Jürgen Giessing

High Intensity Training

High Intensity Training

How to build muscles in minutes – fast, efficient, and healthy

by

Jürgen Giessing

Imprint:

© 2016 Copyright by Jürgen Gießing

Druck:        epubli, a service of neopubli GmbH, Berlin

What this book is about

How many sets should be performed for optimal progress? How many repetitions per set for maximal muscle growth? How many training days per week are best? Which exercises are recommended? Split training or even double split training? How many warm-up sets? Heavy or light weight? Strict exercise form or cheating?

There are so many questions concerning training that it is not surprising that many people are confused. Looking at each of these questions may actually contribute to neglecting another question that is not only more important but also the base for all answers to these individual questions. And this question is:

How does training work?

Training processes have been studied for many years using the most recent scientific methods available. The relevance of training parameters (for muscle stimulation) as well as the importance of rest (for regeneration) have been identified in detail and provide us with all the information necessary to make the body adapt in the desired way to build up lean muscle.

This book is about how training works and what this means if the goal is to gain lean muscle. As a sports science professor I often come across misconceptions of training that have been disproved long ago but are still being passed on. One of these misleading concepts is the “the more, the better” approach that is still followed by millions of trainees world-wide. However, sports science has proven many times that the quality of training is much more important than its quantity. This book deals with the reasons for this “lie that will not die” and how current findings of sports science can be used to one’s advantage. Making the quality of training a priority has the pleasant “side-effect” that the quantity of workouts can be reduced. In fact, it even has to, if quality is the top priority.

If you want to know more about the theoretical background and practical implications for training, read on.

Table of Contents

1 Survival of the fittest? How much and what kind of exercise our body needs

2 How training works

3 Intensity of effort

4 The discovery of High Intensity Training

5 The (missing) scientific background of multiple-set training

6 The Holy Trinity: All good things come in threes

7 The paradigm shift that never happened

8 The essence of High Intensity Training

9 Training programs

9.1 Sample full-body workout A

9.2 Sample full-body workout B

9.3 Sample full-body workout C

9.4 Sample full body workout with pre-exhaustion A

9.5 Sample full body workout with pre-exhaustion B

9.6 Sample full body workout with post-exhaustion A

9.7 Sample full body workout with post-exhaustion B

9.8 Split program: Sample upper/lower body split

9.9 Split program: Sample upper/lower body split with pre-exhaustion

9.10 Split program: Sample upper/lower body split with post-exhaustion

9.11 Split program: Push-pull split A (two-way split)

9.12 Split program: Push-pull split B (three-way split)

10 Intensity and consistency

List of Figures

Figure 1:... Lack of physical exercise causes negative
adaptation and regression. 12

Figure 2:... Milo of Croton. 21

Figure 3:... Improved muscle fiber activation precedes
muscular hypertrophy. 26

Figure 4:... The General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). 32

Figure 5:... Friedrich Nietzsche. 33

Figure 6:... The process of supercompensation. 34

Figure 7:... The training threshold. 37

Figure 8:... Arthur Jones. 44

Figure 9:... Cross referencing by physiologists who recommend
the execution of multiple sets
(Carpinelli, 2002, p. 320). 55

Figure 10:. Strength gains after ten weeks of HIT compared
to ten weeks of three-set training. 60

Figure 11:. Mike Mentzer. 83

Figure 12:. Drop set: reducing the resistance immediately
after reaching muscular failure. 99

Figure 13:. Leg press. 109

Figure 14:. Back row.. 112

Figure 15:. Shrug. 114

Figure 16:. Pec-deck fly. 116

Figure 17:. Incline bench press. 116

Figure 18:. Leg extension. 118

Figure 19:. Squat 118

Figure 20:. Lat pull-down. 120

Figure 21:. Pullover. 120

Figure 22:. Dips. 122

Figure 23:. Push-up. 122

Figure 24:. Leg curl 124

Figure 25:. Shoulder press. 126

Figure 26:. Leg extension. 128

Figure 27:. Leg press. 128

Figure 28:. Biceps curl 130

Figure 29:. Leg curl 132

Figure 30:. Calf raise. 132

Figure 31:. Dumbbell lateral raise. 134

Figure 32:. Chin-up. 136

Figure 33:. Incline dumbbell press. 138

Figure 34:. Back row.. 140

Figure 35:. Abdominal crunch. 142

Figure 36:. Incline bench press. 144

The images in Figure 1 and 2 were created by Udo Buffler. Julia Suchoroschenko created the image on the front cover, the images in Figure 3, 4, 6, and 7 and all portraits and illustrations of training exercises in this book (Fig. 5, Fig. 8, and Fig. 11-36).

