Muscle Building Shock Techniques

Muscle building is all about progressive resistance. Just like anything in nature, stimulus and response. When the body responds to resistance training it's to increase the amount of muscle that needs to be repaired, the damaged muscle area is then repaired to compensate for the stress it's under during the last training session.

This is why we build muscle, so that the repaired muscle will work just a little easier to lift the same weight for the same reps next time. When the resistance is increased, together with exercise variations in each training session, the body continues to adapt by adding more muscle mass.

However, when the weight lifted and the sets and reps used to lift that weight remains constant, your muscle becomes conditioned to lifting that weight quickly, the problem is that over time this new strength starts to plateau. If you change the order of the movements you're doing while increasing the weight, applying maximum intensity, your muscle will grow in both size and strength.

The problem is that even if you mix up your movements you do every training session and you try increase intensity and the load lifted, you will reach that dreaded training plateau, eventually. The following well-known shock techniques have shown themselves to work when used correctly.

1. Super-sets:

Super-setting has been used by bodybuilders to build muscle for decades but there are many different ways to mix-up training two different movements without taking a rest between them. For example, when doing pre-exhaustion on super-sets you would do something like a D/B fly before doing a bench-press.

This would mean doing a set of say 6-12 reps of flies and then without resting finish the super-set with 6-12 reps of bench-press. But any combination can be used, like doing back and chest or triceps and biceps, lower back and abdominals, the choices are endless.

2. Drop-sets

This shock technique is intense, it demands reaching muscle failure and it demands a mental toughness. It starts with a movement where you push out a weight you've selected until you reach failure. Without resting, you then lighten the load lifted and rep out to failure again. You then repeat and lighten the load again, then rep out again to reach failure.

3. Giant Sets

Giant sets are very similar to doing super-sets but this time it's not two movements but three or more movements, without resting between sets. If you think you're strong on a specific movement try giant sets. The three or more movements you can do could be anything, like doing incline press, decline press and bench-press, but there are countless variations.

4. Forced Reps

Forced reps should be done with a spotter who knows what they're doing but essentially your objective is to lift a heavier weight to failure, or beyond. For example, let's say you can bench-press 200lbs for 6-8 reps. Adding 5lbs or 10lbs and asking your spotter to spot you to lift 4 or 6 reps with 210lbs.

For more information checkout Muscle Shock Training Techniques.