths. Longer fibers and more uniform sarcomere shapes extend the length-tension curve to the right, and allow us to work within an optimal strength zone for a greater percentage of a joint’s range of motion. Applied practically, this change in physiology translates to more control and force production at the bottom of a heavy lift, allowing us to get out of the hole with less strain. Like the hypertrophy gains mentioned earlier, changes in strength due to muscle lengthening are modest, but it would be dumb to pass up these easily attainable benefits.

Altering a muscle’s length-tension relationship can also reduce the risk of injury. Take a second and look back at the length-tension graphs above. Wider peak force plateaus signify that maximum muscle tension is being distributed more evenly throughout a joint’s range of motion. In tighter muscles, that plateau resembles something closer to a narrow point, and the greatest forces are experienced suddenly during one small segment of a contraction. By extending a muscle’s optimal force output length, we can control heavier weight at longer fiber lengths and can minimize acute spikes in tension. These two factors can help minimize the chance of strains and sprains.

When combined with appropriate corrective exercises, static stretching can also effectively treat joint imbalances. The likelihood of knee, low back, shoulder, and other common injuries can be decreased when joints are aligned properly. By stretching tight, overworked muscles, we can improve the activation of their weak, overly lengthened antagonists.

Let’s now shift our focus from cool down theory to practice.

How to SMR

Self-myofascial release can be accomplished with a few different implements, but I recommend you limit your toolkit to foam rollers, massage balls, barbells, and mobility sticks because they all rely on the same general method of application. These items allow us to apply high levels of pressure to the entire length of a muscle by using slow and controlled sweeping motions for 30-60 seconds. Because that general overview isn’t too helpful, let’s dive into the specifics of pressure, movement, and duration.

How much pressure? A lot. SMR studies vary quite a bit in experiment design and tool application, but there’s a clear link between pressure and results. The more force we can place on a tissue, the better. Self-myofascial release should cause mild discomfort and possibly even very low levels of pain when done correctly, but the sensation should be far from unbearable. Using a 10 point pain scale, the SMR ouch-factor should peak at ~7/10 but not exceed it. If you have experience with deep tissue massage, the feeling should be similar. Simultaneously relaxing and uncomfortable.

To ensure an entire muscle is being hit evenly, the pressure applied needs to constantly move longitudinally and slightly laterally (end to end and side to side). Studies show that SMR can be effective with a variety of different movement patterns as long as certain pressure and time guidelines are met. To keep SMR as uncomplicated as possible, I recommend you roll at a steady speed of 1-3 inches per second, work along the entire length of a muscle by sweeping back and forth in both directions (proximal to distal, distal to proximal, proximal to distal, etc) while slowly working side to side to ensure the entire surface area is covered.

For example, when rolling out your quads with a barbell while seated on the floor, start at the hip, roll the bar to your knee, reverse the direction of movement back to the hip, and keep that pattern going until the desired duration is reached. While the barbell is traveling back and forth along the length of your thigh, internally and externally rotate your femur to equally target the middle, inside, and outside muscles.

In spots that are noticeably more sore, slow down your rolling speed and work carefully over the muscle to keep discomfort levels manageable. Reduce roller speed as pain increases to minimize the risk of further tissue inflammation and give sensitive areas more massage time. If you’re not sure how much pressure to use, start on the lower end and work your way up as you become more comfortable with the exercise.

Regarding SMR time and frequency, work back and forth over the target area for 2-3 sets, each set lasting 30-60 seconds. Take a 5-10 second break between SMR rounds. All sets of SMR should be performed consecutively on a single muscle before moving onto the next.

How to Static Stretch

Static stretching isn’t super complicated, but it’s easy to screw up if not done correctly. Muscles can become inflamed and damaged when stretched too aggressively. Luckily, a few simple rules help keep us safe and flexible. When stretching, we want to apply purely passive tension for 30 seconds while avoiding pain.

Unlike SMR, static stretching should not cause any significant discomfort. For a muscle to be lengthened safely and effectively, it needs to be relaxed so passive tension can build. When we stretch too hard, muscle fibers have a difficult time relaxing and end up fighting the lengthening process with an isometric contraction. If passive tension is the goal, we can’t be actively contracting against it. Keep the intensity of your static stretching high enough to build noticeable tension, but far from pain.

I recommend that you stick to a hold time of 30 seconds per stretch, perform 2-3 sets per muscle, and alternate between sides by stretching unilaterally. Alternatively, you can knock out all sets for a single muscle before moving on to another like with SMR. Rest for 5-10 seconds between bouts if you perform all sets on one side consecutively. Experiment with both for the best results.

How much range of motion should a joint have? It depends. Age, sex, muscle mass, and the specific demands of your individual lifestyle will determine how much flexibility you need as well as the practical upper limits of your range of motion. With that said, tight muscles need to be stretched and lengthened to promote longer lasting adaptations and achieve optimal joint function. If something is noticeably tight and impedes your ability to move through a specific exercise, work on it. For those who are already flexible, focus on stretching maintenance rather than continued improvement.

Like all other aspects of fitness, our flexibility goals aren’t accomplished in a single session. Improvements take time. Stretch to a comfortable range of motion and slowly work to increase it over days, weeks, and months. Do what’s best for you.

Cool Down Example

The following is a simplified cool down routine that follows a lower body workout. Because post-workout stretching only targets the muscles worked that day, the included example isolates the quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes.

As seen above, the self-myofascial release section targets each muscle individually in a unilateral fashion, each for two sets of 30 seconds. The same unilateral approach is applied to static stretching. A wall supported standing quad stretch starts things out, followed by a band assisted supine hamstring stretch, and pigeon pose targets the glutes to wrap everything up. If possible, take the time to isolate each muscle unilaterally as performed above. This approach takes a bit longer than a bilateral method, but it helps identify imbalances much easier. Bilateral stretching can be just as effective and is more time efficient, but don’t do it exclusively. 30 second durations are listed in this example, but feel free to play within a 30-60 second window for both SMR and static stretching. Finally, be sure to breathe normally while under tension. Don’t hold your breath or hyperventilate.

Because we want to stretch all of the primary movers used in a workout, tissues that carry you through any cardiovascular conditioning need love too. If your upper body workout ends with sprint intervals, you’ll want to stretch out your chest and shoulders, as well as your glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves. Make sure all the muscles worked in your session get some attention at the end.

Our bodies use so many different muscles and joint angles to move, so I can’t cover every possible stretch you might need. But I can suggest a few that cover the most basic movement patterns.

The stretches above should serve as a helpful introduction to static stretching and target some of the most necessary areas, but it’s a very basic list. You will most likely need to incorporate a few extras for your individual needs. If you have the ability to supplement your weight training routine with regular yoga classes, do them. Get out of the weight room and learn something new.

SMR & Static Stretching For Off-Days

Self-myofascial release and static stretching can be performed on non-training days, depending on your goals and recovery needs. Research suggests that to increase flexibility, reduce soreness, and create longer lasting physiological adaptations, stretching and SMR need to be performed at regular intervals throughout the week. But it’s not always necessary to include both cool down components.

To reduce soreness and inflammation, incorporate SMR into your off-days to promote blood flow and general recovery, but leave static stretching out. Static stretching has little to no benefit on DOMS and can potentially exacerbate muscle damage. If you’re flexible but really sore, save static stretching for the cool down after a workout. Off-day SMR uses the same massage technique covered earlier, but the duration is a bit longer.

I recommend you increase the total set count to three and bump up the rolling time to 90 seconds per round. These sessions can be performed at any time during the day, but may be most effective if added into your morning routine or knocked out before bed. Feel free to SMR daily, but treat this recovery tool like a workout and limit its application to 1-2 times per day.

If flexibility is your goal, both SMR and static stretching should be utilized. Tighter muscles require more frequent attention and may need to be massaged and stretched 4-6 times (including cool down stretching sessions) per week until a desired range of motion is met. Like off-day SMR, static stretching for non-training days uses the same application style described earlier, but the total time is increased.

After completing the non-negotiable, off-day SMR protocol (3X90 sec), stretch each muscle 3-4 times for 30-60 seconds. Stay far away from muscular pain and discomfort. Once you’ve achieved your flexibility goals, static stretching volume can be reduced to a maintenance frequency of 2-3 times per week, or kept within the cool down after lifting.

PNF Versus Static Stretching

Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) stretching is another extremely effective stretching method that can replace or supplement static stretching. PNF stretching utilizes the same autogenic inhibition response as self-myofascial release, but is performed during a static stretch.

I suggest a hold-relax approach that uses a five second isometric contraction at 40-90% of maximum force, followed by a 30 second stretch, performed for 2-4 sets, with a 5-10 second break between rounds. Feel free to mix PNF in with your current static stretching sets or eliminate static stretching completely and perform PNF exclusively.

Final Thoughts

Lift all the weights. Run all the miles. Stretch all the muscles.

Regardless of your programming or long-term goals, make sure your routine includes a post-workout cool down section. A few minutes of work can make a massive difference in your overall exercise progress.

A decent amount of content was covered in this chapter, but hopefully the overall message is clear. After you’re done working out, perform self-myofascial release with a tool of your choice, then do some static stretching. Nothing too complicated or crazy. Don’t overthink it.

Experiment by manipulating different variables. Find what works best for you. Share what you discover. Have fun.

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Warm Up: Heat & Movement

Samuel Stephens — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 21:30:49 +0000

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This guide is one chapter from Fitness & Nutrition Programming for Beginners. If you enjoy reading it, consider purchasing the full book either as a PDF or paperback. Thanks!

Warm Up: Heat & Movement

The exercise performance benefits of warming up and how to build an effective routine.

Thermodynamic Gains

After a long day spent hunched over a keyboard at the office, you get in your car and navigate through traffic to the gym. A few minutes after arriving, you quickly change clothes and immediately load up the bar with a new one rep squat max. You brace under the bar, lift off, then… die?

Beginning a high-intensity workout without a proper warm up is generally accepted as a bad idea from both a safety and a performance perspective. The previous squat disaster is an extreme example, but the necessity of an effective warm up doesn’t change among various types of exercises.

Whether you’re going for an easy run or setting a new personal best in your favorite lift, taking the time to ready your body before you start will result in a significantly more productive workout. To lift more weight, build more muscle, and lose more fat, we need to warm up.

This chapter defines warm up, covers the benefits of an effective warm up, and discusses how to build your own routine to get the most out of your workouts.

Warm Up Definition & Benefits

A warm up is a brief (10-15 min) and easy exercise routine that occurs before the main workout. This short preparation period readies us for the day’s session by increasing body temperature, boosting blood flow, and priming neuromuscular pathways. The warm up is not a time to treat injuries or perform significant amounts of corrective exercise. Do rehab work on off-days or between sessions.

An effective warm up can be designed in a variety of ways, but all methods should emphasize heat (an internal body temperature increase of at least 1 °C) and movement.

Warm up research primarily focuses on two different styles of warm up, passive and active. A passive warm up raises body temperature by external means (heavy clothing or a hot bath), while an active warm up increases heart rate, blood flow, and heat through exercise. Both of these modalities have been shown to positively affect physical performance and can be accomplished simultaneously.

Some of the most significant combined benefits of active and passive warm ups include –

Increased ATP turnover rate (faster energy production)
Increased ATP utilization in individual muscle fibers (greater muscular performance)
Increased contraction speed (greater muscular power)
Increased O2 uptake (improved endurance and fat loss)
Decreased lactate accumulation
Increased range of motion
Increased contraction consistency
Decreased risk of injury
Decreased joint friction
Decreased time to reach steady state heart rate
Increased focus and self-confidence
Increased motor unit recruitment

In a resistance training setting, these benefits can result in faster muscle growth, improved strength, and increased muscular endurance. For cardio focused sessions, warming up helps us burn more fat, improves our overall conditioning, and allows us to settle into a steady state heart rate sooner. Bigger and stronger muscles, faster and leaner bodies, and a decreased risk of injury. There are too many great things to pass up. We need heat and movement.

Thanks to the thermodynamic products of catabolic reactions, exercise makes us hot and sweaty. This unavoidable result of moderate to high-intensity movement means that we can focus entirely on the style, duration, and intensity of the active warm up and gain the passive benefits. This cause and effect relationship between movement and heat is the foundation of the warm up.

Building The Warm Up

Below is a basic warm up outline built from a mixture of studies that cover heat, exercise intensity, duration, and self-myofascial release.

To quickly summarize the overall concept, we want to wake up the body then practice the movement patterns that will be performed in the upcoming workout. The wake up phase increases our core body temperature through cardio. The practice phase incorporates exercises that mirror the intensity and activities of the day’s session. These two parts are more commonly referred to as general (wake up) and specific (practice).

As shown above, the general section has distinct, separate parts, while the specific half is a mixture of dynamic stretching and plyometric exercises that gradually become the workout. This is designed to maximize transition efficiency and maintain as much heat as possible from the warm up to the workout. From start to finish, this routine takes roughly 10-15 minutes. You’ll be slightly out of breath and a little sweaty when it’s done but full of energy for the work ahead.

Let’s dive a little deeper into the general and specific sections before looking at full warm up examples. How do these warm up components make us better?

Warm Up Structure: General

The general section of the warm up takes roughly 8-10 minutes to complete and consists of self-myofascial release and cardiovascular exercise.

Self-myofascial release (SMR) is the first part of the warm up and can be accomplished using a variety of tools, but we’re going to focus specifically on the foam roller. Studies have shown that pre-exercise foam rolling can acutely increase flexibility, blood flow, and neuromuscular efficiency without causing any of the negative effects associated with static stretching. This means foam rolling boosts our range of motion while maintaining strength, helps deliver more nutrient-carrying blood to muscles, and may lower the motor unit recruitment thresholds for type 2 fibers. All of this can lead to more productive workouts.

Compared to longer SMR sessions after a workout or on recovery days, foam rolling during the warm up should only take a few minutes to complete. Warm up SMR should focus primarily on the antagonistic pairs (opposing muscles in a joint/movement) being worked that day. However, if you aren’t in a rush to get started and want to focus on rolling out your whole body, go for it. Take this time to think about your intent and goals for the day.

The table above is an example SMR routine that could take place before a day of pressing exercises like bench press or overhead press. The total time is calculated from one 30 second rolling bout per major muscle.

The second part of the general warm up is the cardiovascular portion. This section is designed to warm up the body through a cardio-based activity and lasts 5-6 minutes. Light cardiovascular exercise is a great way to increase blood flow, prepare us mentally for the upcoming session, generate heat, and prime the energy systems we’ll be using later. We get a lot in return for a relatively small expenditure of energy.

Because most resistance training workouts utilize a mixture of fuel sources, we want the general cardio section to utilize our ATP-CP, glycolytic, and aerobic energy systems, while raising body temperature. This can be accomplished by combining an easy aerobic base with a short, high-intensity anaerobic finish. We can passively generate heat and mimic upcoming energy requirements without causing major fatigue. The time you spend in each of these two zones will vary depending on your workout, but about 80-90% should be in an easy to moderate zone with the last 10-20% at a higher intensity.

You’re free to pick whatever modalities you like, but I recommend running and jogging. You like to run? Great. Is cycling more your thing? Go for it. As long as you can adhere to the basic duration and intensity structure, feel free to experiment with different exercise types.

Above is an example cardio structure that can be performed before a session of resistance training. The total time spent on the treadmill is 5.5 minutes. The aerobic section at the beginning increases body temperature and the anaerobic portion activates anaerobic glycolysis and some higher threshold motor units.

In this example scenario, the five aerobic minutes are completed at roughly a 4/10 intensity and the sprint finish is performed at 7+/10. For most people, this is a moderate jog that transitions into a fast run. If you can’t maintain an easy jog during your warm up, don’t stress out about it. However, you need to work towards it. This general outline can be used with different fitness levels and scales to fit any user. On the treadmill, a more fit runner has the ability to crank up both belt speed and incline, while someone less experienced may want to walk at a constant pace and raise the incline to achieve similar energy demands. Do what’s best for you.

The main takeaway here is this general outline can be modified and adapted to your needs. There’s no single, perfect warm up protocol. Lots of different variations can be effective. Feel free to experiment with times, durations, and intensities within the suggested parameters outlined above. If you can boost blood circulation, increase core body temperature, keep it within a 5-8 minute window, and feel energetic afterwards, great.

If you’re in a cold gym or live in a cooler climate, wear a light jacket and/or pants during your warm up to help speed up the heating process and maintain higher body temperatures. You’ve worked hard enough to sweat. Don’t let air conditioning or cooler weather negatively affect your efforts.

Now that we’re warm, sweaty, and ready to exercise, let’s look at the specific warm up portion.

Warm Up Structure: Specific

You can perform the same general warm up before every session, but the specific warm up changes to reflect daily demands. The specific warm up consists of dynamic stretching and plyometric exercises of increasing intensity. This section should take 4-6 minutes to complete.

Dynamic stretching is the first component of the specific warm up. Dynamic stretching is a warm up technique that prepares us for the workload ahead. It does this by introducing moderate loads to muscles, boosting blood flow, increasing joint lubrication, and avoiding fatigue. Dynamic stretches are performed with low-intensity movements and light exercises. These stretches typically use our own bodyweight, safely introduce resistance to our muscles, and take our joints through full ranges of motion. Compound movements that require core activation like push-ups, ring rows, and air squats are great examples. Dynamic stretches should be easy to perform and use a rep pace that’s the same or just barely slower than your normal speed. The exact rep count depends on your experience and ability, but most people should aim to complete 5-10 reps per exercise for 2-3 sets.

Plyometrics are the second component of the specific warm up, and are included to boost the efficiency of neuromuscular activity. These are low-load, high-velocity, power-based exercises that result in quick stretch-shorten cycles of muscles. Plyometrics should be performed with a high (90+%) intensity, light weight, maintain a low rep count (4-6), operate within a 2-3 set total, and not induce fatigue. Similar to dynamic stretching, plyometric movements should ideally incorporate bodyweight exercises like squat jumps, plyo push-ups, kettlebell swings, kipping pull-ups, explosive wall balls, etc. Fast, explosive, and light weight stuff.

