I live by the non-aggression principle, the idea people should be free to do whatever they want as long as they do not initiate the use of force or fraud against others and that force is only morally justified when used to stop or prevent the initiation of force by another person or group. Also, the level of force you use in defense must be appropriate for the threat. If you use too little force your defense will be ineffective and you may be seriously hurt or killed. If you use more force than necessary to stop the threat or continue to use force after the threat has been stopped you risk serious legal repercussions like being sentenced to prison or facing a civil suit for damages. If you are attacked you should not cause more harm to your attacker or attackers than is necessary to effectively stop them from harming you.

While training and experience are often the most important factors, your level of strength and conditioning has a huge impact on how effectively you can use force and how well you can scale it to the threat. It may sound counterintuitive, but the stronger and better conditioned you are and the more effectively you can use force the less you will have to use in many situations.

For example, imagine if on a scale of one to one hundred with one being light touch and one hundred being lethal force you were attacked by someone using a level of force of seventy. To effectively stop the threat your force must be at least at the same level. If you are not capable of using that level of force you will need a weapon, a force multiplier, to effectively stop the threat.

Lone officer takes down two rowdy thugs.

The use of most weapons, especially edged weapons and firearms, raises the level of force all the way to one hundred. If you are physically incapable of using the necessary level of unarmed force to stop the threat you would be justified in using a force-multiplier even if it meant greatly exceeding the level of force of the threat because it would be your only effective option. In this case, insufficient strength and conditioning forced you to use a higher level of force (weapon) to effectively defend yourself.

Consider the effective options of people with different levels of strength and conditioning under similar circumstances. If a man in good physical condition with basic self defense training is the target of an unarmed assault by a violent criminal of similar size he should be capable of matching the force of the criminal’s attack and either stopping it or creating an opportunity to escape. Under the same circumstances a man in poor physical condition would be less capable and may have to rely on a weapon to effectively stop the threat.

If your only effective option is lethal force you would be morally justified in using it, and for a lot of people under a lot of circumstances lethal force is the only option. Regardless of their training and experience if you put a small woman, a frail elderly person, or a disabled person in the same situation their only effective option will be to use a weapon. If that’s the case and they have to kill the criminal to defend themselves that’s fine, however if you are capable of developing a level of strength and conditioning that would improve your ability to effectively scale force enough to avoid having to use lethal force under some circumstances it is worth it to do so.

This is especially true if you are a law enforcement officer since you have a duty to act, unlike us civilians who may have the option to disengage and escape some situations. While many officers will face situations involving such a huge disparity of force that lethal force is the only effective option, there are also many situations where superior physical strength and conditioning would allow an officer to subdue a threat without the need to shoot them. If there’s no other option I’d rather see law enforcement officers go home and criminals go to the morgue at the end of the day and not the reverse; however, I suspect many would prefer to avoid this and having to deal with any investigation as well as all the second-guessing by the media which is largely ignorant about use of force.

Let it be perfectly clear that contrary to the old saying, violence absolutely does solve things, but only if you’re good at it (the people who claim it doesn’t usually are not). While training is definitely the biggest factor also being as strong and well conditioned as possible can make a big difference, and if you want to be capable of using the least amount of force necessary to stop an attack without hurting anyone more than you have to you should continuously work towards becoming stronger and better conditioned.

For information on how to effectively, safely, and efficiently maximize your strength and conditioning check out my books High Intensity Workouts (for free weights and machines) and Project Kratos (for bodyweight).

For those interested in more information on the subject of effective self-defense I highly recommend the following books:

In The Name Of Self Defense, by Marc MacYoung

Scaling Force: Dynamic Decision Making Under Threat of Violence, by Rory Miller

The Little Black Book of Violence: What Every Young Man Needs to Know About Fighting, by Lawrence Kane and Kris Wilder

Deadly Force: Understanding Your Right to Self Defense, by Massad Ayoob

Hard-Won Wisdom From The School Of Hard Knocks (Revised and Expanded): How To Avoid A Fight And Things To Do When You Can’t Or Don’t Want To, by Alain Burrese

Defensive Tactics: Modern Arrest & Control Techniques for Today’s Police Warrior, by Loren Christensen

Martial Arts, Self-Defense and a Whole Lot More, by Wim Demeere

Question: I’ve received similar questions from several readers recently about the relative importance of different training factors for stimulating increases in muscular strength and size. Will increasing intensity or volume produce better results? What matters more, reps and sets or time under load? Does it matter how I distribute the volume of work?

