Using Intensity to Get the Most Out of Your Workouts

When it comes to bodybuilding intensity is everything. Mastering intensity is the most vital skill that will take your body to the next level and in a much quicker manner. Intensity, however, can be quite elusive. Mastering a high level of intensity takes years of practice. But, even as a beginner, if we practice truly pushing our limits early, we will be able to become skilled quite quickly. The first step to that is understanding how important it is.

The body is an ever changing machine. It is constantly adapting to new stimuli to become more able to handle the stresses of our environment. Data is taken in by our senses and sent to our brain to be analyzed. Both conscious and subconscious data from our environment make ever so slight adaptations to our DNA via hormonal activity. That is because our bodies have evolved over a very long time to survive whatever conditions we are cast into. This is the exact reason we train. We work out so that our bodies will adapt to the stresses of exercise to make us healthier, give us more endurance and become stronger. An adaptation of strength is hypertrophy. Hypertrophy is simply the technical term for growth of a tissue, in the case of working out, muscle tissue. 

Gaining strength over time typically requires the increase of muscle mass as a physical adaptation. Thicker muscle fibers are more able to overcome bouts of tension. Such as when a thicker rope is needed to pull heavier objects, the body’s muscular system works in a similar manner. But for these muscle fibers to become thicker over time they need to experience stress. That stress comes from tension from weights or equipment. The higher the level of stress to the muscle, the faster the body will synthesize protein, thickening the muscle fibers. For these reasons we need to ensure the challenged muscle is receiving an adequate stimulus of tension. The more tension, the greater the need for adaptation, thus, assuming all of the other factors are in place, the body will gain muscle mass. 

For these reasons one of the most important parts of working out is having quality tension on the muscle. We can do that by developing a connection to a muscle and being able to use a single or a few target muscles to overcome the applied resistance. Connection, execution, and precision of tension takes years to increase skill. Doing so will more precisely apply the necessary stress for growth. While we may not start lifting with a high level of connection, we can increase the level of execution and stress to the target muscle by maintaining good form and pace.

Even with the right diet, recovery and connection with a muscle in place, we may still be wasting effort in the gym. That is because the body needs a high level of stress to adapt. Adaptation, especially from muscle growth, is very expensive from a resource perspective. The body is not likely to utilize its survival resources to adapt through hypertrophy unless, of course, the stimulus is high. To get the highest level of muscle growth the body must receive a stimulus that is so compelling, it has no choice but to grow. That means workouts should be hard. They don’t need to be long, they don’t need to be 30 or more sets, they don’t need sets of 100 repetitions, but they do need intensity. Do not sacrifice intensity for longer workouts, more sets or more total reps. It won’t work well and may have an opposite effect in some cases.

We have to give the body a reason to grow. We have to make it grow. So we do this by applying intensity. We may not be able to go into every workout and set a personal record, but in the majority of workouts, we can truly push ourselves. The body does not know weight or reps. It only knows tension. Although weight often increases net tension and reps increase time under and total tension, this is not always the case if the stimulus is not executed well. The tension load must be taken to a high level of fatigue for the body to allot resources to remodeling muscle tissue. For this reason sets should be hard. 

Depending on your experience level, hard is relative. For a beginner these sets may not need to be all out to produce a stimulus if the body is not used to it. But an all out stimulus may best cause adaptation. For a higher level lifter, that high threshold stimulus and quality tension may be more imperative. Intensity is all relative to the person’s strength, skill, experience and anatomical makeup. Whatever our experience level we can all push ourselves. For beginners, reaching a level near failure is often more difficult to gauge. That is because intensity is mostly controlled by the brain and your tolerance to pain and stress. Likely a new lifter may underestimate what is capable and come up short of true intensity. Even more advanced lifters can fall victim to this. In fact, I rarely see true intensity in many gyms. The brain will often underestimate the abilities of the body and cut us short of what can truly be done. Managing intensity takes practice but most of all it takes grit.

