The Win On Purpose Podcast
The Win On Purpose Podcast focuses primarily on health and fitness tips and discussions, but we love to celebrate ALL THINGS in regard to being the best you can possibly be in business, relationships, and personal development. Win on purpose means just that, purposefully taking action to become your best self, and following your purpose to develop the passion needed to excel at anything in life!
The Win On Purpose Podcast
The Secret Sauce to Muscle Growth: Training Intensity Explained
Are you feeling stuck in your fitness journey? You're not alone! Many enthusiasts hit a plateau, often without realizing that they might not be training hard enough. Join us in this eye-opening episode as we explore the critical concept of training intensity, a key factor that can unlock your potential for muscle growth and improved performance.
In this episode, we'll delve into what training intensity really means and why it matters for anyone serious about achieving their fitness goals. We discuss practical methods for measuring your training efforts, such as the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) and Reps in Reserve (RIR). Understanding these concepts is essential for pushing your limits, ensuring you’re not simply going through the motions during your workouts.
Gain insights into how the right training intensity can lead to more significant results, even if you're balancing a busy life. Discover strategies tailored for those who want to maximize their gym time without sacrificing effectiveness. Whether you're building muscle or looking to lose fat, increasing your training intensity will be a game changer.
So, if you're ready to break through your plateau and take your fitness to new heights, tune in to this episode! Make sure to share the insights you learn, subscribe for more content, and let’s get inspired to win on purpose in all areas of our lives!
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What's up, guys, welcome back to the Went On Purpose podcast with Adam Kelly. Thank you, guys, for tuning in. In this episode, guys, I want to break down a topic that I don't feel gets talked about enough with those people who are trying to build muscle, who are trying to change their physique to look better, to feel better, to be stronger, to move better, and that is training intensity, guys. So we're going to break down what training intensity is, what that looks like. Give you, guys, a couple techniques that you can start implementing to make sure that you're training hard enough and that that training continues to progress, because as you get better, the work has to get harder in order for you to keep getting better. Guys, I hope you enjoy this episode. Please like and share and tell someone about it. We will see you on the other side.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Win On Purpose podcast from health and fitness, business, personal development, relationships and more. We promise you will find inspiration to help you win on purpose in all areas of your life journey. Now for your host, Adam Kelly.
Speaker 1:What is up everybody? Welcome back to your favorite podcast, the Win On Purpose podcast. This is episode number 20. Guys, we have made it to a benchmark number number 20, and I am excited for that.
Speaker 1:Boys, it's been some crazy times here lately. You know, winter time it's usually not that fun for most of us, unless you know. Maybe you live somewhere where you can go skiing and you know all that good stuff, but if you live in the Midwest, especially the Southern Midwest, here in, like Oklahoma, you know, north Texas area, we just get cold and probably some ice, very little snow and usually when it does snow it's way too cold to play outside. But anyways, today we're starting well. Actually, yesterday we started what we consider here in Oklahoma as our false spring, so temperatures are fantastic out there, I think today it's according to my watch, it's 66 degrees right now. Yesterday was beautiful and it is just amazing out there. So everybody's out and about. That can be, and that's been the case for me as well.
Speaker 1:It's been a very busy Monday. I'm actually recording and releasing this on the same day again. Just life has been a little busy here lately so I haven't been able to get ahead like I like to, but I want to stay consistent, keep providing you guys sound information every Monday and giving you guys something that you can learn from and enjoy. But, like I said, guys, it's beautiful out there. So if you can get outside, like any day this week where it's nice, get some vitamin D in your skin from the sun. Guys, get out there, get some fresh air, because we all need it. You know, so many of us have been dealing with sicknesses and all that junk and we need some fresh air and some life back in us, guys. So it is, spring is upon us, very, very close and you know, if you follow the biblical calendar, spring is actually the true new year, which makes sense because everything comes alive, everything starts blossoming and looking beautiful and the weather starts, you know, getting warmer plants and you know produce starts growing all plants and you know produce starts growing. All these good things start happening. So this is one of my favorite times of year outside of running from tornadoes here in tornado alley, but you know it is what it is. What can we do about that? So, anyways, guys, now that I've caught up with where we're at, and today, on this episode, I'm just doing a straight talk with you guys. I have no notes pre-recorded or anything. This is just a conversation I wanted to have with you guys.
