If you are reading my articles regularly, you would know that I am a strict believer in intensity of workouts and going to failure. Here are a couple of key points that are an important part of making progress this way, but are rarely discussed.
First thing to make sure is that the sets last long enough to stimulate muscle growth. Arthur Jones recommended everyone to do a set of 8-12 reps with the positive lasting for 2 seconds and negative lasting for 4 seconds. This would make each rep last for 6 seconds and the set last for about 48- 72 seconds. The reason why I am highlighting the time is to show how much time your muscle must be under tension to stimulate growth according to Arthur Jones. But most of us complete one rep within 2-3 seconds. So a set of 8 lasts for 16-20 seconds, which is not even half of what Arthur Jones recommends. So the time under tension for the muscle is very less. This might be the mistake that most of the bodybuilders do and complain about their poor genetics. Most of the bodybuilders do not reach their genetic potential and start complaining about their genetics.
Another important point which is less talked about is the importance of the last rep. Arthur Jones preached training to failure and also advised people to go beyond failure. If you are looking for some quick improvement in your muscle then this is the most important thing that you need to concentrate on your workouts.
And I am not talking about the famous high intensity techniques such as rest-pause, pre-exhaust, drop sets etc. I am going to explain about a specific way of training the last rep. Arthur Jones suggested that once you could no longer complete another repetition, you should continue pushing or pulling on the weight.
Obviously you have to train in power racks with safety pins to implement these in movements like squats or bench press. And one more important requirement is to have a very good spotter.
Let us understand this technique with the help of bench press as an example. For most people when they reach their failure, they get stuck near the last rep near the bottom. The spotter has to pull the weight and rack it. Instead try holding or pushing the immovable weight against gravity in that position of stretch for a good 20 seconds, till you can no longer even hold the weight. Then allow the spotter to rack the weights.
On barbell curls, you would most likely come to a grinding halt about two or three inches into the rep, when your arms are slightly bent. You know you won't make the rep but you still have to continue to pull on the bar for as long as you can, before finishing the set.
The key concept here is that, all movements have a positive, a negative and a static movement. In the traditional training methodology, we fatigue the muscle in the positive and negative and reach failure and go even beyond failure. But we still have the static position energy in the muscle. And the muscles helping to hold weights in static position are not used up. To fatigue those muscle fibers, that is use up maximum muscle fibers to induce better growth stimulation you need to do static holds like this at the end of the sets.
For those who don’t know Arthur Jones, He was the mentor of “The great Mike Mentzer” Arthur Jones was the inventor of the High intensity training.
Try this technique and you will have a lot of muscle gains in a short span of time.
All the best for your gains….