List of Tables

Table 1:.. Intensity of effort: the four degrees. 41

Table 2:.. Studies that found no significant difference in strength gains as a result of performing a greater number of
sets (Carpinelli, 2002, p. 322). 61

1                      Survival of the fittest? How much and what kind of exercise our body needs

For thousands of years adapting to the demands of one’ s environment and living conditions was the best one could do in order to survive. Those best suited to their environment and its particular demands on physical activity had the greatest chances of survival (and of passing on their genes). For thousands of years being the fittest meant being able-bodied and powerful. It meant coping with an environment by covering large distances every day looking for water and food, collecting whatever could be eaten, hunting and killing prey while avoiding being eaten at the same time. Therefore, those who were fast, strong and enduring were the fittest and had the best chances of surviving.

Today things are different. They have changed tremendously and are almost reversed. Those who best fit to their environment will not walk for miles each day. They are more likely to work in a factory or an office, carry a notebook instead of a spear and a meal-to-go instead of the prey they have hunted. They use contemporary methods of transportation like cars, taxis, planes, trains, busses, and the underground, which require almost zero physical activity from the passenger while travelling from one place to another. And this kind of modern, effortless transportation is not limited to roads and streets. It is also available within buildings. For example, there are elevators, escalators, assembly lines and other devices that transport items or people. Basically, hardly any physical activity is needed to be well-equipped for our modern world.

For the contemporary consumer food does not have to be picked from trees, much less hunted, killed and skinned. It is available in all kinds of variations from all around the world and in all seasons. Some kinds of food, especially fast food, are available 365 days a year 24/7 and can be ordered by a mouse click (which is physical activity, too, but not exactly intense) or a phone call and are delivered to our door step if we wish so. Instead of having to follow our prey for miles to finally hunt it down with intense effort, all we have to do is get up from the armchair and walk to the front door where we receive the ready-to-eat food. In terms of physical activity we have come a long way (or rather just the opposite) from what our ancestors had to do in order to survive.

The consequences of these changed living conditions are obvious. Unless we provide for it ourselves, we are tremendously lacking physical activity and, even worse, we lack resistance. Our muscles atrophy when there is no need for them to contract against an appropriate resistance. And this is a rational thing for the body to do. Why waste a lot of energy on maintaining resources like muscles when they are not needed?

Figure 1: Lack of physical exercise causes negative adaptation and regression

In our modern world we are deprived of two things we desperately need in order to be healthy: physical activity in general and intense muscular contractions in particular. And we must clearly understand that the two are not the same: There is a difference between low-intensity aerobic activities like walking or jogging and intense anaerobic work like resistance training. Physically, our body benefits from both kinds of activity.

By simply increasing the amount of physical activity, like walking and running, we can improve our general well-being but it will not do much in terms of keeping our muscles from atrophying and keeping our bones dense. The solution to this problem is very simple. We have to do both. What we need is physical activity on a regular, preferably daily basis and regular workouts with a proper degree of intensity to stimulate muscle growth or at least keep our muscles from atrophying.

The World Health Organization recommends walking at least 10,000 steps per day for maintaining or improving health. It needs to be said that even though this is a reasonable rule of thumb, this number was chosen arbitrarily. Today, most people walk 5,000 and 6,000 steps per day on average whereas just a century ago our ancestors were likely to walk between 10,000 and 20,000 steps on an ordinary working day (which was basically every day).

Increasing our daily walking range is very simple. All we need to do is take the stairs instead of the elevator, park our car further from the office entrance, or leave the car in the garage when our destination is within walking distance. It is well documented that even small increases in physical activity will have a positive effect on health. And generally speaking: the more physical activity, the better.

However, and this needs to be pointed out very clearly, this “the more, the better” approach cannot be applied to muscle training. However widespread this misconception may be, modern science has proven repeatedly that training stimuli need to be specific in terms of intensity, volume, duration, and frequency. To be effective, training has to be prescribed like medicine.

The more, the better?

The concept of “the more, the better” may be true for some things but it is definitely not a universal principle. This means that whereas it is beneficial to be physically active every day and get our 10,000 steps daily, working out every day is not necessary and may even be counterproductive.

Training volume, i.e. the quantity of training, is just one aspect of a complex process that consists of at least four interdependent factors: intensity, volume, duration, and frequency.

