How to maximize new training gains.
Coach Kevin answers two listener emails.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hi and welcome back to Get-Fit Guy. Hopefully last week’s episode on the nature of self didn’t induce an existential crisis and you have all made it back this week for another dose of fitness facts.
This week I’m going to respond to some listener emails, with a bit more of a deep dive into one in particular. So let's get going.
The first is from Krzysztof, who writes:
“I listen to your show, and although I do not consider myself "fit", I hope maybe your show will help me get there.
Firstly, I loved the way you responded to the email about 5G waves. You gave a very strong opinion, but at the same time stayed factual and cool. I find it difficult to not let my emotions to take over, so I admire your response. Great job!
Secondly, you frequently say that as a beginner one will make a quick initial progress, but that will stop and you have to keep increasing the load to continue to improve. I must say that I have never in my life seen that "novice effect." Over the years I became a better swimmer and skier, but I improved my technique, not strength. And it took years before my improvement became noticeable.
Am I a special case, or am I doing something wrong?
Recent example: I started doing a previous Get Fit Guy's core strength exercises. Even if I do them for few months now, I cannot do more reps before I'm exhausted than when I started.
Do you have any advice?”
Thank you for the email, Krzysztof. I appreciate your noticing that I was able to stay factual and not let my emotions take over. If you look back to the episode dated 25th October 2022, you will get an overview of Bloom's Taxonomy of Thinking. The higher orders of thinking are evaluation and analysis. When we can be objective and analyze an argument (claims and propositions with evidence of a powerful nature), then it's easy to remove emotion. I’m also a Philosophy major, so the ability to objectively look at claims and evaluate them for validity is somewhat de rigueur.
Next up: You are correct that I have indeed said that a beginner will quick initial progress. However, I don’t believe I have made the claim that you will need to keep increasing load to continue to improve when these improvements stop, purely because this plateau would, by nature, mean that one couldn’t possibly continue to increase loads. What would have to happen would be greater complexity to training and more consideration given to other factors such as volume, dose-response, recovery, nutrition, and so on. These will be of less importance at the beginning. And just to preempt angry emails from anyone who doesn’t understand context or nuance… I’m not saying that beginners don’t need to have good nutrition or recovery. But that they will most likely improve, irrespective of other factors.
But let's take a look at the novice effect and what I mean. So, firstly, it would simply be defined as what happens when an untrained person begins to train for a physical task. There will be an initial, very steep improvement curve, which will flatten out the stronger or fitter one gets. It is the law of diminishing returns applied to adaptive physiology. It ALWAYS happens when a well-designed, appropriate program is followed and the potential for it to happen is always there whether or not program design or program adherence allows it to or not.
Why does a novice or untrained person get stronger really quickly? Because the training they ARE doing is exponentially harder than what they WERE doing. If one is untrained, then most likely what one was doing was eating the standard American diet whilst watching Married at First Sight. For beginners, a bike ride will most likely result in bench press improvements. This doesn’t make cycling a good training program for the bench press. It just means that for an untrained person, ANY training provides an adaptive stimulus that results in an improved physical capacity. This will run out very quickly though, because we need to follow the SAID principle (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand) What defines a good program is its ability to maintain improvements after this initial novice training phase where you are simply picking all the low-hanging fruit.
So, how does this apply to your question about not improving on the core exercises you are doing? Well, your email gives us data that you have been doing them for a few months. You are, therefore, not picking any low-hanging fruit and any Internet program isn’t going to have the nuance to continue to drive adaptation. If you are saying it didn’t work at all even from the start, then I’m going to say something else is at play: you may already have been working at an adaptive level beyond what the program could provide or did it infrequently and didn't reach minimum effective dose, or conversely did it too much and were above maximum tolerated dose.
I hope this has answered your question!
Next up is George from Kent, Ohio. He writes:
“I've been listening to this podcast since its inception and have loved the information and the opinions of each of the hosts. I've been doing some reading on single-set workouts versus multiple-set workouts and I was wondering what is your opinion on this topic, especially if you had a preference for either type of workout. Thank you and continue the wonderful job with this podcast.”
Hi George, thank you for the email and the question! I’ve never had the pleasure of visiting Ohio, but is on my list, there are many wonderful gyms and coaches in Cincinnati and Columbus that I intend on visiting when I have the opportunity.
So, just for the benefit of everyone listening, a single-set workout is exactly what it sounds like. You perform a single set of an exercise in your training. Multiple set is also as it sounds. For example: a single-set workout might be 1x15 back squats and multiple-set might be 3x5 back squats.
So, this might not be any great surprise to regular listeners… what I think is that it depends! If your goal is to be stronger, then doing more sets of fewer reps at a higher load will make you stronger, if we define strength as maximal force against an external resistance. So, by that logic, sets of 1 rep will make you stronger than sets of 15 ever will because you can’t do 5, 10, or 15 reps with a load you can only lift once. However, if you are looking at strength endurance, then sets of 1 rep will be a poor choice because by only doing one rep, you are not building any endurance under the SAID principle.
Additionally, I don’t have data on your biological or training age. But usually, we find that those of a higher training age need a larger dose because they are adapted. Those of a higher biological age are anabolically resistant, so we need to really whack them with a larger dose of training stress to get an adaptation.
Therefore, I can say that I am personally more inclined to prescribe multiple sets than single sets. However, it's all very nuanced and I don’t have enough data to say with 100% confidence what I would say in your case.