Drop Sets For Strength & Endurance

Drop sets are one of many ways to improve strength and muscular endurance and more importantly help to inject some change into you work out if you have been making less progress than normal. Its main benefits focus on working your extremely hard helping to build better muscle endurance and strength. You may also find training with drop set keeps your heart rate up as the work period is longer than normal set and the cardiovascular system will benefit as well.

The basic principle involves starting with a weight which enables you to perform between 8-12 repetitions to near failure for the first set. As you work through the weight will be reduced each successive time allowing the same amount of reps if not more to be completed.

Example of a drop set with Barbell chest press

(tip: make up the total 100kg weight with a variety of different plates. 20kg bar / 2x15kg plates / 4x10kg plates / 2x5kg plates )

• 100kg for 8-12 reps. NO REST 
• Finish the 8-12 reps & take 1x10kg plate+1x5kg plate off each side
• 70 kg for 8-12 reps. NO REST
• Finish the 8-12 reps & take 1x10kg plate+1x15kg plate off each side & add 1x10kg plate back on
•  40kg for 8-12 reps. NO RESTFinish the 8-12 reps & take recovery

You use this technique with any exercises you want to but make sure you rest 1-2 minutes between sets to insure a proper recovery if you can get a partner to change the weights for you to ensure it is done quickly and you can continue to focus.

For more information on drop sets and there benefits please do not hesitate to contact the fitness team.

Increased Productivity!

In a business seminar, Richard Branson was once asked what makes him more productive. It was a question that everyone wanted to here the answer to. His response was, "work out". Apparently, Richard Branson swims around Necker Island every morning and he said it keeps him more productive for an extra 3 hours a day!

Here at TSC, we can't offer you a caribbean island to swim around, but we can offer you a fantastic 25 metre pool with a nice sauna to relax in after!

We have two swim related classes that run in the morning. Aqua is on Wednesday at 9.30am-10.30am and Swim and trim is on Thursday at 8.45am-9.30am.

 


Early Circuit training classes!

We have also just launched our early morning circuit classes, run by our fitness team. These run on a Thursday at 6.45am-7.30am and are a great way to start the day! Training first thing is a great way to increase the body ability to burn fat, as it will rev up your metabolism for the rest of the day. It will also keep you more productive, like Mr Branson! All abilities welcome.

Example five day split

Name:			Date:
Sets/Reps	Monday	W	Tuesday	W	Wednesday	W	Thursday	W	Friday	W
2 x 10-12	Lat Pull Down		DB Press		BB Squats		Standin Press		H Bicep Curls
2 x 8-10	(Pyramid)		(Pyramid)		(Pyramid)		(Pyramid)		Vs (4 x 6-12)
1 x 6-8									H Tricep Ext
2 x 10-12	BB T-Bar		IDB Press		Leg Press		Pull Overs		Ez Bar Curls
2 x 8-10	(Pyramid)		(Pyramid)		(Pyramid)		(Pyramid)		Vs (4 x 8-12)
1 x 6-8									L Tricep Ext
3 x 12-15	DB 1 Arm Row		C Fly		Leg Ext		UR Row		1A Preachers
3 x 12-15	C Prone Fly		Dip		Leg Curl		Lat Raises		Vs (4 x 10-12)
3 x 12-15	IDB Curls		L Tricep Ext		Calf Raises		Plate Press		Tricep Kicks
3 x 12-15	Ez-Bar Curls		Tricep Kicks		Front Squats		Burn Curls		CG Press Ups
2 x AMAP	CG Chins		CG Press Ups		Squat Jumps		Parellel  Chins		Vs
									CG Chins
Extra
Work

One example of a five day split.
Quite a long work out and completeing all excercises maybe alot for a begginer or even amateur gym user.
Set weight so each exercise is done to failure and for any help with techniques ask a member of fitness team.

Foods for muscle building

If you are well into your muscle building, you will know the importance of protein to help repair and rebuild the muscle fibers that you have broken down. However, many of you won't be including certain foods in your diet that will really help your progress:

Red Meat - Don't skimp on your steaks! Saturated fat in red meat is actually good at boosting testosterone levels, one of the big factors in muscle building. If  you are constantly breaking your body down, you will need the fats in these foods to provide quality calories to help rebuild those muscle fibers. Red meat will provide B12, Creatine and iron and provides more quality calories than white meat for all you muscle builders!

