Primary colours of training

Magenta, maroon, turquoise – all colours to make your testosterone levels drop faster than an afternoon shopping for bed linen and cusions. However I am still impressed as the endless and eclectic spectrum of colours can be boiled down to three primary colours – red, blue and yellow. Its interesting how something as unlimited as colour spectrums can be reduced to the interaction of three basic components.

When you think about the endless results and variables that can be attained through training it’s a miracle how the body adapts. The big question is can these adaptations be boiled down to three basic components as well? Can understanding these three basic components allow you to choose programs so as to optimise your progress and avoid choosing programs which won’t fulfil your physical needs?

I personally think so, but before I elaborate on the three components it’s necessary to have a basic understanding of all the adaptations which occur to achieve the result you want. Below is a breakdown of the general goals and the physiological adaptations which make up the adaptation.

General goal	Physiological adaptation
Muscle size	Myofibril hypertrophy Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy Capilirisation Substrate storage
Strength	Myofibril hypertrophy Intermuscular coordination Intramuscular coordination Rate coding Recruitment synchronization
Muscular endurance	Substrate storage Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy Capillarisation Intermuscular coordination Intramuscular coordination

 

This is a basic overview, there maybe other factors but this covers most of the important issues. Obviously some goals may contain both strength and muscular endurance element etc, so will have physiological adaptation from both areas.

Why is knowing this important? Once you have been shown what the three components that go into making up a training programs response I will give you an indicator as to which physiological adaptations they provoke.  As such it will be very clear that if you want a given adaptation you must pursue a given component within your training.

The primary colours of training.

 

I have to thank charles staley for first highlighting these basic components of training in an old muscle magazine sometime in the nineties – so this is nothing new or revolutionary - in fact its plain common sense. Resistance training is termed progressive resistance training because it requires an overload for an adaptation to occur and there are three elements to this – Intensity, Volume and Density. Virtually everything you do in the gym to progress your self can be bracketed into these three elements. Likewise virtually all training programs work because they load one or another of these components.

So how can they be defined

Intensity

Intensity of a workout has become blurred, due to intensity being referred to how hard you work during your workout or how close to failing during a set you get. This has lead to misinterpretation of the term intensity. Intensity can be properly defined in two ways; firstly it can be defined as a percentage of a trainee’s one repetition maximum (1RM – the maximum amount of weight that can be lifted once in good form). This form of definition of intensity is hard to use, as usually a given percentage of 1RM is meant to equate to a given rep range (i.e. 80% 1RM equates to 6-10reps) unfortunately life is never as simple as there are various factors which effect an individuals ability to perform a given number of reps with a set percentage of the 1RM such as

• Training History – what type of training a particular individual has done in the past will determine whether they generate high forces but lack muscular endurance (strength based training) or have good muscular endurance but lack the ability to generate high forces (general volume style training). This has to do with training type affecting fibre type conversion, motor unit recruitment or enzyme and energy pool stores.
• Genetic disposition – genetically individuals differ within their fibre type ratios meaning some will be more disposed to low intensity high volume and others to higher intensities lower volume.

Considering this intensity is better defined as the average poundage/weight per repetition which can be calculated like so

This method of determining intensity disregards where the weight increases come from but rather just looks at the total workload in terms of the intensity for any given muscle group/workout. If a goal is to improve a specific lift or the ancillary exercises in a workout change frequently you may just wish to track intensity in a given exercise.

Volume

The volume of a workout is basically your total number of sets and reps. To be totally accurate in recording volume you should also include your poundage into the volume equation. So volume can be worked out like so

This method of tracking allows you to see how just performing one extra rep in just one of your exercises provides quite a large amount of increase in terms of workout volume. It also shows how adding a set here or there can dramatically increase a workouts poundage/volume and therefore add considerable stress to your recovery ability.  Using arbitrary numbers of sets and increasing by capricious amounts should not be done, rather small judicious increases done in a systematic manner. As a rule of thumb stop increasing your volume and possibly decrease your volume if stagnation and non-progression from workout to workout start to occur or signs of overtraining present themselves.
As can be seen from the calculation above using a heavier weight for the same amount of sets and reps will increase the volume, showing that advanced trainees are already using a higher volume than a beginner just by virtue of using a heavier weight.

Density

Density refers to how much total work is performed within a given time frame. Density can be equated like so

Density of a workout requires strict time keeping in regards to TUT (Time Under Tension – basically how long each rep takes in seconds) and total workout time. This accuracy puts trainees off as they can’t chat with their friends and have to pay attention to finer details such as TUT, but these are the kind of things which stop you from having a possible means of overload and therefore more gains from your training.

Virtually all training variables will affect the intensity, volume or density of your workout. The important issue is determining what physiological adaptations an increase in any of those progression modes occurs in order to align the training parameters to the required goal.

Considering this below is an indicator of which physiological adaptations occur from an increase in any given progression mode.

Progression mode	Physiological adaptation
Intensity	Myofibril hypertrophy Intermuscular coordination Intramuscular coordination
Volume	Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy Substrate storage Capilarisation Intermuscular coordination
Density	Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy Substrate storage Capilarisation

 

As can be seen no one avenue of progression develops all the different attributes for a particular goal. Considering this a variety of different progression routes would be required for optimal development for any given goal.

This method of analysing your training can be applied to any program or technique. As an example lets take forced reps – the weight wont increase so there will not be an increase in intensity but both volume and possibly density will increase leading mainly to increased capilarisation, substrate storage and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy which is great for size or muscular endurance goals but wont be optimal for strength based goals.

A lot of this might seem confusing and as such I have summarised the principle overload for a number of training methods and the potential outcome of each type

Intensity overload – for strength and myofibril hypertrophy (functional muscle)

Method

Rest pause

Partials

 

 

 

 

Volume overload – for sarcoplasmic hypertophy (show muscles) and strength endurance

Method

Forced reps

Drop sets

Tri/giant sets

 

 

 

 

Realistically this information should have given you the ability to analyse any new program and have an objective decision on whether it will aid your training. Hopefully all the kaleidoscope of variables in training should now be more accessible that you understand the primary colours of training.