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Answers from John Shepherd:
Q. I love running and doing weights and keeping fit and fence. However, I want to build bigger muscles, what do you advise?
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Answer:
To build bigger muscles you need to lift medium to heavy weights that target your fast twitch muscle fibres. These are the ones that are crucial for speed, power and strength and the ones that grow in size when properly stimulated. You need to lift a weight above 70% of your 1 repetition maximum (1RM) - this is the maximum amount of weight you could lift in one go. Due to the intensity of the workouts, they release a significant amount of growth hormone and testosterone. These ‘anabolic’ hormones stimulate your muscles to grow. However, as this effect occurs after your training (not when you are working out), you must allow plenty of recovery – take at least 48 hours between these workouts and do no more than 2-3 a week. Interestingly, research indicates that lifting medium to heavy weights (70-85% of 1RM), rather than very heavy weights (85%-100%) of maximum has a greater anabolic effect in terms of building muscle size. This is due to workout intensity. At 70-85% of 1RM the weights can be moved faster and over more reps, 6-10 as opposed to 1-6. You should select exercises that work numerous large muscles and joints, for example, the bench press, squat and leg press and subject to learning proper technique include, cleans, snatches and high pulls in your workout regime. One last point, ensure optimum protein consumption. Protein in the building block of muscle – muscle protein is broken down through training and protein needs to be ingested in sufficient quantities in order for it to re-build. Go for 2g per Kg of body weight and start the process of re-building immediately after your workouts, by consuming a protein bar or drink.
A note on your running and fencing: trying to build muscle whilst developing endurance can be counterproductive. This is due to what’s called the ‘interference effect’. Put simply you are asking your body (and in particular its muscle fibres) to respond to training in two different and conflicting ways. Your weight training targets your fast twitch muscle fibres, whilst the endurance work targets the slow twitch fibres used for endurance - and will actually be trying to change some of the former into the latter with a potential loss in their power output. As fencing is a short powerful, stop/start activity, I would not recommend that you do too much steady state aerobic training. Rather, in keeping with your sport, short sharp intervals are better suited, for example, 90 second runs at 80% effort, followed by 90 seconds’ walk recovery, repeated - dependent on your fitness – 2 to 8 times. You could also perform some sprints over 40m with a complete recovery between efforts. Go for a set of 6. These types of workout will target your fast twitch muscle fibres, reduce the potentiality for compromising your muscle growth and compliment your fencing.