SESSION NOTES: Relative Stamina (478)
Complete four rounds of the following. Complete max unbroken reps of each exercise in 60 seconds, resting 60 seconds between exercises.
- Max unbroken ring dips
- Max unbroken toes to bar
Programming Science:
As this session requires you to go to failure, you will achieve a very high level of motor unit activation.
Motor units are the motor neurons (nerves) and the muscle fibres they ‘switch on’. When we contact a muscle, we are in fact only contracting a small number of muscle fibres. We can’t turn a muscle fibre ‘half on’, it’s either ‘on’ or ‘off’.
When you stop a set before failure, you are failing to maximise the number of fibres you’re activating. By going to failure in the sets in this session, we are maximising the number of motor units we’re activating, which means we’re able to get a lot of effect from a relatively small amount of work (albeit at a higher intensity).
This session contains an even balance of ‘pull’ and ‘push’ based exercises.
The push movements and the pull movements alternate, which has two effects. Firstly, there is some degree of recovery between movements of a similar type to maximise volume. Secondly, there is a ‘blood shunting’ effect, where your body is required to deliver oxygen and fuel, and remove waste, from large and alternating muscle beds.
This blood shunting means there will be a cardiorespiratory benefit, and you will have the added challenge of training with high levels of hydrogen ions (the acid feeling you get from high intensity exercise) in your system, and not just under localised muscular fatigue.
The high intensity of these sessions means they will help to improve oxygen delivery to muscle beds using the anaerobic energy systems.
Health and Body Composition Benefits:
This session is a form of resistance training that provides a stimulus with lighter loads and higher volume than an absolute strength or power based session. While the high levels of fatigue in this session makes it less effective to increase strength and power, it will improve your stamina – the ability of your muscles to resist fatigue.
Often, higher repetition movements are neglected for the upper body (while walking/cycling etc are included for the lower body), but by including these higher repetition upper body movements, we’re helping to develop blood vessels in the upper body which will help reduce cardiovascular risk factors.
As this session requires you to go to failure, you will achieve a very high level of motor unit activation. Motor units are the motor neurons (nerves) and the muscle fibres they ‘switch on’. When we contact a muscle, we are in fact only contracting a small number of muscle fibres. We can’t turn a muscle fibre ‘half on’, it’s either ‘on’ or ‘off’. When you stop a set before failure, you are failing to maximise the number of fibres you’re activating. By going to failure in the sets in this session, we are maximising the number of motor units we’re activating, which means we’re able to get a lot of effect from a relatively small amount of work (albeit at a higher intensity).
High repetition resistance training like this will also improve your flexibility (by going through a full range of motion), posture and coordination. It will also build stability around your joints and spine to give you a healthy musculo-skeletal system and reduce joint and back pain. These movements will also help develop tendon strength.
Although this session is not designed with cardiovascular training as its priority, the higher repetitions do mean there is a crossover to cardiovascular benefits. These include improved cardiovascular endurance, respiratory function and cardiac health.
As a result of this style of session, you will experience changes in blood chemistry, including favourable effects on cholesterol, blood glucose, triglyceride and lipid levels.
In terms of body composition, higher repetition, lower load movements are an important part of an exercise program for increasing lean muscle. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue, so increasing it will maximise how much energy your body burns at rest. This makes it an effective session to reach healthy levels of body fat, both visceral fat (around the organs) and subcutaneous fat (under your skin). After this session, your body will go through a prolonged state of ‘EPOC’ (excess post- exercise oxygen consumption), meaning you’ll continue burning energy long after you finish training – further aiding healthy body composition.
Performance Benefits:
The high repetition movements in this session train the ability of your muscles to resist fatigue – increasing their stamina. This comes from improvements in the efficiency of slow twitch (fatigue resistant) muscle fibres.
As a result of the volume of repetitions, this session will increase the mitochondrial density in your muscle cells, allowing them to more efficiently convert energy into fuel. This means you can sustain higher rates of muscle contraction before fatigue or failure.
The higher volumes will also increase capillary density in your muscles, allowing for efficient delivery of oxygen and fuel, and removal of waste products (further adding to the fatigue resistance).
Although this session is not designed with cardiovascular training as its priority, the higher repetitions do mean there is a crossover to cardiovascular benefits. These include improved cardiovascular endurance, respiratory function, intramuscular substrate storage (increasing energy availability for muscle contractions) and increased enzyme activities (increasing the rate of energy delivery to the muscles).
Strategy:
For maximum effect in this session, there is no strategy! Complete as many reps as possible in each set. This will mean that there is a considerable drop off in reps each round. That’s fine – it will maximise the effect of the session.
How it Should Feel:
The limiting factor in this session is localised muscular stamina, and, as a result, you will experience a considerable ‘burn’ in the muscles. The challenge is to continue the reps even when this burn is present.
At the end of this session, you should feel like you’ve done a lot of work, even if your scores don’t reflect it. Going to failure will deliver high results with low volume.
Scaling Guidelines:
Scale the movement so you can achieve a high number of reps (at least 30 seconds, ideally closer to 60 seconds). If you’re limited by strength (i.e. you can’t lift your body weight for more than a few reps) rather than stamina (i.e. your muscles are burning) you need to scale the movement by reducing the load (through the use of bands etc).
Common Mistakes:
The major mistake in this session is not going to true failure. Often, individuals will stop when it starts to become difficult, not when they hit failure. This is a mentally challenging session – push yourself to achieve big sets.
Another common mistake is not scaling the movement enough, meaning the reps are low and therefore train strength, rather than stamina.