Speaker 1:This is based on a topic that I've had conversations with many people over the years. I see a lot of these types of questions in some of like the health forums and fat loss forums and bodybuilding forums and some of the forums pages like Facebook pages and stuff. I'm kind of dating myself there Some of the Facebook pages and stuff like that, where people are kind of voicing the same thing whenever they get to this point in their you know, training and in their health journey. So I want to clarify some things for you guys, clear up some things for you and, you know, give you some perspective that can help you to make sure that you're getting the most out of your training and out of all of this effort that you're putting in. So this episode is going to be a little bit more geared for people who are taking their training serious and they're really wanting to progress. They're really wanting to get better, rather, if that's just to get more fit. If that's, you know, grow muscle tissue, burn body fat. You know, re-comp their body. You know, swapping out body fat for muscle, tone up, whatever you want to call it. This is more for that person. If you just kind of work out just for just purely general health, there's still things you can get from this to make sure that you're getting the most out of what you are doing. But, like I said, this is going to be geared towards those people that are a little bit more serious about the gym, a little bit more serious about making gains and building muscle and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1:So the topic that I'm speaking on is I hear a lot of times people basically say that hey, you know what I've been working out for X amount of time. You know, usually a few months, maybe six months, maybe a year or two. And you know what I've been working out for X amount of time, usually a few months, maybe six months, maybe a year or two. In the beginning I was making good gains. I'd go in there, everything was fine, I was growing, I was losing body fat, whatever the goal may be. But then it's like all of a sudden I kind of plateau and I'm not really growing anymore. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm still training just like I've been doing. I doing wrong, I'm still training just like I've been doing. I'm doing still what worked in the beginning and for some reason I'm just not growing anymore. I feel like my progress is super slow and much slower than it should be.
Speaker 1:So, talking about this topic, this is a very broad topic. Okay, let's start with that. This is a very broad topic. There are a lot of different factors that play into muscle growth, into burning body fat, into improving fitness, cardiovascular health all these different things. There's different veritables that come into play to make sure that we're optimizing our time and our training and all that. So I'm really going to just touch on one point, although I could do probably a 10 part series on this topic, which, who knows, maybe we will in the future series on this topic, which, who knows, maybe we will in the future. But at least for this one, I want to talk more about the training aspect Because, like I said, there's multiple aspects, from nutrition to sleep, to stress, to supplementation, to you know, all these different ideas or all these different variables that matter, but the one that I want to talk about is what's happening in the gym while you're actually there, and that is your training intensity.
Speaker 1:So we tend to get hyper-focused on a lot of the things that we hear on social media and on YouTube. There's a lot more evidence-based type coaches and trainers and influencers out there. I follow more of an evidence-based approach. I, you know, I consider the evidence that we have today. You know what we found through studies throughout the past, what people have noticed. You know from anecdotal proofs, you know what they've actually experienced in their own training and kind of tried to piece all of that together in a way that's very practical and logical and also simple enough for anybody to grasp and start implementing right away.
Speaker 1:But training intensity, I feel, is one that kind of gets thrown to the wayside. It doesn't really get talked about. You know, form and technique gets a lot of attention. Volume gets a lot of attention. Which volume is probably the overarching, you know, cause of muscle growth and muscle development and maintaining muscle. So that's very important. Don't get me wrong. All these topics are important.
