Before we get into the actual chapter, let’s just recap everything that we’ve seen so far:
- Losing fat, getting and staying lean is a game of calorie control — it’s all about what goes into your mouth. No amount of activity or “healthy eating” can compensate if you eat way more calories than you should.
- Staying fit and healthy is not only about fat loss. There are other components to it — like strength and endurance.
- Even if you are in good shape right now (i.e. in your prime youth), without proper activity, you WILL lose it all because of withering away of muscle (atrophy) because your body has a “use it or lose it” policy.
- There is only so much benefit you can gain from cardio-vascular activities. To have all round fitness, you must have some form of regular muscle building activity.
STRENGTH TRAINING
Muscles contract to produce force. This force moves our rigid skeletal structure and anything else that may be attached to the frame like, say, a coffee mug.
Although strength and muscle mass are not exactly the same, increasing our strength is primarily how we will be building the maximum amount of muscle as drug-free athletes.
When you expose yourself to activities that challenge your strength, it is your body adaptive response to build more muscle.
Your brain on strength training: “Hmm, these muscles seem to be exposed to some kind of stress again and again… let’s add a little more muscle there so that the task will get easy in future”
A well-rounded strength training schedule consists of exercises which address various “functional” aspects of our body. Most of the major muscle groups in our body can be trained using these four basic movements patterns —
1. JUMP
2. SPRINT
3. PUSH
4. PULL
Wait a second… these activities can be done freehand. Where do weights come into picture? There is the big advantage of resistance training using weights:
- First of all, the load that you would be moving (the weight) would be a fixed number — an objective metric of your current capacity.
- Secondly, this number can be gradually increased — what we are achieving here is a concept called progressive overload. We are slowly but steadily increasing the stress on the body — thus, triggering consistent growth.
Shown below are tried and tested barbell exercises which correspond to each of the movement patterns mentioned above:
Are you saying that these movements are all you need to do?
YES! If you are a beginner looking for a super minimalist way to get a well shaped athletic physique, all you need to do at the gym is focus on improving your strength levels at each of the above 6 movements — Squat, Deadlift, BenchPress, Rows, OverHeadPress and PullUps.
Then why do people do so many other things at the gym?
As you slowly advance through your journey of weight training, your goals will start becoming more and more specific.
- For example, you might notice that one arm of yours is slightly stronger than the other. You will realize that it would be beneficial for you to add some unilateral/isolateral (one-sided) exercises like Dumbbell presses and Dumbbell Rows into your workout routine. Similarly for training each leg independently, you might add Lunges to your workout.
- Another example — there is no exercise in the list which particularly targets your Lateral Deltoid. Hence, one may choose to add some Dumbbell Lateral Raises to compensate.
- Men, very often, desire big and muscular arms. Adding bicep curls to the workout is something one may choose to do.
- To cancel out the negative effects of sitting for so long on our shoulders, one may choose to do add extra Posterior Deltoid and Rotator Cuff exercises. My favorite exercise for this purpose — the Face Pull — is demonstrated in this video by fitness YouTuber Omar Isuf:
With changing goals, you will play around with the main movements. But remember this: every good programme, whether it is a strength specific schedule OR a so-called muscle building “hypertrophy” programme, will hover around the primary strength exercises. I recall reading the following statement somewhere at the start of my fitness journey and as I look back, it holds true:
80% of your muscle development will come from the primary compound barbell exercises
ALTERNATIVE IDEAS — HOME WORKOUTS
Many of us do not have the luxury of having access to a gym. In the absence of a gym, is it still possible to build muscle? Yes! Freehand exercises in your room and/or on a ground can help you build significant amount of muscle if done the right way. In fact, I had started off my own journey of fitness via this route. Also, many freehand exercises are actually nice additions to a barbell strength building routine — so don’t miss out on these.
What are the exercises that one could be doing at home?
LOWER BODY
Freehand Squats, Lunges and Bulgarian Split Squats are superb exercises to have in your schedule for your lower body because almost ANYONE can do them. Given below are some great tutorials if you are a total beginner to these exercises.
- Squat — ignore the barbell used in the video: most of the tips apply to the freehand squat equally well.
- Lunge
- Split Squat
Apart from these, Sprints (i.e. running really fast) are also a great muscle builder (apart from being a great calorie burner).
UPPER BODY
Push-ups, Pull-ups, Dips and Body-Rows are the primary movements that I would recommend for the upper body.
Upper body is a little tricky though: most women and quite a big fraction of men cannot do push-ups and pull-ups. In such a scenario, I would replace push-ups with knee push-ups and add more body-rows instead of pull-ups.
- Push-Ups — this video also includes progression tricks for those who cannot do the standard push-up.
- Dips — most people should opt for the first variation (bench dip) shown below while significantly advanced (and relatively lean) people could try out the second variation (full body dip).
- Pull-Ups — the first video below will teach you how to do your first pull-up whereas the second will improve your pull-up technique. If you’re a beginner please take good note of the “negative reps” that Scooby talks about (in the first video).
- Body-Rows — if you do not have access to a rod/bar to hold on to (like in the first video below), you should watch the second video.
A HOME WORKOUT SCHEDULE
I have made a very practical 4 day workout programme that incorporates the freehand activities discussed above. This is shown below:
DISCLAIMER
Having an awesome freehand workout programme does not give you the license to miss out on opportunities to join the gym. Once you can do 30 or 40 push-ups, the muscle growth rate (w.r.t. adding more reps) will drastically come down. Whereas with bench press (movement very similar to push-ups), there is no such upper cap — the more weight you can move, the more growth you will experience. The magic of progressive overload can truly be unearthed only with weights.
In future, we will dive deeper and learn how to schedule the exercises, how to plan your sets and reps and about how heavy you should be lifting.
