When it comes to high intensity training, there is a fine line between optimal and over training. Train too little, and you won’t achieve results. Train too much, and you’ll end up risking being severely over trained. Over training occurs when your recovery abilities are unable to keep up with your physical activity.

I feel that the ultimate solution to this issue is interval training. Interval training is not just a great training method, but it is also a method you can use to manage your level of fatigue. For example, in my usual circuit workouts, I just go as hard and as fast as possible.

These kinds of workouts produce great results within a short period of time, but they’re difficult to keep up with. Eventually, you’ll hit burn out. I’ve experienced more over use injuries (when a particular body part just feels “funny” for a period of time, but not necessarily severely injured), with high intensity circuit training than with any other form of training.

So, if you’re looking for a long-term high intensity program without risking burn out, interval training is the way to go.

What is Interval Training?

Lets recap really quickly, what exactly is interval training. Interval training is simple alternating between periods of work, and periods of rest. The most common work to rest intervals include:

• 20 seconds work, 10 seconds rest (also known as Tabata)
• 60 seconds work, 30 seconds rest
• 30 seconds work, 30 seconds rest
• 45 seconds work, 15 seconds rest

Saving Time with Interval Training

I’ve had many circuit workouts that I planned to be only 15 minutes long, but ended up being 45 minutes long. It’s hard to determine how fast it’ll take you to complete a workout if you do not set a time limit for yourself. Interval training allows you to easily schedule workouts that fit around your schedule.

For example, lets say this week I know I’m going to be busy. I can easily create 4, 15-minute workouts for a total of one hour of training per week. Then, lets assume by the end of the week I feel really fresh and have a lot of time on my hands.

Preventing Injury with Interval Training

I can double my work and perform 6 20-minute workouts in that week. But then lets say, half way through the week, your shoulders start to feel a little “funny.” You know it’s time to back off. So the remainder 3, 20 minute workouts turn into 2, 15 minute workouts.

See how this works? You’re basically listening to your body on a daily basis, and creating high intensity workouts based on how you feel and how much time you have to workout.

Designing an Interval Workout

Here’s the way I create interval workouts:

• Figure out how long the workout will last. Lets assume, 15 minutes
• Figure out how many exercises to perform. Lets assume, 3 exercises.
• We know that each exercise will last a total of 5 minutes (15/3)
• I like for each work/rest interval to last 60 seconds, so we’ll be performing 5 rounds total (5 minutes/1 minute)
• Now, choose a 60 second work/rest interval. I chose 45 seconds work, 15 seconds rest.

And so our workout parameters are as follows:

• Total Rounds: 5
• Exercises: 3
• Work Interval: 45 seconds
• Rest Interval: 15 seconds

Use this simple template to develop your own high intensity interval workouts.

One of the best ways to help you with your intervals is to use the GymBoss Interval Timer. It costs just $19.95, and you can program it to help you keep track of any sort of intervals you may use. Click here to grab yours today.

This article promotes a product. If you purchase this product, I get a percentage of sales. Click here to read my disclaimer.

I get a lot of questions from people asking me about their bodyweight workouts. There is one common thing I’ve noticed: poor exercise selection.

So, lets improve this problem by approaching it step by step:

Step Number One: Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail

Lets start with a hypothetical context. Suppose your workout looks Continue reading

There are a lot of “soreness seekers” out there. Soreness seekers are trainees who will not take a day off or stop training until they feel sore the next day after a workout. They’re also known as “fatigue seekers.”

• The main difference between fatigue seekers and soreness seekers is that fatigue seekers aim to fatigue their bodies within a workout. In other words, they’ll keep going until they can go no longer. Until they collapse on the ground in a pool of sweat (and sometimes puke and blood).
  
• Soreness seekers are individuals who will continually make a workout more and more difficult in the hopes that they’ll get sore the day after. Continue reading

I know I’ve been talking a lot about program design lately. This is because learning how to create your own intense workouts is important. At least to me. You can search the net as much as you want. You can even buy tons of products out there.