Eat the organs - Another fantastic source of high-quality muscle building calories, are the organs of animals e.g. Kidneys, Liver etc.Think of a tiger in the wild. They will eat these first, the meat second and skin third. This is where you find all the goodness.

Eggs - One of the best and most natural forms of protein. Some bodybuilders eat the whites only. This is usually when they are trying to get lean. If you wan't to put on muscle size, eat the whole egg.

Dried fruit and nut mix - Dried fruit is a great form of condensed calories. Eating 5 dried apricots is easy. Eating 5 whole apricots is more difficult. Pound for pound, raisans are one of the most dense forms of carbohydrate and provide a great amount of anti-oxidants. Anti-oxidants will protect against free-radicals which are a by-product of the stress caused by exercise. Nuts are again filled with protein, good fats and carbs and are a great source of calories.

Whole milk - We give whole milk to babies to build them up. Simple.

Eat carbohydrates - These are massively important to fuel your workouts and to prevent you from breaking down muscle fibers to provide energy. If you don't eat enough of these your body will turn catabolic (break itself down) and you will start loosing muscle. Include sweet potato, white potato, rice, rice pasta, pasta, quinoa, wholewheat, etc!

NOT EATING ENOUGH! - if you aren't gaining weight and you are training hard, then you're probably not eating enough. Start incuding the above foods and the additional calories should get the ball rolling. Make sure you are resting enough between sessions and let the food do the work while you put your feet up!

For more information on eating to gain muscle, email Oli on orm@tonbridge-school.org

Try This....

You Should.....

Give it a Rest

A lot of people would like to improve themselves in some way, whether that be in terms of sporting performance, muscular hypertrophy (gaining muscular size) or losing weight. Regardless of the purpose behind your training, there are a couple of obsticles that most people will encounter.

 

Motivation is a major one. All people at some stage will struggle with their motivation somewhere along the way and overcoming this is very much down to personal fortitude and determination. This is what seperates top athletes from the also-rans and those who repeatedly set and achieve goals from those who have used a gym for years (decades even!) without ever accomplishing their desired results. Our instructors can offer all manner of advice and ideas on how to keep yourself motivated and focused but essentially the decision to stick to a plan and work hard at it on every visit is very much down to one person. You.

 

The second, and potentially more dangerous problem, is that of over-training. I say more dangerous in the respect that I've never heard of someone physically injuring themselves or, for instance, tearing a muscle through pure lack of motivation.  Over-training syndrome is a real condition and effects a great deal of gym users and athletes whether they realise it or not.  This is often a result of a lack of understanding of a rest day's usefullness within an exercise regime.

 

Rest days are a crucial element in any programe for many reasons, but most notably to prevent injury and allow sufficient time for muscles to repair and develop between sessions. The most common misconception is that a rest day represents time not being spent working towards ones given target. In fact a rest day constitutes an active and important part of achieving any goal in that it will allow time for all the hard work to be 'redeemed' whilst you rest. If you just continue to train day after day eventually you will find yourself overtrained, probably injured and actually moving further from your targets as a result.

 

The most common physical and psychological symptoms of over-training are;

 

• Washed-out feeling, tired, drained, lack of energy
• Mild leg soreness, general aches and pains
• Pain in muscles and joints
• Sudden drop in performance
• Insomnia (inability to sleep) 
• Headaches
• Decrease in training capacity / intensity
• Moodiness and irritability
• Depression
• Loss of enthusiasm for the sport
• Decreased appetite
• Increased incidence of injuries.
• Lowered immunity (increase in number of colds and sore throats)
• A compulsive need to exercise

 

 It's fairly obvious as to how each of these ailments do not lend themselves to a progressive training regime and this illustrates the importance of avoiding overtraining as a whole. One of the most common mistakes is one often made by those who are generally very active in their day to day lives in addition to following a specific training programme. Most of us only take into account the exercise we perform in the gym and/or in relation to the goals we have set ourselves and what people forget is that, regardless of how much we enjoy it or feel invigorated by it, exercise is just another stress factor within our daily lives. Stress is accumulative in nature and can be contributed to by a number of different factors, both physical and psychological. Take the list of symptoms above for example, they can all be re-caterogised as symptoms related to excessive stress as well as those of over-training and this is why it can be neccesary to adjust or adapt your training workload at times of increased stress in order to redress the balance between training enough to progress and doing too much.

