Break 3 rules and build more muscle

Here's what you need to know...

1. Tension is the key to hypertrophy. Stop being a stickler when it comes to range of motion. Increase the time under tension and grow.
2. If you can't feel a muscle working, then isolation training can improve your mind-muscle connection. It will also improve muscle recruitment during multi-joint exercises.
3. Stop thinking that anything beyond 3 repetitions is cardio training. Build muscle using wider repetition ranges.

Performance and body appearance

Despite my focus on performance, I also want to look muscular and lean. The same goes for my clients.

I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of great bodybuilders, both amateur and professional. I worked with Amit Sapir for a few years - starting when he was still an amateur and ending when he won his professional license.

I trained Patrick Bernard, an IFBB pro in the 212-pound class, as well as a young female athlete in the figure class who won her class.

You can learn from anyone who trains hard - bodybuilders, powerlifters, athletes, CrossFitters, Olympic weightlifters, etc. If you close your eyes to any training modality, you will miss out on a lot.

Having said that, here are three things I've learned while working with bodybuilders - including conventional rules that need to be broken.

1 - Always use full range of motion

Form is important. Good technique equals better performance. If you're competing in sports like Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, strongman and CrossFit, a repetition that isn't complete or done according to the rules doesn't count.

It was always hard for me to accept half squats, bench press reps that were not done to full extension of the arms and the like. But I've changed my mind.

Why you should break this rule:

Partial reps or "incomplete reps" can be very effective. Here are the reasons why:

1. The first guy I ever trained who had over 80 centimeters of thigh circumference was a bodybuilder who always went halfway down on his squats (thighs parallel to the floor) and on some reps he stopped even higher up and yet he still had monstrous thighs! I also noticed that probably the best Olympic weightlifter, Ilya Illyin, performs squats in a similar way. It is also common for Chinese Olympic weightlifters to perform quarter squats or quarter front squats after the primary squat workout has been completed.
2. One of my clients, IFBB Pro Patrick Bernard, has amazing triceps, although he never goes through the full range of motion on close grip bench presses, always ending the movement 3 to 5 centimeters above the chest and just before the position with fully extended arms. In dips, he only performs the upper half of the movement and in bench presses he ends the movement 3 to 5 centimeters before the arms are fully extended. He can perform these exercises over the full range of motion without any problems. He bench presses 205 kilos using the competition style, but when he trains he generally only uses half to two-thirds of the range of motion.
3. I worked with Alex Raymond for a while and he didn't perform tricep presses through the full range of motion due to an elbow injury. Despite this, triceps were one of his best muscle groups. He also finished the upward movement on shoulder presses before his arms were fully extended and he only lowered the bar or dumbbells to the level of his mouth - but he still had amazing shoulders.
4. Some of the guys with the biggest biceps I've ever seen are the ones who only use the middle range of motion on curls and keep the muscle under constant tension.
5. Even though Patrick Bernard uses a full range of motion on his squats, he only performs leg presses through a very short range of motion. As a result, he has amazing vastus medialis development.

Partial repetitions are common, if not the norm, in bodybuilding. This was shocking to me at first, but after analyzing this, I realized that for a bodybuilder, the purpose of performing an exercise with weights is simply to put tension on a muscle to make it grow.

It doesn't really matter what the exercise looks like as long as it puts the muscle under optimal load/tension. Bodybuilders have empirically found that performing certain exercises over only a portion of the range of motion is what works best for their goals.

Bodybuilders tend to use relatively high repetition numbers while still relying on fairly heavy weights. This is something that can take its toll on the joints and reducing the range of motion can give the joints a break.

I'm not saying you should start by avoiding a full range of motion execution on every set of every exercise. After all, performing the big basic exercises through full range of motion involves a greater amount of muscle mass and reaching the stretched position increases growth stimulus by activating the mTor pathway.

But if you're focusing on constant tension, it's perfectly fine to train only in the portion of the range of motion that keeps the target muscles under load.

