Strength & resistance-based training is a core component of most athletes routine. Many recreational athletes regularly include some form of resistance-based exercise into their weekly schedule. Health professionals, coaches and trainers often prescribe exercises to their athletes and patients. If you fall into one of the groups above, stop and think for a moment.. do you consider how and what your exercise dosage should be?
If the answer is yes.. excellent, now think, do you base the dosage on previous exercise programs, or what is convenient for the amount of time you want to put in?
If the answer is no.. maybe you should?
Where am I going with this? As a health professional, I see many athletes and patients who complete poorly dosed exercise programs. For example, an individual may be trying to improve the strength of their leg muscles, say their quadriceps for example. They may have been completing body weight squats for 3 sets of 10 reps for the past 6 weeks. Now initially, this will have potentially given them a strength-based benefit, however, likely, for most individuals, this will be "underloading" or "underdosing".
We know for large bodies of research that HOW we train and WHAT we do in our workouts is vitally important. To work specific physical and physiological components of our body and musculoskeletal system, we need to train for the specifically.
I have included a couple of slides below from a presentation I delivered last year which provide further clarity on this area. The slides highlight the recommended repetition ranges and load required to work specific physical components. These slides are evidence-based principles to guide your exercise and rehab prescription and programming. Please note, this is only the tip of the iceberg, with many other considerations important, including but not limited to rest periods, exercise tempo (e.g. 2:1:2 vs 1:0:1), sets, exercise order, activation and more.
