Bodybuilders often worry if they have recruited and exhausted all muscle fibers

Bodybuilders often worry if they have recruited and exhausted all muscle fibers during a workout.

You simply need to go further in your workout. This makes your workouts more challenging and progressive.

What can you do to make your workout more intense? Fortunately there is a tried and tested path to follow as outlined below:

Add the resistance – If you increase the weight you’re lifting, your muscles have to work harder. Aim to increase the weight when you reach six to eight reps and failure does not occur.

Change the exercise – To achieve maximal gains all muscle fibers in a body part must be trained. You can do this by changing the angle of a current exercise or trying a new exercise.

Minimize your rest intervals – Giving the muscles less time to recover before exposing them to further work has the effect of increasing intensity.

Pre-exhaustion – When an exercise involves two or more muscles the weakest will prevent you from working the primary muscle to failure. You should isolate and tire the strongest muscle first before going on to another exercise.

Try supersets – Supersets involve doing two exercises for the same muscle group with no interval in between. This means you have to utilize different muscle fibers which stimulate greater growth.

Go for partial reps – When you reach failure, you won’t be able to perform the full range of movement for the exercise. Doing partial reps of the exercise that only involves a segment of the lift enable your muscles to work 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.

Employ isometric contractions – You just have to continue holding the weight still when you reach the point of failure to rouse a static contraction in the muscle.

Try to do forces reps – This involves doing one or more reps after your muscles have reached failure. 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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