Home Posts tagged "High Frequency Training"

What Cirque du Soleil Can Teach You About How to Build Muscle

I'm in Chicago to speak at the Perform Better Summit this weekend, but fortunately, my good friend Chad Waterbury provided this guest post for today. Enjoy! -EC

In 2001, I went with a buddy to Vegas. I wish I could say the trip was replete with all the temptations that Sin City had to offer, but it was strictly business.

At the time, I had a packed personal training calendar that kept me busy from dawn to dusk. Most of my clients were guys that wanted to build muscle, so I had them do a combination of heavy and high-rep training to failure.

That’s how bodybuilding protocols worked back then, and most of them still do today. I made my clients work hard and they trained each major muscle group about twice per week.

Now this is where my Vegas trip comes in.

That year I went to see the Cirque du Soleil show, Mystere. Many of my clients had seen the popular show and they mentioned that I should make a point to attend, mainly because of two heavily-muscled gymnastics that display mind-blowing feats of strength: the Alexis Brothers.

As my brain assimilated what I was seeing. I remember feeling blown away. What astonished me most weren’t the incredible routines they did, even though they were the coolest and most impressive things I’d ever seen.

Nope, I was absolutely shocked by the frequency they had to perform that routine. These guys were doing 10 shows per week!

What the Alexis brothers were doing defied all the “laws” of training and recovery I’d been taught in college, textbooks, and online write-ups. That moment I had an epiphany, if you will: I was going to have my clients train their underdeveloped muscles with a higher frequency. I was determined to figure out just how often a person with average genetics could stimulate a muscle group and still recover.

Eleven years later, in 2012, I had accumulated a huge amount of data on frequent training that I was ready to share. So, I released my High Frequency Training (HFT) training system to teach my audience how to build muscle using this approach.

My approach for HFT was pretty simple. First, you would choose an exercise you could do for anywhere from 12-20 reps before failure. Then you would perform a target number of total reps each day, say, 50. Finally, you would add a rep each day over the course of a few months.

It was a very good system, especially with exercises such as the pull-up, and many people gained a lot of muscle from it.

However, I still felt I could make HFT better. So over the last two years I continued to experiment with different training protocols while taking in the feedback from those who were following HFT.

What did I learn? A whole lot. Now my frequent training plans are shorter, and more specialized for each major muscle group. There are three components for making a frequent training plan work for you.

1. Understand whether a muscle responds best to high or low reps: The biceps won’t grow with high rep training; if they did, collegiate rowers would have massive guns. The quadriceps, however, will definitely grow with high reps – just ask any cyclist.

2. Stimulate the muscle group as quickly as possible: When you start working a muscle more often the last thing you want to do is spend more time in the gym. Plus, if the extra workouts are too long you’ll burn out fast. You must stimulate that muscle as quickly as possible, and it doesn’t take long if you know what to do.

Here’s one example for the pecs:

Push-up Iso-Squeeze: Get in the top position of a push-up, then attempt to pull your hands together as intensely as possible for 10 seconds (any longer than that and you won’t be recruiting the largest motor units).

HFT-pu-pic

Do 5 sets of that iso-squeeze with two minutes rest between sets every other day. It works!

3. Spare the joints: All forms of exercise stress the joints, but some do more than others. If you start doing an overhead triceps extension or leg curl every day, you’ll run into joint problems in a hurry. That’s why my latest muscle-building system, HFT2, incorporates instructional videos so you can learn how to best spare the joints and target the muscles.

As an example. Here’s how I spare the knees for the Goblet Squat:

Keep these three points in mind as you train with a higher frequency and you’ll get much better results.

Note from EC: we've already started experimenting with some of Chad's ideas on the high frequency training front, and I think it has tremendous merit. If you're looking for some direction to take the guesswork out of these applications, I'd encourage you to check out Chad's new resource, High Frequency Training 2, which is on sale through Tuesday at midnight.

