September 13, 2015

Mechanical Ascension Training System

The Difference Between A Program, And A System

A lot of people lack direction in their training, and appear to do things without any rhyme or reason hoping that it will get them the results they desire. While this can work for some, “hope” is not a strategy – at least not an effective one. It’s for this reason that many search endlessly for a “program” designed to provide them with the results they so desire. The program itself provides guidance and purpose, which is great, but there’s one major drawback with this approach, and it is: it’s impossible to predict how you’re body is going to respond from day to day, workout to workout, set to set, and even rep to rep.

Because a program is nothing more than a physical representation of a strategy, it has room for error as some days you may be able to perform more sets and reps, or you may not be able to perform the prescribed amount of sets and reps – in either case (feeling like you can do more, or feeling like it’s too hard), the psychological effect may be that the program isn’t the best for the person following it. It’s for these reasons that a “system” of training, one in which accounts are taken to allow for the natural daily fluctuations in performance, may be a more effective approach both physically, and mentally.

A system allows for interpretation, and for on the fly adjustments to be made based on how your body is reacting to the work that you are doing. After all, a training session is something that the individual is experiencing, and only that individual knows exactly how the work they’re performing is effecting them, therefore the individual must learn to listen to the internal cues of the body and base what they do off of that. That in essence is what training is all about. To go one further, that’s pretty much what life is all about – feedback: performing an action, gauging the reaction, taking the reaction into consideration and performing a following action.

September 1, 2015

Special 5 Year Anniversary Article - The Most Effective Muscle Building Strategy: Recruit, Then Fatigue

Freedom within a structure

As far as training is concerned, bodybuilding, or rather training to build muscle, is primarily the result of recruiting and fatiguing as many muscle fibers within a muscle as possible (without overworking the body’s capacity to recover). The most appealing characteristic about bodybuilding training is the freedom you have when it comes to structuring a workout, just as long as it remains within the recruit and fatigue framework. Within this structure you can pretty much do whatever you want (as long as it’s not completely idiotic), while still promoting the desired result.