But…well maybe this is just me…at the end of the day, creating your own unique philosophy is important. I design my own workouts. And my workouts change up by themselves every few weeks. When one things stops working, its time to move onto something else. Continue reading

I’ve come across a lot of full body workouts. Most of them are poorly written simply because they lack balance. Lets examine what a traditional full body workout would like. Most individuals categorize body parts in the following way:

• Back – Pullups
• Chest – Pushups
• Quads – Bodyweight Squats
• Hamstrings – Boot Strappers
• Shoulders – Incline Pushups

Continue reading

Motor units are the functional units of a muscle. The percentage of motor units activated at a given time will determine the amount of force (power) that muscle produces. The force generated by a muscle needs to match the needs of the activity. For example, you do not want to recruit maximum motor units while washing the dishes or picking up a small child. However, you do want maximal motor unit recruitment when sprinting to the finish line or catching a bus.

When you lift fast, you recruit greater motor units with each repetition. According to Strength Coach Chad Waterbury, maximum motor unit recruitment is only sustainable for the first 15 seconds of a movement. Your smallest motor units are recruited first, followed by your larger motor units. However, you can recruit your larger motor units if the weight is heavy enough and the speed is fast enough. Since we can’t really know what “fast enough” or “heavy enough” means without being strapped to all these complicated devices and machines, the best thing is to lift the heaviest weight as fast as possible.

Now, with bodyweight training “heavy” gets replaced by “difficult.” The key is to consistently move onto different variations of a movement when that movement becomes too easy. But most trainees don’t know what too easy means. They go after unecessary repetition numbers and wonder why they’re not getting stronger or bigger. Well, high rep movements do in a way help improve strength levels, but not as well as moderate repetitions. High repetitions do nothing for strength levels.

Image by Combat-Aging

Move Faster and Stronger

We can use Waterbury’s 15 second theory in our bodyweight training as well. Here’s how you do it:

1. Take basic movements such as a pushups and pullups, and see how many repetitions you can do in 15 seconds. I can do 15 pushups and 5 pullups in 15 seconds each.
2. Design a routine where you are doing circuits of pushups and pullups. Lets assume you decide to perform 3 rounds of 15 pushups and 5 pullups. The entire workout should take you a minute and a half, theoretically.
3. Since each round is slower than the one before, the workout may end up taking 2-4 minutes, depending on your recovery time.

Your goal is going to be to move faster each time you perform the workout. With bodyweight training, it is not the load that matters, but the illusion of load. As you get more and more tired, your body thinks you are lifting heavier weights, and so taking as little rest between sets is another important aspect.

The Wrap-Up

Lets assume that your workout time was 3 minutes. Keep hammering at the workout until you’ve dropped down to accomplishing the workout in under 2 minutes. Once you’ve accomplished this feat, switch to more difficult variations, and test your 15 seconds max for that exercise.

This approach to program design accomplishes a few things:

• It gives you a 15-second time frame for recruiting as many muscle fibers as possible. Remember, anything after 15 seconds and you’re recruiting your smaller fibers as opposed to your fast-twitch, larger fibers which are essential for improvements in speed, power, and strength.
• When you work to drop your total workout time and improve your work capacity and recovery, you get faster. Your sets will end up lasting less than 15 seconds, which give you a greater benefit when it comes to recruiting maximal muscle fibers.
• Muscle fiber recruitment also depends on the necessity of the activity. Once you’ve become faster, it’s time to move onto another, difficult variation. Difficult variations are the bodyweight version of lifting heavier weights.

Exercises to Try

This video features some very great advanced bodyweight exercises to use as you progress with your training:

Related Products and Resources

Shawn Lebrun shows you the basics of putting on muscle mass and dropping fat in his eBook, “Simple Steps to Getting Huge and Shredded.” A lot of his clients using the information from the eBook have put on 15-25 lbs of muscle in as little as 8 weeks. Check out the eBook here.

Coach Eddie Lomax teaches you how to successfully use bodyweight training to accomplish your fitness goals.. The best part about his eBook is that he shows you how to steadily progress with your bodyweight workouts, and even gives you templates to help design your own workouts. Check out his eBook, “Workout Without Weights.”

My free Intense Bodyweight Workout Manual features three training programs with simple methods of progression. The manual is especially useful for individuals that have limited time and equipment to exercise. Download it for free here.

There are a hundred different theories out there when it comes to program design. The truth is my own methods have evolved over time. Bodyweightculture .com has a lot of great threads floating around about this very issue. One thing I’ve noticed is that the newbies always ask pretty much the same questions regarding program design. So I just wanted to lay out some principles for these guys to point them in the right direction. Big guys, please feel free to add to my list. I want to keep these principles as general and as common as possible. Read more.

Cover image by yourclimbing.com

Image by Michal Novotny

I would like to restart my training diary on this website. I feel as though keeping a training diary on this site will help others see exactly how I incorporate the principles I present on this website into my practical life.

