Weight Lifting Articles
I'll tell you right now, this will blow the doors off any preconceived notions you might have about training volume and how the body can respond and adapt to it.
Now, the very first time I came up with this technique, I used it to do dumbell shoulder presses. It was a Friday afternoon workout, and I did a set of presses with a pair of 60 lb dumbbells. I was able to do 8 reps with them.
But on Monday, only a few days later, I pressed 80 LB dumbbells for 11 REPS - same exercise, and using strict form. That was a 25% increase in strength in only a matter of 4 days!
So what happened in that one single workout that gave me such a HUGE increase in strength in only a matter of days?
I'm going to tell you...
I call it "Compound Exercise Overload." And let me tell you, if you've hit a plateau in ANY exercise, this technique will shatter it like a brick through a window!
Basically, you're going to take a single compound exercise (a.k.a. multi-joint exercise like bench press, squats, deadlifts, barbell rows, shoulder presses, close grip presses, etc.) and do ONLY that single exercise for 45 MINUTES straight.
And that's not even the brutal part...
The brutal part is...you are only allowed 20 seconds of rest between sets!
And, here's the other brutal part...you're going to end up doing between 80 to 100 sets with NEAR-MAXIMAL WEIGHTS (relatively speaking - I'll explain below) of that single exercise for the ENTIRE WORKOUT.
This is one of the toughest workouts you can do (when you do it right) but you WILL be rewarded with results.
Compound Exercise Overload works to increase strength in several ways:
1. It focuses your nervous system on a single specific exercise, i.e. "greasing the groove" at a specific rep range. No competing training stimuli here, just very specific focus - it's one of the reasons Olympic lifters only use a few lifts in their training. It's also one of the reasons they can lift such extraordinary amounts of weight!
2. It allows you to have a LOT of practice lifting heavy weight - this helps you to perfect your form and become more efficient with your lifting technique.
3. The high volume of training (those 80 to 100 sets you're going to do) creates an emergency situation in your body which forces rapid adaptation by your body (both in muscle and connective tissue).
4. The high volume also forces a tremendous amount of blood into the target muscle group, which helps drive nutrients into those target muscles, which helps them recover and grow!
Combine these four factors and you've got one POWERFUL workout.
PART 2... for the rest of the article....
All the best in your weight training, powerlifting, and bodybuilding, programs.
Jason, CSCS
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