6 TIPS FOR SUSTAINABLE GAINS

Personal trainer and sports scientist Dr Milo Wolf believes there are smart ways to train that save time and offer a shortcut to gains in size and strength

1 PREPARE TO FAIL

This essentially means work as hard as you can with good form, taking every set of whatever exercise you are doing to failure or as close as possible. “By taking each set to failure, you are making each set more stimulative,” Dr Wolf states.

2 TRY COMPOUND MOVEMENTS

Plan a workout that involves exercises that incorporate a number of muscle groups. Things like the squat, the deadlift, the bench press and the pull-up all fall into this camp and can help stimulate overall growth better than specialist isolation exercises that generally take a lot longer to see results.

3 TRAIN BILATERALLY

‘Train bilaterally’ is sports science talk for prioritising those exercises that work both sides of your body, rather than honing in on single leg or arm movements. “When you are at a point where you need to address symmetry or an unbalance in strength, then you can move on to unilateral work, but bilateral is just as good for seeing results and it’s a more efficient use of time,” Dr Wolf says.

4 THE AGNOSTIC PUMP

Supersets are a brilliant way to save time, without scrimping on the exercises. Pairing two antagonistic exercises, or those that incorporate opposite muscle groups, and performing them back-to-back is the way to go if you want to speedily build up different parts of your body. “Biceps and triceps is one of the most common,” explains Dr Wolf. “But chest and back, quadriceps and hamstrings or any two exercises that don’t have any overlap or don’t lead to excessive fatigue all work,” he adds.

5 WARM-UPS ARE OVERRATED

It flies in the face of convention, but spending 30 minutes running on a treadmill or using a rowing machine to warm-up for hypertrophy or strength training isn’t required. The best warm-up is simply performing light reps of the exercise in question. Do two or three sets of light work on the bench press, building up to your heavy working set, for example.

6 EFFICIENCY IS KEY

“Prioritising dumbbell and stack-loaded machine and cable machine exercises are all great options when compared to a barbell movement, for example,” Dr Wolf explains. “You’ll have to spend time setting up the plates, adding a collar and more. The good news is, your muscle doesn’t care what piece of equipment you use to stimulate it,” he adds.