There is a prevalent but inappropriate overemphasize on the quantity of training (volume, duration and frequency) whereas the importance of quality of training (intensity) is often underestimated.

Volume, duration and frequency are thought to be the crucial factors for best training results because it seems to be logical that the more you train, the better results you will get out of your training. But that is not the case. There is no proportional correlation at all between the time spent training and the extent of physical improvement.

This misconception arises when transferring facts from one context to another. But working out is not the same as working even though both terms contain the same verb. In fact, working out is completely different from working in many ways. If someone has a job and is paid a certain amount of money per hour, then there is a proportional correlation between the time spent working and the amount of money earned. The more you work, the more money you get. Therefore, it may seem natural to suggest applying the same approach to working out.

Falsely assuming that there is a proportional correlation between training volume and training results, however, is to miss the whole point of training.

Intensity, rather than volume, is the crucial factor that decides whether a successful training stimulus can be achieved. If training is not intense enough, there will not be any need for the body to adapt. This is a well-known fact that is often overlooked.

Too much volume may compromise intensity and thereby compromise the effect of the training session altogether. Intensity and volume are inversely proportional. Training can either be intense or long, for example running can either be a long-distance run or a sprint but not both. There is no such thing as a sprint marathon. The same applies to resistance training. The more intensely you work out, the sooner you will fatigue. You can either train intensely or you can train long.

Therefore, training programs should be planned by determining adequate training intensity first, that is a degree of training intensity to surely pass the training threshold. Then all other factors should be adjusted accordingly.

Many people still believe that there is a proportional correlation between training quantity and training results, although they are not likely to not get better results the more they work out. Many people spend hours upon hours in the gym every week, yet they are disappointed with their progress. So why do they not question the concept of “the more the better”? This is no surprise considering what psychologists call effort justification.

Effort justification

Whenever we realize that the results we get out of something clearly do not match the amount of work we put into it, we find ourselves in a state called cognitive dissonance. In order to relieve ourselves from that unpleasant condition we tend to justify the effort and try to convince ourselves that “it is/was all worth it”. This is one reason why things that we have worked a lot on are more valuable to us. Someone who buys an old-timer and spends hundreds of hours working on it is unlikely to sell it a few years later, even if offered much more money than the purchase price.

If you went to dozens of garage sales until you found that out-of-print book which you had been looking for so long, how likely are you to sell it later? If someone studies at a University for years to pass the final exam and get the degree, it will be extremely valuable to that person, even if he or she chooses a completely different career option later for which the degree would not have been necessary.

The Sistine Ceiling paintings by Michelangelo are among the world’s most famous and most admired pieces of art. The fact that it took Michelangelo from 1508 to 1512 to finish his paintings illustrates what an effort it took to create such an outstanding piece of art. It makes us appreciate it even more.

Art is only one example where effort justification can be found. There are many others. Even architecture is one of them. The pyramids of Giza are a wonderful example of this. Although there are many higher and larger buildings today, the pyramids of Giza remain to be outstanding and rightfully remain one the Seven World Wonders. After all, it took presumably 20 years of incredibly hard work to build them and they remained the tallest man-made structures in the world for more than 3,800 years. It is very unlikely that four thousand years from now the same will be said about some of the buildings from the 20th century.

In 1929 Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, mainly for his splendid novel The Buddenbrooks which consisted of 768 pages. On the other hand, the 1954 Nobel Prize of Literature went to Ernest Hemmingway for his great short-stories and his grandiose 99-page novel The Old Man and the Sea.

The bottom line is: We might have every reason to value the effort that somebody puts into something, but whenever actions are taken to achieve a certain result, the key issue always is how adequate these actions are to achieve that particular goal.

More about Nobel Prize winners: In 1905 Albert Einstein finished several publications. All of them were so ingenious that the year 1905 was later called the wonder year of physics. One of these publications was Einstein’s doctoral thesis. When Albert Einstein first handed in his PhD thesis to Professor Alfred Kleiner, his doctoral advisor, Kleiner felt it was brilliant, yet he initially hesitated to accept the dissertation. The only thing that Kleiner criticized was that he felt Einstein’s dissertation was “zu kurz“ (German for “too short”) for a doctoral thesis. It consisted of 17 pages.

