Mindconnection Brainpower Informational eNewsletter 2023-04-16

People often get obsessed with details that don't really matter. An example is counting and tracking the number of repetitions you do per set. Allegedly, you can measure your gains by simply noting that you are doing more reps. But this assumes the increase in reps is due to an increase in strength. It is usually due to a decrease in form. The desire to get a better grade is so strong, you will pace yourself, reduce your intensity, not quite get the full range of motion, etc., to get that extra rep.

Details do matter, but only if they are the right details. Here are nine to pay attention to when training:

Consistency. How consistent are you at showing up? How consistent are you with effort from rep to rep and set to set?
Focus. If you are distracted during training, your training will suffer. It's not like you are training all day. For the 20 or 30 minutes it takes you to get through today's workout, ignore everything else. Don't check messages between sets, don't be thinking about the other things you need to do, and don't be chatting with other people. Be totally immersed. When it's done, then you can check your messages, think about other things you need to do, and chat with other people.
Movement. This is another word for "technique', just easier to visualize. Exactly what movement should you do when performing Exercise X? Think about this when planning the exercise. Small variations can have big effects.
Full range of motion. You will hear some trainers talk about the full range of motion. They don't mean 90%, they mean full. Go all the way to the bottom. This might not mean with every exercise, for example you can break the biceps curl down into three exercises (full contraction --upper 20%, mid-range --middle 60%, and full extension --lower 20%). But during the time you work a particular muscle you need to get the full range of motion. You can't do front squats in the full range of motion for your legs and hips, so pair that with deep squats (no weight needed) that range from butt touching the ground to a little above the bottom of your squat range.
Full extension emphasis. When you get into full extension, you are at your weakest point. Putting some kind of emphasis on this will trigger an outsized adaptive response compared to the rest of the movement. Many people bounce at full extension, this is wrong. For example, they bounce the bar off their chest when bench pressing or bounce the French curl bar up. Instead of doing that, squeeze the weight up. Stop the forward motion for just a second, to eliminate bounce. Then squeeze. That's one way to emphasize. Another way is to just do a set where each rep ranges from full extension (nearly hyperextension) to maybe 15% of the way back toward full contraction. Do it as a finishing set.
Limited resting. People who count reps for "progress" take longer breaks between sets. That's a mistake. Training is not performance. You want to make it harder, not easier, to move a given amount of weight.
Muscle damage. Many people try to achieve this by using more weight, which often results in more joint, tendon, and ligament damage. Use better form. On compound movements, look for ways you may be cheating (for example, shoulders forward instead of shoulder blades flat during the bench press) and make the needed corrections. For isolation exercises, make sure you are actually isolating and not recruiting muscles you don't intend to work.
Metabolic stress. You can maximize this by doing sets back to back with no rest. For example, a set of pull-ups immediately followed by a set of biceps curls. Then shorten the rest between that superset and the next superset to as little as you can.
Time under tension. You may find that with correct form you can't do as many reps. So you lose time under tension. The solution to that is to do an extra set. Some people think of time under tension as occurring only during the current set. But it's the total time under tension during that workout, as long as you don't give the muscles time to recharge via long rest breaks. Long rest breaks, where your heart rate comes down to normal and you feel your full strength has returned, basically start a second workout. And you end up with two workouts that don't produce the adaptive response but do leave you sore and full of lactic acid.

Mindconnection eNL, 2023-04-16

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