Many questions that are asked are related to what time under tension is the ideal, the total time of training or the rest times between sets and, on these questions we summarize on this topic of the mistakes you make when training Raúl Carrasco .
In talking about this, the main mistakes made in training are listed, even though there are other mistakes that destroy your earnings.
- Breathing: the first and most important problem that is never talked about, because perhaps it can even be the most problematic is: not breathing between series and starting from the back.
- Time under tension: this is a contradictory point, because although we know that to obtain results you need a concentric and eccentric cadence, it is not clear how to plan a training.
- Rest between sets: from my point of view, the most common mistake in training is not knowing the rest times between sets: whether to rest 1 minute, whether to rest 2 or rest 3.
From our point of view, coinciding with Raúl, these are the most common errors of so many that there are and that are not usually discussed.
Respiration and kidney function
We refer to bodybuilders and athletes of high weights, those who work with heavy weights where holding your breath has more impact and is what usually affects. This also occurs in hypertrophy athletes, who have already had a long history of years, when tension problems or kidney problems begin to appear.
Normally the problem is sought in the hyperprotein diet, in the abuse of steroids and sports drugs in the event that they are used.
The funny thing is that when studies are done, it is found that most of the problem in athletes is that they do not breathe in a series.
That is, this is related to what we know as “ inhale – breathe” when you do an eccentric phase and a concentric phase.
- What happens if we don’t breathe? Or,
- What happens if we even get to that last rep set, where we want to go to failure and we can’t get to that weight and even need the help of a partner? or,
- What happens that you hold the air because it is your last repetition, precisely because you are getting too close to failure?
What happens is that if you endure that repetition, the blood pressure rises too high, so much that it offers great resistance to kidney function, being able to damage the nephrons of the kidney, and normally damages them.
Normally this is very easy to measure, you can go to any pharmacy and buy a urine strip where they measure the red blood cells, which is the blood in the urine.
You can do it directly after training or the next morning on an empty stomach and analyze the value of red blood cells or hemoglobin (blood in urine). It can be negative, positive or + positive; That will tell you if you are breathing well or have breathed badly.
Efficiently removes toxins through urine
Breathing and tension
You will see that if you do a very intense training, reaching too much muscle failure, wanting to overcome failure in too many repetitions, especially by pressing.
Note that at that pressure (or tension) … the normal common arterial pressure can be 12/8, which is normal, but from 13/9 upwards it is considered hypertension in a state of rest …
In a series, holding the repetition, you can reach the tension a 20/20, a 20/10, or a 200/10; well, a very high tension, instead if you breathe NO.
What to do to fix things
The mistakes you make when training by Raúl Carrasco or treated by other experts worldwide are “quotes” about mistakes, but what you want is to fix things, right?.
In all this, by measuring the urine strip, you can detect the stress suffered by the kidney, kidneys, kidney function.
Therefore, it is very important that you focus on this, because just any typical basic workout where you have pulled hard, but you don’t control your breath on each breath.
In general, it is not done, unless you have a personal trainer next to you who tells you how to do it. In short, you must respect this way of breathing both in the eccentric and concentric phase and, as you are enduring many peaks where the pressure rises, you require good blood circulation
Many say: “but in the end I can’t hold my breath”, of course, especially when you get to repetition in which you get to the moment.
Imagine that we are in a bench press, in which you get too close to failure and what happens? … that the bar is by then you expire ….
What measures do we have to take there?
- We must not approach total failure but rather momentary failure.
- Once we cannot maintain the breaths, both eccentric and concentric, since the series must be abandoned, and this always happens, reaching almost 90% of failure but it is not necessary to reach 100%.
Reduce fatigue with the correct amino acids
Why stop at the exact time
One of the reasons, blood pressure rises through the roof, exerting a great strain on the nephrons and you can see this in the strips the next day.
When you see the bloodstained strips the next day, you already take it a little seriously.
And second, most muscle injuries, or major muscle tears, occur at the end of a set, especially the last rep or two.