Because a nearly instantaneous stretch-shorten cycle is the primary defining characteristic of plyometrics, all chosen movements should start with the targeted muscles in a contracted/shortened state. For example, an explosive ring row would begin at the top of the row with arms bent. Jump squats begin standing completely upright. Plyo push-ups start at the top with arms extended. Some examples of plyometric exercises for common movement

Without diving too far into the science, performing plyometrics before a workout allows us to utilize post-activation potentiation (PAP). PAP is a theory that basically states our muscles remember how much fiber activation was recently required, and this makes them more likely to recruit at least the same amount of motor units during subsequent, less demanding activities. Post-activation potentiation can result in increased fiber recruitment towards the beginning of a set, greater strength output, and more volume completed under heavy loads.

For example, a max effort squat jump doesn’t load our muscles with a ton of weight, but it does require 100% motor unit recruitment. When performed before a heavy barbell squat, the jumps prime our neuromuscular pathways, create a short-term contractile history, and make the motor neurons involved easily excitable due to their recent activation. Performing one exercise that mimics the motor unit recruitment requirements of another essentially lowers motor unit thresholds by decreasing the stimulation needed to create action potentials. Post-activation potentiation is what makes moderate weight feel unexpectedly light when performed after a heavy set.

Studies have shown that this muscular response works with both high-speed, low-resistance (plyo push-up to improve bench press) and low-speed, high-resistance (heavy squat to improve sprint time) efforts. More research needs to be done on PAP to fully understand it but enough studies suggest it’s too effective to ignore.

The final phase of the specific warm up is the transition into the actual workout.

As we gradually progress through dynamic stretching and plyometrics, we can incorporate increasingly heavier sets of the starting exercise until we reach our first working set. The example below highlights one way to lead up to a day of squatting.

As seen in the table above, the session begins with dynamic stretching in the form of walking lunges, adds in squat jump plyometrics, then phases out stretching and plyo activities as the barbell work is incorporated. Rest time is kept to a minimum until heavier working loads are reached. Dynamic stretching and plyometric work are performed for 2-3 sets each. The final exercise on the list is the first working set of the day.

Let’s put both sections together and look at two full warm up examples.

Complete Warm Up Examples

The example below is designed to work with a hypertrophy or strength focused pressing workout that leads up to bench press. The general and specific sections are combined.

This warm up heats up the body, activates energy systems, primes neuromuscular pathways, and introduces resistance to our chest, shoulders, and triceps. All of this leads to the first set of bench press. Reps for regular push-ups and plyo push-ups are kept far from failure. The first bench press working set starts with six reps of 185 lbs, so the weight increases based on that end goal. Keep the rep counts of your ramping loads roughly the same as the first working set.

The loads of your first working sets will require their own unique ramping speeds. All working sets need to be progressively introduced as you transition from exercise to exercise. This means that you should perform some type of warm up or ramping load progression when you start a new exercise during your workout. For example, after finishing bench press, don’t immediately start your first working set on overhead press. You don’t need to perform the full warm up routine again, but 1-2 sets of plyometrics staggered between 1-2 ramping loads is recommended. This is much more important when transitioning from one muscle group to another, like moving from chest to back.

Because pre-exercise prep is not limited to resistance training, let’s switch gears and look at a running warm up.

The general warm up starts by rolling out our lower limbs then slowly takes us from an easy jog to our normal running pace over the course of five minutes. This aerobic progression should increase our metabolic efficiency of fats and make the session easier. This pre-run routine does not contain any anaerobic cardio because the long run doesn’t include sprinting or high-intensity exercise. However, a quick anaerobic finish shouldn’t negatively affect the run if time is dialed in correctly.

The specific warm up follows the same formula as the bench press example, and contains minimally fatiguing dynamic and plyo-based exercises. The muscular demands of cardiovascular exercise aren’t the same as resistance training, but we still want our muscles to be warm. Unlike the bench press example, this outline doesn’t have a first working set to ramp up to. Instead, we rest for a few minutes after completing all dynamic and plyometric movements before starting the run.

We could spend all day covering every possible workout scenario and the different warm ups that accompany them, but I’m going to stop with these two. The framework provided in this chapter should allow you to easily build your own. Don’t overthink it.

Static Stretching?

I don’t recommend any static stretching before or during a workout.

Although there is conflicting research regarding the effectiveness and safety of static stretching prior to exercise, there are too many studies that show a negative effect on performance. If you’re so tight that foam rolling and dynamic warm up exercises have little to no impact on your range of motion, it may be best to shift your fitness priorities for that day. Consider taking some time off to work on mobility and recovery.

However, if your current warm up routine does include some static stretching, don’t cut it out immediately. Dropping it all at once might screw with your pre-session confidence. Slowly phase it out over the course of a few weeks. Reduce the duration of each stretch by a few seconds each time it’s performed until you reach zero. But if absolutely no convincing will change your mind about warm up static stretching and you have to do it to feel fully prepared for a session, cap each segment duration at 10-15 seconds and stay away from pain or any muscular discomfort. Stretching for less than 30 seconds shouldn’t have a negative impact on exercise performance.

Static stretching is an important part of any good routine, but needs to be implemented at the right time.

Final Thoughts

You might be thinking that this was a complicated way to say you should do cardio and some light exercises before a workout. You’re probably right. But at least now you know how an effective warm up contributes to exercise performance, have an outline to help you design your own, and may have learned something new along the way.

Foam roll. Cardio. Dynamic stretching. Plyometrics. Workout. Pretty easy, right?

Experiment by manipulating different variables. Find what works best for you. Share what you discover. Have fun.

References

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Cardio: Fat Loss & Work Capacity

Samuel Stephens — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:07:53 +0000

Get the Full Book

This guide is one chapter from Fitness & Nutrition Programming for Beginners. If you enjoy reading it, consider purchasing the full book either as a PDF or paperback. Thanks!

Cardio: Fat Loss & Work Capacity

How to lose weight through cardiovascular exercise and an easy to follow, research-based guide for fat loss programming.

Breathe In. Breathe Out.

There’s no single best way to lose weight, but some methods are more effective than others.

The Fitstra fat loss strategy relies on customized cardiovascular exercise that uses unique metabolic markers to create personalized workouts, and these sessions are designed to supplement an existing resistance training program. That’s a mouthful. Basically, I encourage everyone to add a little extra cardio to their current weight training routine. By looking at the science of fat loss, we can build exercise programs that provide realistic, sustainable, and healthy solutions to weight management regardless of age, sex, or exercise experience.

Because fat loss is primarily achieved through cardio within the context of exercise, this chapter focuses on the importance of breathing, assessing one’s own conditioning level, and burning the most amount of fat through aerobic and anaerobic exercise.

The following content will help you design an effective fat loss-cardio plan that can be added to any existing resistance training routine.

Registered Dietitians & Fat Loss

Before we get started, it’s important to stress the influence diet has on weight loss. Research shows that we can lose body fat through exercise alone, but a smart diet combined with physical activity significantly increases our rate of loss. This means you’ll be at a massive disadvantage if you don’t eat correctly. But what’s correct?

Effective diets vary from person to person, but all should promote healthy and sustainable weight loss progress, provide enough energy to easily perform daily activities, and allow us to live a normal life. We don’t want to be controlled by restrictive eating habits.

I recommend working with a registered dietitian (RD) during your weight loss process. The advice and detailed information you’ll receive from a qualified nutrition professional will be incredibly beneficial to your progress and overall health.

The Process of Fat Loss

After a month of hard work and self control, you’ve accomplished your goal and lost five pounds. By using a bioelectrical impedance scale to measure body fat percentage, you’re confident the loss in weight was almost all fat. Awesome. There’s now less of you than before. But where did those unwanted pounds go?

When our bodies use stored fat as a fuel source, triglycerides in fat cells are first broken down into free fatty acids (FFA) through a process called lipolysis. FFAs are then moved out of fat cells and eventually make their way into the mitochondria of muscles to be turned into energy (ATP) through beta oxidation. This oxygen dependent (aerobic) process of metabolizing fats into ATP produces water and carbon dioxide as a byproduct. From those five pounds of fat lost, 4.2 lbs (84%) of them were exhaled as carbon dioxide and the remaining 0.8 lbs (16%) were lost as water in urine and sweat. Through hard work and consistency, you converted solid fat into liquid and gas.

The stoichiometric formula for the oxidation of a common FFA is listed above. Notice that in order for the reaction to take place, oxygen must be present. Using this information, we can calculate that the oxidation of five pounds of fat requires us to breathe in almost 15 pounds of oxygen. Based on this sizable quantity of O2, it’s clear that our ability to burn fat is heavily tied to how well we can breathe and the efficiency of our aerobic energy system.

This means we should do intense cardio to breathe harder, right?

One small issue we face when programming for weight loss is our metabolic response to exercise intensity. As we workout harder and our heart rates increase beyond a certain point, we essentially stop using oxygen for energy metabolism and burn less fat despite a higher per minute caloric expenditure. High-intensity exercise like 200m sprints require a rapid fuel delivery system to maintain a constant supply of ATP to our muscles, faster than what fat oxidation can offer. Carbohydrates provide less energy than fats, but glucose and stored glycogen can be broken down almost immediately because they do not require oxygen to be metabolized. This metabolic pathway for carbohydrates is called anaerobic glycolysis.

Although we burn very little fat at higher intensities, a great fat loss program will utilize both low and high-intensity cardiovascular exercise and their corresponding fuel sources. But what cardiovascular exercise intensities are best for weight loss, and how much time should we spend performing each? To answer this question and maximize our fat burning potential, we need to learn about fuel utilization and the lactate threshold.

Fat Oxidation & Cardio Intensity

If you were to get on a treadmill, set the speed to 10 mph, and run for 15 minutes, you’d burn more calories per minute than if you set it to 6 mph for the same duration. After your 10 mph run, you’d be reduced to an exhausted, sweaty mess, but content with the effort because it burned a high number of calories. Unfortunately, that high-intensity cardio session you suffered through wasn’t ideal for fat loss.

In a laboratory setting, fat utilization is calculated by measuring the ratio of exhaled carbon dioxide to inhaled oxygen per breath. This measurement is the respiratory exchange ratio (RER). An RER of 1.0 indicates that 100% of fuel burned is from carbohydrates, a ratio of 0.7 is all fat, and 0.85 is an even mix of the two. As exercise intensity increases, we gradually shift from fat to carbs for energy. The 10 mph run from earlier burnt quite a few calories but it’s unlikely they were from stored fat.

After learning about RER and the relationship between exercise intensity and fat burn, you decide to change up your cardio tactics and try a different approach. The next day at the gym, you get back on the treadmill at an easy starting speed of 3 mph. A few minutes pass as you search for the right playlist on your phone, clear new notifications, and continue walking. After finding the right song, you get to work and increase the belt speed by 1 mph every two minutes until you reach 10 mph. You sustain this top speed of 10 mph for 30 seconds before stopping due to exhaustion.

How is this new cardio strategy different from the first run?

During the time it took you to find the perfect song, your body started producing lactate (a byproduct of anaerobic metabolism) and your RER rose as more stored carbohydrates were burned. Your RER probably never exceeded 0.85 during this time, meaning fat was your primary fuel source. With manageable lactate levels and a plentiful supply of stored aerobic energy (fat), your song selection walking pace could be sustained for hours without any difficulty. Lactate build up wasn’t a problem at this low level of exercise intensity because your body removed it at roughly the same rate it was produced.

Things changed as your speed increased. At some point between 3-10 mph (possibly around 7-8 mph), the manageable trickle of lactate turned into a flood and byproducts of anaerobic glycolysis (lactate, ammonia, and hydrogen ions) accumulated faster than they could be removed. RER grew significantly during this time and eventually reached 1.0, meaning nearly all energy was produced from the breakdown of carbohydrates. With metabolites built up in your muscles and the unlimited fuel supply for fat oxidation a thing of the past, you reached exercise failure a few minutes after crossing an invisible metabolic line. You were forced to stop running due to exhaustion.

The heart rate value associated with a sudden and exponential increase in lactate production during high-intensity exercise is the lactate threshold (LT). The lactate threshold is basically our upper limit of sustainable exercise. We can work for a really long time at heart rate intensities below LT, but once we exceed it and start to burn carbohydrates as a primary fuel source, the countdown timer to exhaustion begins.

So, how can we delay the transition from fat to carbohydrates and keep burning stored body fat as exercise intensity increases? The answer is high-intensity exercise.

Lactate thresholds vary from person to person due to differences in diet, training styles, conditioning levels, and genetics, but they can be modified through high-intensity exercise. Activity beyond LT burns a small amount of fat, but strategic implementation of high-intensity cardio can delay the onset of LT and shift lactate thresholds closer to our max heart rate. More room between our minimum heart rate and LT means we have a larger aerobic base and can expend more energy before reaching the carb burning RER zone of 1.0.

If we increase our LT through high-intensity exercise, we’ll have –

A larger aerobic heart rate range, resulting in more fat burned per minute at low to moderate exercise intensities.
A greater work capacity, providing faster recovery times from both resistance training and cardiovascular exercise.
An improved VO2max, leading to increased oxygen consumption and utilization. Better O2 usage means more fat oxidation during exercise and at rest.

All of these factors can help us lose weight significantly faster than diet alone. Plus, if you rely on a combination of diet and exercise for your weight loss progress instead of simply eating less, you’ll accidentally get into great cardiovascular shape as an added bonus.

Talking about metabolic thresholds and fuel utilization sure is fun, but it’s not that helpful if we don’t know how to apply these concepts practically. Let’s cover how to calculate LT and RER along with their specific applications to weight loss.

Accurately Determining LT & RER

The only truly accurate way to measure LT and RER is to have metabolic testing performed at either a local gym, hospital, or university. These tests are relatively short (1-2 hours) and not incredibly expensive ($150-400). If you have the ability to test, do it. The data provided is well worth the required time and financial cost of the assessment. This information will prove to be an invaluable asset to your weight loss programming.

If you don’t have access to a testing facility, don’t worry. We can still estimate LT and RER using two simple self-assessments. The information collected from these tests will not be as accurate as those performed in a carefully controlled professional setting, but can still be great data points for your cardio programming.

Estimating VT, LT, & RER

We now know that an increase in exercise intensity changes the gasses we exchange while breathing. The strong link between breathing, heart rate, oxidation of fats, and the anaerobic metabolism of carbohydrates allows us to estimate an RER of 0.85 (equal mix of fats and carbs for energy) and an RER of 1.0 (all carbs) with two simple tests. These two self-assessments are the ventilatory threshold (VT) and lactate threshold (LT) tests.

The heart rate values provided by VT and LT testing tell us what intensities to aim for during cardiovascular exercise. VT for aerobic cardio and LT for anaerobic. These metabolic points help us develop unique cardiovascular programs based on our individual needs, allowing us to target fat loss as efficiently as possible.

The first assessment is the ventilatory threshold test. As we increase exercise intensity, our ability to talk smoothly and without interruption decreases. For example, a conversation held while walking around the office with your coworker requires a very low level of physical exertion. You can walk and talk with no problem. However, if you two were to sprint for a few minutes outside in the parking lot, you’d be breathing so hard that getting out a single word would be nearly impossible. The ventilatory threshold test helps us find the midpoint between these two intensities and estimate an RER of 0.85. It measures observable changes in speech consistency to pinpoint specific metabolic changes and does not require maximum effort.

The goal of this assessment is to identify a steady state heart rate value where you can no longer talk comfortably or continuously during cardiovascular exercise. The marker for this test is speech that’s broken by large breaths every 3-5 words. You should be breathing harder than at rest, but the intensity should be sustainable for a very long time. The VT self-assessment should not be difficult to complete. You need a heart rate monitor and a treadmill to test your ventilatory threshold.

VT Self-Assessment

Record your resting heart rate.
Warm up with a walk or jog on the treadmill for five minutes at an intensity of roughly 4/10. Aim for an intensity difficult enough to cause a mild sweat.
After warming up, get off the treadmill and relax for a few minutes until your heart rate has recovered to its resting level.
Once recovered, start walking on the treadmill at 1.5 mph at an incline of 1%.
Increase the speed by 0.5 mph every two minutes.
During each two minute segment, recite any memorized paragraph that’s long enough for 20-30 seconds of continuous speaking. The Pledge of Allegiance is commonly used here. This oral section of the exam should begin roughly 90 seconds into all two minute periods.
Closely monitor your heart rate during each two minute section. Note the number every 30 seconds.
Continue to increase speed and recite your paragraph until you are no longer able to speak continuously due to breathing requirements. Record your heart rate. This is your estimated VT.
Return the treadmill speed to an easy walking speed and cool down for one minute.
Congratulations. You’ve completed the VT test.

Before reading about LT testing, please keep in mind that this assessment is optional for most people. It’s a tough test. LT heart rate data will greatly benefit your training, but it’s not absolutely necessary for fat loss success or for the workouts covered later. We’ll cover why this is optional in the Anaerobic Training section.

The LT test helps us identify a heart rate value associated with our lactate thresholds and an RER of 1.0. We test for LT by maintaining the highest possible level of cardiovascular intensity for 10 minutes. You need a heart rate monitor and a treadmill to test your lactate threshold.

LT Self-Assessment

Record your resting heart rate.
Warm up with a walk or jog on the treadmill for five minutes at an intensity of roughly 4/10. Aim for an intensity difficult enough to cause a mild sweat.
After warming up, get off the treadmill and relax for a few minutes until your heart rate has recovered to its resting level.
Get back on the treadmill and start walking at ~3.0 mph and an incline of 1%.
Increase speed until you have reached what you estimate to be the highest level of intensity you can sustain for 10 minutes. Adjusting the speed early is OK but should be left to a consistent speed for as much of the run as possible. Your speed should be set by minute 2-3 and it should be held for the entire test duration. It’s important that you settle into a steady heart rate zone as early as possible. If you are able to increase speed after minute six, your results will not be accurate. You should be completely exhausted after the nine minute mark. This test sucks and is not meant for new exercisers or severely deconditioned individuals.
Record your heart rate each minute during the last three minutes of the run. Use these three points to find your average heart rate. Multiply your average heart rate by 0.9. This is your estimated LT.
Return the treadmill speed to an easy walking speed and cool down for one minute.
Congratulations. You’ve completed the test for LT.

