By the healthiergang writer , fitness instructor and Powerlifting expert.
Multi-frequency training
When the passion for weight training and the desire to improve at all costs takes precedence over logic and rationality, we always tend to want to train with higher frequency, in hopes of achieving superior gains in mass and strength.
Most of the time, however, you find yourself in a dead end street, where the only solution is to go back.
In this article I want to propose a method to train in multi-frequency avoiding overtraining and maximizing the gains in lean mass and strength.
Do not isolate individual muscle groups
The first thing to do to program a micro-cycle in multifrequency is to avoid concentrating on single muscle groups, in the belief of creating the so-called "muscle damage" to stimulate the consequent growth of the fibers.
Demolishing a muscle group by accumulating reps after reps is not the best solution when you want to perform more fundamental exercises per session, repeating them again after a few days. The most logical approach, in this case, is to eliminate the specific exercises; of course I'm talking about all exercises like side raises, crosses, straight arm exercises and leg exercises like leg-extension and leg-curl and focusing on bench presses, standing or sitting presses, squats, deadlifts and pull-ups.
Not being able to recover sufficiently for the next training session is precisely linked to the fact that an excess of exercises that have to do with the same movement patterns in a single session, do not allow you to be able to repeat this session before 5-7 days, thus not being able to organize the micro-cycle adequately. Performing only the basic exercises, for example the squat on the first day of the micro-cycle, allows you to perform this same exercise on the third day 2-3 days apart.
Localized lactic acid
THElactic acid is the by-product of the metabolism of glycogen muscular. Being toxic to cells, the body uses very efficient disposal systems to eliminate it from the bloodstream. One of these is the conversion of lactic acid into glucose which occurs in the liver, while the heart can use it directly for energy purposes.
When lactic acid becomes excessive and these two disposal systems are not enough, a mechanism called lactacid anaerobic mechanism, which allows further production of lactic acid with consequent reduction of oxygen. The maximum limit of this process is reached when the level of lactic acid is so high as to cause the interruption of muscle contraction.
Once back to his aerobic metabolism, the skeletal muscle starts a natural process of elimination of lactic acid which is drastically reduced within 60 seconds and which is completely disposed of in the following two hours.
"The mistake that you absolutely must not make is to associate the muscle burning generated by the accumulation of lactic acid in the trained muscles with the muscle damage created by training".
Very high levels of lactic acid can be generated in a muscle by lifting very light loads, which have little to do with stimulating muscle hypertrophy or muscle damage. Many "gurus", in fact, train their athletes through interminable descendants series in which the loads are reduced each time muscle failure occurs. These subjects argue that doing so stresses all possible motor units and muscle fibers.
In reality, "the activation threshold of the motor units depends on how much load you can move with a muscle contraction and not on how much you can extend a series by continuing to lower the load". The muscle fatigue that is obtained with this practice, as amply explained above, is due to the accumulation of lactic acid.
Taking bench presses as an example, I want us to imagine we are doing a normal ramping (progressive increase of the load with each series), with the load passing from 60 to 80 and finally to 100 kg. Assuming that the repetitions performed are 10, 8 and 6 with recovery intervals of 2 minutes, let's imagine continuing with one stripping (load reduction during the same series) after the final series of 6 repetitions with 100 kg, reducing without pause the load first to 80 kg for 8 repetitions and finally to 60 kg for 10 "exhausting" final repetitions.
What did we get from this practice apart from a high level of lactic acid accumulated in all muscle groups involved? Did we by chance have stressed all the muscle fibers thanks to the reduction of the load that allowed us to complete first another 8 repetitions and then another 10?
Absolutely not. In reality the same motor units solicited in the first series with 60 kg and in the second series with 80, we urged them to lift those same loads during stripping. The only difference is that the second time we lifted those loads with much higher levels of lactic acid accumulated in the muscles.
This made lifting those loads much more tiring, but we can't say that we stressed more motor units or generated more muscle damage; simply we have "acidified" the muscles compromising the fluidity of contraction. Let me be clear, this is not without its benefits, but we will return to it in a later article.
If you are able to lift 100 kg for 6 reps of bench presses, lifting 60 is not difficult at all under normal conditions, but with high levels of lactic acid it can become impossible. What is essential to understand is that lifting 60 kg, whether in the first series or the last, produces an equivalent stimulus, because 60 kg for the same subject and in the same exercise is 60 kg, full stop.
He Fran
Given the example of the bench press, I now want to consider one of the many wods, such as the "fran". In this workout you have to complete 21-15-9 repetitions of thrusters with 40 kg and pull-ups in the shortest possible time. The thruster is an exercise that involves the use of the whole body as it is performed with a single movement both the front squat and the push press.
Anyone who has ever done even the first 21 reps of the two exercises knows how heavy this type of training is. The levels of lactic acid obviously go up a lot, but with the substantial difference that the body manages the lactate levels much better when multi-joint exercises are performed, because it is much more natural for the human body to use more kinetic chains and therefore more muscles to move loads.
"In no sport does muscle isolation exist, because if a specific muscle is particularly fatigued, the entire kinetic chain, the athletic movement and the entire musculoskeletal system are affected".
Bodybuilders mistakenly believe that an "isolated" muscle with specific exercises becomes thicker and more defined, but in reality if you do not lift loads that can stress the motor units with higher activation threshold of an entire kinetic chain it is impossible to best stimulate the motor units of individual muscles, thus reducing their growth potential.
Multi-frequency program
Multi-frequency training with multi-joint exercises eliminating all the superfluous, means organizing the sessions including two-three fundamental exercises and some high metabolic impact work like the "fran" I briefly described above. In this way, the use of all energy sub-layers and maximum increases in strength and mass are favored in an optimal way.
