People don’t actually ask, “How do much you bench?” anymore, do they? Hopefully not.
The perception of fitness and what’s been considered “fit” has evolved and changed over the years. You’ll always have the folks looking to lift as much as humanly possible, runners attempting to run for multiple days on end with no sleep, and CrossFitter’s trying to beat everyone in…well… everything. You get where we’re going here.
Everyone has their own unique goals, but if you’re just trying to add a little bit of muscle here, and cut a little bit of fat there, lifting weights will do the job. Here are some basics to make it a bit more exciting.
1. SUPERSETS
Supersets are a combination of two exercises, performing one immediately after another with zero rest in between.
2. HIGH-to-LOW SPEED REPS
Perform one exercise for high reps with low resistance and at a fast tempo. Immediately following the set, choose a new exercise for the same muscle group and perform the exercise for low repetitions with heavy resistance at a slow tempo.
3. PUSH vs. PULL
Train one muscle group followed by the opposing muscle group in the same workout, and or set.
4. GIANT SETS
Perform three exercises back to back without rest.
5. REST PAUSE
Perform an exercise to failure, rest for 10 seconds, then continue to push out additional repetitions.
6. CLUSTER SETS
Cluster sets involve “inter-repetition” intervals that are 10-second rests between each individual repetition.
7. ECCENTRICS
Perform the concentric portion (lifting) of the exercise a normal tempo and the eccentric phase (lowering) very slowly.
8. MOMENTUM
Perform an exercise at a favorable speed utilizing body leverage to overcome weakness in performing repetitions. This is more commonly known as “cheating.”
9. SPLIT VOLUME
Take an entire training workload and split it into two separate workouts in the same day.
10. DROP SETTING
Perform an exercise to complete failure, remove the weight, and continue to perform additional repetitions.
11. UNILATERAL TRAINING
Apply resistance to one side of the body to create an undistributed load.
12. PYRAMIDING
Incrementally increase the amount of weight for an exercise with each set until reaching a peak, then with additional sets, slowly decrease the weight.
13. FORCED REPS
Use a spotter to help perform additional repetitions as soon as you reach muscular failure.
14. ISOMETRICS
The type of muscular contraction where no movement occurs such as a plank or bridge.
