What way is best to train with weights?
Hello, everyone. Good morning. So as we get into the next phase of focusing on protecting our muscle mass, losing fat, all our stuff, we have to start talking more about resistance training, what the hell it is, why we're doing it. Resistance training has been around for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks did it.
Speaker 1:The the Romans did it. The gladiates. Everyone knew that working your body against some resistance, whether it whatever the weight is, whether it's a bloody stone like Hercules or there's a kettlebell, barbell, your own body weight, whatever. We've known training against that improves. But it's only been since about the nineteen seventies that research into, you know, the competitive advantages of resistance training were taken seriously, and obviously mainly to do with, like, pursuing, like, gold in Olympic games and everything like that.
Speaker 1:There's more and more research and recently, more and more research on women. It was harder to do research on women due to more variables due to the cycling stuff, but now there's more and more but it needs to improve. But what do we know now? What do we know now about resistance training that can help us? Is there an optimal way to lift or to do resistance training for muscle muscle gain?
Speaker 1:And the thing we wanna look at today is the speed in which you do your reps. And the reps is, like, if you if I said to you to do 10 squats, that means 10 repetitions of squats, so 10 reps of squats. So the 10 reps is just you going down into a squat backup as one rep. Is the speed of you doing that impacting your results? Right.
Speaker 1:So this was a this was looking at a meta analysis of randomized controlled trials, which is great because it looks at the cause and effect. And I looked at 14 studies to review over two seventy people. The average length of the research was about eight weeks, and there was at least two workouts a week, and they were looking at the tempos going down in less than a second, and then the other one was going down in three seconds. So like imagine you're squatting and it's like you're going down slow like one, two, three, and then up slow one, two, three, you know? Or you just drop and you go up.
Speaker 1:You just go one, and you go down and up. Does that make sense? And think of this for all of the exercises. Right? So what did the study find?
Speaker 1:Basically, there's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny advantage in most of them for the faster lifts, actually, the more explosive lifts. But the difference is so small, it doesn't actually matter. So it is a tiny variable in the grand scheme. The only time you should actually think about tempo is that if you are limited by the weights at home and you're doing a squat and you're now doing 15 squats and it's easy, right? And you're in the app and you're saying, right, 15 squats is easy.
Speaker 1:And the app says, look, your sets gotta be quite hard for them to count. So you say, how do I make the set harder? I don't have weight. You could hold like water bottles and stuff, but you say, for example, you don't. One way to make it harder is to slow down on the way down and then explode up because then you're spending more time under tension is called, more time with your quads and your glutes and your hamstrings working in the squat.
Speaker 1:Because if you go down that very fast, well, it's over. You know I mean? And if you haven't got and if if you don't got the weight to do that with, it's not giving you the tension you need. So in that case, you'd slow down to make sure you're spending more time in there, then it will get harder. So instead of doing 15 reps, you might then be able to do 10 reps and you've improved the intent, increased the intensity, which is great.
Speaker 1:But there's a lot out there back in the day. I remember when I started training, there was like four one two one methods, you know, four seconds down, hold for one second, explode up, or go up for two seconds, hold. And it's just you're just thinking about it too much. Instead, just do the exercise with good form at your own natural pace. Right?
Speaker 1:Which is great news. Which is great news. The natural tempo should be the thing that is best for you. And when you start doing the strength training, you gotta remember, your goal isn't to, like, try and completely fail in the exercise. Your goal isn't to, oh my god, like, if I don't do this, like, fully, like a video show.
Speaker 1:Like, for example, in some of the videos of the squats, they're going all the way down all the back up. Okay. Maybe you can't go all the way down all the back up, and you can only bend your knees 20 degrees for now. That's fine. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:If you're if it says for you to do a chair sit chair squat, you can put cushions on the chair too. You don't have to start doing everything with a full range of motion. That's what we call it full range of motion. Because full range of motion for every exercise out there, not everyone can do it anyway, even people that train regularly. So don't be discouraged that you can't do the exercises with a full range of motion or you feel like what's the point?
