Don’t Forget Heavy Days

Today’s Sunday Quickie is a little trick I use to keep progressing with regards to fat loss and muscle gain, as well as to evaluate how I am advancing in a measurable way…

There have been many posts here lately on the benefits of sprinting combined with moderately weighted circuits to expedite fat loss and enhance protein synthesis, now I’m going to completely contradict myself and say it’s time to lift some heavyweights. Please allow me to qualify what appears to be a complete change in philosophy. By no means am I suggesting that you abandon the approach you’re on. Chances are that you’re making great progress and I strongly suggest you stay the course, but with one little tweak.

If you’re like me then you’re tearing through your sets and sprints like a madman, sweating buckets and looking like you’re completely out of your mind at times. Your intensity and focus is high and you’re shedding fat and building muscular density at the same time. When you’re getting these kinds of results then why make any changes?

In order to keep the progress rolling along at this amazing pace it’s this one addition I’m going to suggest. Every five or six training sessions, lift heavy. Still do your sprints as they too are amazing for boosting your production of testosterone, but go old school with your lifts.

Here’s a sample I did this past week for just one session, the other five sessions were of the circuit and sprint variety. I squatted, deadlifted, power cleaned, incline pressed and did chin-ups, all is the 6-8 rep range with the exception of the chins which I did last and each set to failure. All the lifts were big, the weights in that typical heavy building range and roughly five sets of each. Why did I do this? To boost testosterone production of course.

After weeks of moderate weights for circuits and sprinting, I like to reintroduce one heavy day per week to make sure my strength stays high and my hormone levels do as well. The great news is that I was able to do at least as well in all my lifts, meaning that even though the focus has changed and body fat levels are dropping, my muscle has remained as has their strength. This is a very real sign of progress.

Give this method a try and add it to your current program. A heavy and basic day roughly once a week is sometimes just what your body needs to remember that it is still just as strong as ever, even though it has less fat on it. Let me know if this trick works for you,

Happy Lifting!