Do you know how long your workout is supposed to be? Well, it depends on how hard you plan on training. In this video, I am going to explain the relationship between workout intensity and workout length and how you can identify different ways to change the intensity of your workouts.
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So the question that starts the whole discussion is “how long should my workout be?” And my answer is simple; “how intense is your workout going to be?” You see, the relationship between workout time and workout intensity is a delicate balance that needs to be understood. The harder you train, the more intensity is featured in the workout, the shorter it is going to be.
When it comes to building muscle, I’ve always preached the concept that you can train hard or you can train long, but you can’t do both. If you are going to be training to failure on every set and pushing yourself as hard as you can on every set, you won’t have the ability to train for a very long time in a single workout. That means that not only does workout duration start to come down, but so does the overall volume of the workout.
You see, if you are training for high durations and high volumes, workout intensity has to go down in the process. That means that every set you do, you are coming up short of failure. If you are not reaching failure, you need extra volume to make up the difference if you want to build muscle.
But what would you do if you want to keep your workouts short? You need to ratchet up the intensity to grow muscle and come back bigger and stronger. One of the best ways to do ensure intensity in a workout is to introduce intensity techniques that will ensure failure on every exercise you do.
For example, you can do something called effective reps. This style of workout is highly intense and ensures that you are not only going to, but you are going through failure as well. You start with an ignition set of 10-12 reps then you rest up to 30 seconds and start your reps again to failure. Now, you will find that the number of reps you can do in a set will come down from 10-12 to about 7-9. Once you reach failure, you will again rest up to 30 seconds before you start your reps again to failure. Now, you might only get 4 or 5, then maybe 2 or 3 after that. You keep going in this fashion until your targeted number of effective reps are reached.
This is a very simple way to ratchet up the intensity of your workout in order to bring the total workout duration time down. Since you are going to and through failure multiple times, you won’t need nearly as much volume as you would as if you were simply stopping each set at 12 reps a few reps shy of failure.
It’s also important to understand what failure actually looks and feels like. Too often do I see someone say that they stopped their set 1-2 reps shy of failure, yet just looking at them perform the set, they aren’t even coming close. They’re maybe 4-5 reps shy of failure, not 1-2. If that’s the case, the workout is not nearly as intense as they are making it out to be which means they are leaving muscle growth on the table.
Introducing intensity techniques is one simple way to ensure that you are reaching failure on every set and increasing the intensity of your workouts and bringing the amount of time you spend in the gym down.
Another intensity technique that you can introduce is something called a trap set. By manipulating the duration of the concentric and the eccentric on every rep, you are manipulating the amount of time your muscles are under adequate tension. As we know, tension is the main driver behind muscle hypertrophy. That’s why the internet scientists have been pushing the concepts of stretch and lengthened partial reps as of late. They are not secrets to muscle growth, but a greater understanding of what we’ve known all along.
Stretch is applied tension to the muscles, but with the addition of weight, there is extra tension being applied in this stretch position. Partial reps are just continued tension after reaching concentric failure. Any way we can increase tension on the muscles is going to be an added benefit when it comes to building muscle.
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