Strength and Conditioning Methodology

Sticking with an exercise routine is easier said than done. Burn out is a common culprit. Lee’s experience has allowed him to  identify five sabotagers of the common workout routine:  too hard, too much, too often and too soon.  Let Lee plan your personal routine to fit your fitness needs.

When properly performed, Lee’s strength and conditioning workouts can provide significant functional benefits and improvement in overall health and well-being, including:

1. Increased bone
2. Muscle
3. Tendon and ligament strength and toughness
4. Improved joint function
5. Reduced potential for injury
6. Increased bone density
7. Temporary increase in metabolism
8. Improved cardiac function
9. Elevated HDL (good) cholesterol

Lee’s training routines use the technique of progressively increasing the force output of the muscle through incremental increases of weight, elastic tension or other resistance, and uses a variety of exercises and types of equipment to target specific muscle groups.

Lee’s clients typically perform one to six sets per exercise, and one to three exercises per muscle group, with short breaks between each set – the specific combinations of reps, exercises, sets and break duration depends on the goals of the individual program. The duration of these breaks determines which energy system the body utilizes. Performing a series of exercises with little or no rest between them, referred to as “circuit training,” will draw energy mostly from the aerobic system. Brief bursts of exercise, separated by breaks, are fueled by anaerobic systems, which use either phosphagens or glycolysis.

For clients looking to improve their endurance, Lee will gradually increases the exercise in volume and decrease in intensity.

Lee’s found—for strength training beginners—multiple-sets offers minimal benefits over single-set training with respect to either strength gain or muscle mass increase, but for the experienced client multiple-set systems are required for optimal progress. However, one study shows that for leg muscles, three sets are more effective than one set. (NSCA)

Beginning weight-trainers are in the process of training the neurological aspects of strength, the ability of the brain to generate a rate of neuronal action potentials that will produce a muscular contraction that is close to the maximum of the muscle’s potential

Weights for each exercise should be chosen so that the desired number of repetitions can just be achieved without breaking up the set.

Intensity, volume, and frequency

Three important variables of strength training are intensity, volume and frequency. Intensity refers to the amount of work required to achieve the activity, and is proportional to the mass of the weights being lifted. Volume refers to the number of muscles worked, exercises, sets and reps during a single session. Frequency refers to how many training sessions are performed per week.

These variables are important because they are all mutually conflicting, as the muscle only has so much strength and endurance, and takes time to recover due to microtrauma. Increasing one by any significant amount necessitates the decrease of the other two, e.g. increasing weight means a reduction of reps, and will require more recovery time and therefore fewer workouts per week. Trying to push too much intensity, volume and frequency will result in overtraining, and eventually lead to injury and other health issues such as chronic soreness and general lethargy, illness or even acute trauma such as avulsion fractures. A high-medium-low formula can be used to avoid overtraining, with either intensity, volume, or frequency being high, one of the others being medium, and the other being low. One example of this training strategy can be found in the following chart:

A common training strategy is to set the volume and frequency the same each week (e.g. training 3 times per week, with 2 sets of 12 reps each workout), and steadily increase the intensity (weight) on a weekly basis. However, to maximize progress to specific goals, individual programs may require different manipulations, such as decreasing the weight, and increase volume or frequency. Lee’s expertise and careful evaluation helps him create a strength and conditioning specific to the individual.

Lee’s found that daily program alterations seem to be more efficient in eliciting strength gains than doing so every 4 weeks (linear periodization), but for beginners there are no differences between different periodization models.

Periodization

There are many complicated definitions for periodization, but the term simply means the division of the overall training program into periods that accomplish different goals. Lee’s programs consider the modulating of volume, intensity, and frequency over time, to both stimulate gains and allow recovery.

In some programs for example; volume is decreased during a training cycle while intensity is increased. In this template, a lifter would begin a training cycle with a higher rep range than he will finish with.

For this example, the lifter has a 1rep max of 225 lb:

This is an example of periodization where the number of repetitions decreases while the weight increases.