Speaker 1:But training intensity, I feel, is like one that I don't really hear many people talk about, and training intensity is basically how hard are you going in the gym? That's what I'm referring to when I say training intensity. So it may have a different definition for different people, but what I'm speaking of specifically is how hard are you actually pushing yourself in the gym? Okay, this is one that I feel a lot of people underestimate, or maybe actually overestimate how much work they're doing, how hard they're pushing, how close to failure they're getting. You know how much demand they're putting on their body to adapt and to improve from where they're getting. You know how much demand they're putting on their body to adapt and to improve from where they're at at that current spot. And so let's dive into that a little bit, guys.
Speaker 1:So in the beginning, when you start your training journey, you know maybe you're in your first couple months or first six months or so you're at a really high advantage. Now, this is specifically for people who have never trained before consistently, or people who have taken a very long time off and they're just now getting back into training. That first six months to a year you're in a really good place because it doesn't take a whole lot of intensity or a whole lot of volume in order to grow a good amount of muscle. Your muscles are so sensitive to stimulus. It doesn't take a lot in order for them to grow. You can go in there and make your way around the gym, around the stations, around the machines. You know, do a few sets, push a little hard and you're going to grow, but that's going to come to a stop fairly quickly, Okay, so we need to know what we need to do from there, and that's where training intensity comes into play, how hard we're actually pushing ourselves.
Speaker 1:So there's a couple of different ways that we gauge training intensity, how much effort we're actually putting into our training. I'm going to touch on a couple of those real quick. So one of them is what's called RPE, or it's the rate of perceived exertion. This is basically like there's different scales depending on you know who you've studied under or what you've looked up or researched, but I basically like to base that on a one to 10 scale. So one would be I'm barely putting in any effort, I'm basically just awake, I'm basically just moving around to. A 10 is I'm absolutely going to complete failure, putting in every bit of effort and energy that I have into the work that I'm doing, and so rating our training this way, we have a good gauge on how hard we're actually going. It's still subjective, so it's still based on what you feel it can be totally wrong based on how much quality work you're actually putting in versus what you feel. But still, it's a pretty good rating in order to know how hard you're actually pushing yourself.
Speaker 1:I usually like my clients if their goal again is truly to build muscle, to change their body composition, to improve the way that they look, I usually have them somewhere around a six or seven to all the way up to a nine rather, if they know it or not. Now I have other cues that I tell people while they're training on how far we need to push and stuff like that. So it's a little bit, you know, easier to understand in the moment, but that's probably where I have most people fall. And so another rating scale and this is the one that I actually prefer to use. I'm not a big fan of RPE, that's more um that. You see that a lot more in sports science and you know sports like powerlifting, things like that I prefer more of like the bodybuilding I guess you could say rating system. That's just how I see it and that's called RIR, or reps in reserve. Okay, and also I feel like this one's a little bit easier to gauge than just how much overall effort we're putting in.
Speaker 1:So reps and reserves is basically how many reps when you finish a working set? Okay, when you're you're doing a set, you're going hard. When you stop that set, how close are you to actually reaching muscular failure? How close are you to where you? If you're doing bench press and you get it down, how close are you to where you wouldn't be able to get it all the way back up again? That is your RIR. For example, if you're doing your 10 rep max or you're doing 10 reps and that's literally failure, then RIR would be based away from that number. So say, if you were doing an RIR of one, that means you're leaving one rep in reserve, okay. So if you're, if you're, 10 rep max is what you're shooting for and you're doing those 10 reps, you're going to stop at nine reps and that's going to leave one rep in reserve, or one rep left in the tank, okay. Or if you're doing a two RIR, that would be that would mean you're doing eight reps and you're leaving two in the tank instead of going all the way to failure. And then three RIR, that's three reps left in the tank, four reps, five reps, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:So why? I feel this is a very important skill to develop on knowing how close you are to failure is because we know, through tons and tons of evidence, guys, that how close we get to failure is going to determine if we're going to grow muscle or not. Okay, so what it looks like with the evidence that we have is that basically five reps or less in reserve is kind of the sweet spot for muscle growth. What this looks like practically let's say you're doing an exercise. Let's say you're doing a dumbbell, bench press. Your max reps are 15 at the weight that you're doing. You get to 15 reps and that's failure. Reps are 15 at the weight that you're doing. So you get to 15 reps and that's failure. So with the idea of needing to get to at least five reps or closer to failure in order to grow, that means that first 10 reps of that set you're not actually really growing muscle. If you were to stop, you know, at rep six, seven, eight, you're probably not going to grow any muscle from that set. So I consider those first 10 reps as kind of like lead-in reps leading to getting to the stimulus that you need the amount of fatigue built up, the amount of muscle damage that you need to actually cause growth. So once you get to rep 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and then even 15,. Now that is your growing range, right there. So we want to make sure that we're pushing somewhere within that range.
