Do you have a level medium / intermediary ?
Small definition: according to the NCSA (the National Strength and Conditioning Association), a newbie is a person for less than two months of resistance training (weight lift). An advanced person, has done it for more than one year and an intermediate person has at least six months, 2-3 times a week consistently.
The majority of us situate in the intermediate or advanced category. The above definitions is very important because without it, I couldn’t write this article. The problem with this definition presupposes that you do a linear progression, which means that you become consistently drier, stronger and you improve your exercise techniques.
The reality is that the majority of people incidental progress and yet they still lifting weights (because it’s cool) and never experience real progress.
The majority of people in this category is need to do one of two things:
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Train with a coach: a coach with enough experience to understand that you lost your soul in the desert of intermediate level.
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Understand that the exercises are a science and study the nuances to progress in stagnation phases.
The Nuances To Gain Muscle
Everybody noticed that the tempo to lift weights plays an important role in the size and quality of muscle tone.
Tempo is the speed of exercise’s movement during a rep. When you pay attention to that, you PROMOTED a greater secretion of growth hormone, better synchronization of neurons and increased protein synthesis. These are essential elements to become stronger and leaner. You just apply the right concepts at the right time.
Time Under Tension
Tempo is a separate entity from Time Under Tension (TUT), but they aren’t separate; tempo is simply a kind of TUT.
What’s the Time Under Tension ?
The best way to explain the TUT is to think of it as all of the time when a muscle is under stress. This includes the tempo of an exercise but also other training practices such as density and isometrics.
Anything that gives more stress longer to a muscle is generally advantageous to gain muscle and be lean.
The importance of time can’t be underestimated. The timing for an exercise place stress on a muscle and in this timing, cell membranes begin to swell (muscle pump), which also requires vasodilation and nutrient influx to repair the damaged area.
This is a crucial intense technique.
Tempo + Cells Swelling + Nutrients = Success.
Tempo is an important factor in the equation and can help create muscle tone but it isn’t the most important factor.
Time, Tempo and Combining The Two
Now that you know the trick, we will take this knowledge and give you new methods to use at the gym.
The last series
Here is what you do: take a break of 60 seconds after your last set and decreases the weight about 20%. After the break, doing a set of 25 reps. With proper technique, your contracted muscles throughout the exercise when you raise and lower the weight.
The benefits of this is the use and development of parts of the muscle that you don’t know, well all the parts of your muscle, pump.
Isotension
Isotension was created by the bodybuilder’s coach John Meadows; It’s really painful and will challenge your desire to continue but if you want out of this poor physical, you have to continue.
Let’s be super creative, okay? Tell your loved ones that you don’t talk to them for 24 hours. Now stay focus.
You put a bench, biceps curl. You take a barbell with a reverse close grip. You do your usual number of reps in each sets and the last sets raises the bar halfway up. In this position, contract your muscles and keeps it worked most powerfully as possible for 10 seconds.
This works because the muscles can be strengthened in particulary isolated parts of the movement. Choose the part that you feel the weakest, be it half way throught (which can help the muscle to peak) or a quarter of the way from the top or bottom which helps strengthen tendons and ligaments near your joint.
Note: If you keep the biceps curls during a quarter from the bottom, you’ll develop that sweet cut between your biceps and your forearms (the one that makes your arms look more defined that they really are).
Now that you have these specialized techniques , you will not floundering in the sea of mediocrity. That’s good !
Try these techniques and you will see you will always be motivated, no plateau . Good luck.
-Steph