Answer: While many of these factors contribute to the stimulation of muscular strength and size gains, intensity of effort is the most important by far. Your results from training have more to do with how hard you train than how much training  you do or any other factor.

If exercise volume really is the most important factor, as some trainers claim, we would see a significant difference in strength and size gains between groups performing single and multiple sets. However, this is not the case. The majority of research shows it makes little difference whether you perform one set or many. It does, however, show that your intensity of effort – how hard you are working relative to your ability – makes a difference. If you do not train with a high intensity of effort no amount of exercise will stimulate significant improvements in muscular strength and size. If you do train with a high intensity of effort the amount of exercise you perform must be limited to avoid overtraining. The higher your intensity of effort the less work you can perform, the less you need to perform.

If you want better results from exercise you must push yourself to work harder on each exercise, not do more exercise. As high intensity training pioneer and innovator Mike Mentzer once wrote, “Anything that you do to make your workout harder will be a step in the right direction.”

There is a practical minimum, however. For optimum muscular development it is necessary to perform at least enough exercises to effectively work all the major muscle groups. If any major muscle groups are neglected your physique will not be well proportioned (for example, the odd, top-heavy, chicken-legged physiques of people who invest significant effort in training their upper body while neglecting their legs). However, the volume of exercise performed during each workout should not be so high that you are unable to maintain a high intensity of effort throughout. Reducing your intensity of effort for the sake of performing more exercise will give you worse results, not better.

Intensity of effort is also more important than load and tension. As long as an exercise is performed to the point of momentary muscular failure within a reasonable amount of time it appears to make little difference what percentage of one’s one repetition maximum load is used, and if an exercise is not performed to momentary muscular failure it will fail to produce the same results even if a heavier weight is used.

Time under load is more important than reps and sets for muscular strength and size gains. Consider it is possible to increase muscular strength and size significantly with isometric contractions involving no movement, no mechanical work at all, provided you are contracting with a high enough intensity of effort for sufficient duration to recruit and fatigue all the motor units in the target muscles. It doesn’t matter how many times you make the weight go up and down, or whether it even moves at all.

In a nutshell, if you want to get as big and strong as your genetics allow, you do not need a high volume of exercise, but what little exercise you do needs to be done as hard as possible. As I explained elsewhere it probably makes little difference how this  volume is distributed, however since time under tension is more important than mechanical work and a slower speed of movement is safer you’re better off performing one longer set with fewer, slower repetitions or isometrically than multiple shorter sets with more repetitions at a faster pace.

References:

Fisher J, Steele J, Bruce-Low S, Smith D. Evidence Based Resistance Training Recommendations. Medicine Sportiva Med Sport 01/2011; 15:147-162.

N.A. Burd, C.J. Mitchell, T.A. Churward-Venne, and S.M. Phillips. Bigger weights may not beget bigger muscles: evidence from acute muscle protein synthetic responses after resistance exercise. Appl. Physiol. Nutr. Metab. 37(3): 551-554, 2012.

Jürgen Giessing, , James Fisher, James Steele, Frank Rothe, Kristin Raubold, Björn Eichmann. The effects of low volume resistance training with and without advanced techniques in trained participants. Pre-print (this reference will be updated after this study goes into print)

Carpinelli RN, Otto RM, Winett RA. A Critical Analysis of the ACSM Position Stand on Resistance Training: Insufficient Evidence to Support Recommended Training Protocols. Journal of Exercise Physiology Online 2004;7(3):1-60

Smith D, Bruce-Low, S. Strength Training Methods and The Work of Arthur Jones. Journal of Exercise Physiology Online 2004;7(6): 52-68

Westcott WL, Winett RA, Anderson ES, Wojcik JR, Loud RL, Cleggett E, Glover S. Effects of regular and slow speed resistance training on muscle strength. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness. 2001 Jun;41(2):154-8

