Maximum Recruitment Training 1

To make your body bigger, stronger, leaner or faster, the goal
of your workouts is simple: recruit as many muscle fibers as
possible with everyrepetition. Maybe you haven't heard
it much, but it can't be denied.

If you perform a workout with crappy reps, your workouts will
stink. There's no way around it. There's also no way you
can have a workout that produces maximum results if you skimp on
the science of muscle fiber recruitment.

When you get maximum muscle recruitment out of every repetition
while making intelligent exercise choices, it turns into a kick-ass
workout that will transform your body.

The Holy Triad

The relationship between speed and force in training should be
extremely clear to anyone who's taken high school physics.
Force equals mass times acceleration, so as the speed of
your lift goes up, the force of your lift goes up.
There's no way you can produce more force by slowing down a lift.

Just as force and speed are positively correlated, so is muscle
fiber recruitment. The only way you can produce more force is by
trying to lift a load faster, and the reason why you can
produce more force is because you're recruiting more muscle
fibers.

When anyone talks about training for any goal, the holy triad is
force, speed, and muscle fiber recruitment. They're the gears
that are driving the bus.

Unholy Eccentrics

Of course, I'm not talking about the eccentric phase of a
movement. There's indeed a point where a super fast eccentric
won't yield the best results. It's obvious that your
muscles are producing less force during the phase if you let
gravity take over and drop the load. You must control the eccentric
phase of a movement, but you shouldn't slow it
down.

Eccentrics have become the Paris Hilton of the strength and
conditioning world: they both get a lot of attention, but no one
really knows why. I'll take a stab at it, though (eccentrics,
not Paris).

1. You get sore

Eccentrics cause a lot of soreness, and because people often
misconstrue extreme soreness as a sign of extreme results,
it's a good selling point. However, your muscles don't need to be sore to get bigger and stronger. It's as
simple as that.

I'm not saying that soreness is bad; it's an
inevitable aspect of training. Any time you train with new
parameters, you're going to get sore for the first week. But
soreness isn't something you should seek. Sore muscles take
longer to recover, and that's not good considering that the
more you can train, the quicker you'll get results.

If you want bigger calves you need to train them often. If you
bombard them with heavy eccentrics and a ton of volume, you
won't be able to train them again for a week. And you'll
spend that week walking around like the late Foster Brooks.

Foster Brooks was not noted for the development of his
gastrocnemius.

2. You appear stronger

You're stronger in the eccentric (lowering) phase than you
are in the concentric (lifting) phase. This is another good selling
point since people typically want to train with heavier loads.
Problem is, merely increasing your strength in the eccentric phase
won't necessarily make you stronger in the concentric phase.

It looks good on paper, but the last time I checked, no
organization was giving out trophies for the person who could lower the most weight.

Enough with this eccentric talk. Let's move
on.

Speed Rules

For maximum muscle fiber recruitment from every rep of every
set, you only need to focus on three elements: speed, range of motion, and technique. These are the
clearest indicators of muscle recruitment.

Let's start with speed. As mentioned, it's positively
correlated with force and muscle fiber recruitment. You have three
primary types of muscle fibers. For simplicity's sake I'll
call them small, medium and large. There's a fixed, orderly
recruitment of these fibers.

The smallest fibers have the highest endurance characteristics
and they produce the least amount of force. The medium fibers have
some endurance characteristics and they produce moderate amounts of
force. The largest fibers have no endurance, but they're
strong as hell.

If you curl the following loads for a count of two,
here's how the muscle recruitment basically looks (as
extrapolated from various pieces of research):

• A pencil = some of your small muscle fibers

• 50% of your one repetition maximum (1RM) = all of your small
and some of your medium muscle fibers

• 100% of your 1RM = all of your small, medium and large muscle
fibers

So the answer seems simple, doesn't it? Always train with
100% of your 1RM and you'll recruit all of your muscle fibers.
That way, you won't have to worry about speed.

Unfortunately, you need to expose your muscles to a sufficient
amount of volume (fatigue) in order for them to grow.

Training with 100% of your 1RM wreaks havoc on your recovery
since it's so damn demanding. That's why it's
necessary to drop the load so you can perform enough reps (volume)
to induce growth. 85% of 1RM hits the sweet spot with most people.
Many can train with loads up to 90% of 1RM and still get enough
volume for growth, but it's difficult to sustain such
intensity for more than 3 weeks.

The good news is that you don't need to always train with
super heavy loads, if you focus on lifting as fast as possible.
I'm going to loosely translate some neuroscience research and
show you what happens if you attempt to curl the following three
loads with maximum speed.

If you curl the following loads as fast as possible, here's
how the muscle recruitment looks:

• A pencil = all of your small and some medium muscle
fibers

• 50% of your one repetition maximum (1RM) = all of your small and
medium muscle fibers and some of your large muscle
fibers

• 85% of your 1RM = all of your small, medium and large muscle
fibers

Again, the above scenario is not taken directly from research.
It's a compilation of different parts of research rolled into
an example that's easy to understand.

