Bodybuilders are typically always searching around for new ways to bust through training plateaus, to provide variety for your routines and to find new ways to trigger muscle growth and improve strength levels. Finding and making use of new different exercise techniques is essential for muscle building success as your muscles soon adjust to the demands of new exercises and will be unable to continue grow until new demands are made of them.
There are a variety of ways in which to stimulate growth including the standard progressive overload principle of using sets and reps and doing as many repetitions as you can until muscle failure. Other types of variations for stimulating growth include supersets, compound sets, drop sets, 21s, partials and so on. However in this article we shall see how you can make use of negatives to trigger muscle growth.
So, what are negatives? And how can you build muscle fast using negatives?
Well, negatives are performed as follows. Taking the bench-press as an example, imagine that your benchpress is 110kg for 8 repititions. You have stopped making any significant muscle building progress and gotten stuck at this weight. Put an extra 20kgs on to the bar and have your gym partner assist you in pushing the barbell until your arms are nearly fully locked. Now from the top position get your spotters to let go of the bar so that you can steadily under control lower the bar. Then let your friends help you press it back up once more. Do this repeatedly as many times as you can until you are unable to do any more reps safely.
Why should I make use of these negatives? And will I build muscle fast using negatives?
Well it happens to be that your muscles are actually in the lowering phase stronger than what they are in the lifting phase. So, you can actually force your muscles to handle more weight than they are used to using negatives. Do a few workouts such as this and you can trigger muscle mass growth and thus improve your weight training efforts for your normal routine and increase your overall muscle mass.
Does doing this pose any problems?
As your muscles are likely to not be used to doing this and for physiological reasons your muscles are more than likely going to be sore on the following days. Certainly do not workout again until you have totally recuperated and keep high your protein intake and be completely sure to take a quality protein shake straight after your weight session.
Negatives can be made use of for any exercise but work best for the classic mass builders such as the major compound multi-joint exercises like: squats, shoulder presses, dead lifts, pull ups, and so on. To trigger muscle growth and break training plateaus then use these workouts on an infrequent and occasional basis.
With those points in mind keep taking on good solid muscle building nutrition, rest plenty and workout vigorously and regularly and you will likely have no problems stacking on muscle mass. Now go ahead and build muscle fast using negatives.
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