Hey there,
Here are the 3 things I’ve learned and/or expanded on this week.
I’m working on putting more information out there in general (writing, videos, etc.) so stay tuned for that. Expect it to be irregular. Going for quality over quantity.
I’ve got online personal training/fitness coaching in the works so stay tuned for that as well!
Experience Failure In Training
Training to failure or not to failure is a big topic in the fitness world when it comes to trying to put on muscle. There’s a lot of emerging research on the topic and some contentious views among the science, bro-science, and bro-…nonsense. I’m not here to tell you whether you should or should not be training to failure on a regular basis (although I have my evidence-informed opinions on it).
Failure in this case means momentary muscular failure, or the point where you cannot perform another concentric repetition.
Whether or not you believe that you should or should not be training to failure regularly, knowing what training to failure FEELS like is important. If you don’t understand what your failure point feels like for a given exercise, you probably won’t have a good idea of what your proximity to failure is on a regular basis.
You typically want to be training within 3 repetitions from failure to have a robust hypertrophic response.
How do you know if you finish your set with a good relative effort and proximity to failure? Well you could try to estimate it based on how fast you’re able to complete the concentric portion of the last few reps (repetition velocity). You could also just stop the set when you feel like you’ve put in the old college try and it feels hard.
OR you could experience what failure feels like for that exercise and take note of how it felt at 1, 2, and 3 repetitions away from that point.
Caveat, caveat, caveat… of course there will be some exercises, like a barbell squat for example, where taking it to that momentary muscular failure point comes with elevated risk of injury. For these exercises, I’d recommend using a combination of repetition velocity, the old college try, and your best guess.
The good thing is that if you properly periodize and progress your training (adding a little bit of weight and/or repetitions each week), you’ll probably hit failure at some point.
A couple viable ways to go about this:
- Start with 3 or so RIR in the first week. Use the old college try, your best guess, and take note of your rep speed slowing down on the last few reps. Add a small amount of weight and/or reps each week. Eventually, you’ll hit failure because you can’t just linearly progress forever. Deload, wash, rinse, repeat. This is the approach I like to take with my own training. Credit to Renaissance Periodization and Dr. Mike Israetel where I learned about this approach.
- Take each of your initial sets to 2-3 RIR. Again using the old college try, your best guess, and take note of your rep speed. Take the last set to momentary muscular failure. I recommend this approach more for beginners or early intermediates because they are probably using lighter loads and these more frequent approaches to failure likely won’t cause excessive fatigue that they cannot recover from. It also helps you to realize more quickly whether you were making good estimates in the initial sets. I also recommend this approach to anyone who might be more likely to get bored with training and fall off the wagon more often. This approach adds a little more spiciness to the mix and can help keep people more engaged.
It’s gonna take some time and you likely won’t be perfect with it at the onset. Do your best and don’t worry, if you’re training hard and putting in the work consistently, results will come.
Don’t Forget The Enjoyment Factor
No matter what the physical pursuit you’re after is, whether that’s strength gain, muscle gain, fat loss, performance, overall health, etc… there are fundamental principles which govern how you should go about training to reach your goals. These are NOT the particular methods that you choose to use. They are the foundational truths, as we know them, which underlie why the methods you choose work or don’t work. You’ve got specificity, overload, fatigue management and recovery, individualization, stimulus-recovery-adaptation (SRA), variation, among others.
If you follow the principles of whichever physical pursuit you are chasing, you’re going to get results.
A really important factor that I would put within the individualization principle is the enjoyment factor. A lot of folks out there give up on their programs and their goals very early into the process.
If we miss on the enjoyment factor, it doesn’t matter how perfectly we hit on the other principles when designing our training programs. We probably won’t achieve our goals, because we won’t adhere to the program over the long-term.
The beautiful thing about principles is that they’re NOT methods. They aren’t the training programs themselves. There are many different methods you can use to reach your goals and still adhere to the fundamental principles.
It’s better to have “less optimal” methods which you enjoy and stick to over the long-term, than it is to have the “most optimal” methods which you hate and can’t go a week without quitting altogether.
I’m not saying enjoyment is the only or most important factor. Because it’s not. If your goal is to build muscle but you only enjoy walking on the stair master, then I don’t know what to tell you dawg, you’ve already violated the major principle of specificity.
In any case, if you only find happiness and satisfaction in the achievement of an external goal, you’ll probably find yourself miserable most of the time. Enjoy the process. Try to derive happiness and satisfaction from the process and the journey, not the outcomes. More on this another time perhaps.
Learn From People You Disagree With
Social media uses algorithms to push the type of content that you regularly engage with the most your way. You watch a video or read a post that you agree with, you like it, share it, comment on it, and the platform then updates to give you more of that type of content. This keeps you engaged and coming back for more over, and over, and over again.
There’s nothing wrong with liking, commenting, or sharing a post or video that you enjoyed or agree with. There’s also nothing wrong with learning from reputable sources on their social media posts and videos. The issue arises when you’re only exposed to content and information that you already agree with. It can make it seem like the information you’re seeing is what’s normal, widespread, and circulating for everyone. Not to mention that people use language that can be quite compelling and that sway people into believing things, even if they are grossly false.
Even when we do the research ourselves on a particular topic, we can run into issues. As humans, we have an inherent confirmation bias. We like to seek out the things that we already believe to be true. For example, if I already have a belief that artificial sweeteners are bad to consume, my search for information on the topic might look something like: “why are artificial sweeteners bad for you?” or “what are the negative effects of consuming artificial sweeteners?”. This places an implicit bias on the information that you’re going to see. More information with the negative connotation that you added to your search will be visible higher up in the results.
Some things you can try when doing research on the internet.
- Flip the confirmation bias. When you make your search, use questions that directly oppose your current beliefs on the topic. Seek out the information that is contrary to your current belief. You can continue to disagree with the results of the search. But now you’re forced to come up with a rationale for why that information is wrong and your knowledge has expanded. .
- Use more neutral questions that neither confirm or refute the claim. If you don’t already have any knowledge on a topic, try to make your question neutral. For example typing “how do artificial sweeteners affect the human body?” rather than “why are artificial sweeteners bad for you?” is more neutral and will likely give you more accurate and evenly distributed takes on the topic.
Back to social media.
Follow and learn from reputable sources that communicate information that you believe to be true. BUT also follow and learn from reputable sources that communicate information that opposes your current beliefs. This is how you expand your knowledge. You might find that you have good reason to maintain your beliefs and refute the opposing information. But at least you had to consider the opposing information. You might find that the opposing information is quite solid and you may need to update your current beliefs or change them entirely. No shame in that.
The key word there is reputable sources. There’s a lot of quacks out there. Use a critical and skeptical mind.
Respectful disagreement and intelligent debates get us all closer to the truth. Isn’t that what we’re all after anyway?
That’s all for this week.
Peace,
Jamie
If you like what you just read, keep coming back weekly for more!
If you feel so inclined to spread the word, give this article and my weekly journal a share with your friends
Follow me on all the socials:
Instagram @jamietmacfarlane
Facebook
X (Twitter)