Personal Training Secret Weapon For Increasing Strength

I learned this really effective way of increasing strength for any body part from Charles Staley's fantastic website just recently which is based on Escalated Density Training or EDT for short. He is pretty much the originator of this concept, one I have been using a lot of in my own training.

EDT could be explained as "doing more in less time", something I am extremely interested in as are my personal training clients. I would guess that most of us are busy people and who doesn't want to get more done in less time?

You could adapt this for any body part or exercise but I will use the example of chin ups or pull ups with an underhand or reverse grip (ie. palms facing you). To be honest chin ups/pull ups have always been a weak point for me but not anymore after using this quick and very effective program.

So here we go, let me show you how simple this is and a routine you can use yourself or if you are a personal trainer, with your own personal training clients.

The Routine
1. Do 3 chin ups (use an assisted chin up machine if you have access to one)
2. Rest for 20 seconds
3. Repeat until failure, ie. you cannot complete 3 repetitions with good technique

That's it! So to give you an example, say you did this the first time for a total of 2 minutes roughly which is a great start, and this obviously depends on the level you are coming in at. The next time you do it see if you can go for a bit longer. When you get to 5 minutes, start reducing your rest time to 15 seconds. This is where EDT comes in, "doing more in less time". When you have finally built that up to 5 minutes reduce your rest period to 10 seconds. Then start adding more repetitions, ie. do 4 or 5 reps and then repeat the whole process again. You can tweak this program in so many ways to suit you and expand as your strength increases.

I would recommend doing this once per week to start with, maybe on the day you do back training (be sure to start with this first though or you will quickly fatigue) or just simply do it at the start of any session.

I will add some more information on EDT in another post and I truly believe it is one of the best concepts in training today. More work in less time sounds pretty good no matter how you look at it!

Give this program a go and I would love to hear your comments on how you did with it.