The mistakes you make when training by Raúl Carrasco

On this occasion, we have compiled a video about the mistakes you make when training by Raúl Carrasco, our IFBB Pro and current AMIX athlete.

Many questions people ask are related to the ideal time under tension, the total workout duration, or the rest periods between sets, and regarding these questions, we summarize this topic of the mistakes you make when training by Raúl Carrasco.

When discussing this, the main mistakes made in training are listed, although there are other mistakes that destroy your gains.

• Breathing: the first and most important problem, and one that is never discussed, perhaps because it may even be the most problematic, is not breathing between sets and starting from the back.
• Time under tension: this is a contradictory point because, although we know that achieving results requires a concentric and eccentric cadence, it is not clear how to plan a workout.
• Rest between sets: from my point of view, the most common training mistake is not knowing how long to rest between sets—whether to rest for 1 minute, 2 minutes, or 3.

From our point of view, agreeing with Raúl, these are the most common mistakes among the many that exist and that are rarely discussed.

Breathing and kidney function

We are referring to bodybuilders and athletes who lift heavy weights, those who work with heavy loads, where holding your breath has a greater impact and is usually what causes problems. This also occurs in hypertrophy athletes who have been training for many years, when blood pressure problems or some kidney issue begin to appear.

The problem is usually attributed to a high-protein diet and the abuse of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs, if they use them.

The curious thing is that when studies are conducted, it is becoming clear that most of the problem among athletes is that they do not breathe during a set.

In other words, this relates to what we know as “inhale–exhale” when you perform an eccentric phase and a concentric phase.

• What happens if we do not breathe? Or,
• What happens if we even reach that final set and repetition, where we want to reach failure, but cannot lift that weight and even need a training partner’s help? Or,
• What happens when you hold your breath because it is your last repetition, precisely because you are getting too close to failure?

The problem is that if you hold that repetition, blood pressure rises too much—so much that it places significant strain on kidney function, potentially damaging the kidney’s nephrons, and normally it does damage them.

Normally, this is very easy to measure: you can go to any pharmacy and buy a urine strip that measures red blood cells, that is, blood in the urine.

You can do this immediately after training or the next morning while fasting, and analyze the hematocrit or hemoglobin value (blood in the urine). It may be negative, positive, or +positive; this will indicate whether you breathed properly or poorly.

 

Breathing and blood pressure

You will see that if you do a very intense workout, getting too close to muscular failure and trying to go beyond failure for too many repetitions, especially while straining…

Notice that with this pressure—or tension—normal common arterial blood pressure may be 12/8, which is normal, but from 13/9 upward it is considered hypertension at rest…

During a set, holding a repetition, you can reach a tension of 20/20, 20/10, or 200/10—in other words, extremely high tension—whereas if you breathe, you do not.

What to do to solve the problems

Mistakes You Make When Training by Raúl Carrasco or discussed by other experts worldwide are “quotes” about mistakes, but what you want is to solve the problems, right?

By measuring the urine strip, you can detect the stress the kidney—or kidneys—and renal function have undergone.

Therefore, it is very important to focus on this, because any typical basic workout in which you exert yourself intensely but do not control your breathing with each breath…

Generally, this is not done unless you have a personal trainer beside you telling you how to do it. In any case, you must maintain this breathing pattern during both the eccentric and concentric phases, and since you are enduring many spikes in which pressure rises, you need good blood circulation.

Many people say, “But in the end I can’t maintain my breathing.” Of course, especially when you reach the repetition where you reach that point.

Imagine that we are doing a bench press and you get too close to failure. What happens? The bar stops, so you exhale….

What measures do we need to take at that point?

• We should not approach complete failure, but rather momentary failure.
• Once we can no longer maintain both the eccentric and concentric breathing, the set must be abandoned. This always happens when we are practically at 90% of failure, but there is no need to reach 100%.

 

Why stop at the exact moment

One reason is that blood pressure shoots through the roof, placing enormous pressure on the nephrons, and you can see this on the strips the next day.

When you see blood-stained strips the next day, you start taking it a little more seriously.

And second, most muscle injuries, or significant muscle tears, occur at the end of a set, especially during the last one or two repetitions.

Therefore, reaching muscular failure is important for recruiting more of all the muscle fibers and reaching those powerful type II fibers, which have the greatest number of myofibrils.

Total failure—which is what needs to be clarified here—NO.

• Once you are approaching it, working with a weight at 80% of your 1RM,
• Once you are mentally preparing yourself as the repetitions progress, the muscle is becoming fatigued, and you are focused on whether you will make it through the next set or not, that is where you stop.

There is no enormous difference in terms of achieving hypertrophy by doing that extra repetition that will take you to failure… momentary failure, but not total failure…

Going beyond failure—if you use a high-intensity technique, then yes, that is fine, but only if you have someone behind the bar, and as long as you keep breathing.

Kidney function suffers more during a squat, a leg press… during the last repetitions when you do not breathe…

• We hold our breath during that last repetition.
• Blood pressure shoots through the roof.
• The nephrons suffer—so much so that they become damaged.
• The damage is reflected in the blood and urine.

So it may seem silly to breathe, but it is very, very important.

Recruiting all the muscle fibers

When we considered 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 tension and how it can play a role in growth.

Definitely, not having the appropriate time under tension is a problem when it comes to achieving results in terms of strength/hypertrophy or hypertrophy.