Speaker 1:Now, this can be very hard to estimate, especially if you're a beginner. So this is like I said you know a little bit ago. This is actually a skill that you have to develop and you have to practice day in and day out, because whenever we're trying to gauge how close we are to failure, we have to eventually come up to our pain threshold. So this is what I consider Okay. So if you're doing a set and you know it starts burning and then it gets harder and then everything starts burning and then your triceps start burning and your shoulders and your chest feels like it's ripping apart and wants to give out that you're getting close to your pain threshold. But just because you're close to your pain threshold does not mean that you're close to failure.
Speaker 1:And so from my own experience of working with clients, especially new clients that are new to lifting or new to, you know, progressive training, when I have them try to predict their RIR or their reps in reserve, they're usually pretty far away from failure whenever they think that they're close to failure, and so, basically, what we do there is each week, whatever we got to on that first week. So they got to 10 reps, okay, on 20 pound dumbbell bench press and they felt like they were super close to failure. The next week we'll do an extra rep, and then an extra rep the following week, and then we keep doing that until we get to a few weeks in where it's like, okay, now, now, this set, you're literally going to give everything that you have until you literally cannot push those dumbbells up again and I have to take them from you, okay, and so we do that, and then they see that, oh wow, like I thought I was close to failure these previous weeks, but then I just did an extra six reps past the week before when you told me to go to failure, because I had to actually literally go to failure. And so this is very important to learn because, like I said, that pain threshold is a beast, guys, and that's part of what you're you're training while you're lifting is being able to get up to that pain threshold and slowly, over time, nudge it up higher and higher and higher, to where now it's easier for you to take each muscle group to failure because you're able to push through that pain threshold. But if we're not willing to take the time to do that and develop that and get stronger in that pain threshold, we're going to really end up limiting our growth pretty quickly and that's where a lot of people end up. So training intensity is so important. Going close to failure is so important. Close to failure is so important.
Speaker 1:I would say this is outside of volume. Again, volume is how many reps, how many sets and the amount of weight that you're doing. That's basically encompasses your volume. There's some other factors that you can throw in there but just for simplicity sake, that's basically how you calculate your volume. That's, again, probably the most important factor when it comes to your training to build muscle. But if, even if you have a good amount of training volume, but you're always cutting your, your working sets far from failure, you're probably still not going to develop very much muscle or you're really limiting the amount of muscle that you could be developing if you were doing that volume, or maybe even a little less volume, but pushing really hard and pushing close to failure.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I cannot express how important this is, because so many people either have no idea of this, this concept, and so they just go to the gym, they do their three sets of 10, you know, they get a little burn, little sweat dribbles, and they're like, okay, I got my work in, you know, and that's good, like for general health. Just to you know, keep your heart healthy to keep your muscles working and functioning and your joints healthy, that's absolutely fine. But again, this is for the people who are taking their training more serious and really wanting to improve their physique as a whole. You know the outside and the inside. Then you know that's just not going to be enough for very long, and so we want to make sure we're consistently progressing and that our training over time is getting more challenging and more challenging, and there's lots of different ways we can make it more challenging. But again, if our training intensity is not where it needs to be, it doesn't matter what we really do with all these other factors, it's not going to have the impact that we want it to have.
