Sport – Cyclops Creative

We all exercise or train to become better versions of ourselves but we don’t always know how to get better. Years of experience in the gym and other training environments have shown that many people exercise, but most don’t do enough to get real results. Exercise and training are there to push your body past limits so that it can adapt to the load, making you physically and psychologically stronger and fitter. However, there is also a chance of doing too much.

There are three main variables you can change to dial in your training to get fitter, stronger, or bigger.

Training volume

Volume is often inaccurately described as the duration of the training, however, it’s the quantity of activity performed during training. “It is the primary component of training because it’s a prerequisite for high technical, tactical, and physical achievement.” (Periodization, T.O. Bompa & G.G. Haff). The specifics of the volume will always depend on the sport or activity. For endurance athletes, the main component measured is the distance covered. Resistance training and weightlifting will measure the accumulative weight lifted during a workout (Volume Load = sets x reps x load in kg).

How can you increase training volume?

If you’re an endurance athlete work on increasing the distance covered per run or week.
Each week, try to add an extra rep or two to each set.
If you are building more capacity, add another full working set to the exercise.

To add volume, you’ll be adding distance, sets, and reps to the workout. Doing a higher volume workout will impact your recovery time between workouts.

Training Intensity

Where volume is the quantity of work during training, intensity can be seen as the quality of work being done. With relation to resistance training, intensity can be seen as the energy expenditure or work per unit of time. i.e. workout). The more work you do during a workout, the higher the intensity and fatigue accumulated. However, intensity also has a psychological component whereby your ability to handle and overcome mental challenges during a tough workout or training segment.

intensity is measured differently between sports and activities. Endurance athletes will look at average heart rate as they run, cycle, or row. Maximum heart rate will also be used during resistance training but power output will become increasingly important.

Training Intensity graph — Training Intensity

There are two easy-to-follow methods of assessing intensity when training.

REP (Rate of perceived exertion)

Training hard is very relative and you need to find your “sweet spot” for training. Each level of RPE is a guide for progression. Each intensity zone has its uses whether you’re training for endurance or weight training.

RPE Scale:

1-4: This is where you’ll be warming up. You’ll either be jogging very slowly or doing mobility exercises, getting a light sweat.
5-6: The warm-up and speed set intensity. Low intensity and moderate weights that slightly work the muscles to prepare for main activities or work on explosiveness. Endurance athletes will be able to chat but with laboured breathing.
7-8: This is your working capacity. You’ll be doing your working strength sets or running but with shortness of breath and talking in short sentences.
9: Pushing hard and barely able to maintain the intensity of the exercise. Reps are slowing down and form is becoming worse—barely anything left in the tank.
10: You’ve pushed so hard that there is no way you can do another rep. Systemic and muscular failure happens here. Not recommended too often.

While RPE is great for endurance athletes, it can split those doing resistance training. RPE is perfect for powerlifters who work according to their maximal efforts. They tend to work with lower weights at higher intensity.

RIR: Reps in Reserve

If you want to build muscle, you could use the RIR method for your workouts. These are the reps in reserve for each set. It can be tricky to figure out, but so does the RPE scale. The more you use it, the better you’ll get.

You don’t want to start a new training block too heavy, so training each set to about 3 RIR is a good start (this could change in the final set). By adding weight each week, your reps in reserve will decrease and you’ll progressively get stronger.

Ways of altering intensity:

Increasing the speed over time or quickness of a specific exercise. E.g. running faster
Increase the weight lifted for an exercise.
Decreasing rest times between sets and exercises.
Performing endurance, interval, and tactical exercises at a higher % of maximal heart rate.
Have more intense training weeks before adding a deload week as part of a training block. E.g. 3;1 block to 4:1 training block.

Training Density

Training density is going to involve how often you’re training. The frequency of your workouts will depend on your training intensity and your recovery. If you’re recovering long before the next workout, you might consider adding another workout to your week. However, depending on your goals and program, increasing training frequency will look different to somebody else.

How to adjust training density:

If your muscles recover a few days before the next workout, adding another workout for that muscle group could improve adaptation. E.g. Training legs 2-3 times a week instead of once.
Have more speed sessions or longer runs during the week if you’re an endurance or track athlete.

Relationship between Volume and Intensity

There is a trade-off between volume and intensity. You can add all of the reps and sets you want, but it will impact how heavy you can load the bar. You can also run far but you won’t be running as fast as possible.

Optimal Volume and Intensity

If you’re building muscle, you will be adding loads of sets and reps to your workout to stimulate muscle growth, but you won’t be training very heavily. If you’re training for strength, your reps will be lower, rest times longer but the weight will be much heavier. You want to find the perfect zone for your specific goals.

There is no special variation that suits everybody, which is why well-planned programs make such a big difference.

Avoidable Volume and Intensity

There are two more scenarios that you don’t want to find yourself in. These are often determined by no training plan, trying to follow elite athlete intensity, or being unable to train very hard.

You’ve got the group who often starts too heavy, always trains to failure and ego lifts with way too much weight on the bar. They load the intensity and increase the volume so much that they’re sore for a week, train with a sub-optimal range of motion, and increase the risk of injury. This approach can also lead to overtraining.

The second group is often the beginners. They are unsure how to train effectively and/or worry about injury or muscle growth way too much. Unfortunately, this is also the zone, where for most of history, women were told to train because otherwise they’ll get bulky. This group of individuals exercise, but not hard enough to make any gains or they get them very slowly.

