In a world where so many fad workouts come and go, it's amazing that anyone actually finds a routine that works for them for any sustained period of time. Promises' of huge muscles with low body fat can be found all over the internet and even more so in bodybuilding magazines. The problem is the promises fall short due to the fact that the majority of bodybuilding routines you read online and in magazines, are not made for your average lifter. Take performance enhancing drugs out of the equation and most of these routines lose what little credence they may have had. The area where most bodybuilding routines either hit or miss is on the amount of volume one is required to do and the intensity is which this volume is completed with. The fact of the matter is not all of us can have the same amount of intensity day in and day out nor can we all as individuals be expected to lift at similar reps and weights. What was needed was a constantly evolving and personalized approach to bodybuilding. Charles Staley knew this and hit the nail on the head with EDT! EDT stands for Escalating Density Training and is a workout regimen designed by Charles Staley to revolutionize the way in which we train. Traditional bodybuilding routines tend to be confined and endless. Most people who start training don't seem to realize to gain muscle you either need to do more weight or more sets and repetitions. On standard routines you find yourself doing the same weights and repetitions month in and month out with know real goals or monitoring system of your progress. EDT changes all of this by allowing you to constantly change your workload and intensity based on your progress. The only person you're comparing yourself to and competing with on EDT is you. The fact of the matter is if you are able to do more weight or more reps then your previous workout, you must be getting stronger. Unlike traditional workout routines EDT isn't based off of a pre-determined amount of sets and repetitions. The only thing that you'll know before your workout is how much weight you will be using for each exercise and how much time your workout will take. In EDT you take a weight that you can properly lift for ten repetitions and use this as your workload. Now you choose two antagonistic lifts and set your timer for twenty minutes. For example you would choose the bench press(push lift) and the bent row (pull lift) and you would do 5 repetitions of each exercise back to back without a rest and then you would take a thirty second rest after completing both exercises. On a piece of paper you would record that you completed 5 reps for each exercise. After your 30 second rest you would continue the cycle again. You will get to a point where you will need more then 30 seconds rest to properly perform your lifts. Adjust your rest time to 45 seconds and when this is no longer enough you can move the rest time up to as much as 1 minute. In addition to moving your rest time you should also decrease your reps by 1 every time you are unable to perform the lift with proper form. At the end of the 20 minutes take a 5 minute rest and choose 2 different antagonistic exercises for 2 other body parts. An excellent compliment to the chest and back would be the triceps and biceps. Now set the clock again for an additional 20 minutes and perform your 2 new exercises in the same manner as you previously did. At the end of this 20 minute cycle your routine is done and you need to add up the totals for each exercise. Now for your next workout you'd simply attempt to beat the numbers you recorded during you previous workout while still keeping proper form. When you can complete more 10 reps more then your previous week, you must increase the weight by 5%! So there you have it! No bodybuilding routine can claim perfection but EDT certainly comes close. |