Cameron J. Mitchell, Tyler A. Churchward-Venne, Daniel W. D. West, Nicholas A. Burd, Leigh Breen, Steven K. Baker, Stuart M. Phillips. Resistance exercise load does not determine training-mediated hypertrophic gains in young men. Journal of Applied PhysiologyJul 2012,113(1)71-77;DOI: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00307.2012

Question: A reader asked for my opinion on an article in which the author claims, “…multiple sets are a must if you want to maximize your muscular potential.” I’ve written about this before, but since this is a subject a lot of people are still obviously confused about I’m going to break it down here and explain it as simply as I can.

Answer: Like most things, the answer is “it depends.” You do not need multiple sets to maximize your muscular potential, but for single set training to be effective you have to do it right. And, if you are doing it right, performing more than one set can quickly result in overtraining and slow or stop your progress.

To better understand this it helps to think of exercise volume in terms of metabolic rather than mechanical work. The stress on your body and stimulus for adaptation has little to do with how many times you lift and lower the weight, and a lot to do with the tension and metabolic demand placed on your muscles. Because of this, it is more appropriate to define exercise volume in terms of the magnitude and duration of muscular force application (force x time) than reps and sets. This is why isometric training methods like static holds and timed static contractions effectively build muscular strength and size without any mechanical work performed.

It also helps to keep in mind that different people have very different ideas about what a set is and how it should be performed, and this often determines how many they believe is necessary. For example, a person who performs four sets of ten repetitions of an exercise at a typical cadence – lifting the weight in a second then lowering it just as quickly – would have a cumulative time under load (TUL) for that exercise of eighty seconds (4 sets x 10 reps x 2 seconds per rep = 80 seconds). A person who performs just one set of ten repetitions of an exercise at a moderately slow and controlled cadence – lifting the weight in four seconds then lowering the weight in four seconds – would also have a TUL for that exercise of eighty seconds (1 set x 10 reps x 8 seconds per rep = 80 seconds). Although the first person performed four times as much mechanical work, assuming the same resistance the metabolic work would be roughly equal.

If you perform an exercise at a fast cadence – quickly throwing the weight up and dropping it – with typical repetition ranges your TUL per set would be very low and you would be able to perform more sets without overtraining. Even if your intensity of effort is very high you might need to perform multiple sets for optimal results if each of the sets is very short.

On the other hand, if you perform an exercise at a slower cadence – lifting, lowering, and reversing direction under strict control – with typical repetition ranges your TUL per set would be very long, and attempting multiple sets in this manner would result in overtraining.

There are a lot of examples of people who have gotten big and strong using both methods, and on the surface it might not seem to make much of a difference whether you perform multiple shorter sets or a single longer one if the cumulative TUL per muscle group is the same, but there are several disadvantages to performing multiple sets at a faster cadence.

The faster you move during an exercise the greater the force encountered when you reverse direction between lowering and lifting, where the muscles under load are most vulnerable. The more mechanical work you perform the more wear on your joints. The faster you move during exercise the less you are capable of maintaining proper body positioning and control over the path of movement. These all increase your risk of injury or developing joint problems over time. Additionally, the faster you move during exercise the less weight you can lift.

It could be argued that despite your muscles being able to produce more force at slower concentric contraction speeds dividing the TUL of an exercise into multiple, shorter sets with a few minutes of rest in between would allow the use of heavier weights. However, since most people do not train to failure on each set when performing multiple sets and your results from exercise have more to do with your intensity of effort than load, this wouldn’t appear to be any more effective than a single, longer set performed to muscular failure.

Of course, if you want to go as heavy as possible you can still do it with slower repetitions by performing rest-pause, with lower risk of injury and less wear on your joints.

While it probably makes little difference in muscular strength and size gains whether you perform multiple shorter sets or a single longer one provide the intensity of effort and TUL are similar, when it comes to safety and efficiency HIT style single sets are the clear winner.

