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Everyone knows I have a reputation for training brutally hard, I mean very hard! (It is the only way to win a Mr. Olympia that is for sure, especially six). But hard training is not a be-all and end-all. It has to be the best, right training.
You must force muscle to grow, to adapt to higher work-loads. The basis is, for example, a set of barbell curls for 8-12 reps with a weight that you barely can make 8-reps. Once you make 12, you increase the weight so you go back to barely making 8-reps.
Your bottom line is that progressive overload forces muscle to grow but WITHOUT over-training or injuring yourself!
Remember though that the weight load doesn’t matter as long as you go to “failure” and use maximum intensity in reasonable form. (Then, you allow that muscle to recover and saturate it with DYA proteins in the interim)!
In Speed-Strength & Sport, the guys are lifters and they must do singles and doubles, maybe triples, to develop power and form but you are a bodybuilder and must also work for mass.
So, overload is a must. Now I do forced reps. This is an advanced training technique to extend my sets, to work harder! For instance, for incline barbell presses, I fail at 8, but I have my spotter assist “a bit” to help me make 2 more reps (forced reps).
I also use what is called “rest-pause” Let’s say I am doing a set of seated dumbbell presses and I fail at 8 with 2 more forced reps. At that point, I rest ONLY 10 seconds in order to regain some strength. Then I’ll do another rep. I’ll rest another 10 seconds and do another and a final rep. You can use rest-pause with a partner and forced reps by yourself!
Forced reps are “positive work” but I also used negative work to go ‘beyond failure’. I do 8 reps in the triceps pushdown and my partner assists me on 2 forced reps.
Then my partner helped me raise the stack until my arms were in the fully extended near-lockout position. Once here, I lowered, fought and resisted the weight down! This double stressed the muscle big-time. However, I only used this on very select exercises, not squats!
I like extended sets. Say, you are doing seated dumbbell curls. I’ll drop the dumbbells at the point of failure at 8 reps and 2 forced -- and pick up a lighter pair and do another 2-3 reps. This is intensity past the point of failure.
If forced reps prove too tough or are impractical, try partials. Once you reach failure, say, doing dumbbell laterals, you can continue to move the dumbbell’s up but you’ll not be able to make full reps. It might be 3/4 or 1/2 reps then less. Finally you should not be able to move them at all. This fries your muscle!
When you hit a period of no gain on a muscle, try pre-exhaustion. Pre-exhaust your pectoral (chest) muscles working its prime mover function (horizontal abduction).
Do a set of cable flyes to failure. Then, immediately go to an exercise which works the muscle again, but uses an assisting muscle. In this case, bench presses.
The cable flyes blast your pecs but now benches utilize also your triceps and delts so you work your pectorals again! I really like pre-exhaust on large body parts like thighs and back. When working thighs, I do 3 sets of leg extensions to failure and then do leg presses.
Most bodybuilders don’t do it this way and do leg presses or squats first as they’ve learned from lifters but they want strength not size. So I can’t use as much weight as I usually can in leg presses. This also saves my joints!
I kept my sets rather low because I trained so intense! I never did more than five sets for an exercise counting warm-ups, even as a beginner. Over the years, I began to do a “one-all-out-main set” for each exercise, following 2 warm-up sets, so 3 sets in total.
But I must say, it took me almost 10 years to learn the nuances of bodybuilding, to understand what really worked best for me. I think beginners need a couple more sets to learn technique and to generate the necessary muscle pathways and of course, the older you get or the more injuries you have, the intensity one can train with in terms of a percent of maximum goes down. For example, one sprints until age 30 and jogs thereafter.
Beginners should not use forced or negative reps. I trained for 12 months before I tried a forced rep and only after two years of workouts did I begin to employ them regularly. For a beginner, going to failure generates enough muscular stress. The “newness” of your body to the rigors of weight-training guarantees the correct muscle-building response will occur. As you progress, you must choose the point at which you can honestly apply the one-main-set system.
HERE IS A DORIAN SET of INCLINE PRESSES:
Do 2-3 warm-up sets with 15 down to 8 reps. Then load up the bar with the maximum poundage for 8 reps to failure and get 2 forced reps. Then do a couple of negative reps or 2-3 rest-pause reps.
For anyone trying this one-set system, if you feel you can attempt a second set, then you couldn’t have been pulling out all the stops during the first set. Now there are many roads to Rome obviously since Lee Priest is pretty damn big and he does LOTS of sets, but I’ve never been a believer in volume work.
I think that one set with 100% intensity (sort of 8-13 reps or more movements) does the job. But one set of 1-3 reps would not build muscle size, you see. Bodybuilding is different than Olympic or powerlifting. It’s my contention that doing too many sets if they are high-intensity is over training and you will not recover.
