Alright, you've made it to the end of this series. By now you've been putting in LOTS of hard work, and with all that hard work your muscles have been growing and you are starting to become leaner. Your body has been well-trained! However, a well-trained body is harder to trick into building more muscle and burning more fat. This means you're gonna have to do stuff that the body HATES. You have to find something that gives the body NO OTHER OPTION than to grow at this point. I'll give you all the tools you need to break the plateaus, but it's up to YOU to do them and push through the pain, no matter how agonizing it is. Let's get it!
First things first. If you want to get a muscle to grow more, it's simply going to require more work. More work = more volume. The first thing you should be doing before using any other tool I'm going to give you in this article is upping your volume, the sets per muscle group. You're already working each part of the strength curve, now you simply increase the sets for each part of the strength curve. If you've been doing 2 sets per portion of the strength curve, go to 3. If 3, go to 4, and so on. However, there's no need to be doing more than 5 sets, unless you're doing a marathon with a muscle, more on that later. When it comes to increasing that volume, you'll need to recover for a longer period of time since your muscles are getting pounded at this point. This is where your final, and most optimal split comes into play. Legs, Push, Pull. This allows for full recovery among all muscles while the exact opposites are working. Some programs will have people do shoulders the day after chest, or arms the day after back. That's not a good idea since your shoulders come into play with some chest movements, and your biceps slightly get incorporated with back movements. So make sure you to the Legs, Push, Pull split to recover fully. Here's how your week would look
Monday: Legs, Abs
Tuesday: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps
Wednesday: Back, Biceps
Thursday - Saturday: Repeat
Sunday: Rest
Obviously, you can change the exact days depending on your work schedule, but just make sure that the pattern stays the same. Also, notice I didn't put calves on there. That's because calves can be worked on every day since the calves work every day moving you around, so they require LOTS of tension and stimulation to build. Build up to that of course, and still be sure to give the calves one day of rest. Also, on each of these days you need to be starting out with those anabolic exercises we talked about earlier in this series. Bench Press to start the push day, deadlifts to start the pull day, and now you can incorporate the heavy squats on leg day since legs have their own day in your routine now. These exercises are anabolic, meaning they trigger testosterone and HGH (Human Growth Hormone) production in the body as long as you use heavy weight (3-5 reps) and train your nervous system to get stronger. With these hormones elevated, you'll have great muscle-building potential when you hit the isolated exercises afterwards. Ok, now on to those plateau breakers:
Marathon
This is simply where you do a TON of sets for a muscle
When incorporating this, you should be doing at least 10 sets PER EXERCISE as this freaks the body out and forces adaptation
DO NOT do this all the time as that will break down muscle, but doing it only once will send a message so-to-speak
you don't want to severely damage the muscles, you just want to beat them up really hard this one time to send a message to grow
After doing this, don't do it again for another month. keep in mind you'll still be working those muscles again in just a few days
Rest-Pause
When you get done with your last set, rest 5-10 seconds then try to do more reps
This increases lactic acid substantially in the muscle, which promotes growth
You can incorporate this at the end of each exercise if you want, but your body will adapt to it at some point so you'll have to switch to another plateau breaker
Forced Reps
At the end of your set, when you can't contract the muscle with proper form anymore, you can use a little bit of momentum but ONLY ENOUGH to help put tension back on the muscle as opposed to just throwing the weight around
Massive lactic acid increase if done correctly
YOU MUST do your normal reps first, meaning that you should feel the muscle BEFORE you move the weight. This ensure that the muscle you want to work will move the weight as opposed to momentum or other muscles
If you do forced reps right away you will NOT GROW as there's no tension with forced reps along. But if you kept the tension on the muscles BEFORE your forced reps, the forced reps will actually pound the muscle harder
Like the Rest-Pause, doing this all the time will cause a plateau
Drop Sets
These are the most popular plateau breaker, made popular by a certain Austrian bodybuilder
On your last set, when you cant do any more reps, lower the weight and keep going, then lower it more when that weight gets too heavy
Keep going until you can't anymore. Your muscles should be SHAKING by the end of this
If you do this right, you won't be able to work that muscle anymore
And yes, your body can adapt to this if you do it all the time as well
Pyramid
These are a great way to build muscle and strength
Start with a lighter weight and do 10 reps, then increase the weight and do 10 more weights, and keep going up until you can't get 10 reps anymore
You can use this technique with other reps, but make sure the rep count stays the same every time you up the weight
It's a good way to warm up and puts lots of blood in the muscle
Can be done every workout, but plateau will occur eventually
Mountain Climber
A combo of Drop Sets and Pyramids
Do the pyramid first, and when you can't hit 10 reps, you lower the weight and go right into your drop sets.
I'd recommend this once a week for each muscle as it can hit you really hard
Speed Reps
After your last set of perfect form, do the rep as fast as you can.
Similar to a forced rep, except you'll need to rest a little longer since you'll be focusing on speed to tire out the muscle
You can try this on both workouts for the muscles, but it's HARD
Heavy Negatives
I always say to emphasize the negative, but for this one you should be trying to hold the negative on a rep for AT LEAST 6 seconds
emphasizes tension in the muscle, and most muscle damage occurs in the negative portion of a rep
Make sure you have a safe way of dropping the weight if needed, like if doing a squat or bench press
Static Hold
Two ways to do this
Holding a weight while the muscle is fully contracted
You're basically squeezing the muscle as hard as you can in the most difficult portion of the rep
Examples: The top of a calf raise, leg extension or leg curl, chest fly, lat pulldown, cable row, etc
Where the bottom portion is most difficult
bench press, squats, deadlift (right before the weight touches the ground), tricep pushdown and bicep curl (hold in middle)
Hold that position for as long as you can
Do these at the end of sets
Allow for a safe way to drop the weight
And there you have it! All the tools you need to break a plateau with muscle building. The key is to only use ONE of these at a time. Doing all of them too soon will cause injury or lead to your body adapting to everything, backing you into a corner. This also wraps up this series, which means you now have all the tools necessary to get started in the gym, and to build yourself up as you become more advanced. And now that we've covered the muscle-building process, we must now dive into the other process that people yearn for but have been so misled on, even more than building muscle. That's right, I'm talking FAT BURNING!! We'll start that in the next series. Until next time.
Comments