Alternating Resistance Training

Which arm is doing the work right now?

I’ll be honest, alternating resistance training is usually not on my radar. It’s low on my effectiveness scale for building mass or strength.

Two big reasons to lift right? Arguably two of the main reasons anyone lifts (health and aesthetics/fat loss likely being the other two).

Why even do it at all?

Well all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Most people would say I’m a ‘serious’ person when it comes to training. It’s been my profession for fifteen years and for most of that time people would ask when I was going to get a real job. 😡

I’m working on it but I’m still a little serious about sharing my knowledge and making sure others do it right dammit! I don’t just count reps, I help people change their lives and it’s kinda awesome.

But every once and a while you just gotta let loose and do things because they are different, novel and fun. A good way to at least mix things up.

Enter Alternating Resistance Training

It’s a great way to mix up your training, do circuit training and drive your heart rate up. Sometimes it’s just boring doing the same old same old.

I’m introducing it into DTS’s phase three (starting this week) because we just did a phase of focus on unilateral training, that typically has more of a hypertrophy-oriented focus.

My mission with Daily Training Session (DTS) is two fold:

1. Inspire more people to move and especially lift (bands are resistance, any form of resistance is ‘lifting’ 😉)
2. Expose them to a wide variety of tools/methods/approaches that might appeal to them in the longer term

I’ve given this quite a bit of thought and I don’t expect everyone to love every phase of DTS. A phase is a long time to do something you’re not wild about doing and it’s also a long time to wait before you get back to the possibility of doing something you do like doing.

A WOD by contrast is hinging only on a daily committment. If you don’t like the WOD today, well tomorrow will probably be completely different.

Good from a psychological ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ perspective, bad because the body needs more than one of the same workout to derive maximum benefit at a reduced risk of injury.

Why Alternating?

The reasons to integrate alternating resistance training movements are surprisingly plentiful:

1. You hate traditional methods of conditioning (biking, running, rowing, etc…etc…) and still want to train your heart i.e. it’s good for circuit training
2. It can aid in recovery
3. It can be done a lot
4. It promotes rotational coordination and control
5. It adds variety (and fun) while providing similar movement integration

Conditioning

If you’ve been a long-time reader of SBF, you know I have a bit of a beef with circuit training. Not all circuit training, just the fluff I see trying to be passed off as High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).

I’m judgemental of the results online guru’s promise, not so much the circuits themselves. Anything that gets people moving is A-Okay in my books, but I like to paint my promises with a dash of realism.

Full disclosure: Most of the programs I write feature some kind of circuit, the DTS program right now is mostly circuits. Circuits exist on a spectrum though.

You can make them more conditioning oriented (like phase 3 of DTS will be) or you can make them more neuromuscular oriented (like phase 2 of DTS was).

If you absolutely hate doing any slow-distance traditional cardio of any kind — and believe me I go through my own phases of dislike — alternating resistance training circuits can be a godsend.

Alternating resistance training will be more conditioning focused. Making them more aerobic and still training your heart/lungs without the boredom. It’s not as good at steady-state or traditional cardiovascular conditioning but it’s pretty darn close.

And the exercise you will do trumps the efficacy of any exercise you don’t.

Recovery

This is something I’ve been meaning to talk a lot more about on SBF, I’ve loosely mentioned it in a few articles in the past and I’m going to loosely mention it here once more.

The closer you take your resistance training to absolute failure, with an appropriate volume (# of sets) you increase recovery requirements.

The less volume you use and the further away from absolute failure you train — let’s say a 5 or a 6 RPE or below (meaning 5 reps in the tank or more) — the less stress is created and recovery is far easier.

If you can do 30 push-ups in one shot, but you only train a few sets to 15, you’ll move, utilize some energy but you won’t require the typical 48 hours of recovery I normally tell people to take when resistance training.

I’m usually telling them to train to technical failure (1 rep in the tank) at higher volumes though (3–5 sets per exercise).

If a circuit lasts 30 seconds and you do a double or single limbed exercise straight then it’s 30 seconds of focused stress.

Do the same exercise (a press, a row, a lunge, what have you) in an alternating resistance training fashion and you get a bit of an isometric break between reps.

You’re still moving for the entire 30 seconds, but the chances of you not completing the full 30 seconds of the movement have been cut in half*.

The chances of you hitting absolute or even technical failure have been dramatically lowered. Your heart, lungs and blood vessels still get taxed, but we’re not creating as much mechanical stress on your neuromuscular system.

Usually this translates into the ability to do alternating circuit training at a higher frequency during the week if we so choose. The tradeoff being we probably won’t build much lean mass (muscle, tendon or bone) while we do that.

*As long as we don’t double the length of the interval.

Frequency

I know trainers that use continuous circuit training almost daily (Mon-Fri anyway) with clients because of this recovery advantage. Heck, there are entire gym business models built on the idea.

Repeat daily business is the best kind of business for these gyms and you can’t do that with intense resistance training or true HIIT. Even if you can convince your clientele that’s what they are doing.

I don’t think that’s the most time-efficient or effective way to train, but it is a way to train without crushing a person or causing over-training.

When you don’t train near failure you can mix up the training more frequently without causing massive amounts of soreness*.

Providing a lot of variety like this can be a great way to keep a certain type of person interested and thus repeatedly coming back.

Moving daily at a lower intensity and lower proximity to failure will still be better for that individual than doing nothing or missing more intense workouts 2–4x a week.

Plus a lot of people like or even thrive on a daily routine. That’s why I started the Daily Training Session.

And at the same time, a variety of circuit training convinces clients they are working really hard because every workout feels hard — and new, because it is.

You gasp for air more. Your muscles burn in novel ways. You’re not as familiar with the exercises so they feel harder to do.

