Bodybuilding: Constant Change for Results
The body has incredible adaptive capabilities. The implication of this for bodybuilding is your body quickly adapts to a specific exercise regimen. Therefore for continuing progress you must always change your training practices to induce your body to create new adaptations, namely, to develop new muscle tissue.
Shifting your workouts may involve a vast array of training methods. The simplest principle is to continue trying to lift heavier weights for more repetitions. More weight puts your muscles under more stress and they need to respond to the stress by growing.
Create a goal to be innovative in your approach to instruction. Challenge yourself and aspire to get stronger, particularly in basic lifts such as squats, deadlifts, bench press and rows. Concentrate on getting stronger and your muscles will respond. Just make certain to remember to do your best to maintain decent form to avoid injury.
A standard technique used by many bodybuilders is to never do the exact same workout for the exact same body part twice in a row. In actuality, many coaches have two structured workouts for every muscle group. By way of example, 1 chest workout may consist of barbell bench press, dumbbell flyes and drops. The following chest session would include flat barbell press, incline barbell press and peck deck flyes. The combinations are endless and you are able to select and mix your favourite exercises.
Another frequent strategy is to change the set and rep patterns from one workout to another. As an example, one squat exercise may consist of 4 sets of 8 repetitions and the following workout could be two sets of 25 reps. Lower reps generally build mass and strength whereas higher repetitions build muscular endurance. By always changing these patterns you get the advantage of both approaches and you don't allow your body to get used to any specific style.
You can also simply completely change your workout routine every 3-5 weeks. You can change the exercises which you're performing, the sort of training split that you're using and the set/rep routines. By way of instance, if you've been performing a push/pull/legs split, you can change it to upper body one day and lower body the next or you could change to performing a single muscle group daily, once per week. The options are endless.
As well as altering your training split every couple weeks, you can change to different exercises. In case you've been focusing on broad arm chins, barbell rows and close grip pulldowns on your back, you can change to broad arm pulldowns, 1 arm barbell rows and low pulley rows. Additionally, if you were focusing on doing 3 sets of 10 repetitions, then you can upgrade that to 4 sets of 8 reps.
Speaking of rep and set sequences, there are a couple of highly powerful and little known training protocols that you ought to attempt to actually"shock" your body. Three of them are the 5x5, 8x8 and 10x3 routines. The 5x5 routine will have you doing 5 sets of 5 reps. Use a weight that's equal to a 6 rep maximum and try to do 5 sets of 5 reps with it. Just rest about one minute between sets. Your muscles will be burning.
For the 8x8 regimen, choose a weight which you can perform 12 strict reps together and then try to perform 8 sets of 8 reps with only a maximum of 45 seconds rest between sets. The pump if you do that is unbelievable.
The 10x3 work out is a strength and size building killer routine. Pick a weight that's your 5 rep maximum and perform 10 sets of 3 reps, resting as needed between sets. This is an intense challenge and should only be used with basic chemical multi-joint exercises. It works really well with squats, deadlifts and bench press. Keep adding weight from one exercise to another and you'll get stronger and bigger.
Total body workouts, supersetting, circuit training and quantity training are methods that involve a radically different training protocol. There's a totally endless selection of exercise approaches to try. Just a few have been touched upon here but the fundamental principles are the same. Change impacts the body and forces it to grow. Additionally it is great for your mind as doing the exact same thing over and over gets boring.