DTP training

Monday the 3rd of December was the day that the gym team put themselves through a hardcore training regime. DTP (Dramatic Transformational Protocol) was founded by Kris Gethin who is an ex weight-trainer, and a well respected health and fitness professional from America. He designed the programme as he was getting far too many injuries from lifting heavy weights in the 6-8 rep range. The programme is based on a pyramid system with lots of volume and lots of reps. The basis of DTP is to start of with 50 reps and work your way back down in multiples of 10, to 10 reps (50,40,30,20,10). That is only half the battle, once you have done that you start the process again, this time starting at 10 reps and working your way back up to 50 reps. The science behind this is to work all 3 different muscle fibres. In all of us we have type 1 fibres, type 2a fibres and type 2b fibres. They all have different properties Your type 1 fibres are your endurance fibres, they are resistant to fatigue and are needed for endurance events such as long distance running. These fibres really do not get much training in the weights room, but with this system they are put under extreme amounts of tension and pressure which your body is not used to, and the only way it will respond to this is to adapt and grow. Type 2a fibres and type 2b fibres are used most of the time during your weights sessions.

Now for our DTP session we picked the hardest muscle group - Legs. Squats are normally hard work but when you are doing around 300 reps, things become a little bit harder! The first 50 are used as a warm up set. This high amount of reps promotes the flow of synovial fluid to your joints, opens up neuromuscular pathways, gets more blood to your muscles, and activates nerve endings to get those motor-neurons firing for proper muscle-fiber contraction. As the weight goes up you take longer rest periods and believe me you will need it! As we worked our way down to 10 reps everyone was feeling it and working back up to 50 reps was twice as hard. As you start working your way back up, fatigue really starts to kick in and your type 1 fibres will be firing. Once we finished the second set of 50 everyone was completed knackered. Joe collasped to the floor, whereas Oli 'The Machine' Martin looked like he could do another 50.

That was not the end of the workout as we shifted the attention to our calves. We paired off, Joe and Dan (who by the way did not do the squats poor show!) were on the rack doing calf raises, and Oli and Paddy on the leg press doing calf presses. As we started the torture once more, the calves are a much more smaller muscle group and contain more type 1 fibres but again you will feel them by the time you have finished. By the end of the calf workout we were all struggling to walk around the gym, and rumors were circulating that paddy even shed a few tears! It was an emotional workout! Now you may be thinking that high reps do not build muscle and that you have to lift heavy weights all of the time, this is not true. You will definately build muscle with DTP and more importantly, you'll build muscle density. Give DTP a go if you are unsure ask any of the gym team for advice on the programme and what you can expect out of it. Its extremely hard work, but it will bring you results.

Good luck!

Joe.