Principles of Training

 
 

Range of motion

Range of motion is something that if not emphasized will affect the way your muscle grows. Example, lets say your doing a incline DB chest press and you stop at 90 degrees or even just below. Your only affecting a small percentage of the chest. Here your chest is just getting into the stretch position.The level of difficulty from this point to max stretch is where the most tension will be and where it will be proven to be the most difficult. The more you allow for the area to stretch, the more of that area is being exposed to stress. This is why you hear people say squats build big glutes. Most of the time you see people quarter to half squatting barely making it to parallel, well these people don’t have big glutes. The glutes stretch the farther you go down, that’s why the term “ass to grass” is popular.

Intensity

Your muscle tissue growth will depend on how hard you push yourself when you train. The body will only adapt to a new stressor or trauma, that means if you go to the gym and do the same thing day in and day out you will not progress but only maintain. Each session, each set, each rep is a opportunity to grow but you will only grow as hard as you push yourself. If you quit once it starts to get uncomfortable you are only limiting yourself. There's a difference between the pain of this doesn't feel right and i might get injured and this is getting more uncomfortable by the rep but I’m in no real danger. As long as you're form doesn’t break and your control is consistent you shouldn't ever put yourself in a situation where your going to hurt yourself going to failure by pushing yourself to your true potential.

Control

Maybe one of the most overlooked variables when it comes to training is control. Time and time again you see people doing lat pulldowns swinging back and forth using their entire upper body to swing the weight from point a to point b. When it comes to hypertrophy training you want to make sure your using the utmost control. Control is what keeps the desired area engaged entirely throughout the movement. And the better control you have the more you can limit the recruitment of other assisting muscles which in return allows you to bring the targeted area to true mechanical failure.

Progressive overload

Progressive overload is how you grow and it’s as simple as making some type of progress from one session to the next. That can either be from increasing weight, reps, or time under tension. Without this simple variable you will eventually find yourself at a plateau. You can make some type of progress with just going to the gym and training because you are creating some type of stimulus. But if that stimulus never changes your only going to maintain and if we are talking about how to grow we need to make sure we are getting stronger. There is a direct correlation between strength and size when it comes to hypertrophy.

 
 

“you’ve got to block out all distractions when you train. Your focus has to be 100% into your rep. You’ve got to get into the zone. You know you’re in the zone when guys in the gym look you in the eye and quickly turn away cause they see the fire. You’ve got to be all BUSINESS.”

-mike matarazzo


Joseph Patch