As an actor who rushes to a dozen television auditions and films per week, John Lehr does not have much time for the chest press machine, the leg gizmo, or any of the many Other bodybuilding gadgets in your West Hollywood Health Club. But neither Lehr moves to the luxury of jumping completely to the gym. "I do not want to be one of those muscles with biceps exploding from their shirts," says Lehr, 34, "but in my line of work, it seems to count for a long time. Besides, 40 years from now I want to end up curved as quasimodo. "
So on the board of a coach, Lehr recently began a non-conventional force program: it makes only one set of each exercise (although a single single set), a routine that takes only 20 minutes of three days a week. "I spend less time at the gym than some guys spend looking at the mirror of the locker room," says Lehr, who also runs three mornings a week. "But my body is starting to sign up - you can ask my girlfriend."
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Experts emphasize that to earn strength training benefits from a set, you can not sleep for your routine. You should "get up for failure". In other words, you should raise heavy weights that your muscles distribute after 8 to 12 replicates (representatives). "No matter how screaming or shouting, you should not be able to raise this weight once again," says Chris Hass, the main author of the study, researcher at the Exercise and Sports Sciences at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
For people (often women) who fear that this high intensity will make them rise, rest: make 8 to 12 repetitions to failure will not turn it into a similar to Schwarzenegger. To develop a significant size, you need to raise much heavier weights - heavy enough to exhaust your muscles after only 3 to 5 repetitions - and make a more elaborate and complicated routine, says Hass.
"For the average person who wants to be well in a swimsuit or run with children on weekends, a set is a very valid option," says Hass. Proponents of a set hope the most recent discoveries inspire more people to lift weights. Nowadays, after all, strength training is considered practically a need for good health.
Elevation weights expose body metabolism into higher gear, facilitating weight maintenance. It also helps prevent osteoporosis slowing down the natural rate of age-related bone loss and muscle waste. A study in the February 2000 issue of hypertension: Journal of American Heart Association even suggests that weight training can help reduce blood pressure.
Although experts agree that the training of a set works in the short term and is probably sufficient for general fitness, not all strength researchers fully endorse the idea. "Everyone wants a quick solution, but you have to look at the long way," says William Kraemer, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. Kraemer's research on trained athletes suggests that after four Six months, a set exercisers tend to plateau, while multiple exercisers continue to gain strength.
But no one has studied newborn or recreational entrepreneurs in the long run, so the questions remain on how many common jets and jays can continue to benefit from training a set. The experts at the American Sports Medicine College Straddle A fence, saying that a set is sufficient for healthy adults, but "multi-defined regimes can provide greater benefit if time allows"
For your part, Kraemer defends "Periodization", a technique where you change your program - including the number of sets and repetitions - every two to four weeks. For example, you can get with a set of 10 to 12 repetitions, then make two sets of 8 to 10 repetitions, then two or three sets of 6 to 8 replicates, after three to five sets of 3 to 5 repetitions. It is not just this type of program more effective than a set of a set because it challenges your muscles more diverse, says Kraemer, but it is also less annoying. "When you do the same thing more and more, you do not wait for it. It's like eating apple pie every night."
While Hass agrees that a multiple set of this type can build more force than a standard set routine, it does not think most people have time or slope to follow such a scheme. His reduced scale program, he says, is simply more realistic for most Americans pressed by the time fighting to do any strength training at all.
Even Kraemer results, in fact, confirm this. When his study "periodization" ended, he says, most of the subjects of three sets were eager to cut their routines. "I see them in the gym and most of them were happy to go back to a set," he says.
John Lehr, for example, intends to keep your program abbreviated. "I'm doing tests for Voice-Overs," he says. "Not for Mr. Universe."
Suzanne Schlosberg, a freelance writer based in Santa Monica, California., He is the author of The Ultimate Workout Log, Second Edition (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), and Fitness Co-Author for Dummies, Second Edition (IDG Books Worldwide 2000 ).
