One of the biggest difficulties facing bodybuilders is how can they be sure that all muscle fibers have been recruited and exhausted during a given exercise and it is only by achieving this that muscle gains can be maximised.
The simple answer is, you have work beyond failure and experience a higher level of training intensity than before. This also ensures that workouts remain challenging and continue to engender progress over time thus reducing the likelihood of regression. But how do you go about intensifying your training? Fortunately there is a tried and tested path to follow as outlined below:
1. Increase the resistance of the weight you are using - Meaningful increments in the weights slowly pushes your body a little bit over the point of failure each time. Aim to reach 6 to 8 reps of an increased weight without failing.
2. Change up your exercises - All the muscle fibers in your body must be trained for maximum gain. Introducing a new exercise or changing the angle of a previous one (incline press etc) will help you achieve this.
3. Reduce the amount of rest between intervals - The level of intensity will increase if you give your muscles less time to recover before exposing them to more work.
4. Pre exhaustion - The weakest muscle in an exercise involving two or more muscles will always fail first. This means it will fail before you have the chance to exercise the main muscle to exchaustion. To overcome this, focus on tiring out the main muscle before doing the exercise with both muscles working together.
5. Introduce supersets - this involves performing two exercises for the same muscle group without a rest interval. This means you have to utilize different muscle fibers which stimulate greater growth.
6. Partial reps - partial reps are when you are at nearly at the point of failure but instead of doing a complete rep, you do a partial rep. This will make your muscles still work past the point of failure without having to add new exercises
7. Isometric contractions - when you hold a weight still at the point of failure it stimulates a static contraction in the muscle.
8. Do one more rep than possible - Going past the point of failure by doing one more rep will need the help of a friend. Once you have reached the point of failure, your assistant can help you go just past the point of failure to complete one more rep. - 15343
The simple answer is, you have work beyond failure and experience a higher level of training intensity than before. This also ensures that workouts remain challenging and continue to engender progress over time thus reducing the likelihood of regression. But how do you go about intensifying your training? Fortunately there is a tried and tested path to follow as outlined below:
1. Increase the resistance of the weight you are using - Meaningful increments in the weights slowly pushes your body a little bit over the point of failure each time. Aim to reach 6 to 8 reps of an increased weight without failing.
2. Change up your exercises - All the muscle fibers in your body must be trained for maximum gain. Introducing a new exercise or changing the angle of a previous one (incline press etc) will help you achieve this.
3. Reduce the amount of rest between intervals - The level of intensity will increase if you give your muscles less time to recover before exposing them to more work.
4. Pre exhaustion - The weakest muscle in an exercise involving two or more muscles will always fail first. This means it will fail before you have the chance to exercise the main muscle to exchaustion. To overcome this, focus on tiring out the main muscle before doing the exercise with both muscles working together.
5. Introduce supersets - this involves performing two exercises for the same muscle group without a rest interval. This means you have to utilize different muscle fibers which stimulate greater growth.
6. Partial reps - partial reps are when you are at nearly at the point of failure but instead of doing a complete rep, you do a partial rep. This will make your muscles still work past the point of failure without having to add new exercises
7. Isometric contractions - when you hold a weight still at the point of failure it stimulates a static contraction in the muscle.
8. Do one more rep than possible - Going past the point of failure by doing one more rep will need the help of a friend. Once you have reached the point of failure, your assistant can help you go just past the point of failure to complete one more rep. - 15343
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