Weight Training Fitness Program: The Basics

A good weight training fitness program will be designed to fit your specific needs.

These needs could be:

• A better more muscular physique
• Greater strength and power
• Greater strength, power, speed and endurance for a specific sport

In order to understand how we can achieve these goals with a weight training fitness program let us first look at how the muscle works before we look at the training techniques employed to stimulate different muscle fibres.

But why is knowing this important?

Because by understanding how different fibres perform differently it is possible to incorporate weight training fitness programs that stimulate different fibre types.

Remember and this is important the muscle is made up of all three fibre types. In order to develop the muscle as a whole then you need to train the muscle as a whole.

Also it is important to add variety and keep training programs consistent in order to achieve good results as this article by Mike Geary explains that...

The best way to structure your workouts to get the best results is to be consistent and try to continually improve on a specific training method for a specific time period. A time period of 4-8 weeks usually works best as your body will adapt to the specific training method and progress will slow after this amount of time.

Also you can adapt your weight training fitness program to help you improve your sport - do you want to sprint faster or do you want to develop your endurance in order to complete that marathon you always wanted to enter?

Muscles in the body are defined by three different catagories:

Skeletal: Also known as striated or voluntary, joined to the tendon it controls skeletal movement and is largley under conscious control (except the postural muscles which are under subconciouse control.

Smooth: Found in hollow wall structures such as the gut, blood vessels and the bladder. It is under the control of the autonomic nervous system so therefore is not under conscious control.

Cardiac: Although similar to striated muscles it is not under concious control but is controled by the autonomic nervouse system.

It is the Skeletal muscle that we are focusing on as it is responsible for body movement. The diagrams list the major skeletal muscles.

Each skeletal muscle fibre is bound together by connective tissue (epimysium), and divided into groups or fascicles by a sheath (perimysium). Within these fascicles, each muscle fibre is surrounded by an endomysium. The whole muscle is attached to bone by a tough fibrous band - the muscle tendon.

The muscle fibre is in general made up of Fast twitch or Slow twitch types.

Type I. Slow twitch:

These slow twitch fibres are more efficient at using oxygen to generate more fuel and are considered aerobic (with oxygen) for continuous, extended muscle contractions over a long time.

They fire more slowly than fast twitch fibres and can go for a long time before they fatigue. Therefore, slow twitch fibres are great at helping athletes run marathons and bicycle for hours.

Type II. Fast twitch and can be further split into 2 catagories:

These fibres contract quickly and are recruited when heavy work is demanded of the muscle i.e. for strength and power. These short bursts of energy they provide is good for high intensity activities (see Type IIb below).

Type IIa Fast twitch:

or intermediate fast-twitch fibres can use both the anerobic (without oxygen) and aerobic metabolism for fuel. Type IIa muscle fibers are intermediate and their properties lie between type I and type IIb.

Type IIb Fast twitch:

These muscle fibres use anaerobic metabolism to create energy. Of both types of Fast twitch muscle these are the most suited for short fast bursts of power. These muscle fibers are used in such activities as sprinting, powerlifting, and bodybuilding (they could also improve your swing at golf).

Some people are born with certain genetic conditions and could either have more fast twitch fibres to slow twitch fibres ratio or vise versa (meaning that some athletes are more naturally suited to either endurance or power sports).

However science does show that it could be possible to stimulate different fibre types and change the fast to slow twich ratio by incorporating variations in weight training fitness programs.

This is where we come to the different types of weight training fitness programs that can be used to achieve this.

Before we get to the nitty gritty though we need a brief explanation of the terminology used first.

Terminology:

Rep: short for repetition.

This is the movement of a weight (whether that weight is a dumbell, barbell, body weight or elastic tension bands) through a range of motion. For example a barbell curl starting with the weight at thigh level and 'curled up' towards the chest is 1 rep.

Set.

This consists of several repetitons performed together one after the other until the desired amount is achieved (this depends on the goal desired). For example 10 reps completed equals 1 set of 10 reps.

1 Rep Maximum or 1RM.

This is the maximum weight an individual can perform only 1 repetition. It is from this that calculations of percentages of your 1RM can be used to achieve various results, whether that is increased strength, muscle size or muscle endurance.

So therfore in order to:

1. Develop muscular strength: Perform 1 to 5 reps at 80-90% 1RM; rest between sets in mins 2-6. Sets 4-7.
   Some arguments support performing 1 rep at 100% of 1RM for 1 set per muscle group, however this could put anybody but the most experienced athelete at risk of injury. If you are a beginner stick to a basic weight training fitness program!

   Scientific evidence does suggest that 5 or 6 reps at about 85% of 1RM can still produce good results yet is much safer.

2. Develop muscular Power: Perform 1 to 5 reps at 70-90% 1RM; rest between sets in mins 2-6. Sets 3-5.
3. Develop Muscle size (Hypertrophy): Perform 8-15 reps at 60 -80% 1RM; rest between sets in mins 2-5. Sets 4-8.
4. Develop Muscle Endurance: Perform 25-60 reps at 40 -60% 1RM; rest between sets in mins 1-2. Sets 2-4.

In general the higher the amount of reps, the more slow twitch fibres you work.

The lower the amount of reps, the more fast twitch fibres you work.

Sets in the 1-5 rep range don't recruit as many fast twitch fibres as sets in the 6-12 rep range. They do, however recruit a higher percentage of fast twitch fibres compared to slow twitch.

Some people may respond differently as we all have a different genetic makup so once you become more familiar with how your body responds try adjusting the reps or percentages but try to keep within the guidlines as outlined above.

Various methods can be used as well in order to further stimulate muscle fibres or to go beyond muscle failure (fatigue).

Some of the more well known include:

1. Forced Reps: When the final rep is reached (at which point the muscle is fully fatigued) a training partner will assist (or spot) in forcing another 1-2 reps beyond failure
2. Supersets: Two exercises of a similar type such as dumb bell flyes and bench presses are performed back to back with no rest periods.
3. Pyramid sets: This where the weight is first increased and then decreased over a series of typically 5 sets. for example 12, 10, 8, 10 and 12 reps. The first 2 sets use light to moderate weights to warm up the muscle. The middle set is the working set and uses the heaviest weight and the last 2 sets use lighter weights to further fatigue the muscles

The above is just a guide some may have different opinions as to exact percentages and rep ranges but these ideas do not vary a great deal from the above. Try variety in your weight training fitness program to help you maximise your results whether it is in sport or for building muscle mass.

So to summarize:

Fast twitch and slow twitch respond differently to different set quantities and resistance levels.

Sets with reps in the:

1 to 5 five range generally good for strength, with heavier weight.

6 to 12 range develop a good balance of strength, muscle size and endurance, with mid ranges of weight.

13 to 20 develop endurance, with some increase to muscle size and limited impact on strength, with lighter weights.

more than 20 reps with very light weight are considered to be aerobic. They still use the anerobic system but usually at a rate that can remove the lactic acid generated from it