Curated by Nicolò Ragalmuto
In my profession as a personal trainer I often find that most people who come to the gym to train spend hours and hours inside the club, circulating from one machine to another with very long breaks between exercises, without dropping not even a drop of sweat and without perceiving any sensation of fatigue from what they mean training. These people are the same people who after a few months spent at the gym saying "I was training 3 hours a day", they give up because they don't get any kind of result. This is due to the lack in their training session of a fundamental part, the intensity.
Intensity can be defined as the quality of training performed over a given period of time. It is measured based on the type of exercises used. Heart rate, for example, is a sufficiently valid parameter to assess training intensity. In fact, thanks to it we can calculate at what intensity we must work to reach certain objectives, as shown in figure 1.
Training zones according to HRmax | % HR max |
Anaerobic training | 80-100% |
Cardiovascular training | 70-80% |
Physical activity for weight loss | 60-70% |
Moderate physical activity | 50-60% |
Fig. 1
When instead working with overloads, the parameter used for calculating the intensity can be given either by the number of repetitions, or by the weight used, or by the speed of the movement.
Figure 2 shows the relationship that exists between the load used as a percentage of 1-RM (a maximum repetition) and the speed of execution in the movement of overloads.
Fig. 2
Figure 3, on the other hand, indicates the relationship that exists between the workload used as a percentage at 1-RM and the number of repetitions that can be performed in different expressions of force.
Fig. 3
It is also important, when training, that the relationship between duration and intensity is always to the advantage of intensity, since after about 45-50 minutes from the beginning of training there is a progressive increase in some hormones, including cortisol, which tend to catabolize muscle structures using proteins for energy purposes. On the contrary, with training of short duration and high intensity there is the right stimulation in hormonal and muscular level, with testosterone production which - having an anabolic action - stimulates protein synthesis.
Second part "
