According to the Journal of Sports Medicine, testosterone is important for the desired adaptations to resistance exercise and training. Testosterone is considered a major promoter of muscle growth and the subsequent increase in muscle strength. What can be said about testosterone for both men and women is that testosterone is an important modulator of muscle mass, and acute increases in testosterone can be induced by resistance exercise.
“In general, all types of exercise stimulate the release and production of testosterone,” says sports medicine doctor Jordan Metzl, MD, author of The Exercise Cure. “But there is data to suggest that lifting weights and high-intensity work might stimulate the greatest release of testosterone.”
Here are 7 evidenced-based weight lifting methods to increase your testosterone:
Method 1: Load (Lift Heavy)
While you can do high reps with low weights or low reps with high weights, Vingren et al showed that it definitely takes heavy weights to significantly boost testosterone. The amount of weight—or load—you use for an exercise is arguably the most critical aspect of any resistance training program. The load of an exercise is generally a percentage of a one-repetition maximum (1RM). Your 1RM is the greatest amount of weight you can lift using proper technique for one repetition. Ratamess at the University of Connecticut found that using a load between 85% and 95% of your 1RM releases the most testosterone. It is also recommended that doing 2-3 full body weight lifting workouts per week gives you the most testosterone-boosting results. For example, if your 1RM on the Back Squat is 315, your load would be 268 to 299 pounds.
¥ 315 x (.85) = 267.75
¥ 315 x (.95) = 299.25
If you're a beginner or new to weight training, don’t let this concept of heavy lifting scare you away. You can simulate many of these exercises on weight training machines until you’re strong and skilled enough to perform the free weight barbell or dumbbell versions.
Method 2: Train Large Muscles
Exercises that work large muscle groups—or compound exercises—have been shown to dramatically increase testosterone levels compared with exercises that work smaller muscle groups. These exercises create a lot of metabolic stress, which stimulates testosterone release. When your aim is to increase testosterone, then compound exercises have an edge over isolation exercises.
When you are executing a compound lift you have to use major muscle groups and joints. This adds stress on major muscle groups as a result causes training-induced anabolic adaptations. Your lift will be heavier than isolation exercises due to the involvement of bigger muscle groups; this is another advantage of compound exercises.
Compound exercises for testosterone boosting:
¥ Squats
¥ Deadlifts
¥ Pull ups/Chin ups
¥ Dips
¥ Rows
¥ Bench press
¥ Military press
¥ Shoulder press
¥ Olympic Lifts
Hansen et al, investigated the hormonal response to weight training, participants were split into an arm-only training group and a leg-plus-arm training group. Testosterone increases were significantly higher in the group that added lower body training to their upper body training.
While it can be tempting, especially for guys, to focus on exercises like biceps curls and bench pressing, you’ll notice far better results for lean muscle mass, energy, sex drive, and fat loss when you include multi-joint leg exercises such as lunges and squats into your regimen.
Method 3: Use Long Rest Periods
Rahimi et al, studied the effects of very short rest periods on testosterone and found that longer rest periods of around 120 seconds between sets are better for increasing testosterone (although you can still increase other hormones, such as growth hormone, with shorter rest periods).
Considering what you’ve just learned about lifting heavy weights, this makes sense – since the shorter your recovery periods, the less weight you’re going to be able to lift. However, it can seem like a waste of time to be sitting on your butt for 3 minutes between each exercise.
So if your goal is to increase testosterone, I recommend that you maximize your time at the gym by doing alternate activities during these long rest periods, such as exercises that don’t stress the same muscles you just worked. For example, you can do one set of bench presses, then do one set of squats. Go back and forth until all your sets are done, and you’ll get twice as much done in half the time, while still getting the testosterone boosting benefits of lifting heavy and long rest periods.
Method 4: Increase Your Training Volume
Similar to rest times, the volume of your training also largely impacts testosterone. Volume is the total amount of weight lifted in an exercise session. The more sets and repetitions you do, the greater your training volume. One study reported that a bodybuilding program using moderate load and high volume with short rest periods (1-minute) produced greater testosterone responses than a high load and low volume with long (3-minute) rest periods.