 

The same can be said of fatigue. If you regularly fail to sleep adequately then it can have a detrimental affect on your body's ability to both train and recover. This is partly due to slight hormonal changes, including elevated cortisol (related to stress), decreased activity of the Human Growth Hormone (HGH-responsible for muscle regeneration) and decreased glycogen synthesis resulting in lowered energy levels.

There are many ways in which you can utilise a rest day to aid your progress and allow your body the time it needs to recover, here are just a few;

Stretching
Stretching is always a good choice because this will actively help you to recover by making the muscles more pliable and increasing the blood supply to them as they repair and re-build themselves. It will also, over time, help to increase flexibility and improve the biomechanics and muscle recruitment you can utilise whilst training in future. An easy way to start to improve your suppleness is to take part in a Yoga or Mobility Class on your rest days in order to learn to relax and de-stress whilst still contributing to you objectives.

Swimming/ Pool Recovery
Swimming is an excellent past time during rest periods largely because of the lack of impact involved. Your body is supported by the water throughout and this provides both buoyancy and a degree of gentle resistance to again help increase blood flow to those repairing muscles. Obviously swimming lengths is only a good solution if you are fortunate enough to find swimming both relaxing and comfortable - If you are not a strong swimmer then 20 lengths probably isn't your idea of a rest! Instead you can simply use the pool to perform some simple mobility exercises such as shoulder circles or leg kicks holding onto the pool wall in order to get the same benefits without risking your life.....

OR...if you really can't bare to be away from us.....

Reduce your worload
If you simply have to use the gym then it is wise to reduce you weights and concentrate on your form for a week every couple of Months (or more regularly if you prefer) in order to reduce the work your muscles are having to recover from. This slight reduction in workload can be enough to get you through but there really is nothing better than a good day off.....

Oli's weekly training diary.

Most of the members in the gym are used to the TSC fitness team working them hard in classes or on a one-to-one level. This month, you will have the opportunity to see how they train and who inflicts a bit of physical pain on them!

Here is my training plan for this week, commencing Monday the 1st of May:

Monday - Upper body strength training:

1. a. Bench Press 6 sets of 3 reps
    b. Weighted wide grip Pullups 6 sets of 3 reps

2. a. Narrow grip Bench press 3 sets of 8 reps
    b. Narrow grip chinups 3 sets of maximum reps

3 a. Floor pressing 3 sets of 12 reps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bplOMMhWtxQ
   b. Recline Pullups 3 sets of Maxiumum reps

On all of the exercises I used the new piece of kit that we have at the gym called 'fat gripz'. This made all the pullups extremely challenging (Please see the below article).
I like to pair exercises. I do 'a' first, then 'b'. I rest a minute then go again. I use this for opposite muscle groups so that it doesn't affect my strength. It also keeps my heart rate up and helps with conditioning, as you are always on the move. It also saves time!

Tuesday - Swimming

I had a dip in the pool today. My muscles were sore from yesterday (especially my forearms after the work with the fat gripz). When I hit the pool i do a variety of strokes that help keep me fit for life gaurding. My workout consisted of:

4 laps - Breast stroke
4 laps - Front crawl
4 laps - Side stroke
4 laps - back stroke
4 laps - Side stoke
4 laps - Front crawl
4 laps - Breast stroke

Wednesday - Lower body Strength training:

1. Barbell back squats 1 x 20 reps

2. Barbell Front Squats 4 x 6 reps

3. Heavy weighted drag (I used a heavy chain) 3 sets dragging the chain 30-40 metres http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvrLddmZgdE&playnext=1&list=PL861D49B0B4F379B7

4. Wheel rollout 3 x 8 reps.

Thursday - Upper body strength training:

1 a.Barbell Press behind the neck 5 sets of 5 reps
   b. Scapula Pullups 5 sets of 5 reps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDq8VDCrM3Q&feature=related

2 a. Weighted dips 3 x maximum reps
   b. Incline curls 3 x 10 reps

3 a. Dumbell skullcrushers 3 x 10 reps
   b. Reverse curls 3 x 10 reps


Friday:

Teaching Spin - This always gets me sweating!

