One of
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 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 resistance - increasing weight lifted in meaningful increments ensures muscle is pushed beyond its previous point of failure thus maintaining muscle building process. Aim to increase weight when you reach six to eight reps and failure does not occur.
2. Change exercise - to achieve maximal gains all muscle fibers in a body part must be trained. Changing angle (e.g to incline bench press) or introducing a new exercise will stimulate growth.
3. Reduce rest intervals - giving muscles less time to recover before exposing them to further work has effect of increasing intensity.
4. Pre-exhaustion - when an exercise involves two or more muscles weakest will prevent you from working primary muscle to failure. The answer is to first isolate and tire primary muscle before immediately moving to another exercise that works set of muscles to failure.