No matter how hard you try, you can't exert maximum force
with a pencil as your resistance. This is true because you need a
certain amount of time with sufficient load to recruit all of your
muscle fibers. A pencil simply isn't heavy enough, and the
time of contraction is very short, therefore you only recruit your
small and some of your medium muscle fibers.

You can't exert maximum force by curling a pencil, especially
in the squat rack.

With 50% of your 1RM, you can recruit almost all of your muscle
fibers. But most research demonstrates that such loads aren't
sufficient to recruit as many muscle fibers as heavier
loads.

When training with 85% of your 1RM, you can recruit all your
muscle fibers because the load and time are sufficient. You would
not, however, recruit all of your muscle fibers with 85% of 1RM if
you attempted to lift the load slower. Remember, the difference
between a slower tempo compared to the fastest tempo is muscle
recruitment: it increases as the speed of your lift increases.
Whenever you slow down the lifting phase you do so at the expense
of muscle fiber recruitment.

While you can't go wrong if you always monitor your reps
with speed as the number one component, it's a little more
difficult to judge speed with some exercises. That brings me to
range of motion.

Range of Motion and Technique

Sometimes it's easiest to judge muscle recruitment based on
your range of motion. After all, if you can no longer lift a load
through its full range of motion it's because muscle fibers
have dropped out of the task. Taken a step further, your technique
is a good measure too.

Here are two examples that help get my point across.

1. Upper body pulling, leg curls, and biceps curls

With these three common exercises you typically lose your range
of motion before you lose speed.

Let's use the lat pulldown as an example. Each repetition
should consist of a full range of motion. Your arms and lats are
fully stretched at the top, while the bottom consists of touching
the bar to your upper chest.

When you fatigue, whether you realize it or not, you typically
shorten your range of motion. Either you don't fully extend
your arms at the top, or you can't touch the bar to your
chest. The reason why you must shorten your range of motion is
because muscle fibers have dropped out of the lift. Sometimes this
occurs while the speed still remains relatively
high.

This holds true for leg curls, biceps curls, and virtually any
other exercise. I'm sure you've been unable to lock out a
bench press, dip, or deadlift, so the concept is not limited to
flexion-based exercises.

The bottom line is this: any time you must shorten your range of
motion you should terminate the set because you're recruiting
fewer muscle fibers.

Full range of motion is an indication that you're recruiting
maximum muscle fibers.

2. Olympic Lifts

With Olympic lifts, it's difficult to judge speed because
such a lift consists of many different phases and each phase has
its own speed. It's easy to judge speed if you do nothing but
pushes, pulls, squats and deadlifts: that's why they're
mainstays in my programs.

Olympic lifts aren't so easy to judge. That doesn't
mean you should avoid them: on the contrary, people should be doing more of them. Olympic lifts produce massive benefits and
they should be part of your program at one time or another,
regardless of your goal. The clean and jerk, for example, works
nearly every muscle group in the body. That's a good thing,
especially when you're short on time.

The key to getting maximum muscle fiber recruitment out of all
Olympic lifts is to lift as fast as possible, but always think of
your technique in terms of muscle activation. When your technique
starts to break down, you should stop the set, regardless of the
speed. Muscle fiber recruitment and good technique go hand-in-hand:
as one lessens so does the other.

Remember that Maximum Recruitment Training revolves around three
key factors: speed, range of motion, and technique. When any of those factors falter, it's time
to terminate the set. Remember, we want to recruit as many muscle
fibers as possible with each rep. Anything else will just add
unnecessary fatigue.

Fatigue: A Double-Edged Sword

Fatigue has two faces. On one hand, a certain amount of fatigue
is necessary for strength, growth, and fat loss. On the other hand,
too much fatigue will wreak havoc on your recovery due to excessive
stress, joint strain, and soreness.

So we must balance out the equation. Here's how you control
fatigue.

1. Recruit as many muscle fibers as possible with each rep. This
allows you to train with fewer total reps while still reaping all
the benefits you desire.

2. Choose exercises that recruit as many muscles as possible in
order to keep the number of exercises per session low. This
shortens the amount of time you need to be in the gym.

3. Perform a
specific number of reps with each workout in order to control
volume.

4. Build up your frequency of training slowly and cut back every
4-6 weeks.

Nutrition and adequate sleep are paramount to controlling
fatigue. You can't train your way out of a bad diet, unless
you want to spend 3 hours of every day in the gym. And you'll
never be healthy if you're constantly short on sleep.

Here are a few key factors that help keep fatigue at
bay.

1. Sleep 8 hours every day. Take a 20-30 minute nap after every
workout.

2. Eat six small meals per day and have a serving of fruit,
vegetables, or both at every meal.

3. Focus your protein intake around eggs, grass fed beef,
salmon, mackerel, chicken and turkey.

4. Reduce inflammation by supplementing with Flameout (4-6 per day),
Carlson's liquid fish oil (1-2 tablespoons per day), and eat
plenty of green vegetables.

5. Aid recovery by consuming 10 Branched Chain Amino Acids
(BCAAs) with a 1/2 serving of Surge before and after
your workouts. Add 5 grams of micronized creatine to your
post-workout shake.

In Part 2 I'll outline the Maximum Recruitment Training
programs. Get ready!