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Makwa
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+ 10 Pushing the Envelope…. Rotate Training Stresses for Maximum Gains

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I am sure it is clear to anyone who has spent any time in the gym that as you become more advanced the more efficient your training becomes. The stresses you can tolerate on your muscular and nervous systems greatly increase. Now to go along with this you should also be able to correspondingly increase your ability to further stress these systems. So as you progress through your weekly workouts you can start to eventually burn out your muscular recuperative abilities and/or your central nervous system as you get deeper into your routine. This is obviously what we want to avoid since burning out any of these systems is a major setback to progress.

So, how do we avoid this burnout while still maintaining a high level of training? The simplest way to do this is to rotate the types of training stresses from workout to workout. I am coming at this from a hypertrophy point of view where our type of training can easily burn out our ability to recover from volume, tissue breakdown, oxidation and acidity (lactic acid).

Basically, there are training stresses we can rotate from workout to workout and they consist of three different types. Essentially rotating through these will prevent overtraining. You are not continually overloading the same type of systems day in a day out every workout but you are still training at a high level but focusing on different stressors.

1. Volume Type Training

Unless you just crawled out from underneath a rock, you know what volume training is. These types of workouts will stress your body by increasing stress on your muscle tissue. There will also be a lot of stress on glucose transport and the faster energy systems like ATP production. Training like this tends to be the most inflammatory on your body.

2. Neurological Type Training

These types of workouts are your lower reps, more rest, heavier loads, and faster tempos. Your typically power and strength-type movements. These require maximum output from your central nervous system to contract a lot of tissue all at once. Obviously you would expect your CNS to be the most fatigued system from these workouts. You probably already know this but your CNS typically takes at least a day or sometimes more to recover than the actual muscle tissue itself. Often times your muscles feel ready to go but your CNS may not be. By avoiding overloading your CNS on consecutive days, you give it a chance to recover while you train using the other types.

3. Metabolic Type Training

These are the workouts that really get you sweating. They are the densest which essentially means they have the highest work:rest ratio. You are cranking out lots of reps with very little rest. This puts a significant amount of stress on your metabolism to keep it fueled with energy which creates a high level of acid production and oxidation. You are feeling the burn with these workouts. Awesome for improving your metabolic efficiency and great for conditioning and muscle building as well. Acidosis and oxidative stress are obviously the primary concerns here.

Chronic acidosis and oxidative stress can catch up to you if you don’t stay on top of it which will result in performance and recovery drop-offs. When these systems are taxed out, all the energy production in your body spikes down making you feel tired, flat, and your performance in the gym bottoming out. Giving yourself a break from these high lactic/oxidative workouts is a great way to allow your body to catch up on clearing out the acids and oxidants.

Wrapping it up

When setting up your routine you never want to stress/train the same system two consecutive days in a row. This will give your body as a whole more time to recover from each type of training stress while taking advantage of a revived energy system for your next workout. Where this really comes into play is for those of you who are closest to pushing the envelope as far as recovery goes and training at a high level. Even for those not pushing it to the extreme, rotating the training stresses will still be a benefit to you just due to the variation that it will provide in your training.

johnmarshall12's picture

Metabolic training is great for newbies who are looking to drop fat and get leaner. If they watch their diet I have seen some great results from this! Great post! + 1

Johnny Bravo's picture

I’ve kinda been doing something similar and it seems to work really well for me. I start with heavy lower body then do volume on upper body. For example I’ll do heavy deadlifts and then after do volume with chest/tris. The next time I’ll do heavy pressing first and volume for the posterior chain next. This way each muscle group gets a heavy and light day So it’s hit twice a week with two different training approaches.

The only downside I’ve noticed is I have to cut the volume lower than a typical volume workout or else I burn out.

heavymetalmonsterD's picture

+1 brother fantastic post

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dextetherdog's picture

Great thoughts and knowledge here, Makwa. To me there has to be some sort of system or plan so that you know where you’re heading. Just throwing random workouts and not knowing what body part you’re doing when you get to the gym is probably not the best approach.
To me the main goal of any training program (training approach) is progress, my lifts recorded in the notepad have to go up, if this does not happen, something has to be changed.

Christophany's picture

Awesome post, man! Are you also of the mentality that one should scale it back every 5--6 weeks (for about a 7 day period) so their CNS can recover?