Using a combination of these methods—working large muscle groups, lifting heavy loads, taking shorter rest periods and training with high volume—will favorably manipulate anabolic hormone levels. However, it's also important to vary your training and rest period lengths. For example, if your goal is to increase strength, taking shorter rest periods can impair your physical performance in future sets, which can reduce strength gains if performed over a long period of time. Therefore, alternate between short and long rest periods and high volume and lower volume workouts and incorporate rest days. You can also increase the total volume or work number by adding more reps per set. If we add 5 repetitions per set the new equation would be 20 pounds x 15 reps done once per week = 300 pounds total volume per week. Similarly you can keep the reps the same but add an extra set. The equation would now be 20 pounds x 10 reps x 2 sets = 400 pounds total volume per week.
Method 5: Forced Reps
To do a forced repetition, you perform a weight lifting exercise for as many reps as you can, and then have partner (or a “spotter”) assist you with completing several additional repetitions (anywhere from 1-5 extra reps).
This type of forced rep set generates more testosterone than simply doing as many reps as you can do by yourself. It’s best to do forced reps with a compound exercises. For example, you can do a warm-up set of barbell squats, then, with a partner, personal trainer, or spotter at the gym to help you, choose a weight that allows you to do 5-6 repetitions on your own, but requires an assistant to get another 3-4 reps done after that, for a total of 8-10 reps. You can repeat this for anywhere from 2-6 sets.
While you don’t need to perform forced reps for every workout or set you do, if you’re trying to increase testosterone, it can be especially helpful to do your last set of any exercise as a forced rep set.
Method 6: Sprint training
Sprint training also has shown to boost your testosterone levels. Testosterone levels increased significantly and cortisol decreased for people who performed a series of very short (but intense) 6-second sprints – and testosterone levels remained high even after those people had fully recovered from the sprint workout, in the study by Farzad et al.
So how can you implement the strategy of sprinting to increase testosterone? Try performing several sprints on the treadmill after you’ve lifted weights at the gym, or just head out into the backyard, a park, or your neighborhood block and do a few sprint repeats on your days off from resistance training. You can even do your sprints on a bicycle or elliptical trainer. Try to include 5-10 short sprints when you do a sprint workout, sprint no longer than 15 seconds, get full recovery after each sprint (generally 3-4 times longer than you actually sprinted), and do a sprint workout 2-3 times a week for optimal results.
Method 7: Avoid Chronic Cardio
Long endurance sports such as cycling seem to lower testosterone in the same way that weight lifting seems to increase it. For example, in 2003 Izqueierdo et al found that testosterone levels were significantly lower in cyclists than age-matched weightlifters, or even an untrained control group. Some researchers have even concluded that this type of low testosterone in endurance athletes is an adaptation that gives cyclists or runners a competitive advantage – since the extra muscle mass from testosterone would probably slow you down.
So if you’re trying to boost testosterone, avoid long jaunts on the treadmill, and accept the fact that if you’re going to run marathons or do Ironman triathlons, you may have to settle for slightly lower testosterone levels.
Putting it all together:
First, your workouts need to be progressive if you want to gain or even keep your muscle mass. In other words, as you grow stronger you must continue to increase the amount of work you do with your muscles. You need to stress your body to get the biggest testosterone surge. This is why you hear reputable strength coaches emphasize the importance of working hard while training. There's a time and place for training with lower levels of intensity, but when it comes to boosting the almighty T, go hard or don't go at all.
By using any combination of increasing intensity, volume or frequency you can ensure that your workouts remain progressive. If there is any secret to weight training it is simply that consistency, effort and proper recovery are what will get you the best results, and while there are many different ways you can perform a weight training workout, science has not yet identified the ‘best’ way to work out and probably never will. However, scientific research can provide us with a rough but effective outline that we can use to determine the effectiveness of a workout program.
Use different exercises in each workout throughout the week. This is an essential part of keeping your recovery in check. If you use the same three exercises for all three workouts during the week, you'll be burnt out by week 2.
