Cycles can help muscles

     By Kim Springer
     View columnist
      In order to make muscular gains, strength training should be broken up into small cycles.
      Most people are concerned with when they should increase the weight they are using. The reality is that decreasing the resistance might actually lead to bigger gains.
      Setting up your own strength training cycles in order to reach your goals is called periodization.
      Strength training is not just about lifting more weight. Periodization uses both the training loads and recovery periods to vary training intensity and/or volume.
      According to IDEA Source, a publication for fitness professionals, "variation is introduced in a cyclic fashion to help prevent overtraining, decrease the risk of injury and optimize fitness gains."
      These different loads can be viewed as the stimulating load, maintenance load, detraining load and rest period.
      The idea of dividing training loads, periodization, was original used in Europe in the 1910s as a means to improve sports performance. For athletes who trained year-round, constant increases in load and volume stopped producing better results and actually hurt the athletes.
      Coaches devised a way to incorporate different stages of training such as general, preparatory, and specific.
      Although you might not be training for a specific event or sport, it is still important to periodize your weight-training program. By changing up your routine, the muscle fibers are challenged in a variety of ways.
      By varying weight, speed, repetitions and exercises, the muscle fibers fire in a different order and are forced to recruit new fibers to help with the work. What this all adds up to is stronger muscles with a reduced risk of injury.
      There are three basic loads that can be used during the cycles of training.
      Stimulating loads which overload the body through increased volume or intensity. Maintenance loads simply work to maintain your current fitness without pushing for increased gains. Detraining loads consist of lower intensities and volumes.
      Detraining is used immediately before increasing training volume or intensity or during the tapering period before an athletic competition. During the detraining load, some aspects of your fitness will decrease but this will depend on the loads proceeding and the length of the period.
      For an average exerciser, how busy you are during the day with work and other activities will dictate to an extent what training load you should work in.
      For example, if you are swamped with work and have only the minimum amount of time for exercise, this might be the time to go into a maintenance mode.
      If you know that your work schedule will be letting up at the end of the month, now would be the time to actually detrain. Once your schedule frees up, you will be ready to go into a stimulating load of exercise.
      If your schedule is predictable, then sit down and map out these training cycles varying the loads every two to three weeks.
      Rest cannot be disregarded when it comes to training and periodization. It is the rest, not the training itself that results in adaptations to exercise.
      IDEA Source notes that "the greatest adaptation to a stimulus occurs when muscles recover from previous training periods and are best prepared to tolerate the greatest overload."
      If you are increasing the intensity of your workouts, now is the time when the body needs the most rest.
      Periodization can work for all exercisers and helps to increase overall muscle gains. The other bonus is that variation will decrease the boredom of exercise which is the No. 1-reason people quit.
     
     Kim Springer and her husband, Mike, are certified by ACE, NASM and ACSM as personal trainers. They can be reached at 233-9442, by fax at 233-9446 or by e-mail at springtrain@ netscape.net.