The human body has a remarkable power to adapt to any training program. Your progress slows down after about a year of training and you hit a plateau. As you become more advanced with your training, there are several techniques that you can employ to ensure progress in your program. These techniques involve forcing your muscles to adapt to an increased demand, through putting extra, unusual or unexpected stress on them. All the techniques listed here can shock your muscles into new growth and help you break through a plateau.

Dorian Yates, 6-time Mr. Olympia, used the Heavy Duty Method in his training.  This is actually an intensity principle that involves doing only 1 or 2 sets per exercise.  You train with the heaviest amount of weight you can handle and go to absolute failure.  Training this way, with maximum overload and maximum intensity, is for people at the advanced level. There is a great risk of injury if the basic fundamentals have not been mastered.

The techniques and methods outlined here allow you to extend the set to further increase intensity.  Most people are overtrained in volume and undertrained in intensity.  They train too long and without enough intensity.  If they would cut the volume down to an “hour of power” and raised the intensity level by 50 percent, their muscles would grow.  More is not always better.

Before you jump into using the intensity principles, know that these techniques are not to be used on every set.  The techniques should be limited to your last 1-2 sets per exercise and not done on every exercise (with the exception of supersets).  Doing more than this can lead to a state of overtraining.  Even performing restricted advanced sets should be limited to duration of 6-8 weeks.  Few people can handle such intensity year round.  There is a fine line between training too much and not training enough.  You may notice rapid improvement in size and strength within a couple weeks of starting these techniques.  That does not mean you should bump the advanced sets to every set you perform.  In order to stimulate muscle growth, you have to apply the maximum amount of intensity without overtaxing your recovery system.

FORCED REPS

One method to increase the intensity is to have a spotter supply a little extra lift, helping you to force out 1-2 extra reps. After you have done a set to positive failure (no longer being able to lift the weight on your own), have your training partner or a spotter assist you in squeezing out 1-2 forced reps. This helps to ensure that the muscle is fully exhausted. You end up recruiting and stimulating additional muscle fibers when using intensity techniques like forced reps. However, too many forced reps, too often, can put you in a state of overtraining. This is counterproductive to building lean muscle. Use forced reps sparingly. If you rely too heavily on your partner, it can cause your strength to diminish because you’re not working on your own accord.

REST-PAUSE REPS

The rest-pause intensity technique allows you to use extremely heavy weight and greatly overload the muscle. It is based on the principle that a muscle will recover about 90 percent of its strength in 10-20 seconds. This technique works especially well on chest exercises, such as presses. With rest-pause you start with a weight that will allow you to do 2-3 reps. Then you rack it and wait 10-15 seconds. Do 2-3 more reps, rack it for 10-15 seconds, do 2- 3 more reps then the set is finished. It all counts as one set. The brief rest between sets allows you train with very heavy weight with higher volume, for a total of 6-9 reps.

You can also use the rest-pause technique after doing a set with a higher rep range (8-12) to increase the intensity.  A great exercise for doing this is chin-ups.  After performing as many chin-ups as you can, let go of the bar and rest for 10-15 seconds, then try for 2-3 additional reps.  Since rest-pause is a super intense technique, it should only be used every second or third workout.

DROP SETS

Drop sets, also known as the stripping method, is another way you can extend your set to increase the intensity.  Drop sets permit you to squeeze out a few more reps easily and is effective in keeping the muscles growing.  Let’s say you are using 225 pounds for 8 reps on the bench press.  After the 8th rep you reach positive failure.  If you suddenly dropped the weight to 185 pounds, there is no doubt you could perform a few more repetitions.  After you cannot do another rep on your own, drop the weight by 20-30 percent and keep going.  You could then drop the weight after reaching positive failure.

Drop sets also work extremely well on machines, where you can simply drop the pin down to a lighter plate and continue on.  A dumbbell version known as “running the rack” can also be used in your training.  Use your regular weight on any dumbbell exercise, then grab a lighter pair of dumbbells and crank out a few extra reps.  1-2 drops sets will be adequate enough, anymore than this and you will risk becoming overtrained.

PARTIAL REPS

Partial reps allow you to extend a set beyond positive failure, until you physically cannot do anymore reps. It takes the muscles from a point of momentary fatigue to state of total exhaustion. After performing the full range of motion reps at the end of a set to failure, continue on to do three-quarter reps, half reps, and quarter reps before reaching total muscular failure. Keep going even if you can only move the bar a few inches. Partial reps burn tremendously, but you are stimulating muscle fibers that were not being worked before. This intensity principle will surely shock your muscles into new growth and can be used on practically any exercise.

SUPERSETS/TRI-SETS

Unlike straight sets, supersets involve performing two or three exercises in a consecutive fashion.  Supersets have two main variations.  One way involves doing two exercises back to back for the same muscle group.  For instance, doing military presses for shoulders immediately followed by dumbbell laterals.  Although both exercises are working the deltoids, they are targeting different areas of the muscle.

Tri-sets are done the same way, except you do three sets in a row without stopping.  A muscle that seems to be totally fatigued will still have strength remaining if you demand that it perform a slightly different movement.  A common tri-set for the chest would be flat dumbbell presses, followed by incline dumbbell presses, followed by cable crossovers.  Abs respond very well to tri-sets and great increase the intensity of the workout.

