Gaining muscle- Techniques to get it done!

Damaging muscles are the key to building them. To build new muscle you must stress the existing muscle in a new way. When muscles are stressed then become damaged and then must be rebuilt. With adequate diet and rest your body will rebuild the muscle with an increase in size!

Try some of these techniques to shock your muscles into new growth:

1) Super-sets- Nothing has been around longer than this! You can really up the intensity on the muscle with this technique. Some examples include:

• Lat pulldown/Row


• Bench press/Fly


• Deadlift/Lunge


• Close grip press/ Dips

2) Negatives- If you like submitting yourself to pain than please try these! Negatives focus on the eccentric phase of the lift which has been shown to cause more damage to the muscle and lead to more growth. This is tough...and is best to do with a partner. You can do negatives two different ways. One way is to have a spotter help you with the weight on the way up and the other way is to lift the weight yourself. I like to do the negative and then have my spotter help lift the weight up. You can use more weight on negatives but just limit the negative to under 10 seconds.....any more you should increase the weight because it is too light.

3) Off set rep scheme- This is a personal favorite that I have come up with and use often myself. First pick two exercises for one muscle group. Then what you will do is do heavier weight on one exericse for low reps and then medium to lighter weight on the other exercise for higher reps. For example:

Standing barbell bicep curls- 6 reps

SUPER SET WITH

Seated dumbbell hammer curls-12 reps