A scientist may spend his or her whole life trying to solve a problem or might solve it through a sudden flash of inspiration. Some of the greatest discoveries or inventions were brought about by coincidence. Alexander Flemming (another Nobel Prize laureate) discovered the substance he later called Penicillin when returning to his laboratory after spending some weeks on holiday with his family. When he came back he found one culture of staphylococci contaminated with fungus which destroyed the staphylococci near the fungus. His further research finally led to the development of the world’s first antibiotic. This discovery was responsible for millions of lives that could be saved by fighting serious infections with antibiotics.

But should we value Flemming’s work less because of the fact that the breakthrough in his research happened accidentally? I do not think so. Should Einstein have added some meaningless pages to his already brilliant piece of work? What if Michelangelo had not needed five years to finish his Sistine Ceiling paintings? What if he had finished them within six months? Should this make us appreciate his work less – or even more?

A side-effect of effort justification is that we do not only appreciate something more if we had to spend a lot of time on getting there. We also tend to attribute this success to the amount of work that we spent and underestimate the relevance of the quality of the process. After all, it is the result that counts, not the amount of hours we spend to get there.

We are rightfully impressed when someone says: “My car broke down. I called the mechanic who did not give up until he finally found the mistake after nine hours and then fixed it.” But is it not equally admirable if the story goes like this: “My car broke down. I called the mechanic who took one look at it, found the mistake and fixed it on the spot.” In the first version our appreciation for the mechanic’s effort is most likely caused by his not giving up, his persistence to keep looking for the mistake, but not his quality as a mechanic whereas in the second version the competence and efficiency of the mechanic clearly stand out.

Achieving the same result in much shorter time by improving the quality rather than the quantity of effort, improves the efficiency of the whole process tremendously.

Efficiency and the time factor

Everybody knows the saying “time is money” (usually attributed to Benjamin Franklin). However, this statement is incorrect. In fact, time is much more valuable than money. According to psychologists Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd time is our most valuable possession. And who could argue with that.

With regard to classical economics Zimbardo and Boyd point out that the rarer a resource is, the greater is its value. Unlike most other things that can be possessed like jewelry, gold or money, time cannot be replenished. Their statement that “(…) nothing will allow us to regain time misspent” [1] hits the nail on its head.

The outstanding value of time is also reflected economically. Overnight delivery is more valuable because of the time saved and therefore more expensive than regular delivery which may take a few days. International flights are another example. Non-stop flights are more expensive than connecting flights with a stopover that may even require a change of planes before reaching the actual destination. Although connecting flights (sometimes called “direct” flights to hide the fact that it is not a non-stop flight) cause higher costs for the airlines, they can charge more for non-stop flights because they help us save our most valuable possession: time.

Training is no exception. A training program is more efficient if it produces the same results or even better results in less time. And that is why High Intensity Training is the most efficient kind of training there is.

Those who say “I don’t care if I am wasting a lot of time in the gym as long as I am making good progress” should think twice. Even if there was no such thing as overtraining, which in fact impairs training progress, there is another factor that nobody can escape from: opportunity costs. This is another economical principle that also applies to time. And since time is our most valuable possession, it even applies more to time than to anything else.

In an economical context the relevance of opportunity costs becomes obvious. When someone decides between investing a certain amount of money on stock A instead of stock B, this decision may earn this person a certain amount of money after some time. But if he or she would have made even more money by choosing stock B instead of stock A, the profit made by choosing A is as obvious as the opportunity costs of not choosing B.

The same applies to time. Just as money spent on one thing cannot be spent on something else, the time we spend in the gym cannot be spent doing something else. Even if somebody does not mind wasting time in the gym (over)training, opportunity costs of that decision cannot be denied.

And there is one opportunity cost directly related to too much time spent training: Every minute spent (over)training means less recovery time from the workout. So training more than necessary is not just a waste of time. It is much worse than that. Training more than necessary (regardless of whether the person may enjoy time spent training) is counterproductive!

For this reason it is obvious that the “the more, the better” concept neither makes sense in an economical nor in a physiological context. Actually, the principles that are responsible for making muscles bigger and stronger have been identified a long time ago and could have been available for more than two millennia.

Recently, training science has rediscovered the legend of Milo of Croton which illustrates how the process of muscle training works in a nutshell. The lessons that can be learned from this famous ancient legend have been ignored for too long.

Milo of Croton

Figure 2: Milo of Croton

Milo of Croton was an Olympic wrestler who lived in the 6th century BC. In fact, he may have been the most successful wrestler in Olympic history. He won the wrestling competition at the ancient Olympic games several times and was also a multiple winner of the wrestling competition at the Pythian Games at Delphi. Milo remained unbeaten for about a quarter of a century. Contemporary authors described Milo as incredibly strong. Milo, a friend of ancient mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, allegedly once saved Pythagoras from being crushed when the roof of the house they were in broke down. Milo supported the central pillar until Pythagoras and the others could get out and then he saved himself by rushing out.

