Don't Goof Around Doing Lousy Exercises if Your Goal is Developing Muscle
bodybuilding, progressive overload, exercises, muscle mass
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The key to developing muscle is progressive overload. This means that you must challenge your body with heavier and heavier resistance. The problem is that if the progressive overload is not objective and consistent, you are only going to be fooling yourself instead of actually improving. For example if you lift heavier, bur your form deteriorates, there is not real OBJECTIVE progress being made.
What exercises are lousy and why will they diminish your progress
If you stick mostly to single joint exercises, you will have do lost of them to cover the whole body. Additionally, the body does not react the same way to single joint exercises as compared to multi joint ones. The latter stimulate the hormonal system to a greater degree and subsequently the improvements are bigger. Also there are different single jointed exercises. A dumbbell concentration curl and a dumbbell triceps kickback will only isolate one muscle, while a barbell curl will work both the biceps and the forearm. To step it up a notch a chin up will work the back in addition to the aforementioned muscles of the arm.
The (incomplete) list of objective and productive exercises in order of muscular stimulation
Deadlifts
Squats
Bench Presses
Cleans
Chinups/Pullups
Overhead Presses
Rows
Dips
Curls
Calf raises
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on 2/7/2008
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13.4
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Are You Sabotaging Your Gym Progress
progressive, resistence, overload, bodybuilding, training
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What is the purpose of training your muscles
Weight training is a kind of stress. When your muscles, as well as tendons, bones and internal secretion glands are exposed to the stress of resistance training, they fatigue and break down a bit. The organs and tissues subsequently recover and become stronger than before.
What is progressive overload
In order to get stronger, the body has to experience conditions that are increasingly more difficult. If month after month you just go for the pump with your 3 sets of 12 at 200 pounds, guess what will happen? Your body will not change. The simplest way would be to just add more weight to the bar on your bench presses. However there are other ways to make the training conditions harder.
Ways to progress
The simplest way to progress is to do for example 3 to 5 reps or 8 to 12 and aim at hitting one more repetition the next time you are in the gym. For instance, 200 pound for 3 reps, next workout 200 pound for 4 reps, etc. Or if you go for the hypertrophy inducing rep range - 10 reps at 200 lbs, next workout 11 reps, you get my point. Add reps. Another way is to try to add weight to the bar or machine. Yet another way is to try to do more total reps (which means sets X reps)with the same weight. You can also try to finish the same workout in less time. These are all ways to make the conditions harder on your body.
How often can you progress
This depends mainly on how close you are to reaching your genetic potential. Beginners can and should strive to progress with each session, sometimes even daily. Intermediate trainers usually can increase the resistance once every 5 to 7 days. Advanced athletes are happy to improve once every 4-6 weeks. Olympic/Pro level trainees strive for annual progress or even plan their ascent in 4 year cycles for the Olympic games. You should strive to progress as often as possible for your condition. Trust me... read entire entry
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on 1/21/2008
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16.2
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