The other method of supersetting is to perform exercises for two opposing body parts, such as back and chest, quadriceps and hamstrings, or biceps and triceps.  It allows the antagonist muscle to rest while the other is being worked.  Doing supersets for different muscle groups give you an extraordinary pump.  While you work one muscle, the opposing muscle is being stretched this will allow more blood to rush into that muscle.

THE CHEATING METHOD

Most people learn the cheating method prior to instruction.  After doing barbell curls strictly for 6 reps what do you do when you cannot do another strict repetition?  You nudge the barbell a bit to get an additional 2 or 3 reps.  Cheating after the target muscle has fatigued allows you to complete a few additional reps.  This is called smart cheating and allows you to put extra workload on the muscle being worked.

Anyone can pick up a heavy bar and heave, bounce or toss it up using the back, deltoids and legs.  That cheating is only good for the ego and you would just be wasting your time.  The goal is not to get the weight anyway you can, it is to further increase the intensity of your set after reaching positive failure.  Improper cheating puts undue stress on the tendons and connective tissues and you will drastically become more prone to injury.  So the cheating method is not a green light to use a sloppy training technique.

Deliberately nudging the bar into motion gives you a little momentum and helps you drive past the sticking point of a movement.  You want just the amount of effort required to keep the weight moving.  Remember that you should not be focused on the weight in your hands, you should be focused on the working muscle.  Cheat reps done properly further stimulates muscle fibers.  It is a way of doing forced reps without a spotter on hand.  Good exercises to use the cheating method on are; barbell curls, lat pulldowns, bent-over rows, standing shoulder presses, and lying tricep extensions.

PRE-EXHAUST PRINCIPLE

This intensity technique allows you to isolate and fatigue the large muscles, before you train it in combination with the smaller ones during compound movements.  Most exercises involve more than one muscle.  When you do barbell squats, for example, you are using your quadriceps, hamstrings, hip flexors, gluteus maximus, and to a small extent the calf muscles in combination.  The quadriceps are by far the strongest of these muscles and normally would not tire before the other muscles would.  To compensate this, you can do leg extensions first, an isolation exercise that will pre-exhaust the quadriceps.

Then when you go on to perform barbell squats, the quadriceps that are already fatigued, will fail at about the same time as the other muscles.  The pre-exhaust sets eliminate the “weakest link in the chain” and ensures you will fully fatigue the larger muscle group.  Other pre-exhaust routines would include dumbbell flyes before bench presses for the chest, dumbbell laterals before shoulder presses for the deltoids and dumbbell curls before narrow- grip chins for the lats.

NEGATIVES

There are three different types of muscle contractions– concentric, eccentric, and isometric. Concentric contractions involve the muscle shortening and occur when the weight is moved positively.  In the bench press, for example, the muscle work concentrically to press the bar up off the chest. Isometric contractions involves the application of force without movement, such as holding the weight at one particular point.  Eccentric contractions involve the muscle lengthening and occur when the weight is lowered, during the negative portion.

The muscle work eccentrically during negatives, as when resisting the movement of the bar as it approaches your chest in the bench press.  Performing negatives is an effective way to gain strength and usually causes more muscle soreness than other methods.  Since you can generate more force eccentrically than concentrically, you further stimulate the muscle fibers by the greater induced tension damage.

In order to perform negatives on most exercises, you must have a spotter available.  Load the bar with more weight than you would normally.  Then lower the weight slowly and under control, rather than letting it drop.  Once you reach the bottom, have your spotter or training partner assist you in lifting the weight back to the starting position.  Your muscles are stronger through the negative portion of movements, they can lower a weight under control that you would not be able to lift positively on your own.

Just because negatives cause increased soreness does not mean that they are a substitute for positive training all together.  They should be done for variety.  Negatives can be performed for the entire set or after you can no longer complete repetitions concentrically. Exercises that work well for negatives include; any type of presses (flat, incline, military, and close-grip), barbell curls and lying leg curls.

STAGGERED GRIPS

This intensity principle is subtle yet effective.  It allows you to target different areas of the working muscle throughout one set.  For example, on tricep pushdowns you would start with a wide- grip, approximately 20 inches, and do 5-6 reps. Set the weight down and reposition your hands six or seven inches closer to the middle.  Only allow yourself a few seconds rest to change your hand grip before performing more reps.  Do another 5-6 reps with this closer grip.  Set the weight down one more time and move your hands about 7 inches apart from each other. Then do 5-6 more reps with this narrowest grip and the set is completed.  Staggered grips can be applied to other movements as well, such as bench presses and bent-over rows.  It allows you to hit different areas of the muscle simply by moving your hand stance.version of yourself, with the same body fat percentage.

TWENTY-ONES

The name for this intensity principle comes from number of reps performed during the set– twenty-one.  This technique works best for curling movements, such as bicep curls and leg curls.  You do 7 half reps in the lower range of motion, 7 half reps in the upper range of motion and then a series of 7 full reps to complete the set.  The set is divided into three sections.

Twenty-ones force your muscles to exert themselves in ways they are not accustomed to, having to stop the movement at the midpoint.  Even though they are called twenty-ones, you can use any number of repetitions for this intensity principle.  You can try 3 sets of 10 reps or 3 sets of 6 reps, as long you do the same number of reps per section.