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This programme is divided into 10-day groups
The objective of the following three-to-four-week period is to gain some
muscle strength and relative muscle size. Before this scares anyone
off, let me explain. The exercise program is not designed to make
you look like a bodybuilder! All that’s happening is that we
split the body into two groups of three muscle groups each so that
we can
focus more on the individual muscle groups.
This method assists the isolation of particular muscle groups and enhances
the overload of muscles. Progressive overload is probably the most important
exercise principle used in exercise programme design and also the reason why in
this month’s programme you do two-to-four exercises on the same muscle group.
When the muscles of the human body are exercised at intensities, volumes and
loads in excess to what they are used to, the muscles are overloaded. The
overloading will cause specific physiological and neuro-muscular adaptation. The
next time you do the same exercise, it will feel a
bit easier. This is because your muscles will have adapted to the previous stimulus.
If you follow the same programme for too long, your muscles and body will no longer
adapt to the stimulus. This causes you to “plateau” in your training and you
will find yourself not achieving the weekly goals you set out to achieve. By
changing the exercise order, the exercise, the recovery period, the intensity
and/or the volume of the exercise, you can process the overload of the exercise or
programme.
The length of a successful exercise programme ranges from two to three weeks minimum and
four to six weeks maximum. Within this period, subtle changes to rest periods, angles at
which exercises are performed, the number of kilos lifted and various other
factors
can affect the outcome (overload) of the exercise programme.
For this month we therefore focus on overloading each major muscle group in such
a manner that you can gain muscular strength and relative muscle size. Relative
muscle size refers to muscle size development in relation to the type of
training you do.
For the ladies, the exercise programme will focus on increasing strength and muscle
tone. The differences between the men’s and the ladies' programme are twofold.
Firstly, the number of repetitions you do for each exercise and secondly, the
intensity/load or amount of resistance. If you work between the 15-30
repetitions range, the intensity decreases, which will result in lighter weights
being used.
When performing the exercises, a burning sensation rather than a lack of strength,
"shaky" kind of feeling is experienced in the particular muscle group. Alternating the
exercising of different body parts also enables the overloaded muscle to recover sufficiently to be in top form for the next session. This means that you can train
on two consecutive days, because you will not be doing the same exercise or
exercising the same muscle groups two days running.
Experience has shown that to do a split one and split two on consecutive days, followed by a rest day,
has great results.
I hope you have lots of fun during the next couple of weeks. Please let me know if you have any questions regarding your training.
Good luck
Sean
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