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Key Features of
the Method
1. Workouts are to
be kept to around the forty five minute mark to enhance anabolic hormones,
whilst reducing the release of stress hormones.
2. You will be performing multiple exercises of different angles to hit all
possible muscle fibres. This would include a combination of isolation and
compound exercises.
3. The reps of all exercises should be performed in with good technique.
4. Emphasis should be placed on variety but not at the expense of haphazard
volume or instinctive methods. Although you will be training with variety you
should still measure and record your progress on a workout by workout basis to
monitor progressive overload.
Possible
Advantages
1. The chances of stimulating all components of a muscle for growth are
maximised with this method.
2. The program is interesting and can be fun to follow, full of training
variety.
3. The program doesn't become life absorbing, you have sufficient energy to go
to work, play with the kids etc. This should be a mainstay of any program,
including the volume based methods.
4. Progress is usually regular and satisfying.
Possible
Disadvantages
1. Monitoring exact progress can sometimes become messy if you don't keep
your loading parameters in good check.
2. The workouts can become long and tedious if you do not enjoy the variety and
variation that comes with this type of training methodology.
3. Holistic training can require an individual to train anywhere from three to
five days per week in the gym for upto an hour and this may be beyond the
abilities of some people due to health or lifestyle factors.
What Defines a
Holistic Routine?
Many people have a different view point as to what holistic training
actually is. Well we will try and clarify the issue and shed some light on what
actually constitutes holistic training. Holistic training means that you train
the system as a whole - a universal approach. This is that you incorporate into
your program a method to train every possible portion and functioning element of
a muscle, in order to stimulate the maximum amount of growth. Along with most
holistic programs you would include a holistic approach to diet to maximise the
recovery and growth of your muscles.
As you know there
are many components to the muscle tissue within your body. That is, they are made
up of different types of muscle fibre. In holistic training you are going to be
training the fast twitch and slow twitch fibres, through the whole spectrum of
intermediates, to the extremes. Also within muscle is the energy systems of the
muscle - the mitochondria that you can train within a holistic program. Next you
have your capillaries, also trainable through your program, and of course
connective tissue. There are of course other elements within your muscle such as
glycogen and fat, but these are matters to be approached with diet and
nutrition, generally.
Your aim as weight
trainers is usually to increase muscle size. However, once you
realise that a muscle is made up of many different components, each of which
grow via a different stimulus, it becomes obvious we have to rethink our
training if maximum development is the goal. This is, in essence the standpoint
of holistic training - to train the whole system, every last bit, in order to
stimulate maximum results.
Below is a table
that lists the main components of a muscle cell, how much of the overall muscle it
makes up, and most importantly, what you need to do to increase its size.
| Cell
Component |
Approx
% of Muscle |
Required
Stimulus |
Information |
| Myofibrils |
20%-30% |
80%
of max. 6-12
reps |
Myofibrils
lie within the fluid portion of a muscle cell and are the contractile
portion of the muscle. It is made up of two proteins, myosin and actin.
The cross sectional area of the myofibrils is directly proportional to the
strength of the muscle cell. |
| Mitochondria |
15%-25% |
60%
of max. 15-30
reps |
Mitochondria
are tiny organelles lying between the myofibrils. They are responsible for
the oxidative metabolism of the muscle cell as well as for creating ATP -
the energy source of a muscle. A muscle cells endurance capacity is
proportional to the number of mitochondria in a muscle cell. |
| Sarcoplasm |
20%-30% |
Non
specific |
Sarcoplasm
is the fluid within a muscle cell and will increase in volume as either
the size or number of myofibrils or mitochondria increase. |
| Fat
Deposits |
10%-15% |
Diet |
|
| Capillaries |
3%-5% |
Endurance/Continuous
tension |
|
| Glycogen |
2%-5% |
Diet |
Glycogen
is stored next to myofibrils and is an energy source for the muscle cell.
Various dietary techniques can be applied to increase muscle glycogen
stores. |
| Connective
Tissue |
2%-3% |
High
force |
Connective
tissue increases in size only when the cell is placed under high levels of
stress, and is therefore most developed during strength training, which
equates to 1 to 5 reps. |
There is a wide
range in the percentages each component makes up of a muscle cell and there is a
reason for this. There are a number of different muscle types, fast twitch,
intermediate, and slow twitch muscle fibre's. Knowing how these differ, and
knowing what each muscle group in the body is made from, enables you to focus
your training for optimum development, which is very important with holistic
training methods as you are required to train every possible variable.
More On Muscle
There are several
different types of actin and myosin filaments. The actual speed at which a
muscle can contract is ultimately dependent upon the type of myosin contained
within the muscle.
It is believed that
there are actually four distinct fibre types in our species, however they are
generally grouped into two main categories of fast and slow twitch fibres.
Although at the time of writing, not to complicate issues, but there are
actually believed to be, now, around three types of fast twitch fibres known.