HFT2


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The Best of 2012: Strength and Conditioning Product Reviews

To wrap up my "Best of 2012" series, I'll highlight the top product reviews I did at this site in the last year.

1. Deadlift Dynamite - This product was a great fit for me to review not only because I'm particularly fond of picking heavy s**t up off the floor, but because Andy Bolton and Pavel Tsatsouline packed so much practical, yet forward-thinking information into it that it was hard to not rave about it!  Check out my entire review: What a 1,000-Pound Deadlift Can Teach You.

There were certainly some other great products I encountered this year, but these three reviews proved to be the most popular with my readers, based on hosting statistics.

2. High Frequency Training - I'd actually say that this was my "funnest" read among the product reviews featured here, as I've always enjoyed Chad Waterbury's writing and perspective.  It'll really make you rethink your perspective on volume management in training programs - and if you're looking for a program to kick your butt, look no further.

3. Elite Training Mentorship - It probably sounds incredibly self-serving to review my own product, but Elite Training Mentorship is a resource of which I'm tremendously proud because it isn't just mine.  Rather, it's updated monthly with contributions from great coaches like Mike Robertson, Dave Schmitz, Tyler English, Vaughn Bethell, Steve Long, and Jared Woolever.  With monthly updates - in-services, exercise demonstrations, webinars, articles, sample programs - from each of us, this is a fantastic continuing education resource that is both affordable and convenient. This isn't so much a product review, but I think you'll appreciate how this article demonstrates just how valuable a site like this is: 5 Reasons to Be Excited About the Future of the Fitness Industry.

There were certainly some other great products I encountered this year, but these three proved to be the most popular with my readers, based on hosting statistics.  Hopefully, there will be plenty more to come in 2013!

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Review: High Frequency Training by Chad Waterbury

I was fortunate to receive an advanced copy of Chad Waterbury's newest project, High Frequency Training, earlier this week, so I thought I'd do a quick write-up on the product.

One of the things I've always admired about Chad is his extensive educational background; all of his programs are based on theories that are heavily rooted in both his research and anecdotal observations.  It takes a lot of time to learn scientific principles, apply them in the real world and evaluate results, then "re-program" in consideration of what did and didn't work.  Chad is one of the few people in the industry with the unique background and experience to have accomplished this, and High Frequency Training is an outstanding example of his efforts.  There are a lot of books out there that were published by schmucks with absolutely no frame of reference; this isn't one of them.

I also think Chad does a tremendous job of relating complex topics in the conversational and easy-to-understand format.  Truthfully, I often glaze over the "rationale" portions of the books I encounter - either because I already understand them, or because it's so poorly written that I'd rather just get to the meat and potatoes (the program).  Conversely, Chad's discussion of how he came to understand the how various loading protocols impact the overall volume equation was outstanding.  In short, if you want big muscles, you have to be exposed to a high training volume - but that may come from a variety of set/rep/load combinations.

 

One can't just haphazardly add volume, though, as overuse injuries can easily kick in if you just keep adding and adding.  Additionally, you can't simply add volume in all aspects of your program; you have to pick and choose the appropriate times and places so that you're making progress instead of just treading water. Chad's program takes the guesswork out of adding volume.  And, as an added benefit, you'll likely get a bit leaner from the increased exercise volume and frequency.

Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay to this program, though, is that it's making me revisit how I am planning my own training.  Admittedly, I've trended toward much lower volume strength training programs as I've gotten older and the rest of the stress in my life has increased.  After reading through this e-book, I'm searching for ways to add some additional volume via increased frequency as a means of complementing my current approach, which is typified almost exclusively by work in the 1-10 rep range.  With Chad talking about incorporating some much higher rep sets, I'll be dabbling a bit more in this regard.

This program won't be a good fit for you if your primary goal is strength development, but if you're looking for a way to gain muscle, try some new exercises, and deviate from a "normal" training approach, it'd be a great fit. And, you can't beat the price, as it's on sale for $50 off as an introductory offer this week only.  For more information, check out High Frequency Training.

 

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