Having been involved with weight training for years (decades), I want to share some conclusions that I thought I had learned from training experience, but my conclusions turned out to be wrong. First of all, I have always been the type that will listen to the experts to start with, but if there is a wide spectrum of opinions among the experts, or their advice doesn’t seem to be working, I’m not afraid to try something new; even if it goes against the common expert advice.
High Frequency Training Appeared to be Bad
One of the things that I tried that went against what the experts said was to try training my whole body five days in a row. The first time I tried this, I just did one to two sets to failure for each body part. It felt good for about a week and then it started to feel like I was burning out and it quit working. I gave it up after about a month. My conclusion was that the experts were right and that training on consecutive days was a bad idea.
Like many people who train with weights, I didn’t understand that in order for one variable to work right, the other variables must be adjusted to compliment that variable. In this case, it was many years later that I learned that training on consecutive days did work if I stopped a set when rep speed started to slow down, and I quit repeating sets for a body part as soon as my strength level decreased.
Light Weights Appeared to be Worthless
A second false conclusion that I believed through experience was that light weights are always worthless when it comes to strength training. Of course the experts said lights weights would rob me of strength and once again they seemed to be right. However, various circumstances led me to try doing 10 reps or less per set, even though the weight was light enough to do 50 reps or more for one set. Suddenly my strength started to pick up and I was surprised that as long as I lifted the weights forcefully and stopped a set long before I began to fatigue, light weights could enhance strength training.
Lifting Heavy on Regular Basis Seemed to be Bad
A third false conclusion occurred after being enamored with the Bulgarian style of training. Bulgarian methodology is built around working up to a one rep max weight. The one rep max is not a phase of a training cycle, instead, working up to a one rep max is done on a consistent basis from one workout to the next. It wore me out and left me stuck. I concluded frequent training with heavy weights doesn’t work, but I later found that it does work if I back off enough on the weight to use perfect form and never grind. Others have also found that using excellent form without grinding with heavy weights to be very important. This is discussed on the following videos.
Another factor that seemed necessary for my own success when using heavy weights was to compliment it with other types of training including the use of light weights, medium weights, and medium heavy weights. Basically, I prefer four types of training as opposed to one. This will be discussed further in the next article. Best of training to you.