Monday, June 23, 2014




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"The road of life might be difficult or easy.  But whether we want to be in the driver's seat doing the best we can, or be dragged down the road yelling a loud screaming - is our own personal choice."

How To Keep Your Exercise Program
On Track And Progressing

In any exercise program one can reach a plateau when you seem to spin your wheels without showing progress in strength, firmness or in front of the mirror.  Strength training requires ever increasing intensity in your workouts because that's what it takes to stimulate muscular hypertrophy, toning and progress. You should also vary the exercises to use different muscles, increase the reps with lighter weights, and decrease the reps with heavier weights.  Start a set of each exercise using about half of what one rep could accomplish.  Example:  If you can do squats with a  maximum of 130 lbs. on the barbell for 1 rep, use 65 lbs to warm up the muscles of your legs.  Do another set for another 10 reps using about 95 lbs.but not to exhaustion.  The next set (3rd) try 110 lbs. until failure.  Then, if you are an experienced trainee, drop about 15-20 lbs off the barbell and do another set to failure.  Do this for all the muscles you want to develop and you should be able to get yourself out of the rut and on the highway to progressive bodybuilding.  The more advanced in your training and the more knowledge you acquire, the faster you'll be able to do multiple sets to fatigue your muscles.

Albert Einstein said "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome." Another aphorism is "“If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." So pushing yourself during your workout, and varying your exercises for the same muscle groups you want to develop, is the fastest and best way to progress.  It's a good sign when you have some pain and tightness in the muscles you worked on the previous day.

Next week the topic we'll consider a planned, safe, and scientific approach to strength training. It will be defined, in detail, and somewhat in a cook-book style presentation.  Each step should be understood for practical planning if you want to adapt some or all of the ideas given for your own personal program.

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