I would also like some feedback from my audience. Feel free to ask me questions about my program and give any suggestions that I can personally employ. Enjoy!

Training for Week of Monday, January 26, 2009

Monday, January 26, 2009

For time:

• Dive Bombers, 15 reps
• KB Snatch, 3 reps
• Dive Bombers, 12 reps
• KB Snatch, 6 reps
• Dive Bombers, 9 reps
• KB Snatch, 9 reps
• Dive Bombers, 6 repss
• KB Snatch, 12 reps
• Dive Bombers, 3 reps
• KB Snatch, 15 reps

Time: 11:04.67

Intensity Rating: 8/10

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Three rounds for time of:

• 1 Pullup
• 2 Front Squats
• 2 Pullup
• 4 Front Squats
• 3 Pullups
• 6 Front Squats
• 4 Pullups
• 8 Front Squats

Time: 15:58.91

Intensity Rating: 7/10

Friday, January 30, 2009

For time:

• Shoulder Press, 5 reps
• Chin Ups, 4 reps
• Push Press, 15 reps
• Chin Ups, 4 reps
• Push Jerk, 25 reps
• Chin Ups, 4 reps
• Push Press, 15 reps
• Chin Ups, 4 reps
• Shoulder Press, 5 reps
• Chin Ups, 4 reps

Time: 9:14.49

Intensity Rating: 6/10

General Notes/Thoughts: Overall a very good week. I have lost a considerable amount of weight, but somewhere along the way I realized how much fun I was having. And so I think I really just got caught up into developing interesting workouts.

I’m sorry I can’t give you guys a proper assessment in terms of my progress, but the truth is that I really haven’t been measuring my progress that closely. I used to weigh myself and measure myself all the time, but I just got tired of it. I just decided to get in the intense, consistent workouts without worrying about the results. But maybe that’s what helped.

I’ll be heading off to India in about 2 weeks, so my plan right now is to rachet up the intensity, then chill while in India. I’ll probably still workout, but I think if I’m going to a wedding I can expect to be eating a lot of bad food.

After I come back, I’ll see which direction I want to take my training.

Specific Notes about Workouts:

Monday – Divebombers are great for shoulders, tris, and chest. KB Snatch is more of a cardio exercise now. Need heavier KBs, or something heavier than 35lbs.

Wednesday – Pullups were tough. Front squats are amazing for the legs. Keep doing them. Need to work on pullups strength

Friday – Good shoulder and back workout. Short, difficult, but not that intense. Chinups were ok. Can def add reps to it. Pressing was tough, esp the shoulder press. Check form on push jerk.

Total training time this week: 36:15.07

The most important thing you need to take into account when designing a bodyweight training program is how much time you have to actually workout. For starters, ask yourself which three days in your schedule is the lightest. If, for example, you say to yourself that the weekends are your only days off then you need to ask yourself if you will actually be motivated to exercise on the weekends.

Some Tips on Scheduling

• My suggestion is to use either a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule or a Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday split. You can even perform a 2-day program and train only on the weekends. Choose something that you know you can stick to for the long-term.
• I have found that I am able to stick to a program better if I am training at a higher frequency (5-6 days per week), since this way I feel I have something to do each day. But this choice is prescribed only to intermediate and advanced trainees.

Once you have determined which days to train, you need to determine how many hours per day you have to exercise. Use the following as a guide:

Table One:

Now take the time you have to train and divide that by the number of days you have chosen to train.

• For example, if you have chosen to exercise 3 days per week and have time for 3 total hours of exercise per week, then your training session will last 1 hour. If you have chosen to exercise 5 days pwer week, and have time for 1 total hour of exercise per week, then your training session will last 12 minutes.

Before we continue, I know what question you have in your head: “How can you get a good workout in just 12 minutes?” You can. I have had intense workouts that only last 4 minutes. I will devote a separate post on this topic.

How much Rest?

The next step is to determine how much rest you wish to take between each set. This will be based on your experience and goals. Use the following two tables to help you:

Table Two:

Table Three:

Choosing Exercises

Now that you have your rep range and total time per session, it is time to choose your exercises. I have prepared a video to help determine which exercises you should focus on and have published it before. Here it is again:

Use the video to make a list of the exercise you will use. The second part of this post will run on Monday. I’m letting you guys use the weekends to really brainstorm this stuff. It’s important.

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