Heavy meromyosin
(HMM) is recruited for rapid ATP breakdown and is found in powerful fast
muscles. Fast twitch muscle
cells (also known as white muscle fibres) contain higher levels of myofibrils
and lower levels of mitochondria. These muscle fibres are generally associated
with strength having a thicker nerve supply allowing greater innervation, in
other words more nerve activity allows more muscle fibres to contract allowing
heavier weights to be handled.
In general, reps in
the range of 6-8 are an ideal compromise between developing strength and
increasing muscle size. Reps in the range of 9-12 will better stimulate muscle
growth with a lesser impact on strength development.
Fast muscle fibres
differ from their slower cousins in many ways, endurance capacity being one of
them. In fact, its in the endurance area rather than in velocity or speed that
their differences become most apparent. The fast-oxidative (FO) fibres have
relatively good endurance (the term oxidative refers solely to the aerobic
machinery within the fast -oxidative fibre itself). Fast Glycolytic fibres (FG)
which are very fast in contracting, are very powerful but have nothing to offer
in the way of endurance (the term glycolytic refers to the anaerobic machinery
within the fast-glycolytic fibre itself).
Intermediate in
speed, endurance, and power are the fast oxidative glycolytic (FOG) fibres,
which contain both the anaerobic and aerobic machinery within their cellular
makeup.
Fast twitch muscle
fibres have a far greater capacity to increase in size than do slow twitch
fibres.
On the other side of
the coin, slow muscle (S), so called because in comparison with say, FG fibres,
they appear thus, is an endurance fibre used primarily by those who engage in
distance activities. Its very powerful aerobically with lots of aerobic enzymes,
blood vessels, and myogloblin (an oxygen-storing endurance compound). On the
downside, however, these fibres aren't capable of creating much force and,
consequently, don't possess the inherent mass potential of their faster cousins.
Slow twitch muscle
fibres (also known as red muscle fibres) contain higher levels of mitochondria
and are consequently associated with endurance. These fibres contain light
meromyosin (LMM). They are less easy to increase
in size, but generally respond to higher repetition ranges, usually between 15
and 30 reps.
Unfortunately, at
least as far as targeting our training goes, all skeletal muscle groups contain
both types of fibres, and therefore requires both types of training to optimise
muscle size. Typical splits of fibre types have been included in each of our
bodypart exercise guides.
Putting It Into
Practice
And so now you can see why there is indeed possible merit to the traditional
thinking of volume training. Not in so much as marathon training, but in a far
more variation and extended usage of sets and reps than in something such as HIT
training, or static contraction training. Now we know
that recovery is a key component to building muscle size and strength. Recovery
ability by your bodily systems is always in limited reserve. You can enhance it
through diet, sleep and a better environment lifestyle for creating an anabolic
environment, however, regardless of this, recovery ability is still in short
demand. This places overtraining as one
of the worst possible scenarios facing the bodybuilder or athlete.
Now when we discuss
traditional methods of marathon like volume training - the type of six days per
week, possible two sessions per day, each lasting upto two hours, using the more
is better theory, we can see unlimited flaws. Holistic training is not this type
of volume training by a long shot. Within holistic training you are going to be
doing different exercises, with different varying quantities of sets and rep
schemes and tempos to concentrate your efforts on maximising all round
development of all muscle components, yet your aim is still to do this in the
least total amount of work necessary to elicit a growth response. Doing more
than necessary is detrimental to your ability to recover from exercise and
continue to make progress.
When you are
designing a holistic program for your body you should be thinking in terms of
training the muscle as a whole, including your body as a whole system, but the
workouts should still be split into a three to five day type of pattern. This
means that a hest, shoulder and tricep day on a monday, followed by legs and abs
on wed, and back and biceps on fri, would be a pretty standard bodypart split to
follow on a holistic program.
Chemical Nutrition,
and the work of Paul Borresen, popularised a format of holistic training many
years ago. The would have a trainer isolate a muscle group first of all with an
isolation exercise performed with light weights for around 100 repetitions.
Followed by a little rest the exercise would then be performed for around 50
reps with a light weight. Leaving ego's at the door the trainer would then move
onto a further different isolation exercise and perform one heavy set to near
failure at around ten reps. After a short rest, the same exercise would be
performed in a triple drop set fashion, of ten reps per drop, causing a highly
intense set of around 30 reps. After a little more rest the athlete would move
onto a heavy compound exercise for that muscle group and perform a couple of
straight heavy sets to failure at around 2 - 10 reps per set with adequate rest
between sets.
This type of
training would hit all components of a muscle from the high tensile connective
tissue with the heavy loads performed at low reps, all the way through to the
mitochondria of the muscle with the high endurance blood pumping high repetition
training. This actual form of holistic training is rather brutal when performed
to the maximum with very little rest between sets and it was noted that trainers
experienced best results after following this program for three weeks and then
actually having a whole week off to fully recover. This was known as the growth
week, and many athletes actually gained all of their bodyweight gains on this
week off through supercompensation by the body.
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