While a lot of training methods can be highly effective if done hard, progressively, and consistently, not all methods are equally safe or time efficient. If you have to choose between multiple methods capable of producing the same strength and conditioning improvements over time (which is limited by your genetics, regardless of the methods used), it makes sense to choose the method that is least likely to injure you or undermine your long term joint health and functional ability, and requires less time in the gym. Effectiveness alone is not enough. An exercise program should also be safe and time efficient.

The goal of exercise is to stimulate the body to produce improvements in all the trainable factors of functional ability, to improve your physical capabilities, appearance, and health. Even if a program effectively stimulates the body to do so, if it is likely to cause you injury it is going to undermine your functional ability and health in the long run.

The ultimate reason for exercising, for wanting to improve your physical capabilities, appearance, and health is to better enjoy your life. None of us knows how much time we have, and once we die that’s it. Unless you really enjoy hanging out at the gym (and some people do) spending any more time working out than necessary is a waste.

Although the cumulative TUL of many HIT workouts is comparable to that of many multiple set bodybuilding workouts, because the work is more condensed they take much less time to complete. For example, if you perform a HIT workout consisting of ten exercises each performed for a single set of six to ten reps at a 4/4 cadence and rest a minute between exercises, your cumulative TUL would be a little over ten minutes and your total workout time would be around twenty minutes. Consider that many people who do HIT use even shorter rest periods and might complete the same workout in under fifteen minutes. Compare this with a typical bodybuilding workout consisting of a dozen exercises performed for three to four sets of eight to twelve reps at a 1/1 cadence and with a two to three minute rest between sets. Although the cumulative TUL would be about the same the total workout time would be one and a half to two hours because of how the work is distributed. Additionally, condensing the same cumulative TUL into a shorter workout increases the work to rest ratio and the effectiveness for cardiovascular and metabolic conditioning, making it unnecessary to spend more time performing other activities for that purpose.

Question: I’ve been following your HIT workout program and lost a lot of fat on my arms, shoulders, and legs but I still have some fat to lose on my abdomen and lower back. Should I add more abdominal exercises? Should I start doing high intensity interval training on my off days to burn more fat? Are there any supplements that help?

Answer: No, no, and not much. If you’re already losing fat elsewhere you are already doing what is necessary to lose your abdominal fat, it just takes longer. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is the fat in some areas is different than the fat in others. So called “stubborn” fat has less blood flow and has more of the receptors for hormones causing fat to be stored (alpha 2 receptors) and less of the receptors for hormones causing fat to be released (alpha 1 and beta receptors). Because of this, when your body draws on its fat stores for energy it takes less of it from these areas. The second reason is how fast you can lose fat is inversely proportional to how much fat you have. Although this limit probably varies considerably between individuals and would be affected by strength training and differences in diet, the average appears to be around thirty one kilocalories per pound of fat per day (Alpert SS. A limit on the energy transfer rate from the human fat store in hypophagia. J Theor Biol. 2005 Mar 7;233(1):1-13.). This means the less fat you have, the slower it will come off.

This means “stubborn” fat comes off more slowly on average, and since the less fat you have the slower it comes off it takes significantly longer to lose than the more “compliant” fat in other areas. To make matters worse, as you become leaner and muscle groups in other areas become better defined the contrast can make the “stubborn” areas more noticeable.

When discussing this with clients I often compare it to filling and emptying a swimming pool. Your “stubborn” fat is like the deep end of the pool, and your “compliant” fat is like the shallow end. When you fill the pool the water accumulates in the deep end first and the shallow end last. When you drain the pool the water leaves the shallow end first and the deep end last. If you want to empty out the deep end you’ve got to drain all the water. If you want to reduce the fat in “stubborn” areas, you’ve got to reduce your overall body fat significantly.

While it is possible to increase fat loss in specific body areas by exercising the underlying muscles, the difference is so incredibly small it’s not worth it (Are blood flow and lipolysis in subcutaneous adipose tissue influenced by contractions in adjacent muscles in humans? Bente Stallknecht , Flemming Dela , Jørn Wulff Helge. American Journal of Physiology – Endocrinology and Metabolism Published 1 February 2007 Vol. 292 no. 2, E394-E399 DOI: 10.1152/ajpendo.00215.2006). Trying to target “stubborn” fat with exercise is like trying to empty water from the deep end of the pool faster than the shallow end by bailing the deep end with a teaspoon.