These two scenarios are avoidable because they’re quite easy to fix with correct education and programming.

Final Thoughts

Understanding the relationship between volume, intensity, and density can help you make those gains you want so much. You want to train hard and often enough to stimulate your muscles and nervous system but not so hard that you get hurt. You also want to ensure that you’re doing exercise at a high enough volume and intensity to make any gains at all.

These variables are changeable for the individual and individual goals, so take the time to learn and enjoy the process of getting fitter and stronger.

Written by Gary Dunn a.k.a. @geekphysique_za

There are countless movies about sporting heroes, fictional and real life, that overcome adversity. Books have been written about legends of their respective games that came from nothing to make something of themselves. This is NOT one of those stories, but one of somebody just finding their way, and it all started with some sport at school and how exercise helped overcome some hurdles to be just a little bit more independent.

Having been born with a visual impairment that left me legally blind and a doctor telling my parents that I would never read or write left quite a bumpy road ahead. With a mother who overcame the hurdles on her side and pushed me to do more than feel sorry for myself, and a school specially made for visually impaired people, there was a start but it was slow. I was never the tallest and a little bit chubby, while in boarding school for most of the week and there weren’t that many options for physical activity in a school for kids with visual impairments. These factors made it hard for somebody who ate like they hadn’t eaten all day (even though I did) to stay healthy and deal with fat-shaming because nobody could be shamed for their disabilities. After all, everybody was disabled.

I was always a fan of sports, especially cricket and rugby, but my school did not have them, not even blind cricket. The school did have a grass running track like most schools would but it also had a 25m Olympic-style laned swimming pool. We had the usual annual inter-school athletics meets but I never knew you could do more so it was only when I was about fifteen that I just started joining my fitter friends on the running track when it wasn’t even athletics season anymore.

I enjoyed having something to do in the afternoon, having mini competitions with my friends on the track and the bug got me. Not only did I develop a competitiveness to do better than they or I did, but I saw my body change and become stronger. Now, we know the way you look is the least important thing in life but when you’ve got low self-confidence, seeing those little changes makes you feel better.

Now, we can go on about how I somehow got into Stellenbosch University and eventually got my degree in Sport Science where I learned bout everything the body does to be better. I made friends who taught me how to lift weights and lessons that taught me more about the different sports I loved but knew little about. However, we want to know how sport and exercise helped me reach for more rather than sit around and say that I can’t do that one thing or exclude myself from living a more independent life.

Self-confidence

At the most basic level, sports can boost your self-confidence to heights you can barely imagine. It can be as basic as seeing changes in your body and feeling better about how you look in a mirror. But, with myself, I was seeing changes in my performance. Realizing that putting in hard work that was also fun provided me with confidence when I saw the running times go down and the weight I lifted increase. Not every person needs to be a world-class athlete but whether it’s in the gym or just going for a run and going a bit faster, those small wins made me feel more confident and made me work harder to get better next time.

Personally, looking good made me feel confident, but that was in the beginning. The confidence I got through exercise made me more comfortable to step outside of the disability box I put myself in and try new things in the outside world like going to university on my own, building friendships out of nowhere, trying different types of sports and even karting, which somebody with my eyesight probably wouldn’t usually attempt.

Discipline

My friends motivating me to start running with them was how it all began but exercise is a great, if not the best, way to build discipline. When you start seeing the small changes in your body and performance, you want to do a little bit better each time. Through the constant work on myself, I learned about what discipline was and how when I kept showing up to the gym or work, I would achieve my goals more consistently.

Showing up and putting the work in every day whether I wanted to or not became a habit so, it doesn’t feel like work anymore and I can just keep moving forward and build on what I did the day or week before. You don’t have to wake up at 4 am every morning to go to the gym or sit at your desk, but having some form of routine will help you build discipline.

I used my confidence and discipline to set new goals like going out further into the world, including running long distances on the road without any assistance. I used it to build a career in industries myself and my parents were told would never be possible.

Goal-setting

For most of us, work is not what we want to do during the day, but if we turn it into a bit of competition with ourselves, we can get through it more easily.

Setting goals in the gym while following a program taught me how to set goals for the workday as well. We can all write our day’s jobs into our diaries but what about setting goals similar to our workouts? Being able to do a specific job in less time isn’t a top priority but setting the goal of having fewer errors for a piece of work will automatically make it more efficient. It can even be as simple as finishing longer tasks before shorter ones later in the day when your focus tends to dwindle.

Set goals at work like you would in the day’s workout or training session, and you might see changes coming.

Making unlikely friends

Whether watching a game with friends, being part of a team, or running a race, I’ve met all kinds of people. I met people to nerd out with when it came to our favorite sport and got to train, and compete, with all kinds of amateur and professional athletes. I even got to write about training for a World’s Strongest Man finalist and Britain’s Strongest Man when the world was falling apart in 2020/21.

Sport has taught me that disabilities don’t matter because as long as you’re doing something to do better, you’ll always have people around who support you, and provide unlikely opportunities.

Along with a strong family behind me who never let me do less than I was capable of and getting my sweat on a couple of times a week, I learned lessons to carry with me for my entire life to come. It helped me become more confident and disciplined, helped me make friends, and gave me a career that some would have thought impossible from the day I was born.

Tag: Sport

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