You must force muscle to grow, to adapt to higher work-loads. The basis is, for example, a set of barbell curls for 8-12 reps with a weight that you barely can make 8-reps. Once you make 12, you increase the weight so you go back to barely making 8-reps.
Your bottom line is that progressive overload forces muscle to grow but WITHOUT over-training or injuring yourself!
Remember though that the weight load doesn’t matter as long as you go to “failure” and use maximum intensity in reasonable form. (Then, you allow that muscle to recover and saturate it with DYA proteins in the interim)!
In Speed-Strength & Sport, the guys are lifters and they must do singles and doubles, maybe triples, to develop power and form but you are a bodybuilder and must also work for mass.
So, overload is a must. Now I do forced reps. This is an advanced training technique to extend my sets, to work harder! For instance, for incline barbell presses, I fail at 8, but I have my spotter assist “a bit” to help me make 2 more reps (forced reps).
I also use what is called “rest-pause” Let’s say I am doing a set of seated dumbbell presses and I fail at 8 with 2 more forced reps. At that point, I rest ONLY 10 seconds in order to regain some strength. Then I’ll do another rep. I’ll rest another 10 seconds and do another and a final rep. You can use rest-pause with a partner and forced reps by yourself!
Forced reps are “positive work” but I also used negative work to go ‘beyond failure’. I do 8 reps in the triceps pushdown and my partner assists me on 2 forced reps.
Then my partner helped me raise the stack until my arms were in the fully extended near-lockout position. Once here, I lowered, fought and resisted the weight down! This double stressed the muscle big-time. However, I only used this on very select exercises, not squats!
I like extended sets. Say, you are doing seated dumbbell curls. I’ll drop the dumbbells at the point of failure at 8 reps and 2 forced -- and pick up a lighter pair and do another 2-3 reps. This is intensity past the point of failure.
If forced reps prove too tough or are impractical, try partials. Once you reach failure, say, doing dumbbell laterals, you can continue to move the dumbbell’s up but you’ll not be able to make full reps. It might be 3/4 or 1/2 reps then less. Finally you should not be able to move them at all. This fries your muscle!
When you hit a period of no gain on a muscle, try pre-exhaustion. Pre-exhaust your pectoral (chest) muscles working its prime mover function (horizontal abduction).
Do a set of cable flyes to failure. Then, immediately go to an exercise which works the muscle again, but uses an assisting muscle. In this case, bench presses.
The cable flyes blast your pecs but now benches utilize also your triceps and delts so you work your pectorals again! I really like pre-exhaust on large body parts like thighs and back. When working thighs, I do 3 sets of leg extensions to failure and then do leg presses.
Most bodybuilders don’t do it this way and do leg presses or squats first as they’ve learned from lifters but they want strength not size. So I can’t use as much weight as I usually can in leg presses. This also saves my joints!
I kept my sets rather low because I trained so intense! I never did more than five sets for an exercise counting warm-ups, even as a beginner. Over the years, I began to do a “one-all-out-main set” for each exercise, following 2 warm-up sets, so 3 sets in total.
But I must say, it took me almost 10 years to learn the nuances of bodybuilding, to understand what really worked best for me. I think beginners need a couple more sets to learn technique and to generate the necessary muscle pathways and of course, the older you get or the more injuries you have, the intensity one can train with in terms of a percent of maximum goes down. For example, one sprints until age 30 and jogs thereafter.
Beginners should not use forced or negative reps. I trained for 12 months before I tried a forced rep and only after two years of workouts did I begin to employ them regularly. For a beginner, going to failure generates enough muscular stress. The “newness” of your body to the rigors of weight-training guarantees the correct muscle-building response will occur. As you progress, you must choose the point at which you can honestly apply the one-main-set system.
HERE IS A DORIAN SET of INCLINE PRESSES:
Do 2-3 warm-up sets with 15 down to 8 reps. Then load up the bar with the maximum poundage for 8 reps to failure and get 2 forced reps. Then do a couple of negative reps or 2-3 rest-pause reps.
For anyone trying this one-set system, if you feel you can attempt a second set, then you couldn’t have been pulling out all the stops during the first set. Now there are many roads to Rome obviously since Lee Priest is pretty damn big and he does LOTS of sets, but I’ve never been a believer in volume work.
I think that one set with 100% intensity (sort of 8-13 reps or more movements) does the job. But one set of 1-3 reps would not build muscle size, you see. Bodybuilding is different than Olympic or powerlifting. It’s my contention that doing too many sets if they are high-intensity is over training and you will not recover.
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