Speaker 1:And you know, one of my favorite words that I use with clients and you can ask any of my clients, they're going to tell you what this word is is efficiency. Okay, use with clients and you can ask any of my clients they're going to tell you what this word is is efficiency. We are all about efficiency here. Excuse me, guys, sorry, we are all about efficiency. It's about getting in the gym doing the least amount of work, aka causing the least amount of damage on our joints, least amount of wear and tear, wasting the least amount of time and getting the absolute most out of what we can. Okay, that, I feel, should be the goal of pretty much everybody that's in the gym.
Speaker 1:Now, you know, if you're 20 years old, you're. You have nothing going on outside of the gym really. Maybe work, maybe not. Uh, maybe you're in college and you just have class and parent and mom and dad are paying for everything, and so you have four or five hours that you can spend each day doing whatever you want, and you wanna spend two or three hours of that in the gym just taking your time doing whatever. Totally fine.
Speaker 1:But the majority of people that I work with and the majority of people that are probably listening to this podcast are not in that situation. We got jobs, we have responsibilities, we have careers. We have careers, we have businesses, we have families, we have spouses, we have kids, we have dogs and pets and everything else that comes with being a busy, successful person, and so we don't have the time to waste like that. So, again, we want to be very, very efficient in the gym and not have to spend a ton of time in there. Get in there, take care of business, get the most out of it and carry on with our day, and so focusing on your training intensity, making sure that you're training hard enough, making sure that you're truly pushing yourself on a day to day, week to week basis, is going to help you be as efficient as possible. Ok, like I said, there's lots of different things that we can touch on when it comes to growth and making sure that you're optimizing your you know muscle growth, your muscle retention, your fat loss, all that, but I feel like this is really a big one that a lot of people are missing, because I see, especially when I worked in box gyms you know the big gyms and there's lots of members, lots of people coming in and out.
Speaker 1:So many times I would see people in there doing the same exact workouts for a long period of time, never really appearing to push themselves, and then you would talk with them and just have a conversation like, hey, how's your training going? You know, how's your progress going, what you know, are you what goals are you working on? Stuff like that, just kind of you know, building rapport and having a conversation. So many of those people are like, yeah, I've been doing this for a while and you know, I just kind of come to maintain. Or you know, yeah, you know I'm here all the time but I don't really feel like I'm progressing all that much. And you know so many different. I don't want to say excuses, but you know situations that they're going through. And then you know you mentioned well, hey, have you thought about this, have you thought about that? And then a lot of times they're like no, I really haven't. I just thought, if I just come to the gym and do a workout, like I'm going to just keep progressing and getting better. And so you know, we get a little bit more into the finer details. When we really want to take our physique and take our health and our body to the next level or make really big improvements or noticeable improvements, we have to start thinking about some of these little details here, kind of like training intensity and our nutrition and our sleep and you know these other factors that play a huge role into how our body changes over time. All right, so make sure that you're training hard guys, you don't have to go to failure. Ok, let me say that you know, if that's what you took from all this, that's not what I'm saying. That's why I started with.
Speaker 1:You know RPE and RIR. You know getting close to failure. You don't have to go to failure, ok, matter of fact, when you look at a lot of the studies again, we have that five reps from failure, that five RIR. You know we see a decent amount of growth at that five. Once you get to four, we see an increase in growth, but it's a little bit slower increase. And then we see fatigue start to go up more, okay. And then, once you get to that three RIR, that growth starts to taper off a little bit, but it's still more growth than four RIR and we see fatigue again starting to rise more and more. And then you get to that two and that one. Now growth is really starting to slow down as far as how much more growth you're getting, but that fatigue is rising up higher, higher and higher Once you get to failure, from one RIR to failure. There's very little growth that actually happens between that rep, but there is a ton of fatigue and a ton of, you know, connective tissue damage and joint discomfort and things like that wear and tear. That happens that you're trading off for this little bit of extra growth by going to failure.