Feeling harder seems like a good thing. As if you’re working harder and therefore more deserving of the result.

But are you improving ‘fitness?’ Are you getting the adaptation you want?

To a degree…

A person participating in this random cesspool of exercise variety at timed intervals will be ‘fitter’ than your average couch potato, and possibly as fit or more fit than more inconsistent trainees even when those trainees are on better programs.

Consistency will trump a lot of other factors.

I’d argue within a few months of this type of training most people have adapted as much as they’ll adapt. At that point they’ll need to up the intensity, meaning they’ll need recovery days.

At that point, recovery-oriented circuit training done more deliberately on what would otherwise be ‘off-days’ might be helpful. At least between true resistance training or true HIIT sessions.

It can be an excellent way to maintain daily frequency while permitting recovery. So long as you don’t train near failure and make the work more aerobic.

I’ve been planning to write an article on recovery training for many years so maybe I’ll finally get around to that now.

*Well, you can if you’re a sadist trainer or a masochist client who wants to be sore all the time simply make sure the circuits approach failure and do more than two sets per muscle group.

Coordination and Rotational Control

An oft overlooked component of resistance training is coordination. And look, I’m not anti-machine or anything, but resistance training in ways that better mimic some of the things you’ll encounter in everyday life can promote a higher quality of life.

Most of the traditional lifts in the gym emphasize sagittal plane — forward and back, or straight up and down — movements. Squats, deadlifts, swings, push-ups, chin-ups, etc… etc…

Generalized strength is still good, but a lot of your life is on one leg or rotational in nature. Walking and running are both rotationally. Throwing. Kicking.

And it’s not just moving on oblique angles, it’s stabilizing while rotation is created. Pushing into a door to open it. Pulling a door open. Taking lids off pickle jars.

There is a coordination benefit to periodically training alternating resistance patterns of movement.

Not enough to make it a focal point of the programs I write 12 months out of the year but enough for me to do some of it a few times a year.

Single limb training can also handle that nicely to an extent but I think there is value in having to hold something solid in one hand while you create movement with the other.

It’s an almost ideal way to train isometrics.

Variety/Fun

Doing the same thing all the time is more than a little boring. I get it, by week 4 of any DTS phase I’m sure people are aching to move onto something new.

What I usually tell people is rather than focus on what (i.e. the exercises) you’re doing over the entire month, focus on how you’ve improved.

When you focus on how much you improve from week 1 of a program to week 4 of a program, you can see the result. Provided you track it.

Even still, I wouldn’t want to do the same exercises for the same volume for much longer than that.

You want some variety and you don’t want training to be serious and ‘goal-driven’ 100% of the time. Building some flexibility, fun and variety into a program is essential to maintain sanity.

The real reason most of the programs I write are for ~4 weeks is that’s usually the length of time I have before consistent people are mentally ready for something new.

Doing alternating resistance training is a good way to integrate the same stuff but from a fresh angle. You’re still doing a lunge or a press or a row, it’s just slightly different and therefore interesting.

The aim is a renewed sense of interest, without sacrificing the long-term payoff by drifting too far away from the exercises you were doing the phase before or are planned for the phase to follow.

Integration

There are lots of fun ways to integrate alternating resistance training:

• In the warm-up
• In the first week of a phase
• As one or two of many exercises
• For coordination-driven, circuit, or conditioning-oriented training sessions
• As the dominant theme for an entire phase

Most of the time alternating training forces people to pay closer attention to technique and naturally won’t get done to failure.

An alternating lunge as part of the warm-up for a training session that will later feature a lunge is a great integration. Or as warm-up set #1 too.

Whenever you introduce a new phase of training I want to limit muscle damage and soreness to encourage adequate recovery. This can be done in a variety of ways:

1. Reduce the volume (Most common, I often start at 2 sets and add sets weekly)
2. Reduce the proximity to failure (start with low RPE’s, like a 4 or 5 out of 10 even and ramp up the RPE to 9 or even 10)
3. Use concentric exercises and progress to more eccentric ones (a step-up in week one, then a split squat, then a lunge)
4. Use exercises in an alternating fashion to naturally reduce proximity to failure
5. A combination…

Alternating resistance training can be a great option in the first week or two of a new phase of training because people tend not to take them to failure. At least one side will break down before the other which tends to balance things out anyway.

Then progress to single or double-limbed exercises with closer proximity to failure.

An alternating dumbbell press isn’t that different from a two-limbed or single-limbed dumbbell press. It leads in rather nicely. Maybe you’re just maxed out on a more typical one-arm or two-armed press and need a mental break?

Circuit training is a great introduction to resistance training. It builds coordination and work capacity for tolerating more intense forms of resistance training later.

It can also improve your technique and focus. You have to focus on more than one thing at a time. Executing an action on one side, while you maintain the position of another.

I really like the coordination factor, it’s a great option for beginners to really groove technique on any given exercise. As a trainee, you really have to be mindful of your approach.

If you’re not using circuits, alternating training sets will draw out the length of time it takes to complete each set. This theoretically leads to more energy burn and more muscular endurance.

Yes, at the expense of muscle building or strength, but this is still a nice mix-in if you want more conditioning and work capacity for a phase.

Daily Training Session — Phase 3

The focal point this month (July 2020) is alternating resistance training so if you’d like to participate and learn more about it, please check it out.

I don’t actually give people a workout every single day because I don’t think anyone should participate in planned formal exercise daily. There is typically at least one day off per week (subject to change).

The workouts I do give you are incredibly well thought out. I’m not just throwing a workout together day-off the way most WOD’s are constructed. I’m trying to build each phase on top of each phase so that you can learn something along the way.

Originally published at Skill Based Fitness.