As you progress in conditioning, regular retesting is necessary. A great cardio program will improve your aerobic base, work capacity, lactate threshold, and fat burning capabilities. But if you never retest and consistently work below your optimal fat loss zones, changes in body composition will take much longer. The intensity of your fat loss cardio sessions should reflect your conditioning progress. The better shape you’re in, the higher your VT and LT will be. I suggest reassessments every 4-6 months for conditioned individuals, and every two months for the first six months for beginners.

Choose whichever assessment method is best for you, but please purchase a heart rate monitor for accurate data tracking. Whether it’s a nice watch with a digital display, or an IR light sensor band that connects to your phone through Bluetooth, get one.

Aerobic & Anaerobic Training For Fat Loss

Now that the potentially confusing part is behind us and we know our heart rate values, we can start programming for fat loss.

The overall concept here is pretty simple. We want to perform 1-2 hours of cardio per week. 80% of this time should be spent burning fat at VT (within 5-10 bpm of your target HR is fine), and the remaining 20% at or above LT through high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and/or lactate threshold training (LTT). This split allows us to maximize fat oxidation and increase our aerobic capacity. Thanks to a few pretty cool physiological adaptations, we can essentially train our bodies to clearly recognize which exercise conditions should burn fat for fuel versus those that should rely on carbohydrates.

To understand why this 80/20 split matters, let’s first discuss the aerobic side of things.

Aerobic conditioning directly targets fat loss through low-intensity, steady state (LISS) cardio. That’s primarily why we want to spend most of our time in this zone. But it also translates into increased oxidation efficiency during subsequent, non-cardio activities. Meaning, we get better at using stored body fat for energy when we’re mowing the yard, walking around the store, etc.

Regularly engaging in cardiovascular exercise teaches our type 1 muscle fibers how to be better at oxidizing fat. This is done by stimulating protein synthesis and increasing mitochondrial density. With more mitochondrial content in our muscles to metabolize fat, we also benefit from elevated post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). A higher EPOC means we burn more fat while at rest after a workout. All of these factors contribute to faster fat loss.

Because we know fat utilization decreases as exercise intensity increases, working as close to VT as possible during longer aerobic sessions is key. The heart rate value VT gives us a great compromise between maximum calorie burn per minute and peak fat utilization. This intensity level is also easy enough to be repeated multiple times throughout the week with minimal risk of CNS fatigue accumulation if sessions are capped at 20-30 minutes (not including resistance work) and limited to 4-5 days a week. Do your best to stick to these upper limits to avoid unnecessary strength and hypertrophy losses.

I recommend running and walking for the majority of your aerobic exercise. Most of us spend a ton of time indoors with work. Go outside if possible. Along with the potentially therapeutic scenery, propelling yourself forward with natural movement can be more effective than using a stationary machine due to the additional physical requirements. When we run outside, our bodies must continuously propel themselves forward (greater energy demand than on a treadmill) and use core musculature to remain upright (better posture and balance). There are no rails to lean on or belts to keep you moving as you walk through your neighborhood. You do the work. If you have the ability to be outdoors, do it. The aerobic exercise you choose should be one you enjoy and are able to repeat consistently. Stick to your target heart rate and do what’s best for you.

On the other side of the intensity spectrum, anaerobic workouts increase our lactate thresholds and give us a larger aerobic window to burn fat. By training the body to adapt to high-intensity exercise and delay the onset of lactate production, our heart rate value for VT increases. This shift in metabolic efficiency means our new VT still registers an RER of 0.85, but the total caloric burn per minute from fat has increased.

In the examples listed on the next page, you can see this concept illustrated in trained versus untrained individuals.

If the untrained person’s VT is 110 bpm and the trained exerciser has a VT of 130 bpm, it’s easy to see who can drop weight faster based on their individual metabolic targets. While both people will eventually reach their weight loss goals, the trained person is able to work harder and burn more fat calories per minute than the untrained (higher trained BPM but same RER). Training at and above our LT with high-intensity exercise improves our fat utilization capabilities at higher heart rates and results in faster weight loss during subsequent aerobic sessions.

Unlike aerobic exercise, anaerobic sessions should focus on short intervals lasting 0.5-4 minutes per set. These sets should utilize a 1:1-1:4 work to rest ratio, depending on segment intensity and individual conditioning levels. High speed running intervals are great for HIIT/LTT, but may not be ideal for some. Other modalities like cycling, kettlebell swings, burpees, air bikes, and rowers can be just as effective. Perform these in isolation or combine a few of your favorites into a circuit. As long as your heart rate stays at or above LT for the required time, feel free to experiment with different styles. Limit HIIT/LTT workouts to 3-4 times per week.

As mentioned earlier in the LT testing section, lactate threshold heart rate data is not absolutely necessary for success. You can estimate the workload needed. If an interval is two minutes long, you should be working at an intensity of at least 7/10 for the entire segment. Appropriate LT training intensities should be difficult and leave you spent at the end of each round. It may take a few workouts to accurately assess your limitations and capabilities. To be safe, start on the easier side of things and work your way up as you feel more comfortable and confident with new exercises. These sets should be pretty tough, but they’re also relatively short and only take up 20% of our total weekly cardio time. Work hard. Recover. Repeat.

Resistance Training & Weight Loss Examples

A quality fat loss cardio program is one that supplements an existing resistance training routine. Research shows that resistance training alone is an ineffective fat loss method, but lifting heavy things frequently does help maintain muscle mass that would normally be lost while on a weight-loss diet. Because of this, your weight training program should not indicate that you’re trying to lose weight. If you’re interested in being strong, focus on strength training. Follow a great hypertrophy plan if aesthetics are your thing. Lift to improve some aspect of resistance training, but don’t attempt to burn fat with high-rep and low-load sets. We want to maintain as much lean mass and strength as possible as the pounds drop. A good weight training routine is the most effective strategy for this. Lifting before a cardio session can also deplete glycogen stores, making fat loss focused cardiovascular exercise even more effective.

For novice lifters, it is entirely possible to lose fat, gain muscle, and increase strength at the same time. However, this concurrent progress will fade as you adapt to the demands of your new lifestyle. Depending on the timeline of your goals, it may be a great idea to take advantage of beginner gains and tackle all three aspects of fitness at once. Alternatively, you may want to simplify things and begin with only resistance training, then incorporate fat loss at a later time. Do what’s best for you.

For experienced lifters, it’s likely that slowed progress or some regression in size and strength will occur due to the negative (350-700 kcal/day) daily caloric balance and overall catabolic stress on the body. But because you aren’t crash dieting and are taking a smart approach to weight loss, don’t worry about it. Your weight loss period is temporary and you’ll catch back up leaner than before with a greater aerobic base.

Two example weeks that vary in style and total time are listed on the next page and should help with program design. Both examples take advantage of three different cardio styles, and target both aerobic and anaerobic energy systems. These three styles are –

LISS
Low-intensity steady state

HIIT
High-intensity interval training

LHS
Low/high-intensity splits

The cardiovascular conditioning time structure for all Fitstra programs is read as –

Number of rounds [Aerobic (VT) minutes > Anaerobic (LT) minutes]

Using 1 [2 min > 1 min] as an example, one complete round of cardio is performed. The round contains a single, two minute aerobic bout that is immediately followed by a one minute high-intensity segment. The entire round totals three minutes of work.

4 [2 min > 1 min] is a two minute aerobic bout followed by a one minute high-intensity segment, performed for four rounds. This example totals 12 minutes.

In the first example listed above, four days of weights are combined with five days fat loss cardio. This week contains 98 minutes of aerobic activity and 22 minutes of anaerobic work, totaling 120 minutes. Monday begins with an alternating aerobic-to-anaerobic LHS style of cardio, Tuesday is pure HIIT, Wednesday and Thursday are both low-intensity steady state days, and Friday wraps things up with one last LHS workout. This more advanced schedule might not be feasible for some people due to the time commitment and total volume of work, but the format can easily be modified.

The second example follows a two day resistance split that is combined with five supplemental days of weight loss cardio, totaling 90 minutes. Like the 120 minute example, all three (LHS, LISS, & HIIT) styles of cardio are used here. The week kicks off with some LHS work on Monday, is pure aerobic LISS on Tuesday/Wednesday, HIIT on Thursday, and LHS on Friday. This specific example has 74 minutes of aerobic cardio and 16 minutes of anaerobic. Both weeks require an investment of time, but the strategy is pretty straightforward and doable for most people.
These simple outlines should help illustrate how easy it can be to incorporate effective cardiovascular exercise and resistance training into your week without spending hours in the gym. Like nearly every other aspect of fitness, there’s more than one way to approach this problem. Use the time, ratio, and frequency guidelines covered here as models to help build what’s best for you.

Strength & Hypertrophy Work Capacity

This chapter is all about weight loss, but a great cardio program does not exclusively benefit those seeking a change in body composition. Within the context of resistance training, aerobic and anaerobic cardio give us one major advantage over those who skip it. A greater work capacity.

Work capacity is the amount of exercise volume we can complete in a set amount of time (per set or per day) and how quickly we can recover from it. The different styles of cardiovascular exercise covered in this chapter stimulate mitochondrial protein synthesis which can increase our work capacity. An increase in muscular mitochondrial density means our ability to store, produce, and break down energy (ATP, creatine phosphate, & glycogen) is increased, the efficiency of all three energy systems (ATP-CP, glycolytic, and aerobic) is improved, and recovery time between sets/workouts is decreased. More muscular energy and quicker activity turnaround times result in faster muscle growth and greater strength gains.

If you have no interest in weight loss but want to maximize gains, you still need to be doing some amount of cardio. Keep the 80/20 percentage, cap the total max time to about one hour per week, and limit most cardio to lifting days. The example above follows these modifications for a total of 44 (36+8) minutes. Simple, effective, and easily variable. Train however you like, but emphasize cardiovascular health. No program is truly complete without it.

Final Thoughts

While there are a number of variables that contribute to weight loss, a smart cardio program should be our top exercise priority. By using a few key metabolic markers, we can easily design plans that supplement just about any weight training routine. When those plans are combined with healthy nutrition habits and smart resistance training, the pounds will drop. Weight loss is hard when you eat poorly and workout without structure. Make it easy.

Establish appropriate expectations for yourself by setting goals based on realistic timelines and your own dietary habits. Do your best to keep weight loss from turning into an obsession that controls your life. Small (1% or less) weekly reductions in total body weight can seem insignificant week to week, but they add up fast.

Work hard, stay consistent, and be sure to take the time to celebrate every small victory you experience throughout your weight loss journey.

Experiment by manipulating different variables. Find what works best for you. Share what you discover. Have fun.

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Strength & Hypertrophy: Training Fundamentals

Samuel Stephens — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 01:17:45 +0000

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Strength & Hypertrophy: Training Fundamentals

The basics of strength and hypertrophy training and how to design an effective, research-based weight training program.

Heavy Metal

If you were to randomly survey 100 people regarding their favorite exercise methods, you’d receive a wide range of responses. Yoga, bodybuilding, Pilates, CrossFit, running, powerlifting, and cycling would dominate the list, but you’d also see plenty of unconventional activities. This lack of specificity under the general fitness umbrella allows us to simultaneously have fun and improve our health. However, if we want to be good at our favorite exercise activities, there’s less room for improvisation or interpretation. An effective program is structured and specific.

Whether you’re navigating a challenging bouldering route, trying to perfect your alignment transitions in vinyasa, or focused on a new deadlift personal best, strong and well developed muscles are critical for success. As long as exercise selection, intensity, and overall program design are implemented correctly, resistance training is a safe and effective way for anyone to improve their health, look great, and thrive in the activities they love. If you’re a human being capable of physical activity, you should be lifting weights.

This chapter covers the basics of resistance training and is written to help anyone design an effective, research-based weight training program.

Resistance Training for Beginners

Before we dive into resistance training fundamentals, it’s important to first cover some guidelines for new lifters to ensure maximum beginner gains are made before moving on to advanced programs.

If you’re untrained or have little to no recent exercise experience, you’re basically superhuman and most standard resistance training rules won’t apply to you. As a beginner, you’ll make massive weekly leaps in strength, muscular size, and cardiovascular endurance. Good program design or bad, you’ll continue to improve. But the bad habits that initially worked well will eventually become ineffective and impede future growth. To set yourself up for long-term success, take advantage of this accelerated progress phase by properly learning the basics and implementing smart habits.

How should beginners start?

First, set a goal for yourself and have a clearly defined reason to train. Interested in bodybuilding? Great. Want to improve strength so you’re better on the Pilates reformer? Fantastic. There’s no wrong answer here. Be sure to know what you’re working towards. All programs need direction.

Next, focus on building a solid foundation of strength. Strong muscles increase our growth potential and improve the quality of non-lifting activities like running, climbing, dancing, etc. All aspects of your life will improve if you can move with less effort.

Strength is easy to improve at the beginning because initial weakness isn’t caused entirely by a lack of muscle mass. Instead, a novice’s inability to lift heavier loads is typically caused by poor neuromuscular coordination and a lack of motor control. This means beginners have enough muscle mass to lift relatively heavy weight, but their brains aren’t good at communicating with their muscles to produce consistent, controlled force. By treating strength as a skill and practicing it often, new lifters can learn to be strong and simultaneously build a significant amount of new muscle mass with a modest level of effort. That’s a training win-win.

The learning phase for strength is intentionally very simple. Beginners should –

Focus on non-periodized, full body workouts that are performed 2-3 times per week.
Each session should contain 3-4 working sets per exercise.
Each set should contain 5-8 reps with a challenging weight.
Avoid failure and leave 1-2 reps in reserve per set most of the time.
Aim to add a moderate amount of weight (5-10 lbs) to your lifts weekly.

These suggestions mean you can basically do the same workouts every week and only need to focus on adding small amounts of weight when appropriate. Reducing initial program complexity helps beginners develop proper form, spatial awareness, and an understanding of their physical capabilities.

The Fitstra Beginner program follows these suggestions and the first two weeks are listed above. This sample section contains two different weeks where workouts A and B alternate each day. There are only eight different compound exercises in the A/B split, making it an easy routine to learn. Stick to this strength protocol or one like it for at least the first two months and limit high-rep sets that target hypertrophy. There’s a good chance you won’t significantly increase muscle size during this eight week period anyway. The increased volume from high-rep sets may cause muscle damage (inflammation often mistaken for hypertrophy) and unnecessary fatigue, impeding growth.

Why is this strength phase so important?

The more strength you build at the beginning, the heavier your subsequent high-volume work can be. This will help you build more muscle. Think of the strength phase as a slingshot that takes an initial investment of time and energy to build but allows you to rapidly progress when released. Become as strong as possible before you change program variables like rep ranges or exercise frequency.

Finally, early equipment and exercise selection should mirror the program you’re going to follow. If you decide to work with the Fitstra Beginner program or one similar to it, you will use a barbell for many of the exercises. Start with the bar from day one or introduce it as soon as you build enough strength, coordination, and confidence. You’ll feel more comfortable with this piece of equipment each time you use it. In any fitness setting, learning to use the tool is just as important as learning to move the weight. Some studies indicate that external cuing is more beneficial than an internal focus for beginners. This means novice lifters should visualize the bar path and prioritize form rather than trying to activate a muscle. As movements become more familiar, focus on contracting the muscles being worked in each exercise.

Because there’s not an exact duration for the beginner phase, closely monitor your weekly progress to determine when you’ve reached an intermediate experience level. This point is typically defined by a strength plateau. When you’re comfortable with the pieces of exercise equipment in your program and stop improving from the same basic workouts, it’s time to move on to bigger and better things. Some may reach this point after a few months, while others might continue progressing over a year.

Listen to your body, do what’s best for you, move on when you’re ready, but don’t rush things. An extra month spent solidifying your foundation with the possibility of minimal returns is much better than moving on too soon. Don’t leave easy gains on the table.

You now know how to start your resistance training journey. Great. But how do you progress from beginner to intermediate? What is a periodized program? How many reps and sets should you do per workout? To answer these questions, let’s start with the basics.

Defining Strength & Hypertrophy

Strength and hypertrophy can have inconsistent term interpretations within different training circles. To make sure we’re all on the same page and working towards a common goal, let’s take a second to define these two facets of resistance training.

Strength can be defined as the ability to mechanically overcome a large opposing force, resulting in the controlled movement of a heavy object. In the weight room, this is displayed as a low-velocity, high-load, concentric contraction. An individual’s strength level is determined by measuring their top end performance during an exercise. This means strength is lift-specific and success is subjective. Adding more weight to the bar or completing more reps in a set means you’re stronger than you were before. Strength levels relative to personal starting points and natural upper limit potential, not absolute strength compared to others, are what count in noncompetitive fitness settings. Focus on being a stronger version of you.

Your individual level of strength may be unique to you, but we’re all limited by the same physiological factors. Two significant variables that impact our growth and lifting potential are neuromuscular coordination (how well the brain communicates with muscles to produce force and/or movement) and muscle cross-sectional area (the thickness/size of a muscle). If we want to be strong, we need to learn how to move well and increase our lean body mass through hypertrophy training.

Hypertrophy is the growth of a muscle in both length and thickness. Differences in age and sex affect growth rates and total lean mass capacity, but research shows that just about anyone can build a significant amount of muscle with resistance training. Similar to the way strength is measured, hypertrophy progress should be compared to individual starting points and growth potential. There are a few different contributors to overall muscle size, but we are going to focus primarily on the addition of new physical structures called sarcomeres.

As seen above, our muscles are made of fascicles that contain many fibers. A muscle fiber is a muscle cell. Each cell consists of bundles of individual myofibril strands that are formed by a series of linked segments called sarcomeres. Inside every sarcomere is an interlaced arrangement of the contractile proteins actin and myosin. Muscle contractions occur when myosin binds to actin and slides the two structures past one another, drawing each end of the sarcomere closer to the middle of the segment.

When we exercise with resistance training and induce hypertrophy, our muscles get longer by adding new sarcomeres to the middle and/or ends of myofibrils (sarcomeres added in series) and get thicker by splitting existing myofibril strands lengthwise to form entirely new strands (sarcomeres added in parallel). The growth of these new physical structures is called myofibrillar hypertrophy. Myofibrillar hypertrophy occurs through a process called muscle protein synthesis (MPS), and it’s what drives our growth and training progress. The more sarcomeres we add through muscle protein synthesis, the greater our strength output and total muscle mass will be. However, sarcomeres are not the only contributors to size.

