One of the biggest difficulties facing bodybuilders is how can they ensure 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 maximized.
The simple answer is, you have work over and above failure and experience a higher level of training intensity than before. This too ensures that workouts stay challenging and carry on to engender progress over time thus reducing the likelihood of regression.
But how do you go about intensifying your training? Fortunately there’s a tried and tested path to follow as outlined below:
1. Boost resistance – increasing the weight lifted in meaningful increments ensures the muscle is pushed past its previous point of failure thus maintaining the muscle building process. Make an effort to increase the weight when you reach 6 to 8 reps and failure does not happen.
2. Change the exercise – to attain maximal gains all muscle fibers in a body part should be trained. Changing the angle (e.g to incline bench press) or introducing a new exercise will stimulate growth.
3. Decrease rest intervals – giving the muscles less time to recover prior to exposing them to further work has the effect of increasing intensity.
4. Pre-exhaustion – when an exercise entails two or more muscles, the weakest will stop you from working the primary muscle to failure. The answer is to first isolate and tire the primary muscle prior to immediately moving to another exercise that works the set of muscles to failure.
5. Introduce supersets – this entails carrying out 2 exercises for the same muscle group without a rest interval. This means you need to make use of different muscle fibers which stimulate greater growth.
6. Use partial reps – at the point of failure you will not have the ability to complete the full range of movement for a given exercise. Finishing a partial rep that uses only a segment of the lift will still work your muscles beyond the point of failure. This technique is particularly beneficial to advanced bodybuilders as it allows them to increase intensity without adding extra routines that can bring about overtraining.
7. Use isometric contractions – this entails holding the weight still at the point of failure to stimulate a static contraction in the muscle.
8. Employ forced reps – this entails completing one or more final reps after the point of failure has been reached. You’ll need the help of an experienced helper to attempt this.
Once you’ve added these techniques to your training routine, you will know you’ve performed your best to maximize muscle growth.
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