Unlike other strong men in history who were described as “naturally strong” or “blessed by God with outstanding strength” young Milo was the opposite. He was a very weak child and was beaten by the kids in the neighborhood more than once. But Milo was determined to do something about that.

According to the legend, Milo took a baby calf, put it on his shoulders and carried it around his parents’ farm. He did that exercise once every day. After several years the calf had grown to a full-grown bull so that eventually Milo was carrying a bull around the farm. Not only had the baby calf grown but so had Milo’s strength. His muscles had developed due to the progressively increasing training stimulus that they were exposed to on a regular basis. 

The legend of Milo may be a bit exaggerated but it clearly shows some of the constituent parts of how training works. Obviously, among other elements, training must be:

Intense enough: It took a lot of effort and strain to lift and then carry the bull. Carrying a mouse would not have made Milo the strongest man of his time.

Progressive: Lifting the same weight in every workout will neither stimulate muscle growth nor strength.

Regular but infrequent: After working out the body needs time to recover from the strain of the workout. After adequate rest and recuperation (and time for positive adaptation), the next workout can follow. Working out once in a blue moon will not be enough to cause any positive adaptation.

Apparently, this knowledge has been available for more than two thousand years.

By the way: How many “sets” of bull-carrying did Milo perform during each “workout”? That’s right – just one!

2                      How training works

Although all the important components of training have been contained in the story of how Milo became so incredibly strong and muscular, it took more than two thousand years before the components could be properly identified. As a consequence, many misconceptions about training have developed. Some of them are still around today.

Maybe the biggest misconception is applying the idea of “the more, the better” to training. Training is like medicine. You need a certain dose. Once you reach the required dose, the medicine will cause a physiological reaction. Taking more than the required dose is not necessary. In fact, it is even counterproductive and even potentially harmful. This is why every medicine comes with a package insert that informs and warns you of the dangers of an overdose of that medication.

So where does this misconception of more training being better come from? This question can be answered quite easily. In many contexts it is absolutely correct that the more you do the better you become. If you want to be the best piano player you can be, you better play a lot. Playing the piano only twice a week for twenty minutes will not do much to improve your ability of playing the instrument well. This concept even applies to some aspects of competitive sports, at least to a certain extent.

It is true that there are many kinds of sport in which potential success is directly related to the numbers of hours spent. Many competitive athletes follow a high-volume approach when preparing for important sports competitions or even the Olympics and World Championships. In some sports this is absolutely reasonable because preparation for competitions on an elite level consists of two factors:

a) practice

and

b) training.

Practice

When it comes to practicing tactics, moves, games and so forth, the old saying that “practice makes perfect” is definitely true. If your goal is to hit the basket as often as possible, many hours of practice will help you improve more than practicing just a little bit once in a while. If you are the quarterback of a football team, you would do well to practice all the passes and tactics and everything that is needed to be successful. Soccer players spend a lot of time not only practicing the basics like ball control. They also need to practice set pieces like corner kicks, free kicks and so forth, not only to improve their own skills but to learn how to play together successfully as a team. After all these hours of practicing they usually know what a certain teammate will do in the next moment. They know where he will run and where the ball must be passed in order to be received by the teammate.

Even in power sports like weightlifting, practice is a very important factor. The more often you practice a certain movement, the more skillful your movement’s execution becomes and eventually you will reach a level of execution that can hardly be improved even further. Thus, practicing improves performance in many sports. Improvements by practice result from improved skills, experience and coordination. Up to a certain point it is very likely that the more you practice, the better you will become. However, practicing should always cease before exhaustion sets in. No gymnast with exhausted leg muscles would practice their routine on a balance beam and no table tennis player would try practice his serve when feeling exhausted. Throwing the darts can even become quite dangerous to yourself and others once you have lost your concentration and your arms start to shiver due to the amount of throwing that has just been done.

Once you have perfected your technical skills, more practice will not generate better results. A high jumper who already uses perfect form on the Fosbury flop cannot improve his high jump by practicing more often. But stronger legs will enable him to jump higher. And that can only be achieved by training them. Although both terms are often falsely considered synonyms, training is a completely different process.