We can also experience muscular hypertrophy through an increase in the size of the sarcoplasm of each muscle fiber. This is known as sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. The sarcoplasm is the fluid, nutrient, and fuel-rich interior space of each muscle fiber and it surrounds all of the myofibrils within a cell. While our muscles can grow through sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and this adaptation does offer some great benefits (increased glycogen storage, fuel delivery, and blood flow), it shouldn’t be a priority in our training. A well designed strength and hypertrophy program will inevitably induce sarcoplasm growth, but exclusively chasing the pump with a high-rep, high-damage, inflammation causing, fluid retaining routine can negatively impact overall training progress by limiting strength and size development. By prioritizing the addition of new physical structures over muscle volume, our hypertrophy training can result in long-term functional benefits and size improvements rather than acute aesthetic improvements.

Now that we’re speaking the same lifting language, let’s talk about how strength and hypertrophy training complement one another.

Motor Unit Recruitment & Mechanical Loading

Strength and hypertrophy training vary in program design, but both styles are guided by motor unit recruitment, mechanical loading, and the force-velocity relationship. An understanding of these three fundamentals will help you make consistent progress and greater gains.

For a muscle to contract and produce force, the brain needs to first send a signal down through the central nervous system to a motor neuron. When the neuron receives the message, it flips an On/Off switch, creates an action potential, and all of the fibers controlled by that one nerve cell contract. This linked system of neuron and fibers is called a motor unit (MU).

Depending on exercise intensity, a corresponding number of MUs are cumulatively recruited in an ascending order of size. Motor unit size is determined by the number of muscle fibers a single neuron innervates. The smallest MUs are activated first and primarily contain slow twitch, highly oxidative type 1 fibers. The largest motor units consist of fast twitch, anaerobic type 2 fibers and are recruited last as workload demand peaks. Due to the fiber innervation properties of motor units, most of our muscles have a significantly greater number of small MUs than large MUs. We have fewer large MUs but they innervate many more fibers per unit, making up for the quantity difference. This progressive increase in fiber activation is one of the methods that allows us to control force production.

All muscles have a mixture of fiber types, but type 2 fibers have the greatest hypertrophy and strength potential, so their activation is our number one priority during resistance training. However, because these fast twitch fibers are recruited last and only in response to high output demands, we’ll miss out on growth if intensity isn’t dialed in correctly. We need to regularly surpass recruitment thresholds for the largest motor units and activate their type 2 fibers.

A motor unit’s recruitment threshold (MURT) is the minimum amount of stimulation needed to flip the contraction switch from Off to On. The largest MUs have the highest MURT. This means that due to the ascending and cumulative activation order of motor units, when we stimulate the largest MU, all smaller units before it will also be active. This makes things pretty simple from a strength and hypertrophy standpoint. Activate the largest motor units.

There are two pretty straightforward ways to stimulate high threshold MUs and the type 2 fibers they control. We can perform fast, explosive movements and/or lift heavy weights. Both of these options can activate 100% of the fibers in a muscle and are important for effective strength and hypertrophy training. However, they produce very different results.

The graph above illustrates the force-velocity relationship. In concentric and eccentric contractions, various amounts of force produce consistent and predictable velocities. This principle states that when we concentrically (muscle shortens) contract against a heavy weight, the movement can’t be fast, and if we move fast, the resistance must be low. As seen in the graph, force output decreases as concentric velocity increases.

For example, if you can do a maximum of two concentric reps of a bicep curl with a 40 lb dumbbell, a high amount of mechanical stress (tension) is experienced by the muscle fibers in your biceps relative to their maximum strength levels. The weight moves slowly because the amount of curl strength you possess is barely greater than the total resistance of the weight. You could curl it much faster if you were stronger, but that would result in less tension on the fibers relative to their max strength potential. See the pattern?

Conversely, to produce high levels of force on a muscle during an eccentric (muscle lengthens) contraction, the movement can be fast. You might only be able to curl up 40 lbs for two reps, but you can probably lower 60 lbs for two reps at a controlled speed. 70 lbs would be lowered a bit faster and 80 lbs even more rapidly. The heavier the weight, the faster a muscle is required to lengthen. Eccentric contractions can apply more tension to a muscle, but they recruit fewer motor units despite heavier loads.

Why does this matter?

Although we can achieve 100% motor unit activation through explosive concentric exercises, we don’t get big or strong by exclusively moving fast. High-velocity concentric movements contract sarcomeres too quickly for enough mechanical loading to impact any individual fiber.

In contrast, heavy weights slow us down, extend the rep duration, achieve peak MU recruitment during the concentric phase, and load every fiber with the required mechanical stress to stimulate the signaling pathways responsible for hypertrophy.
When chasing hypertrophy and strength, 100% motor unit recruitment is minimally beneficial if it’s not accompanied by a high level of tension. It’s this application of mechanical stress on a fiber over a longer period of time that stimulates the growth of new structures, not just fiber activation. That’s why it’s important to emphasize heavy lifting.

However, speed and power-based movements are far from useless in strength and hypertrophy training. These two modalities have a significant effect on our size and performance potential. We can lower our motor unit recruitment thresholds and increase the frequency of fiber contractions (i.e. rate coding) through the correct application of power-based training. This leads to improved strength, greater power output, and more work performed per set. Power-based training will be covered later in greater detail.

To summarize this section, effective hypertrophy and strength training aim to stimulate as many type 2 fibers in a single muscle as possible. These fibers have high motor unit recruitment thresholds and require a significant level of intensity to become active. By lifting heavy weights, we stimulate all MUs and load every fiber with enough mechanical stress (tension) to grow new physical structures. These new sarcomeres make us stronger and increase the size of our muscles.

You should now have a very basic understanding of motor units, mechanical loading, the force-velocity relationship, and how they relate to resistance training. When we combine these general principles with current exercise research, we can start the program design discussion. To maintain some level of order, we’ll start with macro subjects like periodization and then work our way down to micro subjects like rep counts and rest time between sets.

Periodization & Progressive Overloading

We can’t max out daily or improvise each workout and expect to make meaningful progress. We need a plan for our gym sessions. Periodization is an exercise structuring method that targets specific goals through the application of cyclic, predetermined variety, progressive overloading techniques, and planned rest within a set time frame.

What does that actually mean?

Basically, periodization is an exercise plan that gives workouts structure and purpose over time with enough added rest to properly recover from the demands of training. This plan consists of easy to follow, skill-specific checkpoints that add intensity and variety as we move toward long-term goals.

Cyclic, predetermined variety means we change variables like volume (total reps, sets, or days) and load (weight) at regular intervals. These modifications follow a sequential pattern that is often repeated after a series is complete. A single cycle can be run multiple times to improve one attribute or slightly modified to emphasize another. The exercise details of quality programs can initially seem chaotic if they cover a wide range of intensities week to week, but they aren’t random. Periodization employs predictable, intentional alterations designed to promote specific adaptations. Variety is important, but the order is key.

When a program increases weight or reps, our muscles and nervous system eventually adapt to these new demands. An incremental increase in training intensity designed to force an adaptation is called progressive overloading (PO) and it’s what determines our variety. Progressive overloading is necessary in a periodized resistance training program because as we add new muscle and become stronger, motor unit recruitment goes down when our muscles are repeatedly placed under the same load. Think back to the concentric bicep curl example.

Periodization provides overall program structure, while progressive overloading allows us to change specific variables with a straightforward and orderly system. Like steps in a staircase, PO is how we move through the periodization schedule and increase our abilities. We load to a certain peak point, rest, then switch things up by adding a little more weight and/or volume to the cycle that was just completed. Rinse and repeat.

The two most popular progression styles we’re going to look at are linear and undulating. These methods are oftentimes labeled as individual periodization options, but I’m going to refer to them as progressive overload techniques instead. A complete program will likely utilize both linear and undulating PO as training components, but these pieces can’t stand on their own and form a whole program. They’re critical parts of the plan, not the entire plan.

Linear progressive overloading is the easiest to implement and is simply the increase of one variable while another decreases, both at a constant rate. When graphed over time, the primary variable is an upward sloping straight line. It’s important to note that a linear progressive overload can be applied to any variable in any exercise setting, but we normally manipulate load and volume in resistance training.

Undulating progressive overloading is the steady rise and fall of two variables that also have an inverse relationship. When this overload style is graphed, two horizontal waves with opposite peaks intersect at regular intervals. These two lines perpetually dance along the X-axis as they travel towards infinity. Undulating, like linear, can apply to any two variables but is most commonly used with load and volume.

Both progressive overloading styles are pictured below.

Look at the graphs above. Do you notice potential limitations with either style? Linear progression implies that we’ll eventually lift all the weight for no reps and undulating has us stuck in an oscillating limbo, doing the same thing forever. Both options are far from ideal in these forms.

If only we had a way to define the beginning and ends of these PO techniques so they could be repeated, rather than continue on for eternity… Periodization!

Adding time parameters to these progressive overloading methods allows us to increase a particular stressor for a certain duration, reset it, recover from it, then reapply it later at a greater intensity. Segment deadlines combined with progressive overloads give us the pattern of improvement discussed earlier.

Most periodization timelines utilize a macrocycle, mesocycle, and microcycle structure. This allows us to have long-term goals, intermediate priorities, and short-term points of emphasis. The image below is an example of a four month macrocycle, where each microcycle lasts one week.

Periodization was originally developed for sports that compete around an annual competition cycle. As a result, recreational fitness has been heavily influenced by popular sports periodization models that follow a yearly schedule, but there’s no set rule for time. Meaning, you could have a complete periodized program that lasts three months or one that extends to four years. It all depends on your goals, personal preferences, and training experience.

Before moving on to some examples, let’s make sure we’re all together.

The main concept from this section is that our goal-oriented workouts need to follow a long-term plan. This plan should incorporate variety through the application of progressive overloading. PO changes at least one variable at predetermined times, and these changes are contained within schedule segments that are long enough for adaptations to occur.

Now let’s throw all of this potentially confusing stuff together and look at two examples of periodization using both linear and undulating PO. Keep in mind these are visual aids to help with concept comprehension, not full programs.

The first periodization example is shown below.

This first example is a five month macrocycle that consists of four mesocycles. Each mesocycle lasts four weeks, is separated by a rest/deload week, and alternates between strength and hypertrophy.

There are four mesocycles in total, but only two months of unique programming. Month three is a copy of month one and four is a duplicate of two. The workouts in months one and three might be the same, but the loads used should increase when that mesocycle is repeated due to strength improvements. Each mesocycle makes us better at a particular skill (strength) and allows us to apply a greater level of intensity the next time we run through it. Same workouts, different weights.

When we look at the microcycles of each month, we can see the two PO techniques in action. The hypertrophy segments follow a basic linear PO pattern with the weight increasing weekly and the volume dropping in response. In contrast, the strength portions steadily change the load and reps each day. Daily changes in a variable are called daily undulation.

This alternating pattern of segments places an equal emphasis on both traditional strength and hypertrophy training methods. It’s really easy to implement and can be incredibly effective for many lifters. Straightforward and uncomplicated.

The second example mixes things up a little bit, but doesn’t deviate too far. Like the first routine, this 15 week macrocycle targets both strength and hypertrophy. This schedule places a greater emphasis on hypertrophy by drawing out the peak hypertrophy load time to two months instead of alternating evenly.

The loads for strength still follow a daily undulating PO that peaks twice a month, but the specific day to day changes are different. As long as a variable is changing daily and progressing towards a certain target, the transition doesn’t necessarily have to be linear (8/6/4/2 versus 8/4/6/2). Both options take us to the same place, but they follow different routes. More room for you to experiment.

The hypertrophy mesocycle change in example two is a longer duration of high volume for more growth. We’re still advancing load with linear PO, but now that transition is spread out over eight weeks instead of four. This doubles the time we spend on a single rep range from one week to two. This 1:2 strength to hypertrophy ratio is a great example of how we can allocate our time to target multiple goals throughout a periodization cycle, but still place an emphasis on the attribute we care about most.

These two examples should provide enough info on periodization and progressive overloading to get you started building your own routines.

So, what’s the best periodization strategy? It completely depends on the individual.

The way you respond to stress and recover from changes in intensity will dictate how quickly you progress and how long a program can remain effective. To dial in the most effective exercise strategy for any one person, a program must be incredibly specific. And the more specific a program is, the fewer people it can help. There’s no one-size-fits-all outline that can perfectly maximize results for everyone. However, I can make general recommendations that work well for most people.

Regarding cycle length, I like to build programs around one week microcycles and four week mesocycles. My macrocycle durations reflect the number of goals a client is working towards, so the total program length varies from person to person. While you have the option to deload in your rest weeks between mesocycles, I suggest you spend recovery weeks out of the gym. Focus on other aspects of fitness and take a break from weight training. Rest is important.

Linear versus undulating? There’s a significant amount of research that compares linear to undulating PO, and most data point towards equal performance, with undulation having a slightly greater effect on highly trained individuals interested in strength. Unless you’re an elite competitive athlete or have been training intensely for 5-10+ years, both options will be effective in your programming. I recommend you use a mixture of linear and undulating PO.

We now have a basic program outline. Let’s fill it in.

Weekly Training Frequency & Recovery

Based on the periodization framework established in the last section, we know that our macrocycle needs to focus on specific, long-term goals and incorporate progressive overloading. But in order to effectively and safely work through a month-long mesocycle, our weekly microcycles need to be constructed to maximize growth, minimize the risk of injury, and allow for proper recovery. In this section we’ll briefly cover how muscle protein synthesis, muscle damage, and nervous system fatigue affect weekly training schedules. We’ll then look at what current research suggests for workout frequency.

When heavy weights load our muscle fibers with high levels of tension, mechanical stress is translated into various chemical signals that instruct our bodies to change. One of these adaptations is the growth of new muscle tissue through a process called muscle protein synthesis (MPS). The new contractile proteins created through MPS are deposited into our muscle fibers, increasing sarcomere count and total muscle size. MPS is how we grow, and it’s a training variable we can easily influence by working out and eating high-protein meals.

How do exercise and diet work together to build new muscle?

The mechanical forces we experience during strenuous weight training sessions make our muscles more sensitive to the presence of amino acids (AA) in our blood, specifically the amino acid leucine. This amino acid sensitivity results in higher protein synthesis activity than normal, leading to growth. MPS occurs to some degree every time we eat protein, but without the catalyst of resistance training to boost production, normal MPS levels result in the maintenance of existing tissue. It’s this increase in MPS that helps us form new muscle mass and why a great diet is so important.

On the opposite end of things, a bad diet and ineffective exercise routine can cause us to lose muscle. Muscle protein breakdown (MPB) is the deconstruction of existing muscle tissue into amino acids. Amino acids are created through MPB and used in various essential metabolic processes throughout the body when dietary protein levels are insufficient. Rates of muscle protein breakdown also rise after exercise relative to an individual’s fitness experience. Beginners benefit from massive MPS spikes after heavy lifting, but they also have to deal with greater levels of MPB. However, this breakdown of lean mass is less concerning than it may sound.

MPB is an essential bodily process, but changes in MPS are generally greater than MPB. We can’t stop muscle protein breakdown from occurring, but we can significantly minimize it with a great diet. By consuming protein-rich meals and incorporating resistance exercise into our schedules, muscle protein synthesis should easily exceed the rate of breakdown. MPB isn’t an insignificant factor in our training, but it’s one we don’t need to stress about.

As seen above, elevated MPS rates can last over two days for beginners, while trained lifters typically see MPS levels return to pre-exercise baselines after 24 hours. This means most of us are passively building new muscle tissue 1-3 days after an effective workout if our diet is dialed in correctly.

The anabolic equation shown above and what we know about post-workout MPS activity give us enough information to form a training frequency outline. We want to stimulate MPS with resistance training when protein synthesis rates drop back down to baseline levels but not before. This allows us to maintain elevated MPS rates without expending energy on unnecessary workouts.

If a great training session can result in up to 48 hours of passive growth, how often should we lift?

Post-workout MPS activity lasts longer for beginners, so trained lifters need to exercise more often to increase strength and hypertrophy. While this general bit of advice points us in the right direction, saying that experienced exercisers need to lift more and beginners should exercise less isn’t too helpful. Taking MPS data alone also implies that there are no impedances to our growth potential. Eventually, more will turn into daily full body workouts, repeated forever. No thanks. To realistically quantify session frequency, we need to factor in recovery by looking at muscle damage and fatigue.

Muscle damage is an exercise induced muscular injury that results in pain, swelling, and a loss in function. Symptoms can range from minor to severe, but are usually present following an intense workout. Damage is typically caused by unfamiliar physical activity and can be exacerbated by high load, eccentric contractions and/or large repetition volumes. Most damage is fully repaired after 5-7 days with standard rest and recovery methods.

Muscle damage is a multifaceted issue, but the main cause seems to be a structural compromise of sarcomeres. Sarcomeres can warp in shape, form tears in their segment links, or completely rupture depending on the injury. Damaged sarcomeres produce weaker contractions, experience less tension due to lower load tolerances, and can ultimately hinder growth when not given enough recovery time. It’s also highly likely that existing damaged tissue needs to be completely repaired before new sarcomeres can be formed. Research suggests that muscle protein synthesis will prioritize fixing a broken foundation over adding new structures if damage is present. Meaning, your workouts might do a great job of regularly spiking MPS, but growth will be limited if you simultaneously deteriorate existing tissue to the same degree.

Muscle damage sounds like something we want to avoid at all times, but it can make us better if used strategically. One of the most significant benefits of muscle damage is its ability to shorten our recovery times due to the repeated bout effect (RBE). The repeated bout effect is a concept that says we adapt to stressors the more often we do them, and exposure to damaging activities teaches our muscles how to protect themselves from subsequent abuse.

As mentioned earlier, unfamiliar exercises can be the most damaging and may require a week of recovery between sessions. But based on what we know about MPS activity, we’ll miss out on growth opportunities if we wait that long. By introducing appropriate amounts of damage at regular intervals, the RBE results in neural and muscular adaptations that help beginners ramp up their training frequency and provides more consistent gains to experienced lifters. The effectiveness of progressive overloading is primarily due to the repeated bout effect and the way it forces our bodies to grow when exposed to the demands of intense exercise.

