TRAINING

Free weights and weight machines each have advantages, but together they serve the same general purpose.

Let’s examine the pros and cons of each:

Machines are safer – There are four principal situations in which most weight-training injuries occur.

1. The point of maximum stress overtaxes you.
2. You bounce or otherwise cheat the weight up.
3. The weight travels outside of the exercise’s ideal path.
4. You fail to balance the weight.

The first two can occur whether you use free weights or machines. With a machine, however, there is less of a chance that you’ll be further injured by the falling weight.

Also, unlike when using free weights, it is much easier to maintain balance and replace the weight if you suddenly find yourself overtaxed in the middle of a rep.

Although machines are inherently safer than barbells and dumbbells, safety should not be that great an issue. Free-weight lifts are not dangerous when performed correctly after stretching and warming up, and with at least one spotter nearby.

Free weights develop stabilization – Unlike weight-lifting contraptions, free weights force you to stabilize the resistance throughout the lift.

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PERIODIZATION IS THE KEY TO ANY SUCCESSFUL TRAINING

First of all I need to notice that green beginners don’t need to stick to load periodization training. They haven’t yet learned to workout strained to their force limit and use weights that are far from potentially maximum ones. These loads cannot cause their organism exhaustion. But for professional athletes the principle of periodization training and cycling training should to be an important workout law.

Periodization Training

I think that disputes about the best way to elaborate training plan will never stop. Not long ago all bodybuilders workouted monotonously throughout the whole year; now they use so-called periodization interval strength training. This technique was adopted from professional sport and its main idea is the following: when you reach your power limit and basic weights can’t be increased furthermore you need to reduce your working loads abruptly in order your organism recover and rest. After this you start climbing your power ‘mountain’ once again. It was found out that such wavy intensity variations grow muscle mass and strength much more effective than the previous monotonous scheme.

So, periodization is a step cycling of an athlete’s training intensity and training volumes to achieve maximum amounts of muscle mass and strength… Each cycle presupposes moving from low volumes and high intensity to high volumes and low intensity. A typical bodybuilding cycle includes three phases: strength training, hypertrophy phase and ‘drying’.

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Here are some guidelines on how to make cumulative fatigue training work for you.

• Experiment first with just one single-joint exercise, e.g. the curl, or calf raise. Take an accurate measurement of the muscular girth, and then once a week, or three times every two weeks, train the exercise exactly as described as before. After two months measure the muscular girth again, and if it has grown, even by just a little, then you have a technique that works for you. If it didn’t grow, and assuming that you trained as directed, along with all the recovery factors, then just put the experiment down to a learning process.

• If you were happy with the test, then apply cumulative fatigue training to no more than two exercises for each routine, but remembering to rotate which two exercises you select. As your gains diminish in any given exercise, revert to another format for that exercise, and if you like select another exercise for cumulative fatigue training. The reason for only selecting two exercises per routine is that the six sets per exercise of this type of training exert a severe demand on your recovery system, and that is why you should be conservative and use only one or two exercises per routine in this format. If you do use cumulative fatigue training on two exercises, make sure only one of them is a major core movement, because if you apply it to two core movements you are likely to be over training.

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