Practice must precede training

Training must be preceded by successful practice. Take the bench press for example: To gain muscle strength by performing bench presses, the proper execution of that exercise (or any exercise for that matter) must first be mastered. When this is the case, it still takes several workouts before increases in muscle mass can be expected. This may come as a surprise to many trainees who have experienced strength increases right from the start of their training program. And indeed, the greatest increases in strength occur during the first half year of training. This seems to contradict the fact that it takes several weeks of training before muscles grow but there is a very logical explanation. When the body is confronted with a previously unfamiliar stimulus it reacts first by recruiting more muscle fibers for which there has so far not been any necessity to contract. Then, as the training process continues for weeks, more muscle fibers are recruited, which results in increased strength. Once the maximum number of muscle fibers that can be activated voluntarily has been reached and the training program is continued, the only way muscle strength can be increased even further is by hypertrophy in the trained muscle fibers.

Figure 3: Improved muscle fiber activation precedes muscular hypertrophy

Training

Muscle hypertrophy is never the result of practice, it can only result from physiological adaptations.

If an organism is confronted with a stimulus that surpasses a certain threshold level, it will adapt to that stimulus. If you are trying to get a sun tan and expose your skin to a certain level of ultraviolet radiation for a certain amount of time, it will adapt by increasing pigmentation. Once that reaction has been triggered, further exposition to the same stimulus does not add to the effect. In fact it may even reverse the effect by burning your skin so that the tan is lost again. 

If your dentist gives you an anesthetic injection which successfully frees you from your pain, a second or third injection will not give you an additional advantage. Giving you dozens of injections may even kill you.

Whenever the human organism is confronted with a certain stimulus above the threshold level the corresponding reaction is triggered. Muscle training is no exception. If a muscle is confronted with a certain amount of tension (about 50-80% of max) for a certain amount of time (about 60 to 120 seconds), the muscle goes into hypertrophy and gains mass and strength.

Stimulus-reaction scheme and ceiling effect

This is called the stimulus-reaction scheme and does not only apply to muscle training but to all kinds of adaptations of the human body to external and internal stimuli. There are two interesting facts about the stimulus-reaction principle and the ceiling effect:

a) Once the reaction has been triggered, it cannot be stopped anymore.

b) Once the threshold has been surpassed, adding stimuli does not fortify the effect.

This is shown by the previous example of the dentist giving a local anesthetic for the nerves of a painful tooth:

a) Once the required amount of medicine numbs the nerve, the process can no longer be stopped and you will be free of pain.

b) Giving you another injection will not make you feel “even more free of pain”.

This also applies to the process of immunization. After a successful vaccination you are immune to the respective illness. Another injection two minutes later will not make you “even more immune”. Neither will a third one another two minutes later. The principle of stimulus-reaction scheme applies to any physiological adaptation. Pregnancy is caused by one single sperm successfully fertilizing the ovum. Additional sperm also reaching the ovum will not make you “more pregnant”.

Probably one of the reasons why High Intensity Training is so popular among medical doctors is that they know about the stimulus-reaction scheme and are familiar with the ceiling effect.

The ceiling effect describes the fact that once the stimulus reaction has been triggered, further stimuli will not add to the effect. If you need 200 milligrams of a certain medication to reach its maximum effect, raising the dose to 300 or even 400 milligrams will not make the medication “work even better”. Actually, the opposite is true. The more unnecessary medication somebody takes, the more side effects are likely to occur, eventually doing more harm than good.

The same applies to training. Once you were successful in stimulating hypertrophy in the trained muscles, the muscles need rest to let the growth process take place. Adding more stimuli (more sets) will not initiate more hypertrophy. It might even interfere with recuperation and, thus, be counterproductive.

Basically, the misconception of more training being better is a transmission error caused by applying a perception to training that has been derived from observations of practice (“the more, the better”). However, such a transfer is inappropriate and unduly.

People who watch a high jumper practice his jumping in the stadium might attribute the strength and size of his leg muscles to his many hours of practicing. What they usually fail to see is that those muscles were not built by practice. They were built in the gym – by training them intensely.

Most people are not aware of this necessary distinction between practice and training and they cannot be blamed for that. Even many exercise professionals and experts have only recently come to realize how important a clear distinction between practice and training is. This lack of differentiation that has been around for centuries is also reflected semantically. Most languages did not even have a word for training and adopted the English word. The word exercise stems from the Latin word exercitium which for centuries has been translated into practice. In German, an exercise is still called Übung, which literally means practice. However, those exercises will only result in physiological adaptations if they are performed with an appropriate degree of intensity followed by enough rest for the body to recuperate and adapt to the stimulus.