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Makwa's picture

My routines are all layed out over a 6 wk period. Once that 6 wk routine is complete I'll take at least 3 days and maybe a day or two more completely off from the gym to just make sure I am fully recuperated and focused and ready to go for the next 6 wk routine. My routines ramp up to an all out blitz for those last two weeks so I really feel taking a break from everything before starting the new one back up is beneficial under those circumstances. Just really need to listen to your body. If you are feeling constantly fatigued, losing strength or losing focus, then take a few extra days off. If not, then just keep plugging away. Following something like this though, should allow you train longer before needing a break since you are avoiding over taxing those systems in the first place and should be able to just keep plugging away.

press1's picture

Very good balanced & informative article mate from both a strength and hypertrophy point of view. Sometimes I can knock out my CNS for 3 days if I'm not careful by simply adding an extra compound exercise etc and the whole weeks training can be messed up! Its a very fine line keeping rest and recovery at a maximum and at the same time keeping up frequency rates without burning out.

addicted.to.pain's picture

I needed this read , helps me remember the importance of rest and recovery.

I think I am gonna try a 3 on 1 off schedule , I need a change, my muscles/body do not feel worked properly, I rotate exercises and consistently increase weight, still something is missing

Nice write up Makwa, when is that EXP gonna change to GURU

herpjunkie111's picture

Great write up Mak, really puts things in perspective.

The workout you wrote that I'm doing right now kinda consists of all three types you mentioned, correct? There are exercises in each day's routine that are high rep/moderate weight and also some low rep/heavy weight. Then you're doing chest/back/legs twice per week and shoulders only once, so there's also decent volume on those groups and of course arms every single day so HEAVY arm volume.

I'm on my third day of rest before I start my 3rd seven day cycle and feel great - can't wait for tomorrow to start back. Probably has something to do with all the carbs I've had today, lol. I do have to admit though my arms are still a tiny bit sore, more the brachioradialis than anything.

Makwa's picture

that workout is pretty much centered around volume and metabolic training. You are essentially taxing those systems every day. This is a somewhat different workout in respect that the recuperation occurs in the 3 consecutive days off you take where with a more traditional type of split you could rotate your training systems to allow recuperation. Couple of ways to skin the cat here.

herpjunkie111's picture

I gotcha.

So if you're doing a standard 5-day split type workout where you work a specific group each day, say on day 1 you do heavy bench presses and flyes, etc with low rep/longer rest periods, then next day you do back you should go lighter and just do more volume? Then when that workout cycle is over the next week for chest do the volume work on chest and heavy work on back. This will yield much better gains in tthe long run?

Makwa's picture

yeah I think you got it.

A five day split for me would be something like:

Day 1 Back/Rear Delts
Day 2 Hams/calves
Day 3 Chest/side delts
Day 4 Arms/abs
Day 5 quads/calves
Day 6 Rest
Day 7 Repeat

Day 1 I would start with something like a volume workout
Day 2 Metabolic
Day 3 Neurolgic
Day 4 another volume
Day 5 Metabolic

Day 7 starts over. This time I may want to hit back/rear delts this week a metabolic workout and then day 2 for my hams/calves hit them with a neurologic type workout and so on. The key to this is to not do say 2 back to back volume workouts for instance.

SickRick's picture

I think this is something I’m going to give a shot, I’ve never thought of approaching the workouts with that type of method. My workouts have been kinda sloppy lately and this seems like it would be a good switch up of things. Good write up, thanks for the info!

wanted's picture

How do you figure cardio into your workout split

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Makwa's picture

I hate cardio so I normally don't do anything. Typically mowing the lawn or yard work is my cardio. I can't plug away on a treadmill or stairstepper. To mind numbing for me. My workouts are pretty good cardio though. My average heart rate during my workouts range from 115 to 120 bpm which is a good fat burning zone. Metabolic training is a really good form of cardio actually and I can peak out at 150+ bpm for short spurts. Now, if I was forced to do cardio I would do it on my scheduled off day from the weights.

herpjunkie111's picture

I get my cardio in every evening when my dog powerwalks me for a couple miles.

herpjunkie111's picture

Makes sense, something to try once I finish the brutal month of arms. I have definitely experienced issues going 3 days in a row doing both consecutive heavy or volume workouts in the past, that's why alot of times I do 2 days on and 1 day off.

I also think using liquid pwo too often tends to really stress the CNS, so lately I've been avoiding it and just getting my energy from carbs. Apple's and bananas never give me the jitters.....