Here are some examples of how you can incorporate partial repetitions into your training:

Exercise	Training range	Purpose
Bench press	End the movement a few centimetres before fully extending the arms	Maintains constant tension on the chest muscles, prevents excessive involvement of the triceps, reduces strain on the elbows
Tight bench press	2.5 to 5 cm before reaching the chest, until just before full extension of the arms	Makes working with a narrow grip safer for the shoulders, prevents excessive involvement of the chest
Incline bench press	2.5 to 5 cm before reaching the chest, up to 2.5 to 5 cm before full extension of the arms	Maintains constant tension on the chest muscles, prevents excessive strain on the shoulders
Dips	The shoulders are in the lower position above the elbows	Allows the triceps to do most of the work while reducing the load on the shoulders
Shoulder press	Bar/dumbbell no lower than mouth height, up to 2.5 to 5 cm before full extension of the arms	Keeps constant tension on the deltoids, prevents takeover by the triceps, reduces the load on the shoulders in the lower position
Squats / front squats	From thighs parallel to the floor to 2.5 to 5 cm before full extension of the legs	Keeps the quadriceps under constant tension and reduces the involvement of the gluteus and leg extensors
Leg presses	Push down to just before reaching 90 degrees of knee flexion	Increases vastus medialis stimulation and reduces stress on the hips and lower back
Curls (biceps)	From just before full elbow extension to just before reaching maximum contraction	Keeps the load on the biceps by preventing excessive involvement of the shoulders and trapezius, reduces the load on the elbows
Tricep press (cable, dumbbell or barbell)	Go from full flexion to about 3 cm before reaching full extension	Reduces the load on the elbows, keeps the triceps under constant tension
Romanian deadlift	Go as far down as possible but only three quarters of the way up	Keeps the hamstrings under constant tension, reduces the risk of possible lumbar hyperextension

I would not use partial repetition training exclusively. It's more of a support technique. I certainly wouldn't use it if I wanted to train with heavy weights and low reps as it defeats the purpose of the exercise.

Partial reps are best reserved for training with moderate to high reps (8 to 20). If you decide to use this technique, you should perform at least one exercise for each muscle group through the full range of motion. Train using full range of motion most of the time, but know the value of partial repetitions and don't shy away from using them if they fit your goals.

2 - Don't waste time with isolation exercises

Strength athletes often make fun of isolation exercises. I have done this too. And at the same time, I was someone who extolled the vital importance of a good mind-muscle connection.

This may not seem like a contradiction...until you realize that the best way to improve a lousy mind-muscle connection is to isolate the muscle.

Why you should break this rule:

Learning to feel a muscle will make it easier to stimulate growth. Isolation gives you the ability to feel individual muscles working.

Isolation training can even be used as a tool to improve the recruitment of a muscle so that you can better stimulate it with multi-joint exercises.

If you can't feel a muscle working during an exercise, then you can't stimulate it optimally. The more you can feel a muscle working, the better the recruitment of that muscle and the stronger it will grow.

Simply "thinking" about a muscle while performing an exercise or trying harder to feel the muscle working will not make a difference in most cases. If you can't feel your pecs working during the bench press, then you won't feel them working any better if you think about them.

This is where isolation training can help you. By learning to isolate and contract a muscle while generating maximum tension with that muscle, you will gradually improve your capacity to recruit that muscle. The better you can recruit a muscle, the easier you can integrate it when performing multi-joint exercises.

A few years ago, having just transitioned from Olympic weightlifting to regular strength training/bodybuilding, my shoulder muscles were so dominant that no matter what I did, I couldn't get my pecs to grow. I could bench press 180 kilos but still had a flat chest.

To "reprogram" my pec recruitment, I performed more isolation exercises and pre-fatigue training. It wasn't long before I could feel my chest during every variation of the bench press. My chest was catching up in its development compared to my shoulders and at one point I had to use the same strategy for my shoulder muscles as my chest had become dominant compared to my shoulders!

Sure, it sounds better to preach performing the classic big basic exercises than using isolation exercises. Squats, bench presses, deadlifts, shoulder presses, power thrusts...all of these make you sound hardcore.

