Techniques

-The Shock Principle: The body adapts to whatever stresses it has been experiencing and as a result will become more efficient at performing in that set of stresses. To “shock” the body means to throw it into situations it is not used to in order to achieve better results. You can shock it by training with more weight than usual, doing more reps and/or sets, speeding up your training, cutting down your rest time between sets, doing unfamiliar exercises, doing your exercises in an unfamiliar order, or a combination of these strategies.

-Forced Reps: Also called Rest/Pause Training. You use fairly heavy weight and go to failure in the set. Then you stop, let the weight hang for a moment and then force out an extra rep. This method can be repeated several time in order to fatigue as many fibers within the muscle as possible, but make sure never to pause for too long because you may give fatigued muscles enough time to recover instead of stimulating new fibers.

-Partial Reps: After completing a set of lifts with a full range of motion doing partial reps to further fatigue the muscle is a great way of shocking the fibers.

-Isolation: This is the idea of isolating a specific muscle or even a part of a specific muscle. For example: An exercise like the bench press is a compound exercise. It works the pecs, the delts, and the triceps. An exercise like the lying dumbbell fly isolates only the pecs. An even more specific exercise would have been the incline dumbbell fly which isolates only the upper pectorals. An even more specific exercise would be incline fly cable crossovers that target the inner cleavage of then upper chest. Isolation is the best weak point training technique. Find an exercise to specifically target your weaker areas and isolate.

-Negatives: The negative is the extension or release of the weight after the contraction. This movement puts more stress on the tendons and supportive structures than the muscle itself. It is important for tendon strength to increase as muscular strength increases. The negative motion can bear more weight than the concentric, so if you use a cheat technique to lift a heavier weight than usual a very effective negative release will be beneficial at the end of your sets. Make sure negatives are always done smoothly and slowly.

-Forced Negatives: This is where a partner applies extra force to the weight being released by gently pushing down and adding extra pressure.

-Cheating: This is the idea of breaking the rule of remaining in strict technique in order to achieve maximum gain. Though this does not mean we ever use sloppy technique. This simply means we use other muscle groups to work in cooperation with the target muscle. This is not something to be done all the time, but it us useful to achieve specific goals. If you are doing heavy barbell curls and only put up 4-6 reps in strict form you can then use you shoulders and upper back to lift 4-6 more repetitions in order to fully stress the muscle being targeted. The most important part is to make sure your using just enough cheat to make it harder, not easier.

-Heavy-Duty Method: This is the use of extended sets to reach maximum exhaustion. An extended set includes the basic lift along with forced reps, negatives, forced negatives, and partial reps. This will definitely take the target muscle to exhaustion. This term has also been used to imply the idea of going directly to the heaviest weight you can handle at 12 reps (after you warm up) and working down in repetitions until you can only complete 6-8 reps in strict form.

-Staggered Sets: This involves doing sets of a weak area you would like to train with more intensity in between other exercises. Say the weak area is calves, then on your chest day you do a few sets of calve raises in between each exercise of your chest. By the end of your chest routine you have now done 15-20 sets of calves. This will help to intensify your weak point training.

-Priority Principle: This is the principle of training weak points in priority to your other muscles. This can be done in a number of ways. Scheduling a specific body part immediately after a rest day. Training a muscle at the beginning of a routine rather than towards the end. Choosing exercises specifically designed to achieve the goal of the weak point (size, shape, separation, definition, etc.). Improving basic techniques to maximize exercise effectiveness (form, rest between sets, breathing, posture, etc.). Utilizing Intensity techniques or other methods for that specific area.

-Supersets: This is the common method in which two exercises are performed in a row without stopping. A third exercise or triset is also effective. This can be done two different ways. The exercises can be performed for the same body part (bench press, then flys) to give an area extra emphasis. Or you can train two different bodyparts (bench press, then chin-ups) which allows you to exercise continuously and helps in cardiovascular conditioning.

-Stripping: Using a loadable barbell or dumbbell and stripping off weight as you begin to fail so that you may continue doing repetitions. At the end of a lift not all the muscle fibers are fatigued. Your muscle is only not able to lift that specific weight. By dropping the plates you are then able to fully fatigue the entire muscle. This should be done at the end of a set.

-Isotension Principle: Between sets flex and hold your muscles in a contracted state. This will not only help you maintain a pump, but it will help in the control and thickness of the muscle itself. Though it does not work the muscle through its entire range of motion, it does work the peak contracted area through very intense tension. This is a good way to define the “horseshoe” in your tricep, or the peak of your bicep.


-Instinctive Principle: This involves improvisation of workouts. Staying in a rigidly strict set of workouts may hold progress back. Knowing what body parts are going to be worked then improvising on which specific exercises, methods, and rest times you will be using will keep your body guessing and progressing.

-Pre-exhaust Principle: If you will be engaging multiple muscle groups in an exercise you will most likely fatigue any smaller muscle group before the larger groups are fully fatigued. By exhausting the larger muscles first you ensure that all muscles in the compound lift are fatigued. As an example: doing chest flys before bench press will ensure that the pectorals are fully fatigued.

-Flushing: This involves holding positions in a lift with relatively light weight. This can be done on many different lifts in which you are isolating a single muscle. When doing lift like deltoid laterals you would take a light weight and hold it maybe 5-10 inches from your sides so that the delt is contracted and burning. Holding this for 10-20 seconds will burn and further fatigue the muscle creating thickness and separation.

-Multi-Sets: This is doing multiple exercises for a muscle group. Instead of doing 5-6 sets of the same exercise or two you do a different exercise for each set. This is not done as a superset. You rest between each and start a different exercise for a that same muscle.

-“One-And-A-Halfs”: This is a different way of stressing the muscle by altering the lift. When doing a lift through the full range of motion for one rep, on the second rep you only do a slow strict half repetition then alternate between full reps and half reps through the entire set.

-Platoons: This requires a half rep in the lower range of motion, then a half rep in the upper range of motion, then a full repetition through the entire range of motion. This can be done 10x10x10 or has also been known as 21’s 7x7x7.