Speaker 1:So you'll hear a lot of this is going to rub a lot of people wrong. This is going to rub a lot of you know the bodybuilding world wrong, because you know there's still a lot of that mentality of, oh, you got to go, take everything to failure. You know every set to failure, you're not really pushing hard, you're not going to get better. That's just not true, guys. Now again, if you like training to failure and you like going and your and your body can handle pushing to failure on a regular basis in a day in and day out, then by all means do whatever makes you happy. But if your body's not built that way you know your joints have some wear and tear it's probably not going to be that profitable to take your training to failure Now, every once in a while, you know, maybe every few weeks, totally fine.
Speaker 1:I actually encourage that because, again, you know we want to know where that true failure is. Because once we hit true muscle failure, once you truly take a set to failure, now it's a lot easier to gauge how close you are to failure. Once you truly take a set to failure, now it's a lot easier to gauge how close you are to failure right? Because if you take something to failure, you know what that pain feels like. You know what that experience is like. So you know when you're starting to get closer and closer to that.
Speaker 1:And the more times you repeat that cycle of building up to failure, going back down, building up to failure, you're going to get more intuitive on how close you truly are to failure. And then also with that, this is something that changes over time. So as you get stronger, as you get more fit, or as you develop more fitness, as you improve through your different lifts and you become more efficient at them, it's going to change how hard you're able to push, how many muscle fibers you're able to recruit, how much force you're able to produce through how many muscle fibers you're able to recruit, how much force you're able to produce through those muscle fibers in order to push harder. So as you go along training, the longer that you train consistently, the harder you're going to have to push over time, okay. So every now and then, like I said, I think it's totally fine to go to failure. But if you're trying to do it all the time've seen it a trillion times, I've experienced it dozens of times it usually ends up with burnout, with plateauing or with injury. Okay, and it's just not worth it for that little bit extra gains you're going to get. But to each his own, do whatever you feel is best for your physique and your goals, because that's what matters at the end of the day. So that's about it.
Speaker 1:I got on this one, guys. This is actually a little bit longer than I expected it to be, but just kind of trying to unpack this concept, and I really feel like this can be the game changer for so many people out there who have been in the gym for months, for years, and they're just like man, I just don't feel like I'm changing. I don't feel like I'm getting better. I don't feel like I'm changing. I don't feel like I'm getting better. I don't feel like I'm getting stronger. I don't feel like I'm getting more fit. I just am coming in here doing my routine and then that's it. This can be a game changer for you guys.
Speaker 1:Focus on intensity, focus on pushing hard. Be aware, while you're doing the work, you see so many people that are so distracted or they got their mind on so many different things while they're training that they don't even know what rep they're on, or you know they're just going and then they just stop whenever. Oh, okay, I guess that's good enough. I'll just stop. Like be aware of how you're feeling, the sensations that are happening. Feeling you know if you're doing the bench press. Feeling your chest activating and squeezing and burning and stretching. Feeling your triceps getting engaged, feeling your frontal delts getting engaged. Like be aware of what's happening, because now you can really start to gauge where you're at and how close to failure you are and if you're actually truly pushing hard enough. Okay, so I'm going to do some more podcast episodes on some of these type of topics. When it comes to making sure you're optimizing your time in the gym, again, if your goal is to build a better physique, to look better, feel better. All that good stuff, because there are some other very important points to make that go beyond training intensity that if you don't, if you're not monitoring those and you're only focused on intensity, probably not going to get the optimal growth that you're looking for either.
Speaker 1:Okay, so hopefully this was helpful for you. Guys. If you will, please like, share, comment, engage with us, guys, Help us get the message out there, help us get the awareness of our podcast out. It just helps, you know, be seen more. It helps us help more people, helps my business. It helps everything, guys. So if you're finding this information good, if you're finding it useful, please, guys, just share it with someone, tell someone about the podcast, and I would greatly appreciate it. So, with all that being said, guys, get out in the sun this week, get that vitamin D in your skin and, regardless, whatever you do, make sure you do something good for yourself, something good for your health, something good for those you care about and, whatever you do, make sure you win on purpose. Talk to you next time.