You’re probably sick and tired of hearing the same old and boring “just train heavy, just do 6 to 8 reps, just increase the amount of weight” advice, so here I’m going to show you the number 1 key element to muscle growth, not just another generic suggestion. The muscles in your body will only grow when you give them a reason to, so to accomplish this you have to “target” them in ways that they never expected, “hitting” on them hard, but most importantly, from different angles of intensity. There you have it, intensity is (and always will be) the biggest secret key to muscle growth.
Here I have listed some intensity principles that you should implement in your workout routine:
Shock If you always put the same amount of intensity on your body, it gets used to it and stops growing. You have to “surprise” your body by changing several aspects of your workout. Here are some techniques:
– gain weight significantly
– Perform more reps and sets than normal
– Speed up your workout
Take short rest periods between sets
– Try an exercise you’ve never done before
– Change the order of your exercises
Special Representative Techniques
Forced Reps: Lift until you go to failure. When you can’t lift any more in the last rep, ask your workout partner for an additional 2 or 3 reps.
Partial reps: At the end of a set when you’re too tired to do full speed reps, use partial reps going down with half the weight and back up. Do this until you can’t lift.
Negative reps: Basically positive motion occurs when you lift the weight and negative motion occurs when you lower the weight. To do one negative repetition, simply lift the weight as you normally would, but when you lower it, do so very slowly. To make it even more challenging, have someone press down on you as you lower the weight.
supersets
A superset is two exercises performed one after the other without a break in between. You should also try “trisets,” 3 exercises performed one after the other without interruption.
Separate
When you start failing at the end of the set, ask a workout partner to take out some weight bars to lower the weight so you can do a few extra reps. Keep reducing the weight until you reach failure.
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This is a great technique. Let’s say you’re doing biceps barbell curls, instead of starting the motion from the bottom up, hold the bar halfway. Lower the bar and raise it up, pausing halfway; Do this action 7 times. Now (without stopping) do it half-way 7 times, and then do 7 full moves from bottom to top without stopping.
ordered set
Choose the body part you want to train harder for that week and choose a specific exercise for that part. Do your workout routine as you normally would, but after you’ve done a few sets of your normal routine, go to the “Specific Exercise” you’ve chosen and do a few sets. Get back to your regular routine; After a few sets go to “specific exercises” and do a few more sets… and so on.
Combine these principles with a hardgainer workout plan and you’ll be the happiest person ever.
Source by Bernardo Schulz
