Shock Techniques

Here are some tips on getting over plateaus:

Almost everyone will reach a point in their training program where it seems they are working their butt off but getting nowhere. This is described as a “plateau”. When you plateau, something needs to change. First, you should evaluate your program. Ask yourself: How long have I been consistent? How often do I change up my workout routine? What is my diet like? And HOW MUCH SLEEP AM I GETTING?

Chances are you have been doing the same routine for over 3 months consistently and/or your body is not getting enough of the proper nutrition it needs to grow. If nutrition is the case, that can be easily resolved with supplementation. If you have been doing the same routine for 3+ months then you may need to “shock” your muscles to get them to grow! Its always a good idea to change your routine every 3-4 weeks or so to keep them growing. That technique is known to bodybuilders as muscle confusion. Here is a list of different ways that you can confuse your muscles and get ‘em to grow past a plateau. It is not possible to use all of these techniques at once. Vary your workouts by incorporating a few of these deviations and you will see greater results from every work-out. Just remember that using some of these variations may cause over training if used on consecutive workouts.

Focus on the muscle. This in itself may be the single most important strategy used by bodybuilders to encourage muscle tissue break down. This is strictly a mental exercise. It will benefit you by allowing concentration on the particular muscle group that you are trying to stimulate. Here is an example for bench-press, but it can and must, for optimum gains, be applied to all lifts: Start by lying under the bar and completing a rep mentally. Think about what muscle you want to do the work. Then lift off the bar and focus on contracting your chest muscles to press the bar up. You may even do a rep or two with just the bar to prep your senses into what will be taking place after you add the weight. After you add the weight, don’t focus on pressing the weight up, but focus on flexing the muscles and on their contraction. The bar’s movement is simply a side effect of that contraction. An example of this technique on lat pulls: When pulling down, imagine your hands as merely hooks. Don’t focus on pulling down the bar, but imagine that you are just pulling down your elbows towards the floor.
The bar is coming down too, but only because your wrists are attached to it. Pull down your elbows but place your concentration and total focus on your lats and totally isolate them to do the pulling. Always think about the muscle that will be contracting and try to exaggerate the contraction on every movement.
Always, as with dumbbell rows, imagine your arms as only hooks that are connecting you to the weight and pull up by contracting the muscle; don’t just think of the lift as moving the bar. The bar’s movement is simply a side effect!

Varying intensity. You can sometimes challenge yourself by putting more exercises into your routine without using more time. Or you can try to get the same routine done in less time. This means less time between sets and it requires a fast recovery rate.

Heavy and light days. The best way to shock the muscle and keep it growing is to use heavy and light training days. Here is an example: On heavy days, use as much weight as you can for 3-4 reps and on light days, put on as much weight as you can for 12-15 reps.

Rest between sets can also be varied to give you some change. Try adding more rest for large muscle groups and less rest for small ones.

Forced reps are pretty popular. A forced rep is considered as trying to lift more weight than you can lift by yourself and needing your partner to help you finish the set. This is good on heavy days when you are at your failure point and you just need a little help to get that last rep. Another form of forced reps is to have your spotter force down the bar to your chest (on benchpress) on the eccentric (downward) phase of the lift by applying his bodyweight to the bar. You may need the spotter to help you get the bar back to the top of the movement.

Partial reps are a great way to get your muscles to burn. When doing partial bench press reps, you should only lift the weight about 4 inches off of your chest. This works great when used as a compound set w/ dumbbell bench or incline flys. This goes for any other exercise as well. Only do the first half of the rep. But don’t do these for squats; it’s a waste of time.

21’s are another form of partial reps. Instead of doing the full motion of the rep, do only the first half of one full motion for 7 reps. Then, do the second half of one full motion for 7 reps. Then, finish off the set with 7 reps of full motion for a total of 21 reps.

100’s are a killer exercise. This is particularly effective with bench. You simply use a weight that you think that you can lift for one hundred continuous reps.
Like burn outs, this should be done at the end of a session due to the inevitable exhaustion of glycogen stores and build up of lactic acid. It is not known how this causes any muscle growth. It defies most principles of muscle growth in that it doesn’t use enough weight to cause a tear down of tissue. Bodybuilders have realized its effectiveness. It may be that the vast amount of blood that accumalates in the muscle actually tears down the muscle fiber due to pressure.

Isolate your muscles to get the most out of a particular workout. Doing leg extensions are a great isolation workout for your thighs. For biceps I recommend doing dumbbell preacher curls. Isolation works only one specific muscle instead of a compound movement (ex. Bench= compound due to chest, triceps, and front delt involvement).