Speaker 1:I'm just bending my arms a bit. Everyone starts somewhere. You're going to start somewhere and you're going to keep progressing. You know, if you can't do any press ups, you can't do press ups with your knees, then you can press off the wall standing up. It's very safe.
Speaker 1:You push off the wall. Make sure your hands are placed well. You push off the wall and then back up, and then you're using that as the exercise. And you think I could do 10. Maybe I could do five.
Speaker 1:But you start there. Right? Because what matters is the intensity for you is hard. It doesn't matter if someone can do 100 kilogram bench press. You think, oh, well, they're doing they're using loads of weight for their chest exercises, and I'm only pressing off the wall.
Speaker 1:How am I gonna get the same results? Because your body hasn't gone through the tension and the the progress they they saw in the app, but you're still in the same boat because both of you are pushing the same amount of intensity. You're doing eight to 10 reps, and it's very hard for you both. Does it make sense? So that's why there's no point in comparing.
Speaker 1:There's no point in comparing. You gotta do what's what's tough for you. And I think don't worry too much that, you know, you gotta do full workers in the gym and stuff. I did a workout yesterday. I was thinking, do I go gym or not?
Speaker 1:And I said, I'm your partner. Let's do a workout at home, went on LeanShield. I had a full workout full body workout too, but I said I want a body weight workout. And because it's I'm done as an advanced trainer, I trained in many years, it gave me body weight workouts that were difficult. You know?
Speaker 1:There was pistol squats, but with support of the wall, very difficult. You know? Very difficult. Mountain climbers for abs tires you out, you know, we were doing, pike press ups very hard, press ups, Superman poles very hard too, like, know, it looks easy, but it's difficult. So even I was able to get as someone who goes to the gym, a very, very effective homeworker without any weight.
Speaker 1:And there's benefits to that too because I was pushing myself and now we are, you know, as as failing alien reps and the sets. So that's the important part, guys. So when you start in this week, when you're getting into it, if you're not training yet, you're not doing anything yet, just get started with something. Something is a lot in terms of the results you're gonna get. Right?
Speaker 1:Doing something small, the benefits are huge. And I just wanna leave you with that today. I wanna leave you with the fact that you can train at the speed that suits you, and you can train at home with what works for you, you're gonna get amazing benefits from doing it. I promise you. So the good news is in the research, we don't have to train in a very specific way.
Speaker 1:We do what's safe and effective for us and make sure we do good form. So watch videos. Make sure a good rule of thumb is when you're doing exercises in in resistance exercises, if you're doing squats or anything to do with your back. So just make sure you're engaging your core, which is like your ab region. You know, make sure you're like tensing that up and tensing your glutes, aka your ass, and make sure you have that strong base where your the the middle part of your body is, you know, locked in in a sense.
Speaker 1:Just as a general rule of thumb because sometimes we can be a bit flappy. You know? Sometimes we can be a bit like, I'm just gonna lift this my arm. It's like, no, your body needs to be engaged. Most exercises, yes, if I'm doing an exercise like bent over row, which is I'm bending over a bit with a dumbbell, I'm rolling it back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's working on my biceps and my my lats and my back, but I'm still engaging the rest of my body. I'm still in a strong structural position. You know, I'm not flapping and just lifting my arm up and down. No, I'm engaging my core and getting into a good powerful stance, making sure that it's my back that's doing the work and nothing else. Same with everything when you're doing squats, you want to keep your chest up, you're gonna look up a bit, like, you know, like up towards the ceiling, keep your back straight.
Speaker 1:Then And you wanna sit back down. You wanna keep the abs tensed. You wanna keep the glutes activated, and you wanna go down. You wanna feel you wanna feel powerful. You wanna feel structure, and you're gonna go up.
Speaker 1:Just rule some. But anyway, if you've had an a weekend of gorging, look, it's January. Things do happen. But if anything today, guys, get your protein in and get some training in. Even if your calories go over, let's just get some resistance training going this week.
Speaker 1:Start the week off well. Start the week off protecting our muscle in the best way possible. But have a good day, everyone. See you soon.