Saturday - REST!!!

Sunday - Power and Back training:

1. Barbell cleans 3 sets of 5 reps

2 a.Barbell deadlifts 4 x 6 reps
   b Dumbell farmers walk 4 x 40-50 metres

3 a.Barbell rows 3 x 10
   b. hanging leg raises 3 x 8-10

Benefits Of Thick Bar Training Coming Soon To TSC

Tonbridge School Centre is currently in the process of providing a range of training equipment which will easily convert any ordinary dumbbell, barbell and bar into an equivalent “Thick Bar”. So I wanted to take the time to discuss the benefits behind thick bar training so to help maximise their use and educate all our members on the benefits that will be freely available to them without even adapting there current programme.

I’m presuming that the majority of people won’t have had access to this particular adaptive training as in the U.K equipment is limited. Having personally trained and worked in a number of different gyms throughout the U.K from mainstream gyms in London and Leeds; to local individual clubs in Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells I have only encounter the product a handful of times.

The Benefits of thick bar training are linked with the development of muscular strength and endurance. There are a number of different reasons for this, some which are more obvious and others which are not so obvious.

Firstly when performing any pulling exercise like One Arm dumbbell rows or Chin Ups, when using the Thick Bar, your grip will be tested a lot more. Your forearms will have to work much harder to hold on to the same weight, increasing the tension in the muscle, and improving the strength of your grip. This is great for many different sports and improving your grip will help you work more efficiently in future training sessions.

Secondly I look to discuss the principle of "Irradiation". I will use a practical example to help you understand the concept without all the Scientific Information. You may already be aware that when contracting a muscle you also contract surrounding muscles. A good Practical example I have come across helps you understand what I’m talking about.

1.      Try flexing your bicep as hard as possible without making a fist.

2.      Flex your bicep as hard as possible whilst making a very tight fist.

3.      You should notice your bicep contract much harder when making a tight fist.

4.      If you flex your forearms hard enough you will begin to feel tension not just in your arms, but in your shoulders, chest, and back.

This is the Irradiation principle in action. The nerve impulses of surrounding muscles can amplify the effect of that muscle. When training for strength gains you can generate much more tension within Prime Mover (main muscle being used in exercise) and synergists (supporting/surrounding muscles).

The more your body uses Irradiation in the pulling movements the stronger your forearms will get. This strength will directly translate into other pressing movements when squeezing the bar hard. Allowing you create more tension when training and maximise progression.

One last point to make on the subject is you cannot combine the thick bar work and lifting straps. Although lifting straps may appear to allow you train harder, as you may be able to hold more weight when performing pulling movements. You don’t rely on your grip at all no Irradiation occurs and they weaken your ability to generate tension in your forearms. After all the strength gained is not functional or usable without the straps.

Circuit blast for Beginners, Semi-Pro & Pro.

Circuits are one of the best ways to train the whole body working various energy systems and muscles. Find below a circuit based workout incorporating cardio and muscular stations. There are three levels and an outstanding time goal for each proving to make for a challenging work out.

Level	Row (m)	Squats (reps)	Row (m)	Press ups (reps)	Row (m)	Squat Press (reps)	Row (m)	Sit ups (reps)	Row (m)	Burpees (reps)	Treadmill 5% (km)
Beginner	200	10	200	10	200	10*5kg Barbell	200	10	200	10	1
Semi-Pro	400	20	400	20	400	20*10kg Barbell	400	20	400	20	2
Pro	1000	50	1000	50	1000	50*10kg Barbell	1000	50	1000	50	4

Beginner	Semi-Pro	Pro
17 minutes	30 minutes	45 minutes

For any help or assistance with any of the exercises please seek help from the gym team.

Dan.Byrne