What is Fatigue Training?
Have you been training for at least 2 months and have found your exercise routine has given you some good results but you have hit a plateau? That point where you body says “nice try but I don’t want to change anymore” and it doesn’t seem to matter how hard you exercise you just can’t seem to get your body developing the way you want. This is where fatigue training could come in and help give you the training boost that your body needs to make that next step.
What does fatigue training involve?
The clue is in the title and as you can imagine this is going to be quite a tough workout, but because of its design it enables you to bring down the length of time you spend on a workout. First things first: you must warm your body up, like all good routines your body needs to be ready for action and you just won’t be able to give it your best without a good warm-up.
Warm-up
For this warm-up you can pick any cardiovascular equipment you like, start off slowly and build up until you get your heart rate up to about 75% of your maximum heart rate (MHR). Let’s say you pick the stationary bike; it should take about 5 minutes of progressively harder cycling to get near your target heart rate. Maintain that for a further 5 minutes so that at the end of your warm-up you should have completed at least 10 minutes.
Now comes the main workout and you can make this as hard as you like. I tend to choose one exercise per muscle group for that training day. Rather than go through every exercise we will take one to show you an example and you can apply the same rules to almost any resistance based exercise.
Main Workout – Example
So here I am all warmed up after my bike ride and the first exercise of choice is going to be for the legs. I will choose the leg press because it is a good compound movement that uses the leg muscles as a unit rather than picking out the individual leg muscles.
Set the machine up so that it is correct for you (if you are unsure ask an instructor) now pick the heaviest weight you know you can do with perfect technique and can perform at least 8 repetitions (if you don’t know this then you are not ready for this type of training yet – Beeble).
Once you have completed these 8 repetitions, drop the weight down: how much you drop it down by is really trial and error, but by the smallest possible margin is best. For this example we will place the pin so that it is 2 weights less. This is not break time, far from it, you should be having no breaks in this type of training so as soon as you have moved the pin get your legs moving again. As the weight is lighter you will be doing more repetitions this time, 10 repetitions to be precise. You will start to notice a pattern here! When you have completed the 10 reps, drop the weight down by 2 again and go straight into 12 repetitions once completed drop the weight by 2 again and this time do 15 repetitions.
| Exercise | Repetitions | Weight |
| Leg Press | 8 | 100kg |
| 10 | 80kg | |
| 12 | 60kg | |
| 15 | 40kg |
By this point you should have fatigued your legs and should find it very difficult to do anymore. If your legs are not fatigued and you feel you could do more then you need to take another look at the weights you are doing. Try starting with heavier weights or only going down by 1 weight at each change. If you couldn’t complete the full amount don’t worry it is good this way. It is called fatigue training because of the result we want is to fatigue your muscles, so as long as your muscles become too tired to do anymore then you have reached the desired result. (We get the point! – Beeble.)
Which exercises come next?
As you can probably tell, you can apply this type of training to any resistance based exercise so I always try and make this type of training an all over body session. So the next exercise would be for the chest e.g. Bench Press followed by a back exercise e.g. Lat Pulldown followed by shoulders e.g. Overhead Press, then we have the biceps e.g. biceps curl and finally the triceps e.g. Triceps Pressdown. (Don’t you ever stop? – Beeble.)
The more observant of you will notice that I have left out one major group of muscles and that is your core and abdominal area. I have done this on purpose as I don’t believe that fatigue training in this form is suitable for those muscles. However that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t add some of these exercises on at the end of your session.
How it should look
| Exercise | Repetitions | Weight |
| Leg Press | 8 | 100kg |
| 10 | 80kg | |
| 12 | 60kg | |
| 15 | 40kg | |
| Bench Press | 8 | 60kg |
| 10 | 50kg | |
| 12 | 40kg | |
| 15 | 30kg | |
| Lat Pulldown | 8 | 60kg |
| 10 | 50kg | |
| 12 | 40kg | |
| 15 | 30kg | |
| Overhead Press | 8 | 40kg |
| 10 | 30kg | |
| 12 | 20kg | |
| 15 | 10kg | |
| Biceps Curls | 8 | 15kg |
| 10 | 12kg | |
| 12 | 10kg | |
| 15 | 8kg | |
| Triceps Pressdown | 8 | 15kg |
| 10 | 12kg | |
| 12 | 10kg | |
| 15 | 8kg |
Followed by an abdominal and core workout
What to do at the end of your routine?
You have a couple of options really, you can call it a day at that point if you like, finish your ab exercises, stretch and head off home. Alternatively if you think you have some energy left you can do the whole routine again. If you decide to do a couple of laps then please leave the ab exercises to the end and not at the end of each lap. Once you have completed the 2 laps make sure you stretch the whole body.
Summary
This is a tough workout and should leave you a little wobbly in your muscles at the end. If you are very new to exercise I would not recommend you do something as extreme as this routine. Be sensible, it is called fatigue training and so the muscles you train should reach a point where they feel they can do no more, but you are the boss and you shouldn’t push yourself beyond your own limits.
It is very tempting during this routine to hold your breath, please don’t! Breathe long, deep and controlled and try to time it with your exercise. So breathe out on exertion and in on the way back. Don’t feel you have to complete every repetition if it compromises your technique and your safety, only go as long as you can perform the exercise with perfect technique (it is a sure sign of muscle fatigue when technique is lost – Beeble).
Warning: it’s not for everyone
If you have high blood pressure, have family history of heart related illness or carry an injury then this type of training is not for you. It will put too much pressure on your heart, muscles and joints not to cause you potential problems.
Check with your doctor first
Before starting a routine as hard as this one always consult your doctor to find out if your heart and body can handle the strains of fatigue training.
All the best with your training and please do let us know how you get on.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Yeah, should really warm up before starting your exercise..Thanks for this post, will surely give this one a try if have some spare time. Hope this one is effective =)
October 8th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Breaking through a workout plateau can be tough, but this is just the kind of thing you need to get through it, try a different workout and push yourself.