How do you build the body you want, and, more importantly, how do you avoid failure while you are doing so? As a holistic trainer, I look at people’s exercise programs all the time. Too often, people are doing just some cool exercise they saw online or from somebody else in the gym, without realizing they do not actually have the physical structure to handle it or the patience to move from point A to point B, without getting injured. In this blog post, I will give you a tried and tested way to effectively craft a program for yourself that will work and help you avoid injury.

To start, you need to realize that a muscle is made of three different types of muscle fibers, that all do completely different things and need different types of training in order for you to see results. To dive into these three types of fibers, let’s use the metaphor of building a boat.

Types of muscle fibers:

  • Type 1
  • Type 2A
  • Type 2B

Photo by Zukiman Mohamad

Type 1 Fibers

Type 1 fibers are what type of material the boat is made out of. Materials have all different types of flexibility, stability, rigidity, density, etc. You can make a paddle board out of foam or a gigantic ship out of steel. Does everybody need to be made of steel? No. (But hopefully you are not just made of foam and can handle a light breeze.) You do want to be able to do more than just get off the couch and go to the fridge. For me, for example, I tend to aim for the middle, and I design my workouts appropriately for that, which ends up being about three times a week.

Type 2 Fibers

These fibers are the strength stuff, the size stuff, the glamor stuff, the six pack muscles that everybody looks at in fitness magazines. These fibers could be just a simple canoe or a battleship depending on how big, strong, tough, and durable the fibers are in strength and size. There is a continuum here between the two extremes and you get to choose what type of ship/body you want to build. However, there is a certain requisite of strength that you need in order to do basic things. For example, if your body is closer to a canoe and you try to pick up bags of mulch for your yard, you might hurt yourself because you do not have the requisite strength yet. Likewise, you do not need battleship level strength to just lay down mulch. So, it is important to consider what your lifestyle demands of your body.

Type 2B Fibers

These fibers are the power muscles that can give an incredible amount of output in a very short amount of time. Do you have a squirt gun level power or do you have the giant cannon level power? I am completely fine with you wanting a cannon but, and this is the key takeaway, you cannot fire a cannon from a canoe, and likewise, you cannot build a battleship out of foam. You have to start with flexibility and stability and build yourself up towards strength, size, and power. Even though strength, size, and power look good in magazines and on TV, flexibility and stability are what will actually build you in the first place. I spend the most time on flexibility and stability as an athlete myself and it is where I spend a lot of time coaching people in the beginning to get real, long resting results. Almost every time I see someone start building their body with only strength, size, and power workouts, they see success between three and six months, but then they either give up because it is not sustainable, or they get injured and they end up right back at square one. (That is usually when they hire me).

Photo by RUN 4 FFWPU

So, what is the success formula? Here you go:

Flexibility & Stability → Endurance → Strength → Size → Power

If you follow this in order, you are going to avoid all those pitfalls that I was talking about before.

  1. Flexibility & Stability

Flexibility and stability is the most important phase to start with. If a joint is incapable of moving through a range of motion when you load it, then it is going to tear itself apart. The big muscles move way too much, the little muscles move way too little, creating too much friction. We start getting arthritis, stenosis, or any other arthrosis or thrombosis, into that joint. Eventually the joint gets necrosis and starts dying until you need surgery for a replacement. Usually working on the flexibility and stability foundational phase should last two to three months. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be boring! But we really want to make sure that you have the foundation to all of the structures of your body before we start loading them.

  1. Endurance

Next, there is an endurance phase that we go through between six to eight weeks to make sure that all of the structure Type 1 muscle fibers are conditioned to stay engaged while we are activating the other fiber types. You want to make sure that your Type 1 fibers are staying engaged when you are turning on your Type 2a/Type 2b fibers with the fun strength and glamor stuff.

  1. Strength & Size

The strength and size phases are interchangeable. Oftentimes, I have clients go back and forth between the two to look good and strong, once they have built up their flexibility, stability, and endurance. Both the strength and size phases last about six to eight weeks.

  1. Power

Finally, we get to the power phase. Personally, as a trainer, I do not work with a ton of athletes that really want high levels of power. I have done it in the past, so I am capable of it, but when I look at how much people are actually supposed to be able to do in a short amount of time, it is usually not canon level stuff. While yes, grandma needs power training to be able to get off the couch, which requires a lot of relative power to get up in a short amount of time, she does not need Olympic level power. So my clients dip into power exercises usually for two to four weeks with one or two exercises in a program.

It is important to note that this process is not completely linear, all the time. Once you graduate from flexibility and stability, you still have to maintain it. That is the hardest part. Imagine that each stage is a spinning plate and you need to keep them all spinning. You need to make sure you stay balanced, otherwise you will run into the same injury problems.

Photo by RUN 4 FFWPU

Lastly, how do you condition these muscle types? The answer is Time Under Tension (TUT) and you need to know your numbers. Start with getting a stopwatch or using the stopwatch setting on your phone. Next, pay attention to the number of sets that you are doing. You cannot just do one exercise for a muscle and call it a day, instead the muscle needs multiple sets to actually recruit maximum effort until failure.

Type 1 fibers at the flexibility/stability, and endurance phases need 120 seconds of total time under tension to reach fatigue. Even then, they do not reach complete fatigue. About 30 seconds later, they are fully recovered and can go again. So to train Type 1 fibers, you should do two to three sets of 120 seconds of work each with a 30 second break in between. Once you hit the end of the third set, you should not be able to do any more. Congratulations! That workout is done for that muscle group and you can move on to a different muscle group. For Type 2A fibers at the strength and size phases, you need to do about 40 to 70 seconds of work, three to five sets each, with roughly 50 to 90 seconds of rest in between. When you get to the Type 2A fibers at the power stage, they actually cannot put out a lot of work. These fibers are completely gassed in 20 seconds. Think maximal sprints, the most amount of burpees you can do in a short amount of time, and the heaviest weight and the fastest speeds. You need about three to five minutes between four to six sets to fully recover. So 20 seconds, three to five minutes of rest, four to six sets is all you need.

So in summary, start with building up your Type 1 muscle fibers with flexibility, stability and endurance, then Type 2A fibers with strength and size, and finally Type 2B fibers with power. Remember, you cannot fire a cannon from a canoe, and you cannot build a battleship out of foam. If you have tried building your dream body in the past and ended up injured, you are especially the type of client I love working with, because I am going to guide you through this process step by step. Or if you already have a program and you want somebody else to give an evaluation of it, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]. I’ve got a free 30 minute consultation and I can look through your program, your history of inflammation, all of your exercise physiology, and help design something that works a little bit better for you to build the body you want.

As always, have a happier and healthier rest of your day, and I’ll see you soon.