When implemented at manageable levels, muscle damage can also be a catalyst for the addition of new sarcomeres, costameres, and satellite cells. Costameres contribute to contraction forces and the overall structural integrity of a fiber by serving as anchor points. These anchor points connect myofibrils to cell membranes and assist in lateral force transmission across the muscle. More costameres can mean more strength. Satellite cells are localized muscle stem cells and they assist in the repair and growth of new fibers. They do this by synthesizing new contractile proteins and/or fusing themselves to a fiber, increasing that fiber’s total number of nuclei. More satellite cells can help us regain muscle faster after extended time off.

Costameres and satellite cells may increase in number following a damaging workout, and they can significantly impact our training in a very positive way. But how much damage is enough to improve our training progress? If we want to take advantage of damage, we need to be able to identify its presence and measure its severity.

There are a few different ways to measure muscle damage, but many of them require invasive and specialized techniques that aren’t practical for everyday use. Most people don’t know what segmental fiber necrosis is, have never heard of Z-band streaming, and are grossed out by protein leakage. But just about all of us have experienced a delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS) following a brutal workout. This post-exercise pain is our marker for damage.

A soreness self-assessment isn’t a sophisticated measuring method, so there’s no need to complicate things here. We’re going to use a basic 10 point scale. 1 represents an absence of pain and 10 feels like death. This system gives us a simple and intuitive way to assess our recovery status. It’s subjective and definitely has flaws, but its ease of use and reliability make it a great tool to help us dial in training frequency and intensity. Now that we’re aware of muscle damage, understand its significance, and can measure it, let’s combine this information with MPS activity to see more of the big picture.

Starting with beginners, we know that MPS can last over two days and muscle damage can take up to seven to heal if we do nothing to expedite it. That 2-7 day rest window can be narrowed down further by adding in the RBE and our DOMS self-assessment. To capitalize on the benefits of the repeated bout effect, we know that we need to exercise a muscle more than once. If our time parameter for bouts is a one week microcycle, we can conclude that beginners need to exercise at least two times per week. The soreness scale then helps us determine how many days of rest should separate these two sessions as well as their estimated levels of intensity.

For example, if a beginner were to perform a full body workout on Monday, they could use the DOMS scale on Wednesday to determine whether their next session should occur Thursday or Friday. If they choose Thursday but are still really sore (7+ on the DOMS scale), simply backing off on weight and volume will allow them to benefit from MPS stimulation without significantly compounding existing damage. As mentioned in the Beginner section, programming for untrained lifters emphasizes session consistency and strength development, not volume and/or intensity.

The same basic concepts apply to experienced lifters. MPS activity dies down after roughly 24 hours for highly trained individuals, but most non-beginners still need at least 48 hours of rest to recover properly from intense sessions. However, unlike newbies, that two day minimum can be taken advantage of if DOMS isn’t a limiting factor. Experienced lifters can potentially target a single muscle up to four times a week safely. Working the same muscle group every other day is definitely on the high end of weekly frequency options, but this can be an effective method if nervous system fatigue is kept in check.

What is nervous system fatigue and how can it impact our training?

There are two different types of nervous system fatigue, peripheral and central. Peripheral nervous system (PNS) fatigue is a localized decrease in contractile force primarily due to a depletion of energy (ATP and glycogen) and a build up of metabolites (lactate, ammonia, and hydrogen ions) within a muscle following an intense exercise bout. This is the muscular failure we experience towards the end of a difficult working set. With PNS fatigue, the brain can clearly communicate with motor neurons, but muscles are too tired to function. Peripheral fatigue is sudden in onset, debilitating, but brief. PNS fatigue can dissipate in minutes.

Peripheral fatigue may sound terrible, but it’s essential for peak muscle fiber activation. The accumulation of PNS fatigue is primarily what causes our higher threshold motor units to be recruited towards the end of a difficult working set. The first rep of a heavy set won’t require full fiber activation, but the sixth rep most likely will due to a decrease in force output from lower threshold, type 1 fibers. Acute PNS fatigue limits our intra-set work capabilities, but it’s not a weekly frequency factor to worry about.

Central nervous system (CNS) fatigue is the exhaustion of our brain and spinal cord due to repeated overstimulation. This results in altered levels of neurotransmitters and impaired neuromuscular signaling. Unlike PNS fatigue, CNS fatigue can slowly sneak up on us and become a chronic issue if ignored and allowed to accumulate. CNS fatigue should not be confused with overtraining syndrome, which is a serious condition that requires a professional medical diagnosis. When CNS fatigue is present, our muscles are ready to lift heavy things, but their motor neurons can’t produce the action potentials required to stimulate high threshold MUs. Inactive and underworked type 2 fibers result in less mechanical loading, decreased motor unit recruitment, and fewer gains. Central nervous system fatigue is a programming factor that can screw up our gains if not respected.

How much recovery does CNS fatigue require?

The total neural cost of a single workout depends on an individual’s training experience and conditioning. CNS fatigue from some exercises (low-volume strength/power) can be cleared up within minutes for more trained lifters, while other more demanding activities (high-volume hypertrophy/endurance cardio) can affect performance up to 48-72 hours. Like MPS activity and muscle damage, there’s a correlation between training status and neural exhaustion. Untrained lifters should consider resting the full 48-72 hours after high-volume/long-duration sessions.

This basic understanding of nervous system fatigue combined with what we know about MPS activity and muscle damage give us almost everything needed to build a really solid microcycle. To tie it all together, we need to look at some research trends observed in studies that specifically investigate weekly training frequency.

The majority of the data point to the same common conclusions –

There’s a positive dose-response relationship between training frequency and strength and hypertrophy gains. Hypertrophy seems to be affected more than strength.
Strength gains for beginners and intermediate lifters are possibly more dependent on total weekly training volume than frequency. Reaching that volume threshold in one session is possible, but this may result in significant CNS fatigue and damage.
Trained lifters require more frequent stimulation than beginners to see regular progress.
There’s a point of diminishing returns in hypertrophy and strength training as frequency grows. Some data show an upper limit for strength at 3x/wk and hypertrophy at 4x/wk.

When training research is combined with what we know about MPS activity, muscle damage repair, and CNS fatigue, the microcycle training schedule is much more clear.

To increase both hypertrophy and strength –

Beginners should perform full body workouts 2-3 times per week and rest at least 48-72 hours between sessions. This routine promotes MPS activity for up to six days, takes advantage of the repeated bout effect to help repair muscle damage, and provides enough rest time to help CNS fatigue dissipate.
Trained lifters should aim to target each major muscle group 2-3 times per week, rest at least 48 hours between same-muscle stimulation, and aim for a total of 4-6 workouts per week. This routine maximizes individual muscle MPS activity throughout the week, and provides at least 24 hours of CNS rest between workouts.

Both of these approaches are very doable for most people. The hardest part will be assessing your own level of fitness on the untrained-trained spectrum. Dialing in an optimal training frequency will take a little trial and error. If you’re new and unsure of your abilities, it’s probably best to start on the low end of beginner and progressively increase your weekly session count as you adapt. These two examples should provide you with enough freedom to dial in exactly what’s best for your training needs.

With the weekly outline covered, let’s discuss how to order and structure a single workout.

Exercise Order & Concurrent Training

Exercise order is a relatively simple problem to solve compared to other aspects of program design. This sequence is determined by only two factors, fatigue and training goals. If we understand how nervous system fatigue affects our performance and have a clear purpose for our sessions, we’ll consistently be able to build effective and orderly workouts.

Fundamentally complete programs that aim to improve both strength and hypertrophy should incorporate some mixture of strength, hypertrophy, aerobic cardio, anaerobic cardio, and power. However, three of these modalities are new styles we have yet to cover. We need to quickly discuss the importance of cardiovascular conditioning and power-based training within a quality resistance training program. These two styles are often overlooked when pursuing gains, but they can have a massive impact on our progress when implemented correctly.

To start things off, let’s take a deep breath and embrace the idea of cardio. Cardiovascular conditioning is associated with an impressively long list of general health benefits, making it an essential part of any fitness program. Within the context of resistance training, aerobic and anaerobic cardio help us improve our work capacity. Work capacity is the amount of exercise volume we can complete in a given amount of time (per set or per day) and how quickly we can recover from it.

Cardiovascular exercise stimulates protein synthesis similar to lifting weights, but primarily results in the formation of mitochondrial proteins instead of myofibrillar proteins. Greater mitochondrial density in our muscles results in an increased ability to store, produce, and break down energy (ATP, creatine phosphate, and glycogen), an improvement in the efficiency of all three energy systems (ATP-CP, glycolytic, and aerobic), and decreased recovery times between sets/workouts. More muscular energy and faster activity turnaround times give us a greater total workload density. It’s a little counterintuitive, but running can significantly improve strength and hypertrophy.

Let’s compare two different work capacities. In these examples, you only have one hour of free time per day to lift.

A low work capacity may require you to wait 3-4+ minutes between sets to perform your best, limiting the amount of work that can be accomplished in one hour. The more time you’re required to rest, the less time you have to lift. Being out of shape can also cause exercise induced CNS fatigue to accumulate, carry over to the next day, and impact subsequent workouts. In contrast, a high work capacity can drop your optimal inter-set rest times to 1.5-2 minutes, allow you to knock out an extra rep or two per set, and keep you from feeling dead as you walk out the door. More volume can be completed, a greater intensity can be applied, and carryover fatigue is nearly eliminated in the high work capacity scenario.

Running does not directly make us bigger or stronger. However, cardiovascular conditioning does significantly improve our work capacity, and a greater work capacity means better weight training sessions. Don’t be scared of running.

What about the top of the concurrent training pyramid, power?

Power training is another useful exercise modality due to its impact on neuromuscular activity. High-velocity movements can be performed to decrease motor unit recruitment thresholds and increase rate coding. We can attempt to decrease MU recruitment thresholds by taking advantage of an acute phenomenon called post-activation potentiation (PAP). PAP is a theory that basically states our muscles remember how much fiber activation was recently required, and this makes them more likely to recruit at least the same amount of motor units during subsequent, less demanding activities. Post-activation potentiation can result in increased fiber recruitment at the beginning of a set, greater strength output, and more volume completed under heavy loads.

For example, a max effort squat jump doesn’t load our muscles with a ton of weight, but it does require 100% motor unit recruitment. When performed before a heavy barbell squat, the jumps prime our neuromuscular pathways, create a short-term contractile history, and make the motor neurons involved more easily excitable due to their recent activation. Performing one exercise that mimics the MU recruitment requirements of another essentially lowers MU thresholds by decreasing the stimulation needed to create action potentials. Post-activation potentiation is what makes moderate weight feel unexpectedly light when performed after a heavy set.

Studies have shown that this muscular response works with both high-speed, low-resistance (clap push-up to improve bench press) and low-speed, high-resistance (heavy squat to improve sprint time) efforts. We’ll cover plyometrics and PAP in greater detail in Chapter 4.

Rate coding is the second half of the power discussion. Rate coding is a measurement of how frequently motor neurons generate action potentials per second. This is just as important to force production as MU recruitment. When contracting at slower speeds or against lower opposing forces, rate coding is typically low. In contrast, rate coding is noticeably higher when moving fast or lifting heavy weights. High-velocity exercises can increase baseline rate coding frequency and lead to more strength and growth. There are endless ways to add supplemental power training into your existing program. I like it in the warm up and mixed into HIIT circuits, both in minimal to moderate volumes.

We now have a basic appreciation for the roles that cardiovascular conditioning and power training play in strength and hypertrophy development. Let’s talk about exercise order.

As seen in the image above, exercise style is the first determining factor. This is due to fatigue. To keep both CNS and PNS fatigue from interfering with workout productivity, start with strength, transition into hypertrophy, and end with cardiovascular conditioning. This sequence places the most high-volume and fatigue-inducing exercises at the end, and allows us to maximize our strength/hypertrophy training potential before we get too tired. Untrained lifters will be able to get away with any random order they want for 2-3 months, but that ability will fade.

While not pictured, power training occurs before strength for competitive athletes (football, weightlifting, etc.). Fitstra programs include some power in the warm up and cardio sections because most people don’t compete in sports, and therefore, don’t need to prioritize the development of explosive movements. But if lifts like the snatch, clean, and jerk are important to you, do them first. They require a lot of motor control and explosive energy, but produce very little fatigue if volume is kept in check.

The second line of the ordering structure addresses multi-joint versus single-joint exercises. This variable is also primarily influenced by fatigue. Multi-joint movements can feel more tiring than their single-joint counterparts, but isolating individual muscles with single-joint exercises can lead to greater levels of localized peripheral fatigue. This means single-joint movements compromise the integrity of multi-joint movements if they’re performed first. If one muscle in a kinetic chain is weakened, the load potential of subsequent exercises that rely on that chain will also be decreased. Multi to single-joint transition is best in most scenarios, but there are instances where that order is reversed. For example, pre-exhausting triceps before bench press to emphasize chest work.

The last ordering guideline relies on personal preferences and individual program goals. If your daily concurrent structure progresses from resistance training to cardiovascular conditioning and places multi-joint before single-joint movements, all remaining sequence uncertainties should be determined by your preferences and programming focus. This is especially true for untrained lifters.

For example, let’s say you’re doing a lower body routine that includes barbell squat, barbell deadlift, hamstring curls, and an easy one mile jog. The hamstring curls and cardio would be performed last, but the order of squats and deadlifts would be your decision to make. If squats are a weak point, it would be best to do them first. If you hate deadlifts and want to get them out of the way as soon as possible, go for it. As long as the first two points in the exercise order checklist are marked off (concurrent style and joint order), small details can be adjusted to suit your needs. With that said, you would ideally want to alternate between squats and deadlifts (weekly or monthly) in this hypothetical scenario. This ensures an equal emphasis of strength and hypertrophy is placed on both exercises.

To maximize your strength, hypertrophy, and cardiovascular progress, perform each type of exercise in isolation and in the order listed above. Don’t blend things together. Circuit training has its uses and can be an effective way to target certain goals, but it’s not going to give you the best strength and hypertrophy results. Save the circuits for HIIT/anaerobic conditioning.

These exercise order guidelines don’t cover every possible scenario, but they should give you a helpful foundation to start structuring your daily sessions. Let’s move on to exercise selection.

Exercise Selection

With a seemingly endless number of machines and movement patterns to choose from, exercise selection can feel like a massive roadblock. To solve this programming problem, I suggest you stick with common, versatile pieces of equipment and focus on traditional compound exercises. These recommendations leave us with a manageable list of effective exercises that can be performed in most gyms. My suggested equipment is listed below.

If you follow any of the Fitstra programs, these are the tools you’ll need –

Lifting Rack
Barbell + Plates
Dumbbells
Pull-Up Bar

Lat Pulldown
Hamstring Curl
Heart Rate Monitor
Strength Bands

Foam Roller
Parallel Dip Bars
Suspension Trainer
Ab Mat

Fitstra resistance training programs are kept simple by focusing on barbell, dumbbell, kettlebell, and bodyweight exercises. Free weights over machines. These tools support a wide variety of training styles, are functionally consistent, and available in most gyms. Standard pieces of exercise equipment help you form a solid training foundation and continually scale with you as you progress.

I prefer to keep exercise equipment as simple as possible, but you don’t have to. If there’s a specific tool you enjoy using in your routine, keep it. For example, kettlebells aren’t mentioned in the previous list because they aren’t absolutely necessary to run Fitstra programs. However, they can add an incredible amount of variety and challenge to a workout. Feel free to incorporate any extra equipment if it improves the quality of your sessions.

We have our tools picked out. How should we use them?

Our bodies are pretty good at bending, twisting, and contorting in different ways. Being highly mobile is great for most of our daily needs, but not every movement pattern should be trained under a heavy load. An effective resistance training program strengthens a few specific, multi-joint movements and improves physical performance in a wide variety of activities. When targeted equally, these exercises can increase strength and hypertrophy, decrease our risk of injury, and evenly distribute work across all major muscle groups.

Simple, efficient, and effective.

As seen in the table above, the selected movement patterns are separated into Upper Body, Lower Body, and Core categories. The upper limb options are straightforward with presses and pulls performed horizontally (movement perpendicular to the spine) and vertically (movement parallel with the spine). Lower limb patterns add a bit more variety, but are still quite simple with a squat, hip hinge, and single leg emphasis. In the core section, we have rotation, flexion, and a hold (isometric contraction). Planks, carries, and anti-rotational exercises are all examples of holds.

When we perform these movement patterns with the recommended pieces of equipment, exercise selection becomes pretty simple. For example, if we want to press horizontally (perpendicular to the spine), we could pick barbell bench press, push-ups, or dumbbell/kettlebell bench press. Setting limits on the tools we use and how we move allows us to keep our routine simple, focus on the most effective exercises, and practice them frequently enough to become skilled at each one. If we’re relatively strong at every exercise and equipment combination, we probably have balanced joints, good posture, and a solid level of overall strength.

Below are some exercises that fit into each category. This is not a comprehensive list.

From the earlier discussion on training frequency, we know that activating a muscle at least twice a week is ideal, but we didn’t touch on exactly how to train it. I recommend you stimulate each muscle group/movement pattern with at least two different exercises per week instead of doubling down on the same lift. Do this by using a mixture of bilateral (both limbs/sides working together simultaneously) and unilateral (one limb/side working in isolation or in an alternating pattern) movement styles.
For example, weighted chin-ups on Monday followed by unilateral lat pulldowns on Thursday would hit both our frequency and variety targets for the vertical pull (parallel to spine). The exercise selection table above should provide you with enough options to make that possible.

It’s important to note that the exercises provided in this section can be used to build really effective programs, but you will probably want to add in a few extras depending on your goals, limitations, strengths, and weaknesses. You may need to incorporate some corrective exercises to address joint alignment issues, and certain body parts might need more single-joint volume to grow. Do what’s best for you.

We now know what tools to use and which exercises to perform. Great. But how many reps should a set of barbell deadlifts contain? What weights are best for strength versus hypertrophy?

Set Volume, Rest Times, Rep Ranges, & Loads

Because strength and hypertrophy complement one another, we need to look at set and rep details for both to build effective programs. If we understand each extreme end of the weight training spectrum, it will be easier to move our program slider and target specific goals. In this section, we’ll look at optimal set volume, inter-set rest times, rep counts, and one rep max (1RM) loads for strength and hypertrophy.