But the truth is that any resistance exercise can build muscle mass. Isolation exercises simply do this to a lesser extent because there aren't as many different muscles involved. But if you train them hard, they will work too.

However, the biggest benefit of isolation exercises is still that you can increase your capacity to recruit a lagging muscle, and by increasing this capacity you also improve your chances of optimally stimulating that muscle during the big basic exercises.

Isolation training is motor learning - learning to maximally recruit and contract a muscle. Even though most of your training should revolve around the big basic exercises, isolation may be necessary to solve a problem with muscle groups that are lagging behind in their development.

In this case, isolation training on its own or as part of a pre-fatigue superset (where the isolation exercise is performed before the multi-joint exercise) can help solve the problem by increasing your capacity to recruit a muscle and optimally integrate it into a large multi-joint exercise.

3 - To get stronger, keep the reps low

I love low reps. If we were training based on what we enjoy, I would never do more than 3 reps per set, while most of my training would consist of single reps and sets of 2 reps. And I did indeed do this for quite a long time.

Pure strength athletes tend to stick to low reps (1 to 5) in their workouts. Sometimes you might go up to 6 to 8 reps, but that's usually with isolation training. Bodybuilders, on the other hand, will use any repetition range to stimulate growth - low (1 to 5), moderate (6 to 10), high (12 to 20) and even very high (more than 20).

Why you should break this rule:

Strength athletes who are so focused on simply moving heavier and heavier weights are depriving themselves of some potential gains. Because while it's true that the nervous system is the key factor when it comes to strength, it's ultimately the muscles that move the weight.

And all else being equal, the more muscle you have, the stronger you will be.

An increase in strength in the lower repetition range (say 2 to 5 reps), will also transfer to the maximum weight for a repetition (1RM weight) and make you generally stronger than an increase in strength in a higher repetition range (8 to 12 reps). But if you get stronger in each repetition range, then you will be stronger overall.

Bodybuilders understood a long time ago that, provided they work hard, they can make any muscle grow with pretty much any type of repetition range. If you train consistently and try to get progressively stronger in the repetition ranges you use, then your muscles will grow regardless of whether you do 3 reps or 20 reps.

When I incorporated a slightly higher repetition range (5 to 10) into my training, I built more muscle faster. Now that I'm looking to build some muscle mass again after some medical issues, I've incorporated some work in the higher repetition range (up to 10 reps, even on the big multi-joint exercises) into my training and I'm noticing a difference in terms of growth.

And if I only train heavy once a week, I'm still getting stronger, even though I'm doing less "pure strength training".

A good approach could look something like this:

Week 1-3

• Day 1: Pull training session, sets of 10 repetitions
• Day 2: Push training session, sets of 10 repetitions
• Day 3: Leg training session, sets of 10 repetitions
• Day 4: test * (1 leg, 1 pull, 1 push), sets of 3 repetitions

Week 4-6

• Day 1: Pull training session, sets of 6 repetitions
• Day 2: Push training session, sets of 6 repetitions
• Day 3: Leg training session, sets of 6 repetitions
• Day 4: test * (1 leg, 1 push, 1 pull), sets of 2 repetitions

Week 7-9

• Day 1: Pull training session, sets of 3 repetitions
• Day 2: Push training session, sets of 3 repetitions
• Day 3: Leg training session, sets of 3 repetitions
• Day 4: test * (1 leg, 1 push, 1 pull), sets of 1 repetition each

* Day 4 of each week is a "test" day where you perform a heavy set to make sure you don't lose the feel for using near-maximal weights. For example, over the course of 5 to 6 sets, work your way up to your 3RM weight on front squats (legs), bench presses (press) and deadlifts (pull).

Bodybuilders will often use even wider repetition ranges, but the above represents an excellent compromise for goals that are both performance-based and aesthetically based. It will help you get stronger while building more muscle.

By Christian Thibaudeau | 07/07/14

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/break-3-rules-build-more-muscle