How to structure a muscle-building program for the various districts, based on the subjective distribution of the various types of fibers.
By Dr. Antonio Parolisi
To evaluate the composition of a muscular district, in terms of slow, intermediate or fast fibers, several tests are presented in the technical-scientific literature through which it is possible to realize a profitable training program that gives maximum results in terms of tropism, then growth. These tests can be excellent because they analyze every major district, so they are also very accurate. Among the reference tests, the main one is that in which 80% of 1Rm is used for an exercise, usually mono-articular, performing the greatest possible number of repetitions; in this way the execution of a high number, higher than 12-15, is due to a high quantity of red fibers, with slow contraction, in that given tested muscle and this highlights its resistance capacity, typical characteristic of red fibers.
Training people analytically can be a double-edged sword, because on the one hand it allows you to keep everything under control with mathematical data and criteria, but on the other hand everything becomes too rigid and when a parameter "doesn't come back", it seems that all reasoning goes to burn.
Often, it happens to have to organize training sessions once or twice a week in subjects who have special needs, so they rely on Personal Trainers, asking them to be able to organize a workout for the whole body in those few days available. In these cases it is difficult to compose typical Body Builder programs with fractional routines and painstaking recovery days.
After several studies and observations on an important amount of tested subjects, on the practice of princely exercises in muscle building, I came to the conclusion that: the versatility of things and their simplicity are the key to success; this is because it allows you to be more casual and practical in Trainer's work ... as long as this does not result in indifference and standard.
This is why, therefore, in this article I will try to describe field tests that are much more versatile, easy, empirically obtained, then re-proposed at any time in the gym also for a self-assessment or even if you are a Personal Trainer or Physical Trainers, from you can use them to test your customers or athletes and create a detailed training program for muscle growth.
Let's try to understand how.
The structuring of a training program can be set on the sensations of muscle burning during the performance of a particular exercise. Burning is an index of lactate accumulation and a characteristic feature is typical of fast-intermediate contraction fibers, which have an anaerobic metabolism with both alactacid and lactic acid components and are mainly responsible for muscle growth. These fibers, following the glycolytic pathway, exhaust the reserves of the phosphagens and intramuscular glycogen and, as a final result, produce lactic acid; this is why performing a series of a multi-joint exercise type Squat, Bench Press or other, with medium-high load (70-80% of 1RM), around 10-15 repetitions, there is a dramatic burning sensation particularly in a muscular district greater than another movement agonist. This feeling will be our guideline.
Too many times I happened to witness the interruption of a series of bench presses, despite the fact that the load is not high for that subject, only because the burning sensation that is felt in the triceps is such as to prevent us from going further, both in 120 kg body builders in less gifted subjects. Often this prevents me from being able to give an excellent result in terms of repetitions in the classic tests for the evaluation of a person's fitness, but not because he is not fit, but simply because his muscular composition in terms of fibers does not has the appropriate characteristics for resistance tests. This, in my opinion, is one of the many limits that fitness-tests have that do not even evaluate other forces such as explosive, maximum and resistant; on the other hand, a subject could be categorized as insufficient in the force of push-ups (bending on the arms) when perhaps the ratio of maximum force on body weight (1RM / kg body weight) in the bench press is excellent. This should make you think about why more athletic performance elements need to be evaluated in a test.
