Intelligent exercise employs leveraging the science of resistance training. Walk into any gym and the majority of the people there have no clue what they’re doing. They’re going through the motions, just trying to get through yet another workout. Many don’t look much different than they did a year ago, despite regularly hitting the gym. The symptoms of this are slinging the weights, using body english and terrible form, waiting forever between sets, poor exercise choices, using too much weight, too much volume, and so forth.
The exception to this is the person under 40 who also happens to be a beginner. People in that situation likely have a surplus of hormones and recovery capacity. They will experience significant, maybe even impressive gains, until they top out due to poor technique, or they get injured. Had they become educated on intelligent exercise their gains would have been greater, and they would have kept on gaining muscle.
For people 40+, steady progress requires intelligent exercise. In a nutshell, intelligent exercise is doing the right exercises, with impeccable form, with just the right volume for your current fitness level. It requires understanding:
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- Your fitness goals
- Your current level of fitness
- Physical challenges you may have
- A good understanding of the science of resistance training
Where you are in your level of fitness is of paramount importance in how you approach designing your resistance training protocol.
Are you:
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- Sedentary
- Active, but don’t train
- Beginner (1-2 years)
- Intermediate (2-5 years)
- Advanced (5+ years)
There is also something to be said about how much you know about the science of resistance training. You may have been training for years, but you’ve been doing it all wrong because you don’t know any better. In that case, no matter how long you’ve been training, you are a beginner. Sorry!
Physical challenges
Part of the human condition is that each of us may have some physical issues, especially as we get older. Lifting weights can slow or even reverse this process. That said, we have to take these things into account for intelligent exercise.
For example, when I started lifting at 61, my lower back was touchy and easy to injure. My personal trainer recognized this and focused my initial training on building my core strength. The idea is that in order to avoid injuring my lower back by performing more advanced exercises, I needed a strong core. Sure enough, after about 8 weeks of challenging functional exercise my core was strong, and my back pain was gone.
Your fitness goals
Everyone is unique in the goals they set for themselves. Some want to lose weight, while others just want to be fit. Some want to be mobile and functional into old age, instead of dreading waking up to more aches and pains.
I started out wanting to be fit. Then at some point I realized I really like lifting, and that it’s as good for my head as it is for my body. But you will need to find your own motivation.
Getting to it
To review, the first 3 things we determined were;
- Your current level of fitness
- Acknowledging any physical issues
- Your current fitness goal.
We also discussed whether you haven’t started, or you’re a beginner, or an intermediate, or maybe you are advanced.
For example sake, let’s suppose you are active, but not intentionally training, and you have hip instability issues. You want to get fit, and if you drop a few pounds that would be OK. Your protocol strategy might look like this
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- Core exercises and corrective exercises for your hip issues 8-12 weeks
- Beginner resistance training 1-2 years
- Intermediate resistance training 2-5 years
- Advanced – 5+ years
Volume
The next thing to understand is the concept of workout volume. Volume is essentially the number of pounds you lifted in your workout. It’s simply a measure of work. For example; a set of barbell curls where you did 10 reps of 25 lbs. = 250 lbs.. The volume of that set was 250 lbs.. If you did 3 sets the total volume was 750 lbs..
When you start out your volume is going to be low. Over time your endurance will improve and you will be able to handle more volume. Some things that affect volume:
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- The number of reps you perform
- The amount of weight you use
- The number of sets and exercises you perform
Rep Cadence
Now, what you want to do is lift enough weight, with impeccable form, to get the job done. If you want to make your training 3x more effective, slow everything down. A single rep should take you four seconds to complete. One second to lift (concentric part of the movement) the weight, and three seconds to lower (eccentric part of the movement) it. The science is that contrary to what most people think, the majority of the benefit happens during the eccentric part of the rep. So, if you control the rep such that the concentric part of the movement takes one second and the eccentric part of the movement takes three seconds, you will get 3x more benefit than if you only focus on the concentric part of the movement.
Nuance
Nuance is all about your form. People will instinctively try to make an exercise easier. This is generally a mistake. Many times performing an exercise optimially makes it seem much harder. That’s because it is! The better your form the more you should feel it in the target muscle, and not in any other muscles. Tiny things like wrist position, the arch in your back, your stance, and so forth make a huge difference in the effectiveness of the exercise.
Intensity
Intensity is the degree to which you can keep performing reps with clean form as your muscles fatigue. Intensity can be influenced by:
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- Number of reps
- The amount of weight
- Time between sets
- Rep cadence
- Total training volume
As you progress from beginner to intermediate to advanced, the intensity of your work outs increase dramatically. Contrary to popular belief, there is no advantage in employing a level of intensity beyond where you are in your fitness journey. In fact, over training is counter productive and often leads to injury and chronic problems like joint pain and tendonitis. The trick is to train at an appropriate intensity for your level of fitness. As your fitness improves, you gradually increase the intensity. It’s a gradual process.