In a nutshell, this is how training works. As simple as this may sound, it took the legend of Milo and more than two thousand years for this insight to become generally accepted. At the beginning of the 20th century athletes still had to go by trial and error in order to find out what worked for them and what did not. However, even if their exercising resulted in improvements, they still did not know what exactly caused these improvements. Was it the kind of exercises? Was it the number of training days per week? The order of exercises? The amount of weight or resistance used? The number of sets per exercise? The number of sets per workout? The rest time between sets? The number of repetitions per set? The speed of each repetition? These are only a few questions about training. Obviously, there are many more and, in addition to that, there are just as many questions concerning the role of nutrition, rest, sleep and so forth. Whenever an athlete made progress, something was obviously working. But it was not known exactly what was working and why.

As a consequence of this lack of knowledge, aspiring athletes did something very understandable. They copied the whole daily routines of successful champions. They copied not only their training routines but also their eating and sleeping habits.

Despite the fact that all the necessary information on training is available to everybody today, many people still do what their ancestors did more than 100 years ago. They copy the training routines of the “champs” and end up training six to twelve times a week like an Olympic athlete, hoping that doing the exact same routine as the champ will put them into the exact same shape as the champ, ignoring genetic factors (not to mention drugs) and not realizing that

a) most of the training articles that are printed in the magazines are grossly exaggerated in order to make the story more interesting and to sell unnecessary food supplements

b) a rather large amount of the “training” time of professional athletes consists of practicing what they need to do in order to perform well on the day of their contest

Understanding physiology

In the 19th century the German toxicologist Hugo Schulz discovered that the growth of yeast was reduced by large amounts of poison (no surprise here) but was actually stimulated by a small dose of poison. This observation caused some surprise among the scientific community but was then largely ignored for several decades.

During the 1930s two very important observations were published that showed that this principle also applies to human physiology. In an article that appeared in the scientific journal Nature Hans Selye, a medical doctor explained his observation that there are three different stages in which the human body reacts to “noxious agents”, which he later called “stress”.

The other important finding was published in the book The Wisdom of the Body by Walter B. Cannon. Inspired by the works of French physiologist Claude Bernard, he explained that the human body has a tendency to keep up a state called homeostasis (a kind of equilibrium with relatively constant conditions of energy levels, temperature, pH hydration etc).

Small changes do not disturb homeostasis because the body is able to regulate itself. If a person has a daily energy demand of, for example, 2000 kcal, this person will not gain weight when consuming 2050 kcal nor lose weight on 1950 kcal a day. The body can regulate energy expenditure up or down a few percent to keep everything balanced. But if homeostasis is disturbed more severely, a physiological reaction is inevitable.

Selye’s book The Stress of Life (published in 1956 and later translated into 17 languages) explained for the first time that a stimulus is needed which exceeds a certain threshold level to have an impact on homeostasis. When this homeostatic balance is disturbed by any stimulus, the body reacts by trying to adapt to it. Selye also found out that this reaction consists of three different stages: the alarm reaction, the stage of resistance and the stage of exhaustion. Since the body’s reaction to stress can be generalized, Selye called this process the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS).

Figure 4: The General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

Überkompensation

Another observation in this context is the fact that overcoming an illness or disease usually makes the organism stronger and thus less susceptible for future illness. As the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had already written more than a century earlier:

“What does not kill me makes me stronger” (“Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker”).

Figure 5: Friedrich Nietzsche

In the 1970s scientists discovered that this adaptation mechanism not only applies to the body’s ability to cope with illness but also to any kind of other stressor, including physical exercise.

It was discovered that once the body has recovered successfully from a stimulus, it not only restores the previous status quo but surpasses that point to better cope with future stress that might even be more intense. The process was first described by the Hungarian scientist Nicolai Jakowlew in 1976 pointing out that the body does not only compensate the effects of the particular stressor(s) but goes beyond this by overcompensating to protect the body from negative consequences of the same kind of stressor in the future. German scientists called this Überkompensation. Another synonym is overcompensation, whereas Jakowlew preferred the Latin term supercompensation.

Figure 6: The process of supercompensation

The graph that demonstrates the process of supercompensation does not go with a time frame. That is because different actions take place in the body as a consequence of a training effect. These different actions do not all happen at the same time. Body temperature and hydration, for example, are regulated within minutes after training. Energy balance can also be restored rather quickly but other processes like muscular adaptations take days and adaptations of tendons and bones take even longer.

