Let’s Get Pumped!

Most exercise and wellness goals require some type of strength training. People don’t like hearing this because, frankly, lacing up your sneakers and going for a walk or bike ride is just easier. It requires far less equipment (although body weight only workouts rock) and most of the exercises we associate with cardio – walking, running, biking, swimming – are activities we learned to do really young and have mastered. Strength training requires not just a different mind-set, but different knowledge and skills to pull off.

A few weeks ago, I posted about making the most out of cardio workouts and now I want to take a second to talk about how to arrange your strength workouts to better line up with your goals. Just as with cardio, frequency, intensity, and volume are the variables you are looking to manipulate. Frequency for strength training refers to the number of times per week a given muscle or muscle group is challenged. This is a tad trickier than we saw with cardio because someone training with a low frequency (i.e. only stressing a muscle group once) may be training with more intensity thus requiring more rest and training different muscle groups on different days (called split routines). This means they might actually be strength training more total days per week. Intensity refers to the amount of weight being lifted, usually in terms of the percentage of your maximum. Volume refers to how much work is being done. For my physics haters out there, work is how much weight is being moved over a distance. So, in strength training, literally how many exercises for a particular muscle times the number of sets times the number of reps.

Again, just as with cardiovascular training, frequency, intensity, and volume each have a low to high continuum and all three variables should not be high at the same time. For example, someone who is lifting a total body routine 3 times per week at 60% of max for two sets of 12 reps has a high frequency, moderate intensity, and low to moderate volume. The more specific goal(s) you have can help you determine where you should plan your frequency, intensity, and volume to be.

Generally speaking, goals fall under one of four larger umbrellas. Health/mobility comprises the first umbrella, fitness the second, power the third, and size the fourth. It is important to note, that weight loss can fall under either of the first two umbrellas depending upon other factors (i.e. if high blood pressure or joints problems also exist, umbrella one).

Training for health or mobility is a situation where, at least in most cases, the amount of weight lifted is not of high importance. In these cases, you want to increase your capacity so that daily activities are easier to complete and pain can be abated. Training under this umbrella is usually high frequency with a low intensity and moderate volume.

Training for power involves not only lifting a larger amount of weight, but being able to perform the exercises quickly. Power is the fundamental key to every awesome thing the talking heads on ESPN rave about when an athlete exhibits them (i.e agility, quickness, reactivity). Training under this umbrella is usually low frequency, moderate intensity, high volume. And with speed. These are the lifters you see doing plyometrics.

Training for size involves lifting a ridiculous amount of weight and doing so to stimulate the muscle tissue to grow. This is commonly called hypertrophy training and there a tons of different ways to do it, some of which are very goal specific (the difference between bodybuilding and powerlifting, for example). But, at the core, they are generally low frequency, high intensity, moderate volume plans.

If you are paying attention, and I hope you are, you probably noticed I skipped over the fitness umbrella. Not an oversight. There are tons of different goals that fall under this umbrella and tons of different programs. The individuals who train here usually don’t fall into one of the other categories. The common theme is that the majority of these programs are moderate intensity. However, there is interplay between frequency and volume for these lifters. The frequency is usually what determines volume. Higher frequency programs mean moderate volume so that the muscle tissue can recover. Low frequency programs can allow for higher volume training.

And, if your head is spinning from all those frequencies and high/lows, here’s a little chart…

Please remember, these are general guidelines. They aren’t the definitive rules and they don’t necessarily work for each individual. Ask a professional if you have questions! And, hey, I answer email!