Hi everyone, welcome back! Want that sexy, strong, muscular body? Well keep reading cuz I have a lot more to say. I hope you all have had a chance to try some set types so you can see firsthand that they are amazing! Okay, sit down and get ready to learn more, we still have about 13 set types to go. To start, I give to you one of my personal favorites, the pyramid. Oh yes Pharaoh Netjerykhet was a genius when he created the first pyramid; it stuck. People took such a liking to it that now it’s in the fitness industry 🙂 Haha LOL. The pyramid as we call it in simple terms is basically lifting progressively heavier weight for less and less reps. An example: let’s say your max on squats is 250 — you might do 10 reps of 125, 8 of 150, 6 of 170, 4 of 190, 2 of 215. That’s a pyramid, and boy oh boy if you haven’t tried this it is absolutely amazing for building strength. Works like no other for strength gains. I have the actual percentages I used to win the Nationals and qualify for worlds. Want them? Keep reading and following my blog and all will eventually be revealed
Next up we have the grueling isometric strength overload, or ISO. This one is rough. This can be used when your strength is topped out to make you even stronger. Let’s say you do a pyramid and your max was 250, then after doing the pyramid for 3 months it’s 350 (yes, pyramids can be this effective) you hit a plateau. One thing you can do is ISO. Again, the example squat max is 350. Load 375 to 400 on the bar. Set the safety pins on the squat rack all the way up. Now get under the 400 pounds, unrack it, and just stand there as long as possible. This tells your brain, “Hey buddy 350 wasn’t so bad was it?” Haha LOL. It’s funny but it does help teach your brain to recruit more motor units to create greater muscular contraction, eventually enabling you to push past previous barriers. Next time you do your last set of 320 for two reps on the pyramid it won’t seem quite so heavy.
Next on the chopping block is partial reps. Partial reps can be used in a couple of different scenarios. First, let’s talk about it in strength application. Then, in muscle application. Okay, back to hitting a plateau on strength. Example squat 350. You go to max out, and lower the weight just fine, transition out of the bottom of the lift okay, then three quarters of the way up you need assistance. This is a perfect time to do partial reps to help you get past the sticking point. Set the pins on the squat rack at the sticky point and squat from there. Do this for a few workouts plus some regular full range squats and after a while you will break through those plateaus. Now using partials for building muscle can be a good way to increase the amount of tension on the muscle. The good thing about this is you can use more weight than you normally could handle. The downside of this is that you limit the muscles cross-sectional activation. Basically, you don’t hit all of the fiber in that particular muscle. This type of training is good to do sometimes to switch things up a little and trick the muscle into a little extra growth. However, I wouldn’t always do it, and definitely don’t use it to show off how much you can left. My grandma could partial squat 500 pounds. Joking, but you get the point.
Okay next is forced reps, which basically means lifting until you can’t and then having the spotter lightly assist you through the rest of your rep. Forced reps are very taxing on your system, so only use these occasionally and the spotter should only help just enough to make up the difference (not pull the whole weight up). Next up is pre exhaust sets. These can be used to help bring up a weaker or non symmetrical muscle, or to help blast off muscle without blasting your joints. To bring up a weaker muscle with, say, biceps you can do underhand pull-ups followed by bicep curls. This would really max your bi’s out. To save your knee joints, you could do leg extensions, followed by leg curls, followed by squats. What this does is get your legs tired so that when you squat you have to use less weight, therefor less load on your joints, and more in the muscle. This can be a good choice for building muscle.
Next on the chopping block is giant sets. You can use this to hit the same muscle at different angles. For instance, do bicep curls with an s-curl bar. One set over hand, one set rope, one set close-grip under hand on S-bar, one set wide on S-bar. Going from weakest to strongest using the same weight.
Next, jump sets. This is similar to supersets except supersets are geared a little more towards endurance and strength. These are geared a little more toward just strength. This is good for opposing muscle groups like back and chest, bicep/tricep or quadriceps/hamstrings. Let’s say you had four sets of hamstring deadlifts and four sets of hack squats. You could do two sets of hams and two sets of quads, then go back to hams for two sets and then go back to quads for the remainder two sets. This alternating gives you time in between muscle groups, and time in between muscle groups buys you more strength.
Okay, last for today’s blog is timed sets. Basically, the way this works is instead of counting reps you watch the clock and count time. After all, the spark for muscle is time under tension. The more time under tension the bigger the stimulus for muscle gains to occur. When you train this way you can do what’s called tempo training. Example: bench press using a light weight. Really focus on the muscle, lower it at a 5 second count, and then lift it up at a 5 second count. This is just one example. There are many other time tempos that you can use that will produce different results. So, go try them all and see what’s what. As far as the 5:0:5 Tempo is concerned, “spoiler alert” — it burns like hell! Thanks kitties! See you next time 😀
