The shot is from the movie Iron Claw and the rights belong to A24.
We all love to have a fit, good-looking body, but achieving a sexy muscular body is no easy game. It takes years and years to get close to the level that you desire. But you can accelerate your growth rate if you train intelligently and efficiently. So Let me give you some advice based on the literature and my experiences with bodybuilding as a natural lifter.
1. Reduce volume
When we start going to the gym, we do a lot of different exercises. At first, it can be beneficial in that you can learn how to move your body more efficiently and master your form and technique. But as you get more experienced and start to lift heavier, you can no longer perform, let’s say, 40 sets in a single day without experiencing high levels of fatigue that can hinder your progress. For people like me who love to spend time in the gym and try a variety of exercises, it may sound deflating. But, I assure you, you will be better off doing less in a single day. So next time, do less, actually.
2. Increase intensity
All right. So now that you listened to the first tip, you need to do something else too. You need to increase your intensity within each set. So now you have less to do quantity-wise but more to do quality-wise. If you only cut down on your volume without intensifying each movement and focusing more on what you’re doing, you won’t take your program any further; in fact, it can be bad for your growth. So try to go to failure or shy of failure in every exercise that you do (unless you’re just trying to activate or warm up your muscles) and focus on your mind-muscle connection. So you may have 3 different exercises for your back in a single day, but you do them much more efficiently and avoid junk volume, which only exhausts your body unnecessarily.
3. Work on your cardio
Picture: Allstar/Paramount Pictures
Have you ever tried to do high-repetition sets with light weights but felt out of breath and couldn’t do it anymore despite having some more reps in the tank?
Having a weak cardiovascular can hinder you from doing your hypertrophy exercises effectively. You may have the strength to do 20 or 30 reps of lat pull-downs within a set, but because you have weak lungs and feel out of breath so easily, you cannot go to failure or close to failure within that rep range and will miss out on the gains that you could’ve achieved. A weak breath can be hampering even in a low rep range. For example, when doing heavy squats, you can easily get winded, even in a low repetition range like 3 to 6, and if you don’t have a strong heart and you’ve never jogged in your entire life, you can’t use all your muscular capacity during your squat since you couldn’t breathe anymore. So a rock-solid cardiovascular can bring out your leftover gains indirectly.
4. Do half range of motion
Okay, that statement can question the legitimacy of my tips because we all know that full range of motion is better than half range of motion. And it is not not correct. It is correct. (sorry, I like to play). But there can be a way to do your exercises in a half range of motion and benefit so much from it. As the research shows, doing your movements in a stretched position can stimulate muscle growth so much more. So when you’re doing an exercise, see what part of it stretches the muscle and try to perform within that range. For example, in a biceps curl, you feel the stretch at the bottom of the movement, and the most growth happens there. So you can move your arm only in that bottom range and not go all the way up.
You can do a whole exercise with this method, or you can add an extra few reps and do them in a half range of motion in that stretched position at the end of some of your sets.
Example: Chest training
Incline Press 3 sets of 10 (in the last set, the two last reps are done only within the bottom range)
Machine Chest Flyes 3 sets of 12 (the last set is done only in a stretched position)
Note: Performing your sets in a full range of motion is really important, and you absolutely have to do it, but adding this technique can make your training even smarter.
5. Rest more between sets
Picture: Paramount Pictures
When we try to build muscle, we don’t need to do everything back to back to grow our muscles. It is not cardio. In doing cardio, the aim is to move constantly without stopping. But in hypertrophy or strength training, you need to rest more so you can move that heavy-enough weight and go shy of or close to failure. When you don’t take your time and immediately go to the next set or movement, you can’t lift as heavy or do as much. If you say that it’s time-consuming, it is not. Why? Because based on what I said, you now do less volume, so there is plenty of time to spend.
Of course, there are other ways to train. For example, in metabolic training (doing high repetitions), within a 4-set exercise, you may want to reduce your resting time and weight together for each set, so this way, you can perform the same amount of repetitions in every set since you didn’t only reduce your rest, but you lifted lighter as well. So you matched the shorter rest time with that lighter weight. And this way, you have benefited from the metabolic effects of that fast-paced high-repetition exercise.
But in my opinion, natural lifters are better off doing the majority of their sets within that 8 to 12-rep range and taking longer durations of rest between sets and making sure of the efficiency of their workout.
