From running to weight lifting, yoga to group fitness, exercise options are more numerous than ever. But every form of exercise has its strengths and limitations. To maximize your results, you must learn how and when to use each to your advantage.
Strengths And Limitations Of Three Different Workouts
The first thing to know about working out is that any form of exercise has its own set of benefits. Consider three common goals: muscle gain, strength, and flexibility.
Goal: Muscle Gain
Building muscle requires some very intense training. It’s all about doing a lot of work, i.e. many sets (four or more), many reps (eight to twelve typically), and short rest periods (ca. sixty seconds). You’ll also do several exercises for one muscle group. This is where the classic “back day” or “leg day” style of training comes from.
Strengths: This intense training can build muscle, boost your metabolism, and contribute to weight loss and weight control.
Limitations: Accumulating volume means lots of beating on one muscle group. This raises this risk of overuse injury. Also, to make it work, you’ll need to hit the gym five or six days a week in order to get everything in.
Goal: Strength
To build strength your focus is not on many repetitions, but rather on producing a lot of force. For example, instead of lifting one hundred pounds ten times, you’ll lift two hundred pounds once. It takes a lot for the body, especially the nervous system, to produce that kind of force so you’ll need to have long rests. We’re talking something like three to five minutes between sets.
Strengths: Being strong is useful, and most of us aren’t nearly strong enough. Strength makes you more athletic and more resistant to injury, no matter what activities you are in to. Even athletes not generally associated with weight lifting, like runners and golfers, regularly train themselves to lift hundreds of pounds.
Limitations: Heavy lifting for only a few reps doesn’t build as much muscle as high rep protocols. Because of the long rest periods, there tends to be less heavy breathing and intense sweating. In other words, it’s not great for aerobic conditioning or fat loss.
Goal: Flexibility
Flexibility training is anything designed to stretch muscles and make them less stiff. It can help you move better, relieve a lot of stress on the body, eliminate aches and pains, and prevent future ones. Yoga is a classic example of a flexibility focused workout.
Strengths: Most of us have a lot of stiffness in our bodies because we spend several hours a day sitting. Restoring proper flexibility will help you move better, which will help you exercise more intensely and with fewer injury related interruptions.
Limitations: Flexibility focused exercise does not directly build appreciable amounts of strength or muscle. Although you will find that with practice you can go from not being able to do a yoga pose to being able to hold it for several minutes, this has more to do with coordination and static muscular endurance. This should not be confused with strength, because strength is about generating force.
To Get Results Focus Your Efforts
Contrary to common belief, different exercise goals can’t be easily addressed all at the same time. Focusing on specific goals, rather than trying to do everything in one workout, will get you better results.
Athletes accomplish this by dividing their training into different phases over the weeks and months of their training year in a method called periodization. Effectively, periodizing simply means prioritizing in a logical manner. For example, if you are an avid outdoor runner you may want to make the winter a time when you focus on building your strength so that you are better prepared for the warm weather season. As another example, if you have a lot of stiffness in your body, it makes sense to focus on flexibility before you attempt too much strength, muscle building, or cardiovascular training.
If you need help developing a plan, physical therapists can help. So can a well qualified personal trainer. Give it a try!