Blow Up Your Physique Using These 11 Smart Bombs

Story by: Christopher R. Mohr, PhD, RD, and Greg E. Bradley-Popovich, DPT, MS, CSCS

ARSENAL: TRAINING Elevate Testosterone Levels No wonder low-fat diets aren't conducive to making big gains in lean tissue. WEAPON: NEGATIVES Strategy: The eccentric portion of a lift, better known as the negative, is a crucial part of muscle action. Contracting a muscle to maintain control of the weight as the muscle lengthens leads to cellular damage called micro-trauma, which in turn stimulates the release of local growth factors and revs up the anabolic machinery to build muscle. What's more, a muscle is 40% stronger as it lowers a weight than when it lifts it. To exploit that discrepancy, some bodybuilders use a weight so heavy that a spotter helps them lift it, after which they lower it back down solo.

Deployment: You'll do 2 - 3 sets of negatives on your first exercise for each bodypart for one week (see "Training Weapons" below). Some examples of quality exercises include the bench press, overhead press, front pulldown, leg extension, leg curl, cable pressdown, barbell curl and standing calf raise. Select a weight significantly heavier than that with which you can normally get eight reps. Have a spotter lift the weight for you, then lower it yourself; it should take 3 - 5 seconds. Do eight reps, then perform straight sets for your remaining exercises.

WEAPON: THE ISOMETRIC "HOLD"
Strategy: This refers to that moment of idleness between the concentric and eccentric actions, just before the weight changes direction. Only it doesn't have to be idle: When used correctly, these "holds" demand highly active focus and control. They can also produce muscle growth beyond that stimulated by the moves book-ending it. In this case, the hold itself constitutes the entire set. Deployment: As with negatives, you'll train isometrically for your first exercise of every bodypart with a weight significantly heavier than you'd normally use. The exercise you select, however, will be an isolation move, preferably using a machine or cables. Do 1 - 2 sets of simply holding the weight at the top of the movement for 10 - 20 seconds.

WEAPON: TRAINING TO FAILURE
Strategy: Failure refers to the point at which you cannot execute another repetition using reasonably good technique. Reaching that point with loads lighter than you might normally associate with hypertrophy can build mass. In fact, some researchers suggest that intensity of effort may be more important than volume or load at inducing strength-training adaptations.
Why? By the end of the lighter-but-longer set, even those hard-to-reach "high threshold" motor units (each nerve cell, and the muscle cells it supplies) are called into play.
Deployment: Plan on doing 3 - 4 exercises per bodypart, three working sets each. Since you'll be doing this for only one week, rep out to muscle failure on every set. (Typically we advise going to failure on only one set per move, but this week go balls to the wall.)
Strategy: Drop sets provide a unique stimulus by allowing multiple levels of muscular fatigue within repeated sets of an exercise. They're particularly great for blasting through strength plateaus.
Deployment: Continue the last set of each exercise until you cannot complete another rep with good form. Immediately decrease the resistance by roughly 30% and continue to failure. This "drop" in resistance may be repeated once more, as long as the set doesn't exceed 120 seconds total (the so-called anaerobic window). M&F

WEAPON: Drop Sets
Strategy: Drop sets provide a unique stimulus by allowing multiple levels of muscular fatigue within repeated sets of an exercise. They're particularly great for blasting through strength plateaus.
Deployment: Continue the last set of each exercise until you cannot complete another rep with good form. Immediately decrease the resistance by roughly 30% and continue to failure. This "drop" in resistance may be repeated once more, as long as the set doesn't exceed 120 seconds total (the so-called anaerobic window). M&F