To start, let’s define reps and sets.

A rep (repetition) is one concentric+eccentric cycle of an exercise, and is normally considered complete when we return to the starting position of a movement. Reps can be short in duration and involve a single-joint, or they can be a lengthy sequence of movements and require multi-joint coordination to complete. For example, one repetition of a bicep curl is the combination of elbow flexion+extension, and is isolated to one joint. In contrast, a single rep of an exercise like the Turkish get-up requires almost every joint in the body and uses a series of different movements.

A set is an isolated collection of one or more reps that occurs between predetermined periods of rest. Sets allow us to attack a certain muscle or movement pattern with structure and intent. A single set can be simple and involve only one exercise, or it can be a complex collection of exercises. In most cases, a set is the rep count for one exercise. For example, if we perform a total of 30 push-ups that are divided into three groups of ten reps, we have completed three sets of push-ups. When reading Fitstra programs and most others, sets precede reps. 3×10 is read as three sets of ten reps.

How many sets are enough?

We know that research shows a positive dose-response relationship between exercise volume and gains for both strength and hypertrophy. However, the optimal number of sets for these two styles vary depending on training goals and fitness experience. More volume is better for size and strength, but we need some idea of what more means. Helpful set volumes that apply to both beginners and trained lifters can be established by comparing available studies. The table below shows optimal weekly strength and hypertrophy set totals for individual movement patterns. This shows that 4-8+ sets per week are ideal when training for strength while 8-12+ sets per week are best for hypertrophy.

Based on this information, hypertrophy gains can require nearly twice as much weekly set volume as strength. This implies it generally takes less time to improve neuromuscular coordination and motor control than it does to grow new tissue. So, if we want to build a program that increases both, it’s probably best to spend the majority of our training time on hypertrophy. But because the studies used to form the table above only tested for strength or hypertrophy, we can’t simply add the two ranges together. The total volume for beginners and most trained lifters would be a bit too high. Instead, we need to operate within set volume ranges that allow us to improve both strength and hypertrophy, without causing unnecessary amounts of CNS fatigue and muscle damage.

I recommend most lifters shoot for 5-10+ total sets per week for each major movement pattern/muscle group. Exact totals should be determined by your training status and program goals. Within this range, 60-70% of sets should focus on hypertrophy and 30-40% on strength. This split promotes consistent growth and provides enough weekly strength work to improve the neuromuscular coordination of new tissue.

If you’re on the beginner to intermediate side of fitness, start lower in your weekly set totals. See how you respond to smaller volumes before making incremental changes. It’s better to be slightly underworked for a week or two than unnecessarily beat up and exhausted. The table below contains my recommended weekly set volume options. These range from beginner to intermediate. Set totals and strength percentages (% of total sets) are listed at the bottom.

An easy way to implement this recommendation is to separate strength sets from hypertrophy sets for all movement patterns and target them on different days.

Let’s revisit the chin-up/lat pulldown example from the Exercise Selection section. If we do weighted chin-ups on Monday, all sets performed for that one exercise can focus on strength. When Thursday arrives, lat pulldown sets emphasize hypertrophy. For a goal of eight total sets of vertical pulling in a week, three sets isolate strength with chin-ups on Monday, and the remaining five sets hit hypertrophy with lat pulldowns on Thursday. This strategy is used in the Fitstra Upper Lower programs. To see how strength and hypertrophy can be combined on the same day, check out the Fitstra Legs Push Pull program. There are plenty of different ways to implement these recommended weekly set splits. Do what’s best for you.

With some optimal set ranges established, let’s make sure we’re able to perform them well. How long should we rest between sets?

Optimal inter-set recovery periods vary quite a bit from person to person due to training experience, age, exercise intensity, work capacity, diet, and goals, but more time is usually better. If allowed to rest longer, we can lift more weight, restore a greater percentage of our baseline energy stores (ATP), remove more of the metabolites (lactate, ammonia, and hydrogen ions) that build up during exercise, increase post exercise MPS, and reduce intra-workout fatigue. Longer rest times between sets also make the workout more enjoyable due to lower ratings of perceived exertion (RPE). If the overall difficulty level of an activity is realistic and sustainable, both emotional satisfaction and program adherence will be higher. This is especially true for beginners.

As seen above, longer recovery periods are associated with increased load potential and decreased PNS fatigue. I recommend inter-set rest times of 1.5-3 minutes when training for hypertrophy and 3-5 minutes for strength. It will take a little trial and error to dial in exactly what’s best for you, but these ranges should work well for most people. If you’re unsure of where to begin, start with longer recovery periods to establish baseline performance levels, then gradually shave off time as you increase your work capacity through cardiovascular conditioning.

Heavier weights require more rest than lighter loads. Nothing too complicated. But what is heavy and what is light?

The loads used in resistance training are typically calculated using a one rep max (1RM). A 1RM is the most amount of weight we can lift for one complete repetition of a single exercise. 1RMs are lift-specific, so your squat will have a different 1RM than bench press, deadlift, etc. If we want our program to be effective and tailored to our individual needs, we need to know 1RM values for the included exercises. But for many people, maximum loads are unnecessarily dangerous. To reduce the risk of injury, we can estimate 1RMs by using a multi-rep max of a lighter weight.

An approximate 1RM of any exercise can be calculated by using the chart above. To find this value, divide the amount of weight lifted by the 1RM% of reps completed.

For example, let’s say you can bench press 135 lbs for a max of six reps before failure. Based on the 1RM table above, we know that any weight we can move six times is approximately 85% of a one rep max. We then divide 135 lbs by 85% (135/0.85) to give us an estimated 1RM of 160 lbs.

Although we can technically calculate a 1RM from any rep count, I recommend a 4-6 rep max. This method is great for beginners and experienced lifters alike, as it does not require a testing week or any type of program modifications to measure strength. Estimated 1RMs can help you determine what loads will be most appropriate for a given rep count, but 1RM percentages don’t need to be followed perfectly. Use these targets as reference points and work at or as close to the suggested 1RM% as you can in your program. In all Fitstra programs, working sets should be performed with the corresponding 1RM% load of reps listed. This results in working sets with intensities (RPE) of 7+/10.

What rep ranges target strength versus hypertrophy?

The top of the 1RM table shows that strength is strongly associated with heavier loads, but fades as we go over the six rep mark. In contrast, hypertrophy starts to creep in around the six rep mark and extends all the way through the table. Like many other aspects of fitness, there’s not a solid line that separates strength from hypertrophy. But there are sweet spots. Studies show that strength gains are primarily made when we lift at or above 80-85% of our 1RM, while hypertrophy can occur at a variety of different loads. These percentages correspond to rep ranges of roughly 1-6 for strength and 6-12+ for hypertrophy. When we reflect on what we know about muscle growth and the learning process of strength, the ranges make sense.

Hypertrophy requires the activation and mechanical loading of type 2 fibers, regular spikes in muscle protein synthesis, and possibly some occasional tissue damage. Because PNS fatigue results in the eventual recruitment of our largest motor units, all of these hypertrophy prerequisites can theoretically be met with heavy or moderate weight. Studies show that hypertrophy can occur at rep ranges up to 30, but I recommend that you cap your hypertrophy range at 12 due to the fiber type-fiber size paradox.

The fiber type-fiber size paradox is a concept that states muscle fibers with the highest oxidative capacity have the lowest growth potential, and attempting to simultaneously increase a muscle fiber’s oxidative capacity and size is less effective than training these two attributes independently. Lighter weights that fatigue us at relatively high rep counts (15-30) rely on highly oxidative, type 1 fibers for the majority of the set. These high-rep sets don’t recruit large motor units until the end of an exercise, resulting in a considerable amount of wasted muscular energy spent on smaller MUs. In contrast, heavier weights (6-12 reps) recruit type 2 fibers much sooner and direct our energy expenditure mainly towards growth. High-rep sets improve muscular endurance, but they are inefficient at targeting hypertrophy and can cause too much damage/fatigue to be worth implementing.

Strength improvements are more one dimensional. To be strong, we need high levels of motor control, fiber activation, and force output. These aspects of strength are skills that need to be regularly practiced and perfected as new tissues are added from hypertrophy training. Meaning, if we want to be proficient at maximum force production, we have to continuously teach existing and new muscle mass how to be strong. Power training can help us lift more, but there’s no substitute for heavy loads. Stick to 1-6 reps, use smart progressive overloading patterns, move heavy things, and teach your body to be strong. Treat strength training like a skill that can be improved with no ceiling, but lost without practice. Stay consistent.

Use these set volumes, inter-set rest times, rep counts, and load suggestions as starting points, then make adjustments as needed to build the best program for you.

Rep Failure & Tempo

At this point in the strength and hypertrophy discussion, we’ve covered just about everything you need to create a simple and effective program. You now know about periodization, motor unit recruitment, training frequency, exercise order, and other important muscle building topics. The big picture of resistance training is pretty clear, but it’s not quite complete. We need to touch on two final topics that dive a little deeper into repetition style and performance. These are set failure and rep tempo.

Failure is a specific point during a set where we cannot complete any more reps due to PNS fatigue. We fail when we can’t generate enough force to overcome external resistance. Reaching or exceeding this level of exhaustion is usually encouraged in training groups to get the most out of every set, but most of us should avoid failure when possible.

By consistently taking our sets to failure, we can increase CNS and PNS fatigue, muscle damage, and necessary inter-set rest times. Repeated set failure also increases our session RPE (ratings of perceived exertion) which can lower emotional satisfaction/enjoyment and cause problems with program adherence. Highly trained lifters and elite competitive athletes may benefit from this style of max effort training when used correctly, but research suggests that both strength and hypertrophy can be improved without reaching failure.

We can’t build massive arms or double our squat max in a single session. We reach our goals by accumulating small, daily victories over long periods of time. The key to success is consistency, but it’s difficult to keep showing up when we’re overly sore, injured, or anxious about the quality of an upcoming session. To help prioritize fun and maintain consistency, I suggest beginners stay 1-2 reps away from failure. If you think, “I probably could have knocked out one more,” as you rack your weights after the last rep, perfect. Work near failure and occasionally experience it, but don’t let it interfere with the quality and consistency of your sessions. Trained lifters may benefit from a one rep buffer between them and exhaustion, but results will vary. Do what’s best for you.

These failure recommendations are easy to implement if we control our rep tempo.

In most resistance training settings, our repetitions should be complete concentric+eccentric cycles of movement, performed in a controlled manner, and taken through a full range of motion. These repetition guidelines allow us to take advantage of regional hypertrophy. Regional hypertrophy is the growth of new tissues in specific areas of a muscle. While both contraction styles can produce similar results, studies show that concentric contractions tend to increase the cross-sectional area of a muscle (proximal sarcomeres in parallel), while eccentric contractions can favor overall fiber length (distal sarcomeres in series). If we can make a muscle longer and thicker, it can be stronger and faster. To get the benefits of both contractions, we need to move through our reps at the right speed.

Most beginner and intermediate lifters should use a simple self-pacing assessment to establish their rep speeds. When moving a weight, do you feel like you’re in charge of the object, or is it imposing its will onto you? Are you moving slowly enough to feel muscular tension throughout the full range of motion? Does your movement speed allow you to hit all of your target reps with the load you’re using? If the answer to these questions is yes, you’re most likely good to go. The absolute best rep speed will be one you can perform consistently with great form and confidence. With that said, I do have some tempo suggestions.

I recommend most lifters spend 1-2 seconds in the concentric phase and 1-3 seconds in the eccentric. Experienced lifters may see hypertrophy benefits from eccentric times of up to four seconds, but the excessive damage from loaded lengthening should be used sparingly. If you’re still unsure of tempo, pay attention to how fast you can move a heavy weight when you’re 3-4 reps away from set failure. Mimic that speed.

That’s it. Let’s put it all together.

Full Program Examples

I’m not going to include program examples here. There are too many different possible training combinations that would need to be covered. Instead, head over to the Programs section and check out all of the workouts listed there. They range in length (2-6 months), target a variety of different training styles, and accommodate all experience levels.

Final Thoughts

Despite the number of topics covered in this chapter, we’ve barely scratched the surface of strength and hypertrophy training. Science points us in a very helpful direction and gives us a ton of wiggle room to play with program details, but there’s always more to learn.

This chapter should give you the necessary tools to start building your own programs. Go lift some weights, build a little muscle, and learn to be strong.

Experiment by manipulating different variables. Find what works best for you. Share what you discover. Have fun.

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Zammit, P. S., Partridge, T. A., & Yablonka-Reuveni, Z. (2006). The Skeletal Muscle Satellite Cell: The Stem Cell That Came in From the Cold. Journal of Histochemistry & Cytochemistry, 54(11), 1177–1191.

Zaroni, R. S., Brigatto, F. A., Schoenfeld, B. J., Braz, T. V., Benvenutti, J. C., Germano, M. D., … Lopes, C. R. (2018). High Resistance-Training Frequency Enhances Muscle Thickness in Resistance-Trained Men. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 1.

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Sleep & Athletic Performance for Young Athletes

Samuel Stephens — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 21:02:47 +0000

Sleep & Athletic Performance for Young Athletes

This paper by Elizabeth Copenhaver and Alex Diamond discusses the relationship between sleep habits and athletic performance in young athletes. Copenhaver and Diamond acknowledge early on that the emphasis of this paper is on adolescent student athletes because they are a high-risk population for poor sleep health. Specifically, the authors cover general sleep recommendations, sleep physiology and architecture, how sleep impacts athletic performance and recovery, the importance of training schedules on sleep quality, the relationship between emotional states and sleep, and sleep evaluation strategies for clinicians. This article is written to give parents, coaches, teachers, and pediatricians strategies to ensure the young athletes they work with have consistent, quality sleep and understand the importance of proper sleep hygiene.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) recommends 9-12 hours of sleep per night for elementary aged (6-12) kids and 8-10 hours for adolescents (13-18). Parents of young children can usually meet these guidelines because they have a great deal of control over their kids’ schedules. This is not the case for most adolescents. Certain biological and lifestyle factors like puberty, social events, and technology can interfere with teenage sleep consistency. The student athlete must deal with all of these factors while also juggling the demands of practice and competition, resulting in an average of two fewer hours of sleep per night compared to students not enrolled in extracurriculars. This two hour loss of sleep is particularly detrimental to adolescent student athletes because it impacts their sleep physiology and unique sleep architecture.

Sleep related physiological changes are due to circadian rhythms and a self-regulating system called homeostatic sleep. Circadian rhythms operate around a 24 hour cycle and are largely dependent on light exposure along with other environmental cues. In contrast, homeostatic sleep is an “internal drive associated with time since last sleep and compensates if a person is experiencing sleep deprivation.” The structure of a sleep cycle, or sleep architecture, consists of rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. REM sleep is affected by sympathetic nervous system input, whereas NREM sleep is primarily associated with parasympathetic nervous system activity. Healthy humans normally complete one cycle through the NREM+REM sleep stages every 90 minutes, with a total of 5-6 full cycles per night. Children spend roughly an equal amount of time in REM and NREM sleep, but adolescents heavily favor REM sleep in the second half of the night. Therefore, sleeping just enough to function the next day is not enough for student athletes. Proper cognitive and physiological development in adolescents is largely dependent on sleep durations that meet or exceed AASM’s recommendations. To fully appreciate the value of sleep in young athletes, it’s important to understand some of the performance side effects of sleep deprivation and know what lifestyle factors can contribute to poor sleep habits.

Adolescent athletes who experience regular sleep deprivation are at risk of impaired cognitive function, weakened immune system, disruptions to hormone production and gene expression, problems with metabolic and cardiovascular health, brain inflammation, and body temperature regulation. In a competitive setting, these side effects of sleep loss result in slower reaction times, losses in skill proficiency (serving, throwing, etc.), more cognitive errors in high-stress situations, and a decreased ability to implement concepts learned in practice that may be due specifically to a loss in REM sleep. Adolescent brain waves during REM sleep mimic those of an awake brain and it’s theorized that this rest period may be “a period of memory consolidation that would be especially important for motor learning in the student-athlete.” Student athletes who sleep less than eight hours per night are also 1.7 times more likely to suffer an injury than those who meet or exceed this nightly threshold. This injury chance increase may be due to poor decision making in practice and on game days, along with impaired soft tissue recovery that would normally occur during an 8-10 hour night of sleep.

Regarding lifestyle factors that can impact sleep quality, the authors focus on training and competition schedules, travel, and an athlete’s emotional state. Traveling across time zones and anxiety the night before a big game can decrease sleep quality, but the most significant issue facing student athletes is their practice and competition schedules. Natural circadian rhythms vary from person to person, but adolescents tend to stay up longer and wake later. This “night owl” tendency is due to hormonal changes that affect circadian rhythms and an increased sensitivity to light combined with more nighttime screen use, resulting in an average nightly sleep loss of 90 minutes between 6th and 12th grade. This means that early morning practices (6-8 AM) are directly at odds with adolescent development and can end up being ineffective due to poor workout quality and lower learning ability. Competitions that extend late into the night compound this problem and can result in poor efficiency, which is a measurement of time spent in bed versus time spent asleep. On average, adults have a sleep efficiency score of 90%, regular students achieve 77%, and student athletes rank last at 70%. Therefore, it is recommended that practice for all student athletes occurs mid to late afternoon if possible.

To summarize the article and state the obvious, sleep for adolescent student athletes is important. Kids need quality sleep to recover, learn, and develop physically, but adolescent lifestyle factors and biological traits are oftentimes at odds with how adults like to organize life. It’s essential for adults to understand that kids are not miniature adults. This idea applies to how we train children but also should be considered when we evaluate their priorities and behaviors. Many kids aren’t lazy or immature just because they want to sleep in and stay up late – they are oftentimes reacting to their unique biological development and circadian rhythms. The best support that coaches, teachers, and parents can provide to student athletes should include a healthy balance of empathy and wisdom. It may be best for schools and athletic departments to reconsider their operating hours. This could allow for more ideal learning environments, practice times that don’t compete with essential sleep windows, and an overall lifestyle change for student athletes that’s healthier and more aligned with their innate biological development.