What abdominal exercises can do is increase the strength and thickness of the abdominal muscles making them look more defined when your body fat is low enough, and they should be done for this purpose. However, you do not need to train your abdominal long or frequently as is often recommended. Like other muscle groups, if you train your abdominal muscles with a high level of intensity very little volume and frequency is required.

Performing high intensity interval training on off days not only won’t help, it can actually hurt you if you area already relatively lean. As I mentioned earlier, how fast you can lose fat is inversely proportional to the amount of fat you have. The leaner you get, the less energy you can get from your fat stores. If your calorie deficit exceeds the energy you are able to get from your fat stores the difference is going to come from glycogen, then your lean body mass. You don’t need a bigger calorie deficit as you become leaner, you need a smaller one. You can not force your body to lose fat faster by increasing activity, but you can cause yourself to lose muscle if you do too much. Accept that fat loss slows down as you get leaner, and it will take you much longer to lose the last ten pounds of fat than it took you to lose the first ten. I explain this in detail along with how to determine your starting calorie intake and adjust it for maximum fat loss in Getting Ripped.

A few supplements have been shown to help with fat loss in general, ephedrine, caffeine, DHEA, etc., and yohimbine HCL in particular may help you to lose “stubborn” fat because it blocks activation of the alpha receptors. Some people “stack” caffeine, ephedrine, and yohimbine, however I do not recommend taking ephedrine and yohimbine simultaneously, especially if you have any heart problems.

I recently did a couple interviews with the Corporate Warrior website covering a variety of exercise, diet, and lifestyle related topics. You can listen to and/or read them at the links below:

Corporate Warrior Interviews Drew Baye: Part One

Corporate Warrior Interviews Drew Baye: Part Two

If you have a question about something discussed in the interviews post it in the comments below.

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”

– Jim Rohn

“…when it comes to getting ripped, the solution is quite simple…but the application is hard as hell.”

– Doug McGuff, MD

I know exactly what it takes to get someone’s body fat down to the low single digits, while maintaining or even gaining lean body mass. It does require some understanding of physiology, nutrition, and how to adapt exercise programs and diets based on individual response, but overall it is relatively simple. Unfortunately knowing isn’t enough, and while the process of getting ripped is relatively simple the application is really hard for most people.

Many people start a fat loss program feeling motivated and believing they will see it through, but eventually find excuses to go off of their diet and skip or slack off during workouts. It’s hard to restrict calorie intake, especially on workout days. It’s hard to give up or cut back on favorite foods, especially when your family and friends are eating them. Meal planning and preparation takes time and effort. Working out on a consistent basis takes time and effort. Depending on how much fat you want to lose it may take you a very long time to reach your goal.

It’s hard. It can be one of the hardest things some people do in their life. Losing a lot of fat if you’re overweight, or trying to get in ripped condition is an absolute bitch.

But, it is worth it. 

The key to toughing it out is to constantly remind ourselves why we are doing it. More importantly, to define and stay focused on our end goals. Losing fat or getting ripped are means goals. In and of themselves they are meaningless. What gives them value is the end goals, the ways they will improve your life. To be healthier, to live longer, to look better, to perform and feel better, and all the things that come with these.

If you are trying to lose fat right now, go get a piece of paper, and write down all of the ways losing that fat will improve your life. Imagine how you will feel, what you will be able to do, how people will treat you. Those are the things you have to think about when you’re hungry, when you don’t feel like weighing and measuring food, when you’re tempted to skip or slack off during a workout, etc. Don’t think about the fat loss, think about all the reasons why you want to lose it.

I’m serious. If you haven’t already done it, go get a piece of paper right now, and write it down. Then keep that paper on your, or hang it somewhere you will see it every single day.

Share it with your spouse or partner, your family, your friends, so they know why your goals are important to you and ask them to be supportive. Few things are as hard to deal with while losing fat than being surrounded by people who are trying to undermine your attempts, often because they feel threatened by the change you are trying to make. Better yet, if they need to lose fat ask them to do it with you, and agree to support each other.

