KEEP YOUR MUSCLES GUESSING | How To Increase Muscle Growth
HOW TO INCREASE MUSCLE GROWTH | KEEP MUSCLES GUESSING, REST & ROTATION
Some of the things I’ve learned over the years is that we need to keep the muscles guessing…
You can keep your muscles guessing with rotating routines every 3 months, monthly or even have 2/3/4 routines rotating weekly. I have had success with multiple routines; heavy week, light, circuit/endurance, muscle rest/cardio week or even variations of a heavy week with rotating just the exercises. This can be applied to all routines…rotation within rotation.
ROTATION AND REST
Keeping the muscles guessing and not knowing whats coming next will insure maximum growth. We have all heard of or experienced plato’s… variable routines can definitely help in this department. But to maximize growth and avoid plato’s, we need to be conscious of a few things DIET, REST and yes keeping the muscles guessing. Understanding that recovery leads to better performance, makes it just as or more important then the training it self. Simply put the muscle can be torn but can only be repaired by nutrients and rest.
2 kinds of rest… 1) sleep very important and 2) downtime. Downtime is very important because with out it adrenal fatigue (on going negative stress/high cortisol levels) will become the predominant restraint with performance, injuries, sleep quality, blood sugar balance and more plato’s! Adrenal fatigue is a large topic… maybe for another post. Ultimately the ideal rest would be 48 hours between anaerobic days, split by an aerobic day. This can be difficult for some to grasp especially if their training sport specific and require to achieve results in a specific time frame. But for most of us it should be part of the on going routine… allowing time to heal and preventing constant stress from over training. When we were young we can get away with it for awhile but it catches up with us eventually.
Looking at the big picture for your training is a good way to go… don’t just think about immediate results but the results over time… slow and steady you could say is the best way to achieve it. Wanting to get results fast and going hard all the time will only get you so far… going hard with proper rest and variable training may take longer at first but will always win the race. Keep the body free of injury and in good health.
AN EXAMPLE 3 WEEK CHEST ROUTINE
Just an example of a chest routine that worked well for me, this can be done heavy or light. But typically this would be more of a heavy rotation with the 4th week being a variation of light recovery.
3 week routine: I liked 6 sets of 6 with proper warm up first, when going heavy and 20/15/12/10/8 when going light
WEEK 1 | Flat
- Flat Bench
- Flat dumbbell press
- Flat dumbbell fly
WEEK 2 | Incline
- Incline Bench
- Incline dumbbell press
- Incline dumbbell fly
WEEK 3| Decline
- Decline Bench
- Decline dumbbell press
- Decline dumbbell fly
Nice simple and will keep the chest guessing for maximum gains. I feel free weights are best when trying to make big gains, and machines more for recovery.
Train Well,
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