References

Copenhaver, E. A., & Diamond, A. B. (2017). The Value of Sleep on Athletic Performance, Injury, and Recovery in the Young Athlete. Pediatric annals, 46(3), e106–e111. https://doi.org/10.3928/19382359-20170221-01

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Fitness in the Workplace – Benefits and Best Practices

Samuel Stephens — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 01:06:09 +0000

Fitness in the Workplace - Benefits and Best Practices

Fitness has grown considerably in popularity over the last few decades. What was once a more private activity that focused on an individual’s personal health and wellness, has transformed into a public lifestyle trend viewable to all. This is largely due to content sharing on social media and advancements in technology (Štajer et al., 2022). Fitness influencers on a variety of platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram have helped millions of people incorporate structured physical activity into their lives. As a result of increased fitness awareness, health club revenue in the United States has nearly tripled since 2000 (Gough 2024). More adults are choosing to participate in a variety of exercise settings and the hobby of fitness is more popular than ever. However, despite the rising trend of fitness in popular culture, there is currently a pandemic of obesity and physical inactivity (Kohl et al., 2018). And ironically, the same technology that helps to promote fitness to millions of new exercisers is also contributing to sedentary lifestyles.

One population group that is especially vulnerable to the negative effects of physical inactivity is the traditional office worker. Many workplace environments have embraced a hybrid approach to the workplace, but most white-collar jobs still require long hours of sitting in front of a computer. Without the proper interventions, physical inactivity can result in a variety of negative physical and mental health consequences for employees, as well as financial strains of tens of billions of dollars globally to employers (Norbeck 2013). Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss how regular physical activity can positively affect the well-being of employees, how structured workplace fitness programs can financially benefit employers, and the best practices for implementing exercise programs to ensure adherence and successful outcomes.

Before diving into the health benefits of physical activity in the workplace, it is important to first establish a few definitions. The term “fitness” can include a wide variety of activities and points of emphasis, depending on who is asked. For some, fitness focuses exclusively on the sport of bodybuilding where aesthetics take priority over health. For others, fitness is a highly competitive hobby where powerlifting and CrossFit events dictate exercise programming. Within the context of this paper, fitness, exercise, and physical activity are not defined as a sport or a specific activity, but rather a “state of physical condition, health, and well-being, and more specifically, the ability to perform various forms of sports, occupations, and daily activities” (Sevilmis et al., 2023). Therefore, workplace fitness is not an end state or a competition on a calendar, it is a collection of exercises and behavior modifications designed to generally promote physical and mental health. Exercise programming for fitness in the workplace includes resistance training, cardiorespiratory conditioning, and mobility work.

Although one’s ability to work from home has grown significantly in the last few years, with nearly 27% of Americans working remotely at least part time (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023), a “workplace” as described in this paper is an on-site work environment where employees commute to one location and collaborate in-person. A traditional office environment is a great example of a workplace that can be targeted by fitness programs. In this setting, there may be many employees who experience similar days, share identical schedules, and may have the ability to exercise together. Many office workers are sedentary up to 70% of their time at work (Rosenkranz, et al., 2020) and that time tends to increase with age (Bernaards et al., 2016), making this demographic a great candidate for fitness intervention. However, a well designed workplace fitness program can also benefit organizations with more physically active employees such as hospitals, schools, and other largely populated campuses. The following sections will discuss some of the specific benefits employees and employers can gain from exercise and how to implement workplace fitness programs to increase the likelihood of long-term adherence.

Quality fitness programs can have positive effects on an employee’s physical health, emotional well-being, and cognitive ability. These three aspects of wellness are oftentimes separated into their own unique categories when discussing the benefits of exercise, but more recent research indicates that physical, mental, and cognitive health work together to create vigor that results in an overall sense of well-being in the workplace (Gil-Beltrán et al., 2020). It is therefore important to discuss the benefits of each component and how they work together.

Beginning with the most visibly noticeable area of change, employees who improve their physical health through exercise can lower their body fat percentage and increase muscle tissue. Other less noticeable benefits include, increased insulin sensitivity, greater bone density, improved functional strength and mobility, and positive changes to cardiorespiratory conditioning (Saqib et al., 2020). When taken together, these improvements to physical health can help prevent many different non-communicable diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, and some forms of cancer. One study by Moore et al. (2016) indicated that leisure-time physical activity is associated with a lower risk of 13 out of 26 different types of cancer studied, regardless of one’s BMI or smoking history. Therefore, the physically healthy employee has a lower risk of non-communicable disease and is less likely to miss work due to illness. For many people, the physiological changes obtained from exercise are the sources of their motivation, but for others, fitness programs act as a recovery activity to replenish valuable emotional and mental resources that have been spent during the workday.

A fast-paced work environment can be a mentally taxing place that leaves employees feeling emotionally stressed and cognitively drained at the end of each day. However, regular physical activity has been shown to improve mood, self-esteem, and brain function, while mitigating the effects of stress (Moore et al., 2016). One observed acute change to mental health following exercise is caused by increased neurotransmitter production. Endocannabanoids, endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine have been shown to help with pain management, stress reduction, and emotional regulation (Gil-Beltrán et al., 2020b). These neurochemical changes observed post-exercise can help employees better manage their emotional responses to stressful events at work. Other studies have also shown that cognitive function, specifically “attention, focus, memory, cognition, language fluency, and decision-making” is positively influenced by physical activity for up to two hours after an exercise session (Mahindru et al., 2023) When taken together, the cognitive and emotional benefits of physical activity can help employees more effectively navigate the dynamic challenges of work and turn difficult workdays into manageable ones.

Many of the same benefits employees gain from exercise also positively affect employers. When employees are given opportunities to exercise, physical activity can serve as an important distraction from work responsibilities. This distraction allows for the replenishment of valuable cognitive and emotional resources, as described in The Conservation of Resources Theory and Effort-Recovery Model. These two theories can be used to understand the relationship between physical activity and workplace well-being, where exercise is performed as a recovery activity and gives employees periods of time away from significant stressors at work. When they return to their workday tasks, non-sedentary employees can experience more job satisfaction, show greater empathy towards their coworkers, and become more absorbed in their work tasks (Gil-Beltrán et al., 2020a). Furthermore, a study by Rosenkranz et al. (2020) demonstrated that more time spent sitting negatively affected job satisfaction and workplace fatigue, while less sedentary time did not compromise productivity. Taken together, employers who provide their employees the opportunity to exercise during workdays can create a workplace environment of happier and more engaged teammates who regularly feel emotionally and cognitively restored.

Exercise in the workplace can make an organization more profitable by increasing output, but it can also improve financial status by decreasing operating costs. Employers who encourage fitness within their company culture can experience less absenteeism and turnover, resulting in a more competitive and successful organization (Sonnentag & Jelden, 2009). High levels of job satisfaction can lead to longer tenured employees, which can reduce the financial and man hour resource costs associated required to hire new employees. Quality workplace fitness programs not only keep good employees for longer, they can also improve the quality of their work because physical activity allows for the restoration of mental resources. Emotional and cognitive replenishment can create genuine enthusiasm and motivation to tackle difficult workplace problems, oftentimes with success. And it is the success achieved after restoration that helps employees maintain a healthy sense of self-efficacy along with demonstrations of true competence. Possibly the greatest benefit of an emotionally and physically healthy workforce is an increase in the organization’s overall productivity that is created by skilled workers who choose to stay with their employers longer. However, without a sound implementation strategy, these fitness benefits will not be realized.

There are many different ways to structure the daily activities in a workplace fitness program. Oftentimes, the style of a workout class will be as unique as the personality of the instructor who is teaching it. Exercise variety on a micro-level can keep participants engaged and excited for upcoming events, but macro-level program design must be preplanned and intentionally structured to ensure long-term success. Therefore, it is important to discuss some best practices in workplace fitness programs that promote participation and adherence. The two main areas of focus are exercise accessibility and habit formation strategies.

Possibly the most important prerequisite of a workplace fitness program is the availability of an on-site fitness center. Organizations with on-site gyms have direct control over who they hire to teach classes, the specific equipment available, and many of the seasonal programs featured. As previously discussed, on-site programs allow employees to take breaks from stressful work days and mentally recharge so that they can return to the office with a restored level of motivation to solve challenging problems (Gil-Beltrán et al., 2020b). Companies that do not have convenient, on-site exercise facilities can still promote physical activity and structured exercise, but they may find it difficult to establish a culture of healthy habits within their organization.

Quality exercise programs should target habit formation by implementing fitness programs that are equally inclusive to beginners and workout veterans. This approach requires a variety of fitness class formats, such as traditional resistance training with an emphasis on strength, structured cardiorespiratory classes, and flexibility training. These three formats each provide their own health benefits and should be performed weekly, totaling roughly 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MacIntosh et al., 2021). However, resistance training should be prioritized from a training frequency standpoint. One study by Gabay et al. (2023) showed that exercise adherence was greatest in participants who lifted weights, compared to aerobic and flexibility training. Weight training can be scaled to lower levels of perceived exertion and this allows newer exercisers the opportunities to build habits without the discomfort that may be experienced in high-intensity aerobic classes. When beginner-friendly exercise classes are consistently available at their scheduled times, employees know what to expect and can more easily participate in the activities they enjoy, leading to habit formation.

Finally, workplace fitness programs should emphasize the needs of individual employees as much as the needs of the entire organization. Self-efficacy is a large determinant of program adherence, but it is oftentimes difficult for beginners to achieve high levels of exercise competency without the knowledgeable guidance of fitness professionals. Quality exercise instructors can improve adherence by addressing the individual goals, preferences, limitations, and concerns of all participants, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach (Collado-Mateo et al., 2023; Dalle et a., 2011). This can be particularly effective when working with obese and older populations who may have specific limitations that require unique programming solutions. Therefore, quality fitness instructors should take the time to foster genuine relationships with their members to ensure participants feel valued and viewed as individuals.

There are a wide variety of barriers that may inhibit workplace fitness participation, but possibly the greatest adversary is company culture. Many hopeful exercisers do not consistently stick to an on-site workout routine due to a lack of participation by their peers (Safi et al., 2022). When organizations do not prioritize workplace fitness initiatives, employees may not feel comfortable taking personal time to exercise while others work. To overcome this issue, it is important for companies to lead top-down. Ideally, managers and executives should be seen participating in the fitness programs and encouraging others to do the same during work hours when appropriate. The fitness professionals should also work with company executives and employees to implement easily attendable class schedules and educational content designed to find solutions to scheduling problems.

The advancement of technology in the workplace has greatly benefited work productivity and the speed at which information can be shared. However, these same advancements have created a lifestyle for many office workers that lacks regular physical activity. Physical inactivity can result in the development of serious health consequences for employees and can negatively affect the profitability of an organization. However, quality workplace fitness programs offer solutions to these problems. By offering on-site exercise opportunities to employees, employers can create a health-focused company culture that contains motivated, enthusiastic workers who stay with their organizations for longer. These knowledgeable, tenured employees with high levels of self-efficacy in the workplace can reduce company costs associated with turnover while contributing to the success of various companies in competitive industries. A little exercise at work can create healthy employees and even healthier organizations.

References

Bernaards, C. M., Hildebrandt, V. H., & Hendriksen, I. J. (2016). Correlates of sedentary time in different age groups: results from a large cross sectional Dutch survey. BMC public health, 16(1), 1121.

Collado-Mateo, D., Lavín-Pérez, A. M., Peñacoba, C., Del Coso, J., Leyton-Román, M., Luque-Casado, A., Gasque, P., Fernández-Del-Olmo, M. Á., & Amado-Alonso, D. (2021). Key Factors Associated with Adherence to Physical Exercise in Patients with Chronic Diseases and Older Adults: An Umbrella Review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(4), 2023.

Dalle Grave, R., Calugi, S., Centis, E., El Ghoch, M., & Marchesini, G. (2011). Cognitive-behavioral strategies to increase the adherence to exercise in the management of obesity. Journal of obesity, 2011, 348293.

Gabay, M., Levi, O., Petracovschi, S., Negrea, C., Matichescu, M., & Oravitan, M. (2023). Exploring exercise adherence and quality of life among veteran, Novice, and dropout trainees. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 5.

Gil-Beltrán, E., Llorens, S., & Salanova, M. (2020a). Employees’ physical exercise, resources, engagement, and performance: A cross-sectional study from hero model. Revista de Psicología Del Trabajo y de Las Organizaciones, 36(1), 39–47.

Gil-Beltrán, E., Meneghel, I., Llorens, S., & Salanova, M. (2020b). Get Vigorous with Physical Exercise and Improve Your Well-Being at Work!. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(17), 6384.

Gough, C. (2024, April 16). Fitness Center & Health Club Revenue United States 2020. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/236120/us-fitness-center-revenue/

Kohl, H. W., 3rd, Craig, C. L., Lambert, E. V., Inoue, S., Alkandari, J. R., Leetongin, G., Kahlmeier, S., & Lancet Physical Activity Series Working Group (2012). The pandemic of physical inactivity: global action for public health. Lancet (London, England), 380(9838), 294–305.

MacIntosh, B. R., Murias, J. M., Keir, D. A., & Weir, J. M. (2021). What Is Moderate to Vigorous Exercise Intensity?. Frontiers in physiology, 12, 682233.

Mahindru, A., Patil, P., & Agrawal, V. (2023). Role of Physical Activity on Mental Health and Well-Being: A Review. Cureus, 15(1), e33475.

Moore, S. C., Lee, I. M., Weiderpass, E., Campbell, P. T., Sampson, J. N., Kitahara, C. M., Keadle, S. K., Arem, H., Berrington de Gonzalez, A., Hartge, P., Adami, H. O., Blair, C. K., Borch, K. B., Boyd, E., Check, D. P., Fournier, A., Freedman, N. D., Gunter, M., Johannson, M., Khaw, K. T., … Patel, A. V. (2016). Association of Leisure-Time Physical Activity With Risk of 26 Types of Cancer in 1.44 Million Adults. JAMA internal medicine, 176(6), 816–825.

Norbeck T. B. (2013). Drivers of health care costs. A Physicians Foundation white paper – second of a three-part series. Missouri medicine, 110(2), 113–118.

Rosenkranz, S. K., Mailey, E. L., Umansky, E., Rosenkranz, R. R., & Ablah, E. (2020). Workplace Sedentary Behavior and Productivity: A Cross-Sectional Study. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(18), 6535.

Safi, A., Cole, M., Kelly, A. L., Zariwala, M. G., & Walker, N. C. (2022). Workplace Physical Activity Barriers and Facilitators: A Qualitative Study Based on Employees Physical Activity Levels. International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(15), 9442.

Saqib, Z. A., Dai, J., Menhas, R., Mahmood, S., Karim, M., Sang, X., & Weng, Y. (2020). Physical Activity is a Medicine for Non-Communicable Diseases: A Survey Study Regarding the Perception of Physical Activity Impact on Health Wellbeing. Risk management and healthcare policy, 13, 2949–2962.

Sevilmis, A., Özdemir, İ., & García-Fernández, J. (2023). The history and evolution of fitness. SPORT TK-Revista EuroAmericana de Ciencias Del Deporte, 12, 4.

Sonnentag, S., & Jelden, S. (2009). Job stressors and the pursuit of sport activities: a day-level perspective. Journal of occupational health psychology, 14(2), 165–181.

Štajer, V., Milovanović, I. M., Todorović, N., Ranisavljev, M., Pišot, S., & Drid, P. (2022). Let’s (Tik) Talk About Fitness Trends. Frontiers in public health, 10, 899949.

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Gaming, Sleep, and Athletic Performance

Samuel Stephens — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 18:28:45 +0000

Video Games, Sleep, & Athletic Performance

Electronic sports, or esports, have exploded in popularity over the last decade and are now recognized by many to be legitimate forms of professional competition. What were once small, community events have transformed into globally streamed, culturally significant tournaments with international representation. Millions of viewers tune into watch video games like Fortnite and Dota 2 that have offered up to $40 million in total prize pool earnings for a single tournament (Shaw, 2021). This recent rise in video game popularity can partially be attributed to the financial incentives associated with professional esports play and the obsessive behaviors of gaming addiction.

Multiple articles have been published regarding the care of esports athletes, their training habits, and the physiological effects of esports, but the majority of gamers are not paid professionals (Stanishiva, 2023). However, the findings from these studies are still relevant to amateur gamers who play competitive esports titles like first person shooters (FPS), multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBA), or real time strategy (RTS) games. Lower-skilled, nonprofessional gamers tend to focus on “grinding” through matches to gradually increase their matchmaking rating (MMR) and may only find joy in the hobby of gaming after a win (Aeschbach, 2023). Many players believe their true MMR is higher than their player rating and may fixate on playing daily and for long durations to improve their rank and escape “ELO Hell” (Ismail et al., 2019). “ELO Hell” is the belief that one has been mistakenly placed into a ranking that is lower than where they belong and are paired with incompetent teammates who cause team losses (Aeschbach, 2023). Therefore, one player is unfairly “stuck” in a stressful social environment. Gaming addiction symptoms can arise because most players understand that more playing time is required to improve their skill level and leave ELO hell (Mohammed et al., 2023; Nagorsky & Wiemeyer, 2020).

Unlike other professional sports that require practice fields, special equipment, or structured organizations to play, anyone with a computer can engage with esports titles from the comfort of their home. The accessibility of online gaming allows children, adolescents, and adults to regularly participate in high-stress, competitive environments where sessions can last for multiple hours and occur in close proximity to bedtime (Lee et al., 2021). This fixation on competition that is available at all hours of the night can cause emotional distress, mental fatigue, interfere with sleep quality, and these side effects may negatively affect athletic performance (Palanichamy et al., 2020; Knowles et al., 2018). This review will discuss the relationships between video games, sleep, and subsequent athletic performance.

Physical & Mental Health Side Effects of Gaming

While sleep loss is a major focus of this review, gaming has other significant side effects on a player’s mental and physical health. This section will begin by examining the physical health consequences of extended, repeat gaming sessions and how those issues may affect athletic performance. The ergonomics of PC gaming have been shown to be associated with musculoskeletal (MSK) pain in the low back, neck, and shoulders (Lindberg et al., 2020). In a 2020 study from Denmark, researchers found that over 30% of professional gamers surveyed had chronic low back pain and that pain prevented them from practicing as often as they’d like (Lindberg et al., 2020). Repetitive use injuries and MSK pain caused by prolonged gaming time spent in a seated position with flexion occurring in the hips, lumbar, and thoracic spine, along with internal rotation of the shoulders may also pose injury issues in athletes who participate in contact sports (Watson, 2001). Therefore, it is possible that athletes who game often in a seated position may have a higher risk of injury than their peers who do not spend as much time seated.