Therefore, reaching muscle failure is important to have a greater recruitment of all fibers and to be able to reach those type 2 power fibers, which are the ones with the most myofibrils.
Total failure, which is what needs to be clarified, NO.
- Once you are approaching, working with a weight at 80% of your 1RM,
- Once you are mentalizing as the recruitment of repetitions progresses, the muscle becomes fatigued and you are focused on the fact that perhaps in the next series you are going to stay or not, there short.
There is no abysmal difference when it comes to achieving hypertrophy by doing that repetition plus what will make you reach failure … momentary failure but not total failure …
Overcome the failure, whoever has a high intensity technique, YES, because only you have someone behind the bar, but as long as you hold your breath.
Kidney function suffers more in a squat, in a press … in the last repetitions where you do not breathe …
- Let’s hold that last breath,
- Blood pressure soars through the roof,
- Nephrons suffer, they suffer so much that you damage them,
- The damage is reflected in blood in the urine.
So it seems like it’s silly to breathe, but it’s very very important.
Recruiting all muscle fibers
When we took into consideration the topic of the mistakes you make when training by Raúl Carrasco we did not mention the physiological response to a certain duration of time under stress and how it can play a role in growth
Definitely not having the adequate time under tension is a problem to achieve results both at the level of strength / hypertrophy or hypertrophy.
This time under tension itself and the physiological response (accumulation of lactate and growth factor for a whole 40-60 seconds) are not in themselves a stimulus for growth, but can increase the adaptation of the stimulus.
This has been talked about a lot in seminars, but it never hurts to repeat it, that is, to know that a series of 8 to 12 repetitions is the one that entails a tension time of between 30 and 40 seconds.
This average means that a repetition lasts practically 4 seconds, both in the eccentric and in the concentric.
Always the eccentric phase making it slower, and a ballistic concentric phase with a little speed, to influence a little more in the recruitment of power fibers.
Remember that adding speed to the intensity, to the weight, makes you recruit more types of fiber, if we compare it with a series with the same weight and going up a slower weight.
A series of hypertrophy should not be less than 20 seconds; a series of strength and hypertrophy occurs in 20-30 seconds, but 40 seconds is ideal. From there upwards, even 50-60-70 seconds take advantage of all energy metabolisms.
In short, all series achieves the muscle recruitment of all muscle fibers.
What about protein synthesis
In 2012, a group of researchers conducted a study published in The Journal of Physiology, to examine the effects of increased time under stress on protein synthesis, an important indicator of muscle growth.
Although we say that it is not in itself a key factor in growth, this study can give us interesting information about what really happens:
In this study, 8 men who had been training legs twice a week for at least 2 years performing 3 sets of single-leg extensions using 30% of their 1RM.
- Participants performed 6-second concentric and 6-second eccentric sets to failure with the right leg.
- On the other hand, they performed series with concentric 1 second and eccentric 1 second until failure with the left leg.
The researchers then took needle biopsies of muscle tissue in both legs 6, 24, and 30 hours after exercise.
The results that are not contradicted by the video about the mistakes you make when training by Raúl Carrasco are surprising:
- After 6 hours, exercise-induced rates of mitochondrial and sarcoplasmic protein synthesis rose 114% in legs that developed slow contractions
- Only 77% in the legs that developed faster contractions.
- Furthermore, after 24-30 hours, mitochondrial protein synthesis rates rose by 175% and 126%, respectively.
These results suggest that longer time under tension may lead to greater muscle protein synthesis and a faster onset of this increased synthesis.
The optimal time under tension
The progressive overload of the muscles will force them to adapt and grow later and, on the other hand, in this video about the mistakes you make when training by Raúl Carrasco and in other research, it is cited that the Optimal rep range for muscle growth, or hypertrophy, is between 8 and 12 reps (30-40 seconds).
Legendary trainer Charles Poliquin is a training pioneer who focused on manipulating time under tension. Through his experience and research, he was able to develop optimal time-under-stress ranges for specific objectives.
- For muscle hypertrophy, he found that 30-70 seconds per set was optimal.
