Mental Prep

Not all exercises are equal when the goal is higher natural testosterone levels. Testosterone is one of the many powerful communication hormones that communicate within the body. Hormones direct the internal organs & tissues to up-regulate or down-regulate function. Testosterone is the primary one of a handful of hormones that signals muscle tissue repair & growth. After weight lifting, muscle androgen receptors are in need of raw resources to help rebuild or grow the tissue, specifically free testosterone.

External sources of testosterone, like steroids, will continue to bind to the androgen receptors even without weight training due to the sheer concentration of steroid in the blood. Hence why steroids are well known to build muscle, even if a person doesn't exercise or train.

A reasonable goal for resistance training for most people is to get more muscles & build strength. Testosterone is usually considered a side effect of exercising for most. If the goal were reversed & the idea of training to raise the testosterone levels, we would experience the ideal types of activities to be the same with whichever goal you seek. Exercising to increase muscles & strength or to raise your natural testosterone levels, is considerably the same form of training. All three can be optimized with incremental strength gains over 6-12 repetition range on compounds exercise.

One factor to take into account is when training high volume. If the goal is to increase testosterone production, high volume training will put a lot of stress on the body, and this will raise your cortisol levels. Cortisol & testosterone use similar raw materials to be produced. Cortisol limits the amount of testosterone production because it is using those materials its self. When Cortisol levels go up, testosterone levels goes down. This is why it is optimal to train with moderate volume, moderate reps & moderate to heavy compound weights.

Training Set-up

The best way to exercise for muscles, strength & testosterone is to structure your workouts around the three fundamentals:

1. Volume 2. Intensity 3. Frequency

These three fundamentals are equally important & complementary to one another. Muscle growth, strength & testosterone building routines would consist of hitting within certain ranges of each of the three fundamentals for optimal results. Here are the target ranges:

40 - 100 heavy* repetitions per muscle group per week.
40 - 100 light* repetitions per muscle group per week.
70% of the repetitions from compound exercises.
*Heavy & light weights are subjective to each persons’ challenge level. Heavy repetition range is from 1 - 5 reps. Medium repetition range is from 6 - 12 reps. Light repetitions are from 13 + reps. Do not over-train!!!!

Compound exercises involve 2 or more joints in the body. Chin-ups, pull-ups, bench press, shoulder press, deadlifts, and squats are some examples of compound exercises. Incorporate compound movements into your routine to elicit a larger testosterone response than isolation movements.

Over time, low reps & high weight compound exercises will build outstanding amounts of muscle, strength and consistently healthy levels of testosterone in your blood. There are strength programs out there that do very low repetitions to lift the most weight (e.g., Strongman competitions), but these programs do not optimize testosterone production and levels.

An ideal program for the purpose of building muscles, gaining strength & producing testosterone, would entail heavy compound lifting & a high weekly volume of 40-100 reps. This allows the intensity to be sufficiently high enough to allow an adaptive response & gains.

Compound exercises optimally increase testosterone production because they activate several muscles during a short period. This “Testosterone Work Principle” can be utilized by applying the names above of compound movements.

The body has different concentrations of androgen receptors on various muscle groups. In men, most androgen receptor concentration & density is in the upper body (chest, shoulder & traps). The lower body has significant amounts of muscle tissue, but research is showing that the upper body muscle groups have higher numbers of androgen receptors than the lower body. Androgen receptors would still need to receive testosterone and the best muscle group to stimulate testosterone production is the lower body due to the amount of muscle tissue there. Upper body workouts will boost testosterone production as well, but the lower body would stimulate more. This explains why men are thought to have broad shoulders and a big chest.

Cardio Set-Up

One last thing to address about training for higher natural testosterone levels and that is... Cardio!

Do not do long duration jogging for an hour! Consider replacing your cardio with High Interval Intensity Training (HIIT) cardio. For 10 mins (max 15 mins), do a cycle of slow walking followed by a short sprint. Start on low speed on a treadmill and walk for 30 - 45 secs, then raise the speed to so you are jogging (to awaken your legs for the upcoming run), then lower back down to walking after 30 - 45 secs of jogging. Once 30-45 secs of walking have passed, increase the speed past your jogging speed by one whole level (e.g. from Lvl 7 to Lvl 8) and run for 30 - 45 secs. Back down to walking speed for 30 -45 secs (deep breaths) then up the speed level again, run for 30 - 45 secs. Repeat this cycle until you find an appropriate sprint speed. Finish this interval training between 10 - 15 mins. You should be sufficiently warmed up and breaking a sweat by the end.

This form of cardio is the best for also burning fat, stimulating your legs for testosterone production and primes your body for the upcoming workout your about to do. Do not exceed 2 hours total per week for any form of cardio because that is endurance training. Endurance training is inversely proportional to your strength, size, and testosterone levels. Substitute HIIT for the traditional moderate cardio training (like jogging), and you'll see your results sooner. Treadmill was just an example. You can perform HIIT on your preferred cardio method. Start slow, then rev it to high. Back down to a slow speed, then high again, etc.

Overview

1. Progressively build strength in the 6 - 12 rep range.
2. Exercise with a routine that achieves the proper amount of training volume.
3. The bulk of your exercise is compound movements.
4. Do HIIT as your form of cardio.

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