We know from medical contexts that once a stimulus surpasses a certain threshold, the corresponding reaction is triggered. If the body is then given time to rest, it will adapt to that stimulus in a functional way. Further applications of the same stimulus before the body has adapted, will not add to the effect and might even interfere with the body’s ability to adapt to the stimulus. This is the reason why one sufficiently intense set of each exercise is all that is needed to stimulate muscle gains. The trained muscle fibers then do not need more sets of the same exercise. What they rather need is enough time to rest and grow.

Recently, the model of supercompensation gained a lot of attention. The brilliant scholar and bestselling author Nassim Taleb uses the model to explain his concept of antifragility and points out that there is a lesson to be learned from the body’s ability to supercompensate that can be transferred to other contexts as well. Taleb points out that supercompensation is a natural mechanism of the body to “fight the next war” by overcoming the last one and preparing for the next one. This is how resistance training makes us stronger: “(…) the body overshoots in response to exposures and overprepares (up to the point of biological limit, of course).” [2]

There is no doubt that intensity is the key factor for an increase in strength and muscle mass, not volume. Milo lifted a progressively heavier bull once every day. Lifting and carrying a baby calf twelve times a day would not have made him as strong and muscular. Observations in occupational medicine have shown the same. Intensity, rather than the volume of activities is responsible for physiological adaptations. 

Imagine somebody working in an office or book shop from 9 to 5 sorting letters into different filing systems or putting books on different shelves (or a similar kind of work). Lifting 100,000 letters, each weighing 100 grams, adds up to a total workload of ten tons or 10,000 kilograms. Despite the impressive volume of 100,000 repetitions and 10 tons of weight, this kind of “exercise” may eventually give you sore shoulder joints or arthritis but will do nothing in terms of strength and muscle building. On the other hand, lifting 100 kilograms ten times with maximum effort will be more effective for muscle building, despite a total workload of only 1,000 kilograms.

The bottom line is: There is a training threshold. If this training threshold is surpassed, a training stimulus is created. If the threshold is not surpassed, there is no need for the body to adapt. This can be illustrated by another example from the mail delivery business. There are mailmen who walk from door to door for six to eight hours each day, which easily adds up to a walking distance of 40 to 70 miles a week. How many mailmen do you know who can do well in, or even win, a 10,000 meter race without any specific kind of training? Considering the volume of their physical activities, one might think they should easily be able to do that. But it is quite obvious that the intensity of walking is not sufficient to surpass the necessary training threshold. As long as they do not train, simply being active will not be sufficient, not even at a very high volume.

Figure 7: The training threshold

Again, it should be noted that this fact is not limited to muscle training but applies to any aspect of the body adapting as a result of imposed demands.

On a dark and cloudy November day you can spend all day sitting on your veranda without getting a tan. The intensity of sunshine is not high enough to surpass the threshold that is needed for the body to adapt. On a hot and sunny summer day, however, ten to forty minutes of unprotected exposure to the ultraviolet radiation of the sun will stimulate pigmentation in most people. Extended exposure time will not result in a deeper tan but in sunburn.

It is impossible to calculate exactly how many minutes in the sun are needed to get a tan (like X minutes of exposure to Y electronvolt at a wavelength of Z) but it is safe to say that you better get out of the sun when your skin is starting to look a bit reddish.

3                      Intensity of effort

The same applies to training intensity. We do not know (and most likely will never know) the exact point when the threshold is exceeded. Fortunately, it is not necessary to know. What we do know is that high intensity training ensures a sufficient training intensity level to trigger adaptations in terms of strength and muscle hypertrophy. Therefore the important question is not “Am I doing enough sets?” but rather “Am I training intensely enough?”.

And there is an answer to that question. Again, the calculation is the same as in other physiological contexts. If you need a particular medication, your doctor will calculate how much you need based on your age, sex, body weight and other factors. If your doctor’s calculation comes to the result that you need 186 milligrams a day, he will then tell you to take 200 milligrams a day to make sure you get enough but not too much of the required medication.

It is the same with training intensity. If you are able to do ten chin-ups in perfect form but fail on the eleventh repetition, you did the most you can do for that exercise. You may already have surpassed your individual training threshold during repetition number nine or ten, but finishing the tenth repetition and even trying to finish the eleventh makes sure the training threshold is exceeded. Therefore, it is safe to say that training intensity is the key factor for physiological adaptations.

Unfortunately, the term intensity is often misunderstood. It is necessary to distinguish between relative intensity and training intensity (also called intensity of effort).

Relative intensity refers to the