Your get-rippedquick workout

How to find the sweet spot between strength and endurance for bulk and definition

IFBB Pro Bodybuilder Sibusiso Kotelo’s muscles are more defined than his friend’s, powerlifter Matthew le Roux. Why? He lifts a moderately difficult weight for 12 to 15 reps, known as hypertrophy training, compared with Le Roux, who picks up the heaviest he can manage for one rep.

Biokineticist David Leith defines hypertrophy as strain or stress that causes a muscle to grow in size. ‘Lifting weights causes it to lengthen and subsequently shorten under a load, which induces hormonal responses, such as the secretion of growth hormone (GH, which stimulates the growth of your muscle) and testosterone (promotes muscle mass).

‘It also “damages” your muscle, but that isn’t a cause for concern because micro-tearing is necessary to promote repair and develop new muscle fibres, increasing a muscle’s size.’

‘When you do short bursts of highintensity exercise, your body breaks down glycogen to produce adenosene triphosphate (ATP), a molecule that carries glucose within cells to provide immediate energy.’

Le Roux channels all his effort into lifting his heaviest weight over one rep because he’s training for a specific event. If he puts all his effort into that one rep, chances are he’ll be too exhausted to do it again and he’ll stop producing ATP. Even if he were to place that much load on his muscle for more than one rep, his form would deteriorate close to failure, and he’d risk injury and possibly impair future training.

‘Hypertrophy doesn’t necessarily mean lifting your one-rep max. Research has shown a safer and more effective way to train is within two to three reps of failure,’ adds Leith.

So, if you’re training for endurance, or aesthetics like

Kotelo, lift a high enough intensity to build strength and power for long enough to train aerobically to reach the point of fatigue that induces hypertrophy but also stimulates your muscle to grow.

‘Lift a high enough intensity to build strength and power for long enough to stimulate your muscles to grow’

How

To start, aim for 10-12 reps at 70% of your one-rep max. Remember: heavy men aren’t necessarily stronger than their lean counterparts, so it’s best to choose a weight based on your perception of effort, advises personal trainer Mziyanda Zuba. That should feel like around six to seven out of ten, and eight out of ten for your session overall.

Try a lighter weight first, advises Kotelo. ‘Picking up a heavy weight and managing two reps, known as

“ego lifting”, has nothing to do with hypertrophy. If your technique suffers you won’t activate the muscle.

‘The thing about form is that it’s not just about injury prevention; you need to activate the muscle itself, or you won’t get ripped. That’s why I advise training with an expert who knows the biomechanics the body goes through to recruit a specific muscle.’

Change one variable at a time, either weight or number of reps. During a fourweek hypertrophy programme, Leith has his athletes start with a certain weight in the first week, aiming to increase it

by 5-10% provided that correlates with their effort level.

To avoid hammering the same muscle groups day in day out, do five sets of each of them twice per week. The idea is to train one part of your body while another rests. One day, you might combine your quads and your back, and the next day rest those muscles to concentrate on your hamstrings and chest.

After you’ve warmed up, a typical session includes two primary 10- to 15-minute sets, focussing on two big muscle groups in each one. Then, you’d finish with one to two secondary sets of exercises for smaller muscles using lighter weights.

rest

‘Your muscles don’t grow at the gym; they grow when you feed them the right nutrition and rest,’ says Kotelo. ‘You need to replenish the energy you’ve consumed, and the best time to do that is to eat when your GH levels peak just after training.’

Kotelo eats complex carbs such as cream of rice to top up the glycogen he uses during workouts and easy-to-digest whey protein powder for muscle repair. He recommends consulting a registered dietician who’ll devise an eating plan based on your energy output and muscle mass.

It’s a well-known fact that the quickest way to burn fat is by doing strength training, not cardio, because it’s better at building muscle, and muscle burns more kilojoules than some other tissues, including fat – but that only happens at rest.

Homeostasis, the state of steady internal, physical and chemical conditions maintained by the body – hormones, hydration, energy – needs time to return to its pre-set levels. Your central nervous system needs to recover from heavy lifting and your muscles from the damage caused by higher-rep training.

What happens if you don’t rest enough? Symptoms such as fatigue, illness and negative moods will stop you from producing the results you want at the gym.