- For strength and size gains, or functional hypertrophy, suggest training at the lower end of that range, around 30-50 seconds.
- However, for maximum hypertrophy without an emphasis on strength, he suggests training at the upper end of that range, or around 50-70 seconds.
With this knowledge in mind, you simply need a little math to figure out the sets, reps, and time range under tension to achieve that maximum hypertrophy you want, which goes for 8-12 reps. , between 4-6 seconds per rep.
The problem and the solution
The third problem, the most common mistake in training that is cited in this video about the mistakes you make when training by Raúl Carrasco is not knowing the rest times.
This answer is very simple, it leads us to one of the three key points in hypertrophy: time under tension, muscle laceration and metabolic stress.
To create metabolic stress (in addition to the series itself), which is the rest time, the ideal is that the total rest is not a maximum rest. As is done for example when you want to gain strength, you rest for 3 to 5 minutes even 10 minutes.
Contemplating that the maximum ATP recovery is 180 seconds (3 minutes), it leads us to the conclusion that, to create metabolic stress, the rest times between sets must be less than 3 minutes.
This rest time will allow both the level of phosphocreatine and ATP not to recover 100% and this creates a metabolic stress where a multitude of growth factors and several anabolic hormones promote an anabolic blood environment.
Thanks to this triggered process, in subsequent meals, the entire amount of macronutrients can be absorbed in greater quantity.
Therefore, breaks between sets less than 3 minutes; But, what is the ideal rest time to achieve hypertrophy ?;
- For smaller muscles: about 2 minutes
- For large muscles: no more than 2 minutes, 60-90 seconds.
Rest between series for force
To get stronger faster, the best rest period is 3 to 5 minutes between sets and this is because much of the energy your body consumes during traditional strength training (heavy weight, 1 to 6 reps ) comes from the adenosine triphosphate phosphocreatine system.
The ATP-PC system uses phosphagens to produce energy very quickly and without the use of oxygen. Your body has a very small phosphorus reserve, which lasts about 15 seconds and takes about 3 minutes to fully replenish phosphagen stores (Fleck, 1983).
In other words, if you give your ATP-PC system at least 3 minutes to recharge, you will lift more weight and get stronger faster .
In a widely recognized study, athletes lifted a weight more times in 3 sets after resting 3 minutes compared to when they rested only 1 minute (Kraemer, 1997).
Another recognized study showed a 7% increase in squat strength after 5 weeks of training with 3-minute rest periods. The group that rested for 30 seconds only improved their squat by 2% (Robinson et al, 1995).
Two more studies that examined very short rest periods (30 to 40 seconds) found that they did not cause gains close to strength from longer rest periods (Kraemer et al, 1987; Kraemer, 1997), as according to these investigations , the body will get too cold if the rest exceeds 5 minutes and of course there are exceptions.
Before training, prepare yourself properly
Rest between series for hypertrophy
To grow faster, the best rest period is 1 to 2 minutes between sets and this is clear. Well, in addition to what is said in the video about the mistakes you make when training by Raúl Carrasco there are other factors.
Bodybuilders take advantage of shorter rest periods to make their muscles BIGGER. How? … well, one of the key factors in the amount of muscles that grow is the amount of anabolic hormones that the body produces after weight training (McCall et al, 1999) …
Short rest periods of between 1 and 2 minutes cause a greater release of these hormones than longer rest periods (Kraemer et al, 1991; Kraemer et al, 1990).
Short periods of rest also cause other muscle-building benefits, such as increased lactate production and blood flow to target muscles (Kraemer, 1997; Kraemer et al, 1987). We seem to be talking about a pump workout, but increased blood flow to the muscles has been shown to help protein get there faster (Biolo et al, 1995).
In another context, muscle fatigue, caused by lactate production, has also been implicated in short-term strength gains and significant hypertrophy (Rooney et al, 1994).
We share below the video on the subject that we discuss here and whose transcription was integrated into a series of studies carried out by prestigious researchers, as well as Raúl Carrasco himself, our IFBB Pro.
Do you feel that it is time to change things?