Your Guide To Heavy-Light Training

Look Great, Perform Even Better People that look and perform like muscular athletes usually do two things in the gym: They train to improve performance by driving up strength, speed, and conditioning. They use specific hypertrophy work to attack weak points and, ultimately, build a balanced physique. But the problem among most people is that they treat aesthetics (looking good) and athleticism (performing well) as mutually exclusive training goals. Fortunately, they don’t have to be – especially when you use and adjust the training methods of the late Olympic sprint coach, Charlie Francis. While Francis wasn’t programming workouts to help his athletes look better naked or bust a deadlift PR, his high-low principle is what kept them progressing without burning out. We can use the same idea to increase both performance and hypertrophy. Here’s an overview of what that looks like before I get into the details. Heavy-Light Training Overview It’s also called an “intensive-extensive” or a “high-low” training split. It bases workouts on the neurological demand of training. It places the highest-demand work on nonconsecutive days. The “heavy” or intensive days are when you do exercises that are more demanding on the central nervous system. For lifting, this can mean that the work is greater in complexity, has greater explosive demands, or requires max strength. The “light” or extensive training days are based on a higher volume and less weight. To keep the workout challenging without such extreme neural demands, this will mean creating more metabolic stress within your muscles. Four Benefits Of Heavy-Light Training 1. You get stronger and look better at the same time. This programming allows you to train muscles and movement patterns more frequently. For many lifters, this results in improved technique and, as a result, faster gains in strength compared to training a muscle or movement pattern once per week. You also get the bonus of consistency. Organizing workouts in a way that keeps you from digging yourself into a recovery hole will allow you to keep training and keep challenging your body without burning out. You can’t change your body composition or gain strength without consistent effort and that’s what this type of training guarantees. 2. You feel good and stay fresh from workout to workout. The reason this type of program works is because of its varying neurological demands, which keep systemic stress in check. You’ll be able to squat, deadlift, etc. more often, but you must vary the loading and volume to prevent excess fatigue. To understand it better you’ll need to know a couple things about the nervous system. Let’s cover that… Your nervous system has two parts: The central nervous system (CNS), composed of the brain and the spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system (PNS), all the remaining nerves and ganglia outside of the brain and spinal cord. Motor units consist of one motor neuron and all the muscle fibers it stimulates. When a signal is sent from the nervous system, it activates the motor unit. Then all the muscle fibers innervated by the motor unit are stimulated and contract. Each motor unit consists of a bundle of muscle fibers and a motor neuron. Small fibers are in small bundles and in control of smaller, finite movements. Large muscle fibers are in bigger bundles to generate maximum power and strength. So when you unrack a weight at 95% of your 1RM, your nervous system goes into overdrive, sending massive signals to your body to increase muscular recruitment. Motor neurons, and virtually every other nerve in your body, are constantly receiving information from other nerves. As a result, it becomes supercharged, recruiting more muscle fibers to execute the near-max squat, along with improving muscle fiber recruitment on subsequent exercises, making them more effective. That means lifting heavy all the time is best, right? Nope. If you lifted heavy every workout, your nervous system, joints, and tissues would start screaming at you before too long. That’s where this programming shines. It limits the overall stress you’re placing on your body by adjusting the demands on your CNS by varying load, speed, and intent of exercises. 3. You improve your technique. With heavy-light training you do each movement pattern more often than most training splits. When it comes to maximizing your performance, the more often you do a movement correctly, the more proficient you’ll become. Once a movement becomes more naturally and technically precise, your strength numbers can improve, driving up work capacity, which will lead to improvements in your physique. Remember when you first started deadlifting and you had to learn the mechanics of the movement? While you were deadlifting you’d think things like, “Don’t round your back and pull the slack out of the bar.” But with lots of repetition using good technique, you get the movement down pat. Reaching this state of “unconscious competence” in
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