Then, every time you are tempted to eat more than you should, to not give your best effort during a workout, to stay out late drinking with friends instead of abstaining and getting adequate sleep, ask yourself whether the momentary enjoyment of some food or drink or the momentary relief from physical discomfort is worth more to you than the improvements in your life that will come from achieving your goals. Remind yourself why it’s worth it.

The Ivanko Super Gripper has been my favorite gripper for a long time. Its extension springs can be adjusted to provide fifty five levels of resistance, from an easy forty five all the way up to an impressive three hundred and forty five pounds. The grip is comfortable, and it feels like the extension springs provide more consistent resistance over the full range of motion than torsion spring grippers, which are usually much easier to start than finish closing. The long handle makes it easier to perform forced reps with the assistance of your other hand.

The only complaint I have about the Ivanko Super Gripper is there is no indication on the gripper itself of the resistance the extension springs provide in different configurations, so it is necessary to refer to a chart every time you need to change the resistance to figure it out. I designed a reference chart for this using data from the Ivanko web site, which I kept on my iPhone and iPad for reference, but I wanted something that was even quicker and easier to use, so I asked Bear Cahill of Brainwash Inc. to convert the chart into an iOS app and couldn’t be happier with what he came up with.

It’s a pretty simple app, so there isn’t much to say about it, but everything there is to say about it is good. The calculator allows you to quickly and easily determine the spring configuration required for each level of resistance, and also contains a chart showing the spring configurations that approximate the resistance of every Captains of Crush gripper. It is much easier to read on the iPhone than the PDF chart and if you have an Ivanko Super Gripper and an iPhone or iPad I highly recommend getting this app.

To get the app in the iTunes store click here

From Getting Ripped: A short guide to training and eating to maximize fat loss while maintaining or gaining muscle,

“During the spring of 1995 I was working as a personal trainer for Gold’s Gym in Green Bay, WI, (now Titletown Fitness) and was involved in a feud in the editorial section of The Green Bay Press Gazette with fitness columnist Jane Bodilly, who I frequently criticized for her erroneous and often contradictory advice in letters to the editor. This frequently involved telling people to “forget aerobics” and focus on proper strength training and diet instead.

These arguments caught the attention of a local news network which interviewed Bodilly and me for a segment on exercise and fat loss. I explained that aerobics was not only not necessary but potentially counterproductive for fat loss and other fitness goals and that you could become as lean as possible without it, doing only brief, infrequent, high intensity strength training and reducing your calorie intake.

Talk is cheap though, so I decided to prove it by getting ripped and competing in the NGA Midwest Bodybuilding Classic being held in Wisconsin Rapids, WI in June with only very brief and infrequent high intensity strength training and calorie restriction. Fortunately I was already moderately lean at this time so I did not have far to go. I had been following a typical bodybuilding diet – lots of grilled skinless chicken breasts with sweet potatoes or other vegetables, canned tuna with rice, a lot of milk, etc. – and already had good definition.

In eight weeks between mid April and mid June under the instruction of head trainer Mike Moran I was able to reduce my body fat to between three and four percent (based on multiple measurements performed with skinfold calipers, bioelectrical impedance, and Futrex infrared). During these eight weeks my total workout time averaged less than twelve minutes per week, and I did no so-called “cardio” or any other physically demanding activity. I also did not use any drugs or so-called “fat burning” supplements.

There is nothing unusual or particularly special about achieving this degree of leanness. Competitive bodybuilders do it all the time. What is unusual is that I did it using an approach that is nearly the opposite of what most bodybuilders do when contest dieting. The typical approach is to increase workout volume and frequency, often focusing more on simple exercises for “shaping”, and to perform “cardio” once or twice daily to burn more calories. I reduced my workout volume and frequency to extremely low levels, and did no “cardio” at all, creating a calorie deficit by restricting food intake instead. My total workout time for the entire eight weeks leading up to the contest was under two hours.

Although this was done to reduce an already low bodyfat percentage to competition levels, the same general approach is effective for people with more fat to lose. It has worked for every person I have trained over the past twenty years who was consistent with both their workouts and diet, and it will work for you, too.”

