Question of Weight training muscles?

[Corporal Hicks]

Hi,
When weight training should you train the same muscle with more than one type of exercise, take for example, In one session should I do the bicep curl, 3 sets of 6-8 as well as the bicep curl using the cable machine and using the barbell to do the biceps again? Or would just the orginal bicep curl I do the first time kill the bicep enough to enable more growth or strength? Or does it depend on the type of training?

Regards

Nick

 

[rmclain]

Hi Nick,

It really depends on the intentions of your weight training. Do you want to gain muscular endurance, just strength or size, or a combination of these?

R. McLain

 

[Corporal Hicks]

Hi Nick,

It really depends on the intentions of your weight training. Do you want to gain muscular endurance, just strength or size, or a combination of these?

R. McLain

Mainly strength and size, I know that size is usually gained through 6-8 reps and endurance 12-15.
At the moment for my arms and shoulders its size and for everything else its inbetween?

Regards

 

[Zujitsuka]

Mainly strength and size, I know that size is usually gained through 6-8 reps and endurance 12-15.
At the moment for my arms and shoulders its size and for everything else its inbetween?

Regards

For size, you need to focus on volume (e.g. 5 sets of 8 reps) using about 70% of your max. This really tears down the muscle and encourages cross-section / hypertrophy.

 

[rmclain]

Hi Nick,

For strength, you want to keep your repetitions around 4, with the last rep being failure. Do 4-5 sets.

Remember to work large muscle groups first. Ex. For legs, start with squats then you can do sets of leg extension and flexion, etc.

You may want to build up to a program such as this, as it can make you too sore to continue without many days of recovery. A pyramid program is good for this. Always give yourself 48 hours of rest between working the same muscle groups on the "strength" recommendation above.

R. McLain

 

[Zujitsuka]

As mentioned before, when training for strength, your reps and sets should be low, but the weight should be heavy (e.g. 90% of your 1RM - one rep maximum). For instance, if a person can bench press 200 lbs one time, they should go for three reps for no more than two sets. Multiple sets train muscular/local strength endurance, not limit/brute strength. Guys like Pavel Tsatsouline (dragondoor.com) offer a lot of info on this approach.

 

[lvwhitebir]

When weight training should you train the same muscle with more than one type of exercise

A variety of exercises is best, simply because each works the muscle slightly different. For your example, I would say a dumbbell curl, reverse curl, and a barbell curl would be different enough to really spike full muscle growth.

WhiteBirch

 

[thepanjr]

just gain muscles and str . do biceps too