Training Age and Rep Selection
"The more advanced you become, the lower the number of repetitions that will give you the best response."
We’ve all heard the "rules" when it comes to rep selection: one to four reps for strength, around eight to twelve reps for hypertrophy (muscle growth) and over twelve reps for endurance. For the most part, these rules are pretty accurate, although the specific numbers can vary to an extent based on genetics, muscle fiber type and a few other factors.
Then Ian comes along and lays a pretty profound idea on us: the longer you’ve been seriously training (training age) the less reps you’ll need for hypertrophy! In other words, if you used to grow like a weed on ten to twelve reps as a beginner, then your ideal hypertrophy range may be four to six reps now that you have several years of experience.
Here’s how Ian breaks it down:
If your main goal is muscle growth:Perhaps this is one reason why gains slow down as the lifter becomes more experienced. Lifting heavier and lowing the rep range may keep the gains coming according to this theory. Pretty interesting.
0-2 years of experience: 10-15 reps
3-6 years of experience: 8-12 reps
6-10 years of experience: 6-10 reps
>10 years of experience: 4-8 reps
If your main goal is maximal strength:
0-2 years of experience: 4-8 reps
3-6 years of experience: 3-6 reps
6-10 years of experience: 2-5 reps
>10 years of experience: 1-4 reps
And if you want the best of both worlds (size and strength):
0-2 years of experience: 6-12 reps
3-6 years of experience: 5-10 reps
6-10 years of experience: 4-8 reps
>10 years of experience: 3-6 reps
Balance and Exercise Order
"I don't care what sequencing rules you've been exposed to or have adopted, if it's your weak link or number one priority, do it first."
If you train your chest and back on the same day, when’s the last time you worked your back first? How about arms? Do you ever hit the triceps first? Do the lowly triceps get as many sets and reps as the mighty biceps? On leg day, do you ever train the hammies first? How about the calves? And when you first started training, did you give your legs and back an equal amount of attention as your chest and biceps? Probably not.
Yes, we all know that everything above is a mistake, but it took Ian King to whip our arses into shape and make us do something about it. And if you haven’t done something about these imbalances, then you’ll likely end up with an injury or at least an asymmetrical physique.
Ian says to look back at your usual training split and simply switch things around. If you always train legs at the end of the week, move them up to Monday and you’ll see better results (assuming you’ve had a restful weekend.) Train back before chest and triceps before biceps.
The rule is simple: whatever you train first in the workout or first in the week will get the best results. The problem is that most people train the "fun" exercises and their favorite body parts first. In reality, they should be training the least fun movements and weakest muscle group first in the week and first in the training session.
How long do you have to switch things around? Well, variety is always best, but if you’ve gone two years training the quads before the hams, then it’s safe to say it’ll take almost two years of priority hamstring training to fix any possible imbalance. Also, if you have a weak limb — say your left arm is weaker than your right (hmm, wonder why, Spanky?) — then you should use unilateral exercises (work one limb at a time) and train the weaker limb first.
A more common mistake is to use a different amount of sets per muscle group. Maybe you don’t leave out back work entirely, but you perform twelve sets for chest and then just "throw in" a few sets of pull-downs for back. Big mistake. If you do 12 sets for chest, then you should do 12, or close to 12, sets for back.
To help you understand how to divide and balance out your training, Ian came up with a list of major muscle groups that reflects their function:
Horizontal pulling (row)Ian has a few other categories for abs, lower back, calves, and arms, but the ones above are main muscle groups you need to worry about. Based on this list, you need to be doing vertical as well as horizontal pushing and you need to be doing the same number of sets for each and keep the rep ranges equal where appropriate.
Horizontal pushing (bench press)
Vertical pulling (chin-up)
Vertical pushing (shoulder press)
Hip dominant (deadlifts)
Quad dominant (squats)
Let me give you an example of how this list can help you. Before Ian provided this simple list, I did almost nothing but chin-up variations for back training. Sure, I did rows occasionally, but not very often as compared to chins. This was an imbalance. Now I do just as many sets of horizontal pulling as I do vertical pulling and it’s really helped my back development.
Hip and Quad Dominant Training Split
Leg training sucks. It’s exhausting, painful, and unless you’re 5’6" and nicknamed "Stumpy," you may not have the right structure to build really massive wheels anyway. But still, ya gotta train the legs!
Before Ian popped up from Down Under, most coaches said to train all the muscles of the legs in one session and use the most efficient exercises. That means squatting and deadlifting on the same day. Problem — As effective as these big mass builders are, they’re also very fatiguing and really sap your energy levels. If you start your workout with squats, your deadlifts will suffer and vice versa.
Here are some exercises you can do on each of the two leg days:
Quad Dominant MovementsGot stick legs? This may be your cure!
Full squat
Partial squats (with increased load)
One leg squat movements
Leg extension
Lunge
Leg press (depending on foot placement and body position)
Hip Dominant Movements
Deadlift and its variations
Stiff-legged deadlift
Good mornings
Power cleans
Hamstring curl
Leg abduct/adduct
Tempo and the Four Second Rule
"Getting rid of the stretch shortening cycle will do more to recruit additional muscle fibers and maximize the effectiveness of your workout than practically anything else you can do."
—TC
If you’re an avid T-mag reader, you may be saying to yourself right now, "Come on, Chris, the tempo discussion again? Man, we’ve gone over this a thousand times!" True. That’s because this is a progressive publication and we know how important tempo is to your progress. But look around the gym today and see how many people are actually paying attention to tempo or speed of movement while lifting. Not too many, huh? So it’s worth mentioning again.
You may not know this, but Ian King invented modern tempo prescriptions, you know, those 311 or 302 numbers you see listed after exercises in most strength coaches’ training programs. Good thing too, since manipulating rep speed can lead to different lifting goals (hypertrophy, explosiveness, maximal strength, etc.)
And now, for the 489th time, here’s how tempo prescriptions work. Let’s say you’re about to do a barbell curl using a 311 tempo. The first number is the lowering phase, also called the eccentric. You’ll lower the bar to a three second count. The second number is how long you’ll pause at the bottom of the movement, in this case one second. The last number is how long you should take to lift the weight, also called the concentric portion of the lift.
You’ll need to change up your tempo to reflect your goals. For example, while bodybuilders may want to slow down the negatives to induce hypertrophy, an athlete in a combat sport may want to focus more on an explosive concentric. (For a good overview, read Doug Santillo’s article, A Closer Look at Tempo.) And if your goal is to build muscle and attract scores of women, then you better pay attention to the four second rule.
The four second rule is a concept that Coach King and TC came up with for bodybuilders. The idea is simple: One rep — including the lowering, pause, and lifting— should last at least four seconds. So a tempo of 211 would work as would a tempo of 301 or 310. For all the details, read the original article here.
The main lesson Ian’s taught us: tempo matters.
We’ve just scratched the surface of Ian’s contributions to bodybuilding and athletics. In the next installment, we’ll cover a few more of his most important ideas.
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