Topics covered include original workouts, pace, warming-up, abdominal, neck, and grip and forearm exercises, updated and expanded workouts, repetition methods and ranges/TUL, body part specialization, how to determine the calorie intake that will allow you to lose fat as fast as possible while still maintaining or gaining muscle, considerations and modifications for the obese, macronutrients, meal frequency and timing, meal planning, and supplements. The guide, which is available as an ebook, also comes with a printable worksheet for the formulas in the book.

Click here to buy Getting Ripped

Click here to get Getting Ripped, High Intensity Workouts, and High Intensity: The Annotated, Uncensored Post-Workout, Delirium-Induced Ramblings together in the Classic HIT ebook Bundle (save 25%)

Back in January of 2006 I wrote a post on Ellington Darden’s forum about an idea I had for a single progression system I call “isochronal progression”. This is something I have experimented with periodically in the years since, mostly during the development of my bodyweight high intensity training program Project Kratos, and it is covered in the book. I have recently started phase three of Project Kratos, which involves incorporating feedback from participants and refinements I have made, and am experimenting with this again.

“Isochronal” means equal in duration, or occurring at equal intervals of time. Exercises are performed for a predetermined TUL, rather than for a range of repetitions or time, using a timer (I recommend the Seconds Pro app if you have a smart phone or tablet). If momentary muscular failure is achieved before reaching the target TUL, after a ten second rest the exercise is continued in a rest-pause fashion for the remaining time, using a five second rest pause. As an alternative the exercise can be continued for the remainder of the TUL using a static hold or timed static contraction (TSC) in the mid-range position or position of maximum lever. It is a pass/fail system. Resistance is increased when it becomes possible to perform the exercise for the target TUL before achieving momentary muscular failure.

Isochronal progression alone does not provide as accurate a measure of progress from workout to workout as a repetition count or TUL (it can, however, be combined with these if desired) but it has several advantages which some may find helpful.

One advantage is making it easier for people who self-train to focus on form since they don’t have to count repetitions or monitor a stopwatch. Also, because the duration of the exercise will be the same regardless of the repetition count it removes the temptation to move too quickly or compromise form in other ways for the sake of completing more repetitions, and the temptation to move too slowly or “sandbag” in easier parts of the range of motion to increase the TUL. It allows you to forget about measurement and focus entirely on performance.

Another advantage of isochronal progression is the ability to design workouts with a specific duration or work to rest ratio to emphasize cardiovascular and metabolic conditioning. I find this works well with 3×3 workouts as an alternative to the repetition count, and makes it possible to train multiples of three people simultaneously without anyone either having to wait for the others to finish their exercises to continue or being tempted to stop when someone else does, by having each person in each group of three start with a different exercise.

The ability to design workouts with a specific duration can also make it easier for extremely busy people to fit them in their schedule, and for people teaching group training to stay on schedule.

One disadvantage is of isochronal progression and single-progression systems in general is it lacks the resolution or granularity of measuring progress with the repetition count or TUL. It is purely pass or fail. Workout progress can still be evaluated, just not as easily. In this case, you may be better off making adjustments to your program when necessary based on goal-specific measurements, like changes in weight and body composition or performance in other physical tasks, rather than on exercise performance.

Another disadvantage is some people may take longer to recover when performing a significant number of rest-pause repetitions or lengthy static holds after achieving momentary muscular failure. In this case, they should modify the exercise duration to reduce these. This could be managed in a group setting by counting off the exercise duration in seconds at regular intervals, i.e., “60 seconds, 70 seconds, 80 seconds…” However, to maintain a consistent starting time for exercises the individuals using shorter times would have a longer rest.

Despite the advantages, I still prefer to use the repetition count for dynamic exercises and time under load for static holds and timed static contractions, because I like to have more meaningful data on exercise performance and progress, I’m able to maintain good focus on form even when counting repetitions, and I work out alone and do not need to stay in sync with others. I would only recommend isochronal progression if you self-train and find it extremely difficult to focus on form while also counting repetitions or using a stopwatch, if you are trying to maintain a specific work to rest ratio, or for some group training situations.