Are You Training Hard Enough?

In the September 1971 issue of Ironman magazine, in his article Is It Worth The Price?, Nautilus inventor Arthur Jones wrote,

“…every exercise should be carried to a point of utter failure, where no additional movement is momentarily possible. It is almost literally impossible for most people to work too hard—but it is easily possible for anybody to work too much.”

Fifty years later, despite an ever increasing body of evidence supporting Jones’ Nautilus training principles, you’ll still see most people in the gym doing far more exercises and sets than necessary while barely working hard. I am not exaggerating when I say the vast majority of trainees would get far better results if they spent less than half as much time in the gym but worked at least twice as hard.

What does it mean to work hard, though? Jones’ had an answer for that as well. To paraphrase, he once said if you perform a set of an exercise hard enough you should find it necessary to sit down afterwards. You should not just feel like sitting down, you should have to sit down to avoid falling down.

How do you train harder?

Use better, stricter exercise form

Proper exercise form keeps the targeted muscles working against relatively continuous, balanced resistance, without unloading or underloading and allowing them to rest, resulting in a faster rate of fatigue (inroad/time = intensity!). The stricter your form the harder an exercise is.

Don’t cheat, but don’t stop

Don’t cheat to get more reps as the exercise becomes harder. How well you perform each rep of an exercise is more important than how many reps you perform. Cheating might allow you to do more repetitions, but that is because it makes the exercise easier which is the opposite of what you want. Instead, continue to contract the target muscles as hard as possible without loosening your form.

Even if the weight stops moving you benefit from continuing to contract and fatigue the target muscles for a few more seconds (up to 10 if you are a beginner, but be more cautious and limit it to 5 if you have been training for six months or more). You my believe you have achieved momentary muscle failure, but if you continue to contract as hard as possible you might surprise yourself and find you are able to continue positive movement, even if just barely.

Let your muscles decide, not your mind

You don’t get to decide when the exercise is over, your muscles do. Regardless of how much your muscles burn, your heart pounds, or how winded you feel, continue to give your best effort until positive movement in strict form becomes impossible. Not unpleasant or uncomfortable; physically impossible. As long as you don’t feel any sharp pain or pain in your joints indicating injury, or become faint, dizzy, or nauseated (or if begin to lose your grip when pulling), continue to contract the target muscles against the resistance and move slowly and strictly until you could not do so even if someone put a gun to your head and threatened your life.

If you perform your exercises in this manner, and you use a level of resistance that allows you to achieve momentary muscle failure within around 60-90 seconds (although some will do better with a little shorter or longer time under load) you only need to perform one set of only one or two exercises per muscle group. Contrary to popular but misinformed opinion you do not need to perform a three or more sets of half a dozen or more exercises for each muscle group or work any muscle group more than twice weekly.

As an example, below are the two workouts I am currently alternating between which have been producing very good results. I perform the same eight exercises at the start of each, but alternate between different forearm and grip sequences at the end of the A workout and different abdominal and neck sequences at the end of the B workout.

I perform only one set to momentary muscle failure of each exercise, either dynamically using a weight that allows me to complete between two and four SuperSlow repetitions (10 seconds up, 10 seconds down, plus a few seconds for turnarounds and holds depending on the exercise), or statically using Timed Static Contraction (TSC) protocol. I rest only long enough between exercises to avoid becoming light-headed, winded, or nauseated, and am able to complete these workouts in under thirty minutes, for less than one hour of total weekly training time.

I’m doing all the above with free weights, bodyweight and statics, but here are the same workouts if I did them on machines. Of course, you can mix and match depending on the equipment available to you. Keep in mind any workout like this is only a starting point. Just because it works well for me does not mean it will work the same for you or anyone else. You must make adjustments based on your capabilities and how your body responds to exercise.

If you want to give these workouts a try and need help adapting them to your capabilities and available equipment and adjusting them based on your body’s response to exercise, I am available for consultations and online training and also explain this in numerous posts and videos in my private forum for HIT List members.