The Plan:
Use the above training methods to create a training plan that consists of the exercises you prefer (since there are many options that will work here). The concept is to do a Pull, Push and a Leg Exercise, 3 days a week. With that in mind, here's a sample routine that will build new muscle mass over your entire body.
Workout 1
Warm-up: Rope skipping for 30 seconds followed by 30 seconds of jumping jacks. Rest 30 seconds and repeat for 3 rounds.
Exercises:
1 Neutral Grip Pull-Up
2 Bench Press
3 Barbell Bulgarian Lunges (do all reps for one leg, no rest, then the other leg)
Sets: 6
Reps: Around 6-8 per set
Load: The first set begins with a load you can lift 8-9 times. Do your best to keep the load as high as possible in subsequent sets.
Rest: One minute between straight sets, 5 minutes between exercises
Workout 2 (48 hours later)
Warm-up: Row 30 seconds at a push pace; followed by 30 fast. Slow down to a base pace for 30 seconds, and repeat 3 times.
Exercises:
1 One-Arm Dumbbell Row (no rest between arms)
2 Dip From Rings
3 Deadlift
Sets: 6
Reps: 6-8 per set
Load: The first set begins with a load you can lift 8-9 times. Again, do your best to keep the load as heavy as possible in subsequent sets.
Rest: One minute between straight sets, 5 minutes between exercises
Workout 3 (48 hours later)
Warm-up: Same as workout 1.
Exercises:
1 Overhand Grip Pull-Up From Rings
2 Standing Dumbbell Shoulder Press
3 Squats
Sets: 6
Reps: 6-8 per set
Load: The first set begins with a load you can lift 8-9 times. Keep the load as high as possible in the next 5 sets.
Rest: One minute between straight sets, 5 minutes between exercises.
Program Duration, Recovery, Extra Exercises:
Stay on this program until results stop or you lose your motivation. If either of those things happens, it's time to move on or take a hard look at getting your nutrition, stress, and sleep dialed in. If you want to add some supplemental exercises to the training plan, that is fine, however every muscle is being utilized in this plan but it’s up to you if you need anything else. If you want to add it MetCon days or HIIT training on the off days, try to do 1-2 a week.
References:
Abrahams, P., How the Body Works. (New York: Metro Books, 2007), 263.
Baechle, TR., and Earle, RW., Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning: Third Edition (Illinois: Human Kinetics, 2008), 414-415, 423.
Farzad B1, Gharakhanlou R, Agha-Alinejad H, Curby DG, Bayati M, Bahraminejad M, Mäestu J. Physiological and performance changes from the addition of a sprint interval program to wrestling training. J Strength Cond Res. 2011 Sep;25(9):2392-9.
Hansen S1, Kvorning T, Kjaer M, Sjøgaard G. The effect of short-term strength training on human skeletal muscle: the importance of physiologically elevated hormone levels. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2001 Dec;11(6):347-54.
Kraemer, WJ. et. al. The Effects of Short-Term Resistance Training on Endocrine Function in Men and Women. The European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology (1998): 69-76, November 11, 2014.
Kraemer, WJ., Marchitelli, L., McCurry, D., Mc:lc, R., Dziados, J., Harman, E., Frykman, P., Gordon, S. and Fleck. Endogenous Hormonal and Growth Factor Responses to Heavy Resistance Exercise Protocols.
Rahimi R1, Qaderi M, Faraji H, Boroujerdi SS. Effects of very short rest periods on hormonal responses to resistance exercise in men. J Strength Cond Res. 2010 Jul;24(7): 1-9.
Ratamess, Nicholas Angleo. Effects of heavy resistance exercise volume on post-exercise androgen receptor content in resistance-trained men. (University of Connecticut, 2003)
Tate, P., Seely’s Principles of Anatomy and Physiology. (New York: McGraw Hill Companies, 2012), 37-38.
Vingren, JL. Et. al. Testosterone Physiology in Resistance Exercise and Training: The Up-Stream Regulatory Elements. The Journal of Sports Medicine (2010): 1037-53, accessed November 11, 2014.