We all want to see results from exercise but it’s not always quite clear what factors regulate this process. If you want optimal progress, you’ll need to carefully control and monitor several variables: intensity, volume, and recovery. Also, you won’t see progress if you’re hurt, so one must take extreme care in selecting their exercises and the manner in which they perform them. In most cases, the vast majority of injuries that happen while working out are because of improper technique.

Intensity is one of the most important principles in all of exercise. In order to stimulate muscle and strength development, the level of intensity must be relatively high. If it is not, no amount of lifting (or extra sets) will make up for this. If you’re not seeing results from strength training, this is one of the first things to look at. I can’t stress this enough: in order to get stronger and more muscular, you have to train at a high level of intensity. For some, this is a new experience; they may have always stopped the exercise when it became difficult or uncomfortable. Perhaps they have a fear that if they worked out too hard they would get hurt. While these are all completely valid concerns, don’t worry: you’re not going to injure yourself if you’re training at a high level of intensity with proper supervision. Most exercise-related injuries happen because of improper technique and execution and not because you’re “training too hard.” How do you measure intensity? Here is a useful chart.

Volume is the second variable that is important to discuss. The age-old question is: how many sets of a given exercise do I perform? Do I do one set, three sets, ten sets, fifteen sets, etc.? If you perform too little, you will see mediocre results. Too many and you may just be wasting time and putting wear and tear on your body. Your goals, age, and injuries (or lack thereof) will all play a role in figuring out how much volume of work to perform. There really is no one magical formula for everyone because everyone is different and has different goals. Think of it this way: an eighteen year-old male looking to be as big and as strong as possible has different volume requirements than a seventy year-old man who wants to regain mobility, improve his arthritis, or stave off muscle loss.

The concept of recovery is sometimes overlooked. Without adequate recovery, all of your hard work will fall short. Once you’ve stimulated the body with adequate exercise, your first job is to simply recover. That doesn’t mean that you grow muscle or get stronger right away. Instead, recovering means that you’re back to the place that you were at before you worked out. Or to put it another way: after a hard workout, you’re not the same person that you were when you walked into the gym. You’ve pushed your body hard, caused micro-trauma to the muscle, and you’re temporarily fatigued afterwards. Moments after your workout is done, your body goes to work to just build you back up to where you were before you worked out; there’s no additional muscle building or growth happening right now. It’s all a process to get you back to square one because, right now, your body is worn down (this is a good thing!). Only after you’ve recovered can your body’s systems work on super-compensation, or making you better and stronger. As the bodybuilder Mike Mentzer said, once you work out, it’s equivalent to having dug yourself a hole in the ground with a shovel. When you first got there, there was no hole in the ground. Now that you’ve exercised, you’ve made an inroad into the body; which would be represented by the hole. Before you can build a mound of dirt, you first have to fill that hole back in. Only, and only after you’ve recovered (filled that hole back in), can you then work on building that mound, i.e., strength and muscle. An individual’s training history and genetics will determine how much recovery he or she will need. Someone who does strength training, plays basketball, jogs, and bikes is placing more demands on the body and therefore needs to be more aware of recovery than someone who is less active.

I’ll help you take these variables and apply them properly so that you get stronger, healthier, and accomplish your goals!