Long periods of sitting associated with gaming have also been linked to lower scores in body composition and cardiovascular health (Monteiro Pereira et al., 2022; Emara et al., 2020). A review by Pereira et al. (2022) examined lifestyle and health differences between esports athletes and their age-matched peers who are not professional gamers. The paper showed that esports athletes are more sedentary than age-matched peers, have higher BMI and less lean tissue, higher blood pressure and heart rate, and poorer self-reported mental health scores (Pereira et al., 2019). Gamers may also be at risk of health complications due to poor circulation from sitting and an overall lack of physical activity (Palanichamy et al., 2020). When combined, lower BMI scores and poor cardiovascular health from extended gaming sessions may contribute to worsened recovery and less lean tissue development in athletes.

Gamers may also suffer from mental health complications that include gaming addiction, social and emotional stress, and mental fatigue, which can directly and indirectly affect athletic performance. Gaming addiction is defined by Mohammed et al. (2023) as a “steady and repetitive use of the Internet to play games frequently with different gamers, potentially leading to negative consequences in many aspects of life.” A 2020 systematic review found that “long hours of online gaming was associated with the presence of depression, social phobia, obsession–compulsion, interpersonal sensitivity, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, psychoticism attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and gaming addiction” (Palanichamy et al., 2020). Gaming addiction is a novel and controversial substance abuse diagnosis, but its effect on an athlete’s mental health could result in lower competitive success outcomes in team sports if the disorder causes the athlete to be less cooperative and hostile with teammates.

Finally, long periods of gaming may result in mental fatigue, including central nervous system (CNS) fatigue, that can worsen decision making and decrease neuromuscular efficiency (Davis, 1995; Ismail et al., 2019; Targum et al., 2014). A systematic review from Brown et al. (2020) showed that mentally exhausting tasks of more or less than 30 minutes can result in significantly worsened performance outcomes regarding resistance training and aerobic exercise. Mental fatigue has also been shown to decrease time to exhaustion in endurance athletes (Marcora, Staiano, & Manning, 2009). It is possible that this athletic performance drop is due to acute mental exhaustion, but it may eventually develop into chronic CNS fatigue, or “a negative central influence that exists despite the subject’s full motivation” (Davis, 1995), in gamers who habitually play esports titles for long hours (Kemp et al., 2021). Therefore, it’s important for athletes, gamers, and their coaches to understand the physical performance costs of esports titles and how gaming-induced mental fatigue can affect athletic activities.

Video Games & Sleep

Video games can also impact athletic performance by causing lifestyle changes that impact emotional health, disrupt sleep quality, delay the onset of sleep, and shift circadian rhythms in adult and adolescent gamers (Copenhaver & Diamond, 2017; Palanichamy et al., 2020). In a 2021 study, the sleep quantity, sleep quality, sleep patterns, and self-reported emotional states of 17 professional gamers were evaluated to determine if gaming had any significant effect on these markers (Lee et al., 2021). The results showed that there was a significant correlation between time spent gaming, sleep quality, and depression. The data from this paper also indicate that gaming at night can shift or delay circadian rhythms in esports athletes, possibly resulting in poorer mental health and decreased sleep quality in the later half of the sleeping period. Bonnar et al. (2022) also showed that a circadian rhythm shift in professional gamers can be corrected, indicating that the negative outcomes of extended, late-night gaming sessions are the results of lifestyle choices. Casual gamers may not participate in the same training schedules as professional esports athletes, but they may be at risk of developing many of the same sleep issues with regular play late at night (Kemp et al., 2021). This is especially true in student athletes who must adhere to a strict schedule that revolves around school and sports practice.

Adolescent student athletes are a high-risk population group for sleep disturbances (Copenhaver & Diamond, 2017). Due to adolescents’ unique sleep architecture that favors R.E.M. sleep in the second half of the night, sleep dependent pubertal development processes, and nighttime motor learning and cognitive maturation, quality sleep is essential for the healthy growth of this population (Copenhaver & Diamond, 2017). However, their sensitivity to blue light can cause nighttime gaming to delay sleep onset (Copenhaver & Diamond, 2017). This can be seen in a paper published by Jones et al. (2019) that showed Tweeting late at night can cause basketball players to suffer next day performance issues in shooting accuracy. Therefore, it’s likely the stress from competitive online gaming combined with late-night blue light exposure can significantly disrupt the sleep quality, sleep onset, and cause developmental issues along with recovery problems in young athletes.

Adolescent student athlete gamers and adult hobbyist gamers may have different lifestyle factors that affect sleep quality, but both groups can be negatively affected by sleep loss. Data show that cognitive and athletic performance issues from sleep deprivation in athletes include slower reaction times, slower visual processing speeds, decreased aerobic endurance, decreased muscular strength, and a skewed sense of perceived effort (Bonnar et al., 2019; Patrick et al., 2017; Vitale et al., 2019). These issues can be more severe in training sessions that occur in the afternoon, or further away from an acute loss in sleep (Craven et al., 2022). Most studies show that significant losses in athletic performance occur after multiple nights of inadequate sleep rather than an isolated night of acute sleep deprivation (Knowles et al., 2018). These data suggest that late-night gamers who are student athletes or work early morning hours may experience chronic athletic performance issues if they suffer from truncated sleep caused by habitually gaming late at night.

Conclusion

In conclusion, video games may affect athletic performance by causing significant amounts of mental or CNS fatigue, negatively impacting the emotional and social health of gamers which can lead to depression, and by interfering with restorative sleep habits. It’s important for gamers, athletes, parents, and coaches to understand the potential impact of late-night gaming sessions and how they might impact athletic performance at practice and on game days. To date, there is little available research that investigates the mental workload requirements of long player-vs-player gaming sessions and its effect on subsequent physical performance metrics (muscular strength and power, aerobic endurance, etc). More data in this area will be useful for sports organizations as coaches and parents work to implement healthy boundaries that allow for optimal gaming participation and sports performance.

References

Aeschbach, L. F., Kayser, D., Berbert De Castro Hüsler, A., Opwis, K., & Brühlmann, F. (2023). The Psychology of Esports Players’ Elo Hell: Motivated Bias in league of legends and its impact on players’ overestimation of Skill. Computers in Human Behavior, 147, 107828. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2023.107828

Bonnar, D., Castine, B., Kakoschke, N., & Sharp, G. (2019). Sleep and performance in Eathletes: for the win! Sleep Health, 5(6). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2019.06.007

Bonnar, D., Lee, S., Roane, B. M., Blum, D. J., Kahn, M., Jang, E., Dunican, I. C., Gradisar, M., & Suh, S. (2022). Evaluation of a Brief Sleep Intervention Designed to Improve the Sleep, Mood, and Cognitive Performance of Esports Athletes. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(7). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19074146

Brown, D. M. Y., Graham, J. D., Innes, K. I., Harris, S., Flemington, A., & Bray, S. R. (2020). Effects of Prior Cognitive Exertion on Physical Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. In Sports Medicine (Vol. 50, Issue 3). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-019-01204-8

Craven, J., McCartney, D., Desbrow, B., Sabapathy, S., Bellinger, P., Roberts, L., & Irwin, C. (2022). Effects of Acute Sleep Loss on Physical Performance: A Systematic and Meta-Analytical Review. In Sports Medicine (Vol. 52, Issue 11). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-022-01706-y

Davis, J. M. (1995). Central and peripheral factors in fatigue. Journal of Sports Sciences, 13. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640419508732277

Emara, A. K., Ng, M. K., Cruickshank, J. A., Kampert, M. W., Piuzzi, N. S., Schaffer, J. L., & King, D. (2020). Gamer’s Health Guide: Optimizing Performance, Recognizing Hazards, and Promoting Wellness in Esports. Current Sports Medicine Reports, 19(12). https://doi.org/10.1249/JSR.0000000000000787

Ismail, K. I., Helmi, M., Mohd Kamil, M. K., & Razali, Z. A. (2019). Suboptimal Sleep Among E-athletes: Do E-athletes Need More Game Play to Win? International Journal of Human and Health Sciences (IJHHS). http://dx.doi.org/10.31344/ijhhs.v0i0.146

Kemp, C., Pienaar, P. R., Rosslee, D. T., Lipinska, G., Roden, L. C., & Rae, D. E. (2021). Sleep in Habitual Adult Video Gamers: A Systematic Review. In Frontiers in Neuroscience (Vol. 15). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.781351

Knowles, O. E., Drinkwater, E. J., Urwin, C. S., Lamon, S., & Aisbett, B. (2018). Inadequate sleep and muscle strength: Implications for resistance training. In Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport (Vol. 21, Issue 9). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2018.01.012

Lee, S., Bonnar, D., Roane, B., Gradisar, M., Dunican, I. C., Lastella, M., Maisey, G., & Suh, S. (2021). Sleep characteristics and mood of professional esports athletes: A multi-national study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18020664

Lindberg, L., Nielsen, S. B., Damgaard, M., Sloth, O. R., Rathleff, M. S., & Straszek, C. L. (2020). Musculoskeletal pain is common in competitive gaming: A cross-sectional study among Danish esports athletes. BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsem-2020-000799

Marcora, S. M., Staiano, W., & Manning, V. (2009). Mental fatigue impairs physical performance in humans. Journal of Applied Physiology, 106(3). https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.91324.2008

Mohammad, S., Jan, R. A., & Alsaedi, S. L. (2023). Symptoms, Mechanisms, and Treatments of Video Game Addiction. Cureus, 15(3), e36957. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.36957

Monteiro Pereira, A., Costa, J. A., Verhagen, E., Figueiredo, P., & Brito, J. (2022). Associations Between Esports Participation and Health: A Scoping Review. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 52(9), 2039–2060. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-022-01684-1

Nagorsky, E., & Wiemeyer, J. (2020). The structure of performance and training in esports. PLoS ONE, 15(8 August 2020). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237584

Palanichamy, T., Sharma, M., Sahu, M., & Kanchana, D. (2020). Influence of Esports on stress: A systematic review. Industrial Psychiatry Journal, 29(2). https://doi.org/10.4103/ipj.ipj_195_20

Patrick, Y., Lee, A., Raha, O., Pillai, K., Gupta, S., Sethi, S., Mukeshimana, F., Gerard, L., Moghal, M. U., Saleh, S. N., Smith, S. F., Morrell, M. J., & Moss, J. (2017). Effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive and physical performance in university students. Sleep and Biological Rhythms, 15(3). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41105-017-0099-5

Pereira, A. M., Brito, J., Figueiredo, P., & Verhagen, E. (2019). Virtual sports deserve real sports medical attention. In BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine (Vol. 5, Issue 1). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsem-2019-000606

Shaw, L. (2021, July 7) ‘Dota 2’ tournament to be held in Bucharest with £29million prize pool. NME. https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/dota-2-tournament-to-be-held-in-bucharest-with-29million-prize-pool-2988555

Stanishiva, M. (2023, May 20) How Many Gamers Are There in the World: Essential Gaming Industry Statistics for 2023. Web Tribunal. https://webtribunal.net/blog/how-many-gamers-are-there-in-the-world/

Targum, S. D., Fava, M., Alphs, L. D., Lynn Starr, H., Wessel, T. C., & Hilt, D. C. (2014). Fatigue across the CNS spectrum: a clinical review. Fatigue: Biomedicine, Health and Behavior, 2(4). https://doi.org/10.1080/21641846.2014.959802

Vitale, K. C., Owens, R., Hopkins, S. R., & Malhotra, A. (2019). Sleep Hygiene for Optimizing Recovery in Athletes: Review and Recommendations. International Journal of Sports Medicine, 40(8). https://doi.org/10.1055/a-0905-3103

Watson A. W. (2001). Sports injuries related to flexibility, posture, acceleration, clinical defects, and previous injury, in high-level players of body contact sports. International journal of sports medicine, 22(3), 222–225. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-2001-16383

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Creatine & Exercise Performance

Samuel Stephens — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 03:11:45 +0000

Creatine & Exercise Performance

This post is all about creatine’s effect on exercise performance. Specifically, we’re gonna cover what creatine is, why it’s so effective as a dietary supplement, and how to take it to get the best results in the gym. And if you’d like to do more reading on your own, I’ve got two great review papers linked below.

To start things off, what is creatine?

Creatine is a non-protein amino acid compound that our body uses to fuel high intensity activity through the phosphocreatine shuttle. If you don’t know what that is don’t worry, we’ll talk more about energy systems in a minute. Creatine may not be a protein, but it really likes hanging out with protein. Roughly 95% of our body’s creatine is stored in skeletal muscle, with the last 5% or so being found in other places like the brain. Similar to many other necessary energy substrates, we get some of our daily creatine needs through the foods we eat and the rest is made within our body. Most people consume about 1g of creatine daily with a diet that includes animal products like red meat and seafood. But we need about 3g each day to function properly, so our kidneys and liver work together to endogenously synthesize the rest. However, regardless of how it’s acquired, nearly all creatine in the body makes its way to the muscles and is stored as either creatine phosphate or free creatine.

Creatine monohydrate is the most popular dietary supplement form of creatine, but our bodies ultimately treat it the same as the creatine compounds we’d get from eating a big steak. Creatine monohydrate is shelf stable, relatively inexpensive, and proven to be safe and effective for most healthy people. So to make sure we’re all on the same page, all further mentions of creatine the supplement will be referring to creatine monohydrate.

Ok, great. We now have a basic understanding of creatine. How does this supplement make us better in the gym? To answer that, we need to know just a little bit about energy systems.

Whether we’re napping on the couch or running a max effort 100m sprint, we require energy to function. Luckily, our body is really good at making one specific type of fuel that can be spent to produce energy. And that fuel is ATP, or adenosine triphosphate. ATP is made through a variety of different metabolic processes that occur within three different energy systems. We have the phosphagen system that uses creatine, the glycolytic system that burns carbohydrates, and the oxidative system that primarily breaks down fat. All three of these energy systems work together, but the specific energy demands of any particular activity control which one is most active and for how long.

To help make all of this a bit more understandable, I want you to think of these energy systems as engines with gas tanks. The phosphagen system fuels high-intensity, max effort activity, like sprinting, but its tiny gas tank can only last for 10-15 seconds. The glycolytic system fuels more moderate to high intensity exercise and can do so for 2-3 minutes. And although the oxidative system has a really small engine, it can run for hours and hours due to how much body fat most of us have stored. Even just a few pounds of fat contain thousands of calories.

Let’s zoom in on the phosphagen gas tank and talk about what creatine actually does for us in the gym.

As mentioned before, a normal, healthy diet combined with what our body makes internally can supply us with about 1-3g of creatine each day. This is enough to sustain essential bodily functions and fuel high intensity exercise, but as you can see here, a typical diet doesn’t completely saturate intramuscular creatine stores – a big chunk of this tank is still empty. Why is this so bad for strength and size gains? Simply put, if our phosphagen system isn’t fully fueled, our max effort engine will be forced to shut down sooner.

In a real world setting, the tank on the left might help us knock out 8 challenging reps on bench press. But the tank on the right may produce 9 or 10 reps with the same weight. Creatine supplementation also allows for faster refueling of this tank between sets and this can lead to more consistency during workouts. If you normally start off strong in sets 1 and 2 but eventually lose reps to fatigue in sets 3 or 4, creatine can help fix that issue. An extra rep here and there might not seem like that big of a deal, but a 5-10% improvement in each session is huge when compounded over time.

Creatine doesn’t directly stimulate muscle growth and it likely isn’t contributing much if anything to recovery outside of the gym, creatine’s most significant contribution to exercise performance is the ability to do more work. And if we can do more work in the gym and experience higher quality workouts, we can gain more strength and size over time. Sessions focused on hypertrophy will likely benefit from more mechanical tension and greater fiber activation, while strength workouts may see improvements due to faster rates of force development and quicker inter-set recovery times. Creatine isn’t some crazy anabolic super drug that transforms us into the Hulk overnight, it simply makes our workouts better by giving us more energy to perform them well.

Now that we know how creatine works and have realistic expectations about the supplement, let’s cover how to take it.

Creatine supplementation is really straightforward. You can either implement a loading phase to see performance benefits faster, or stick to a flat dosage to keep things simple. To do the loading phase, take 4 individual servings of 5g of creatine for the first week, then drop down to one serving of 5g per day. The total recommended daily quantity during the loading phase is 0.3g of creatine per kilogram of bodyweight, but 20g per day is fine for most people. Luckily, most creatine supplements come with a 5g scoop included, so it’s easy to stick with 5g increments. If all of that sounds like too much work, simply take 5g per day. This graph helps show the difference in time between the two protocols. You can see that the loading phase spikes intramuscular creatine stores in about a week, while the flat dosage takes roughly a month, but they both reach the same point. So if you want to experience the benefits of creatine faster, go with the loading protocol, but if you want to keep things simple, do the flat dosage. Don’t overcomplicate this part, just do what you think is best for you.

Alright. Let’s recap everything and wrap it up.

What is creatine? It’s an amino acid compound that our body uses to fuel max effort activity through the phosphagen energy system. Why is creatine so effective as a dietary supplement? It helps us do more high quality work in the gym, more work means better workouts, and better workouts lead to greater gains in size and strength. And finally, how do we take it? Either by following a loading protocol for the first week or by sticking to a flat dosage of roughly 5g per day. There’s a ton of other neat research on creatine and cognitive performance, like improved memory and decreased mental fatigue, but that’s a topic for another video.

Thanks so much for watching, everyone. This was a fun one to make. If you have topic suggestions for other videos like this, let me know. Check out Fitstra.com for free workout programs and other similar fitness information. See ya next time.

References

Hall, M., Manetta, E., & Tupper, K. (2021). Creatine supplementation: An update. Current Sports Medicine Reports, 20(7), 338–344. https://doi.org/10.1249/jsr.0000000000000863

Kreider, R. B., Kalman, D. S., Antonio, J., Ziegenfuss, T. N., Wildman, R., Collins, R., … Lopez, H. L. (2017). International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12970-017-0173-z

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