Training, what is it?

What is training? It’s whatever you want it to be, alright, enjoy the rest of your day.

Now for the longer answer. It really is whatever you want it to be, working out in a gym, pole dancing, running, swinging ketal bells around, or if you want to hop on one leg chasing a chicken around a car park while singing bohemian rhapsody, then you chase that chicken! There is no right or wrong. Unless! You want to make a claim, now we have something to say.

Here are some common ones you might hear or have already heard. “5’s, that’s what you do if you want to get stronger 5X5”, really? Why 5’s? why not 4’s, or 6’s? Does this mean if we do sets of 10 or even 20, we wouldn’t get stronger? what’s magic about the number 5? Any given rep range on its own is a completely arbitrary number, outside of the context of programming it’s meaningless. Here’s another, “if you want to get big you’ve got to isolate” really? Tell that to every jacked cross fitter. Or any large powerlifter, weightlifter, or strongman, and ask them about their reverse delt flies for shoulder growth. But don’t stand to close, if they're large enough they’ve probably already eaten one of your legs. How about cardio will ruin your gains. There’s nothing about cardio that is toxic to muscle, you do however have finite resources.

While we’re here, if you become sore from training and someone tells you it hurts means it’s working, just smile and wave as you walk away. Delayed onset muscle soreness or DOMS as we understand it is a by-product of exposure to eccentric (lengthening) contractions, movement patterns, intensities, and volumes that you are currently not adapted to. In English, that just means novelty, do something you’re not used to doing and you may experience some muscle soreness [1].

Now this should not translate into all things are equal, they're not, but we have a pretty good understanding of the processes around particular outcomes, so a good coach can lead you towards a particular outcome within a given modality of training. Firstly, know that adaptations are specific, you’ll get better at the thing that you are doing. So, what does that look like? Let’s say you sign up to a class, and one of the claims they make about this class is that you will get stronger. You go to the class, and they have you doing some floor/body weight work, throw a medicine ball around, and perhaps something with a resistance band. To the degree that you were not already strong enough to do this, you will adapt to the task through repeated exposure becoming strong enough to complete said task, and no more. You do not obtain divergent physical characteristics from a given stimulus. So, doing that class is a great way to get better at doing that class, is that wrong? No. If you enjoy doing classes then do it but understand what you’re doing and what you’re not. So, if we are limiting our older population to very low impact interventions such as water aerobics, bodyweight exercises, or Tai Chi. Are we achieving the goal we set out for? The desire to be risk adverse is understandable. However, with falls being of such a serious nature in this population[2, 3], I would urge anybody to think more about appropriate interventions. Balance though desired, is often confused with skill acquisition, and older people are indeed still people, and as such they will adapt to sensibly dosed training [4][5].

How about resistance training. To be clear, all training is resistance training, however, what is classically thought of as resistance training is the kind of thing seen in any typical gym you might walk into. Now any statement that could be made about training is nuanced, meaning that any general question about training is typically answered with “it depends”, we require context. That being said, I’m going to attempt to give you some broadly applicable information here. You may have heard it said that there are hypertrophy (muscle growth) rep ranges. Now all volume (reps x sets) with enough intensity (30% of 1RM (one rep max), or roughly 5 reps of failure) will drive hypertrophy, regardless of the rep range[6]. So, a set of 4 with 5 or less reps left in the tank will drive hypertrophy, a set of 30 with 5 or less reps left in the tank will also drive hypertrophy. So why the preference for higher rep ranges for driving growth? Fatigue cost. Low rep sets with higher weights on larger compound movements such as the squat, deadlift and bench press come at a higher fatigue cost, and this fatigue cost needs to be allowed for. So, higher rep ranges tend to lend themselves to muscle growth. Does that mean that a person can’t try to grow muscle with heavier compound lifts with low reps? No, remember higher rep ranges simply lend themselves to lower fatigue costs.

What about getting stronger? What general statement can we make about this? As mentioned above, adaptations are specific, so if you want to get better at moving heavy things then we are going to need to practice moving heavy things[6]. But what about the fatigue cost you may ask? Good question. Again, we need to allow for this. Training needs to be sustainable, and if we want something to be sustainable then its best to make it achievable. Leaving some reps in the tank so we live to train another day, allowing for repeated exposure to sensible bouts of stress to drive progress. Again, as mentioned above you have finite resources, so pushing the most weight we can with these heavier weights will come at a very high fatigue cost. A fatigue cost that will halt progress regardless of whether you are doing 1 rep, sets of 10, or the magic 5s. This has been managed historically using percentages of a 1RM. However, these days we more commonly use forms of what we call autoregulation. This is a method of taking your subjective rating of how a lift felt and turning that into an objective means of controlling the amount of load we expose ourselves to.

What I would encourage is to pick an outcome. You don’t need to be married to this outcome you can change it with time. What do you want to take a shot at, getting stronger, fitter, bigger, the chicken thing? Secondly, find good information to follow in the way of a programme. Your challenge here is filtering out the nonsense, and this is where we can help you. Come and make a time to talk about what you want, and we can have a conversation around how to do that. We also have our 12-Week How to Train Programme where we teach men and women of all ages how to train. With the right information, making noticeable improvements with training is easier than you’d expect.

1. Damas, F., et al., Resistance training-induced changes in integrated myofibrillar protein synthesis are related to hypertrophy only after attenuation of muscle damage. J Physiol, 2016. 594(18): p. 5209-22.

2. Abey-Nesbit, R., et al., Risk factors for injuries in New Zealand older adults with complex needs: a national population retrospective study, in BMC Geriatrics. 2021.

3. E.Morley, J., et al., Frailty Consensus: A Call to Action, in ScienceDirect. 2013.

4. Watson, S.L., et al., High-Intensity Resistance and Impact Training Improves Bone Mineral Density and Physical Function in Postmenopausal Women With Osteopenia and Osteoporosis: The LIFTMOR Randomized Controlled Trial, in ASMBR American society for bone and mineral research. 2017.

5. Pérez, J.L.A., et al., An Up-Date of the Muscle Strengthening Exercise Effectiveness in Postmenopausal Women with Osteoporosis: A Qualitative Systematic Review, in MDPI. 2021.

6. Schoenfeld, B.J., et al., Loading Recommendations for Muscle Strength, Hypertrophy, and Local Endurance: A Re-Examination of the Repetition Continuum, in NCBI. 2021.