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Intensity: The Key to Muscle Building Success

(Editors note: I’ve been getting a lot of emails from members who wanted to know how to ramp up training intensity. This article was written to do just that).

One of the biggest difficulties facing  most bodybuilders is how can they be sure that all muscle fibers have been recruited and exhausted during a given exercise. It is only by achieving this, that muscle gains can be maximised.

The simple answer is, you have to 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 the 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 the weight lifted in meaningful increments ensures the muscle is pushed beyond its previous point  thus maintaining the muscle building process. Aim to increase the weight when you reach your given reps and failure, if you train that way, doesn’t occur.

2. Change the exercise – to achieve maximal gains all muscle fibers in a body part must be trained. Changing the angle (e.g to incline bench press) or introducing a new exercise will stimulate growth. Also, changing the order you do your exercises in will help keep the muscle guessing.

3. Reduce rest intervals – giving the muscles less time to recover before exposing them to further work has the effect of increasing intensity.

4. Pre-exhaustion – when an exercise involves two or more muscles the weakest will prevent you from working the primary muscle to failure. The answer is to first isolate and work the primary muscle before immediately moving to another exercise that works those set of muscles.

5. Introduce supersets – this involves performing two exercises for the same muscle group without a rest interval. This means you have to utilize different muscle fibers which stimulate greater growth.

These next methods are for lifters who train to failure:

6. Use partial reps – at the point of failure you will not be able to complete the full range of movement for a given exercise. Completing a partial rep that uses only a segment of the lift will still work your muscles beyond the point of failure. This technique is especially useful to advanced bodybuilders as it allows them to increase intensity without adding extra routines that could cause overtraining.

7. Use isometric contractions – this involves holding the weight still at the point of failure to stimulate a static contraction in the muscle.

8. Employ forced reps – this involves completing one or more final reps after the point of failure has been reached. You will need the assistance of an experienced helper to attempt this.

Once you have added these techniques to your training regimen you’ll know you’ve done your best to maximize muscle growth.

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