For my clients I try to educate them on the fallacy of weight and reps. It is a good measure to help us manage tension, but it is not infallible data that expresses intensity. I recommend not getting too caught up in weight lifted, but tension on the target muscle. I also recommend not getting caught up on reps, because this is just another tension metric. Reps and weight don’t tell the whole story and while progressive overload is likely a good sign a lifter is experiencing hypertrophy, it is not a guarantee. Use weight and reps and guides to help you choose a weight and push you into a realm of intensity but do not get confined by stopping at 10 reps because that’s what your program says, even if you went up a few pounds from last rotation. Look at lifting more in terms of execution and intensity. A well executed lift will apply tension to the target muscle. A set with intensity will apply the necessary stress to that muscle to trigger hypertrophy.

For these reasons I coach clients to use reps and weight as more loose guides, but always be pushing to get a better and more intense stimulus. For execution and intensity, having a coach guide you can do wonders to ensure reps are quality and challenging. I teach clients to let intensity be the guide while keeping weight and reps more loose suggestions. For measuring intensity I use a scale that represents the proximity to failure or a muscle or group of muscles on a lift. I use the RIR model which simply stands for “Reps in Reserve” or simply how many repetitions could you physically do. Chances are, at least without a high level of skill, the mind will be the first to give up, while the body still has gas in the tank. Reps become so exhausting or even painful that you simply can’t continue. But by consistently pushing yourself into the depths of painful sets, over time you can develop the skill to drive intensity. 

Using the RIR model we can gauge intensity and help us measure how hard we need to push. For beginners often a 3-4 RIR is often enough to give them a stimulus of growth. The problem here is beginners likely are underestimating their abilities. For these reasons I typically tell more novice clients to push to a 2-3 or sometimes even a 1-2 RIR. That way if they underestimate their abilities they likely will still get ample stress. For higher level lifters a 1-2 or even a 0-1 RIR can elicit great growth. While it is okay to physically fail on a set if it is safe to do so such as on a machine or with a spotter present, it may also give us a huge stimulus to recover from. Going to absolute failure on every lift may put you deep into a recovery deficit and lead you to overtrain. If going to absolute failure, I advise you to moderate the number of sets you are doing. But, don’t be afraid to take it there. The 1 RIR range is usually ideal. But, if you know you often underestimate your abilities you can often frame it as a 0 RIR. 

When pushed deep into the levels of pain and fatigue, the body must recruit higher threshold motor units. Motor units are like little computer chips telling muscles to contract to overcome a resistance. As the resistance becomes more challenging, more motor units will need to instruct more muscle fibers to contract and to contract harder. This recruitment challenges the muscle fully and is the stimulus our brain needs to initiate hormonal activity for muscle hypertrophy. If the muscle is not properly challenged that hormonal activity may not happen, or may not happen as fully as possible.

So here are some takeaways to help really drive your intensity. As a beginner I worked on form and tension for some months. This alone will elicit some gains. All the while start easing weight and reps up maintaining form. As you become more experienced, start to push further into sets. At 3-4 RIR the last rep should have slowed down a bit. You should feel some burn and a high level of fatigue in the muscles. At 2-3 RIR the reps slow down substantially, the burning and fatigue will increase substantially. At a 0-1 RIR the body is approaching not physically being able to overcome the challenge. At this range we should be barely squeaking out a very slow, grindy and painful rep. I suggest working out with a partner and pushing some sets to true failure. Understand what that feels like. When we gain that awareness we can better gauge our intensity and ensure we are applying a proper stimulus by gauging our proximity to failure. 

While mastering execution, tension, connection and intensity will make you a master, and set you up for amazing gains, we still need to ensure our diets, sleep, and recovery are appropriate to support the adaptation from the workout stimulus. We will discuss these concepts deeper in further blogs. Until then pick up something heavy until you can’t pick it up anymore.