Time under tension itself and the physiological response (lactate and growth factor accumulation during a 40–60-second set) are not in themselves a stimulus for growth, but they can enhance the adaptation to the stimulus.

This has been discussed extensively in seminars, but it never hurts to repeat it: namely, knowing that a set of 8 to 12 repetitions involves a time under tension of between 30 and 40 seconds.

This average means that a repetition practically lasts 4 seconds, both in the eccentric and concentric phases.

Always perform the eccentric phase more slowly and the concentric phase ballistically with some speed, to place slightly more emphasis on recruiting power fibers.

Remember that adding speed to intensity, or to the weight, recruits more fiber types compared with a set using the same weight and lifting it more slowly.

A hypertrophy set should not last less than 20 seconds; a strength and hypertrophy set lasts 20–30 seconds, but 40 seconds is ideal. Beyond that, even at 50–60–70 seconds, all energy systems are utilized.

In the end, all sets achieve the recruitment of all muscle fibers.

What happens with 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 tension on protein synthesis, an important indicator of muscle growth.

Although we have said that it is not 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 their legs twice a week for at least 2 years performed 3 sets of single-leg extensions using 30% of their 1RM.

• The participants performed sets with 6-second concentric and 6-second eccentric phases to failure with the right leg.
• On the other hand, they performed sets with 1-second concentric and 1-second eccentric phases to failure with the left leg.

The researchers then took needle biopsies of muscle tissue from both legs 6, 24, and 30 hours after exercise.

The results, which do not contradict the video about the mistakes you make when training by Raúl Carrasco , are surprising:

• After 6 hours, exercise-induced mitochondrial and sarcoplasmic protein synthesis rates had risen by 114% in the legs that developed slow contractions.
• Only 77% in the legs that developed faster contractions.
• Additionally, after 24–30 hours, mitochondrial protein synthesis rates had risen by 175% and 126%, respectively.

These results suggest that a longer time under tension may lead to greater muscle protein synthesis and a faster onset of this increased synthesis.

The optimal time under tension

Progressive overload of the muscles will force them to adapt and subsequently grow. On the other hand, this video about training mistakes you make by Raúl Carrasco and other research cite the optimal repetition range for muscle growth, or hypertrophy, as 8 to 12 repetitions (30–40 seconds).

Legendary coach Charles Poliquin was a training pioneer who focused on manipulating time under tension. Through his experience and research, he was able to develop optimal time-under-tension ranges for specific goals.

• For muscle hypertrophy, he found that 30–70 seconds per set was optimal.
• For strength and size gains, or functional hypertrophy, he suggests 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 determine the sets, repetitions, and time-under-tension range required to achieve the maximum hypertrophy you desire, which is 8–12 repetitions, with 4–6 seconds per repetition.

The problem and the solution

The third problem, the most common training mistake mentioned in this video about training mistakes you make by Raúl Carrasco, is not knowing the rest periods.

This answer is very simple: it leads us to one of the three key factors in hypertrophy: time under tension, muscle damage, and metabolic stress.

To create metabolic stress, in addition to the set itself, the ideal rest period is not a maximum rest period. This is what you do, for example, when you want to gain strength and rest for 3 to 5 or even 10 minutes.

Given that the maximum recovery time for ATP is 180 seconds (3 minutes), we can conclude that, to create metabolic stress, rest periods between sets should be less than 3 minutes.

This rest period will prevent both phosphocreatine and ATP levels from recovering to 100%, creating metabolic stress in which numerous growth factors and several anabolic hormones promote an anabolic environment in the bloodstream.

Thanks to this triggered process, in subsequent meals, the entire amount of macronutrients can be absorbed in greater quantities.

Therefore, rest periods between sets of less than 3 minutes; but what is the ideal rest period for achieving hypertrophy?

• For smaller muscles: about 2 minutes
• For large muscles: no more than 2 minutes, 60–90 seconds.

Rest between sets for strength

To get stronger faster, the best rest period is 3 to 5 minutes between sets, because much of the energy your body uses during traditional strength training (heavy weight, 1 to 6 repetitions) comes from the adenosine triphosphate phosphocreatine system.

The ATP-PC system uses phosphagens to produce energy very quickly and without 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 over 3 sets after resting for 3 minutes compared with when they rested for only 1 minute (Kraemer, 1997).

Another well-known 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 improved its squat by only 2% (Robinson et al, 1995).

Two more studies examining very short rest periods (30 to 40 seconds) found that they did not produce strength gains comparable to those achieved with longer rest periods (Kraemer et al, 1987; Kraemer, 1997), because according to these studies, the body will cool down too much if the rest period exceeds 5 minutes, and of course there are exceptions.

 

Rest Between Sets 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 discussed in the video about the mistakes you make when training by Raúl Carrasco, there are other factors.

Bodybuilders use shorter rest periods to make their muscles BIGGER. How?… Well, one of the key factors in how much muscle grows is the amount of anabolic hormones 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 rest periods also provide other muscle-building benefits, such as increased lactate production and blood flow to the target muscles (Kraemer, 1997; Kraemer et al, 1987). It may sound like we are talking about a pump workout, but increased blood flow to the muscles has been shown to help protein reach them faster (Biolo et al, 1995).

In another context, muscle fatigue caused by lactate production has also been linked to short-term strength gains and significant hypertrophy (Rooney et al, 1994).

Below, we share the video on the topic discussed here, whose transcript was incorporated into a series of studies conducted by renowned researchers, including our own IFBB Pro, Raúl Carrasco.