Weight Training Tips and Articles

Heavy Duty Weight Training

  One of the more unique weight training routines is the Heavy Duty routine. It’s an extremely low set, high intensity routine. 1970s bodybuilder Mike Mentzer created Heavy Duty with the belief that most bodybuilders of the time were training way too much - some were doing 3 or 4 hour workouts. He advocated much shorter workouts with a few very high intensity sets per muscle group with plenty of rest to avoid ever overtraining. In his heyday, former Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates used a variation of Heavy Duty.

  A Heavy Duty routine calls for as little as 1 or 2 sets per exercise and only a few exercises per muscle. Every set must be done to failure and possibly even beyond it with forced rep and other high intensity techniques. With the set count so low, only major compound exercises should be done.

  To do a Heavy Duty weight training routine effectively you really need to know your body and have the ability to get a lot out of each and every set you do. It’s not a good idea for a beginner to try Heavy Duty since they are still trying to learn proper exercise form and how their body reacts to weight training. A good time to try Heavy Duty would be when you feel you’ve been overtraining for a while. If your body feels beat up and you weight train almost every day for hours at a time you could give Heavy Duty a try to get more recovery and allow your body to “catch up” and build more muscle and strength.

The 10 Sets Of 10 Weight Training Workout

  If you’ve been weight training for a while, it’s inevitible that at some point you’ll hit a wall in your muscle size and strength gains. Your workouts may also become boring and not give you the same pumped up feeling you used to get. Whether you’ve hit a plateau, gotten bored with your workouts, or both there’s one high intensity weight training workout you can try that’s guaranteed to kick your butt - the 10 sets of 10 workout.

  The 10 sets of 10 workout sounds simple enough - you do 10 sets of 10 reps. Waht makes it interesting is that you take a major compound exercise for the muscle group you’re training that day and do 10 sets of 10 reps with one minute of rest between sets using a weight that you can normally do for 20 reps to failure. For example, if you’re doing a chest workout and can usually do 175 lbs. for 20 reps on the bench press you take that 175 lbs. and do 10 sets of it for 10 repititions each set with one minute of rest between sets. It’s much harder to do than you would think. While the first 3 or 4 sets should be relatively easy and shouldn’t bring you very close to failure, you’ll be struggling by the middle sets and may not even be able to get the 10 reps by the last couple of sets if you’ve never tried this before. No matter what, the 7th through 10th sets will be very intense.

  If you’re going to try the 10 sets of 10 reps workout you should use a major exercise for whatever muscle you’re working. This means bench presses for chest, deadlifts for lower back, rows or pulldowns/pull-ups for the upper back, military or dumbbell presses for the shoulders, squats or leg presses for the quadriceps, leg curls for the hamstrings, curls for the biceps, or tricep extensions for the triceps. If you decide to try this workout you will only need to do one exercise for the muscle you’re training - you won’t need to do any more exercises or sets. Because of this you shouldn’t be trying the 10 sets of 10 workout with isolation exercises.

  Even though you’re only using one exercise per muscle when you try the 10 X 10 workout you will feel it the next day, and probably for a couple of days after that. The intensity of the 10 X 10 workout is no joke. This workout is something you should only do for 2 or 3 weeks at a time to kick your weight training workouts back into gear before going back to your normal routine.

Building Bigger Biceps With High Intensity Weight Training

  The vast majority of men who are into weight training want to build bigger biceps. While the biceps aren’t the largest muscle group by any means, they are very easy to show off and many women love them. If you concentrate on intense biceps workouts you can get the arm size you’re looking for.

  One great technique to use for any biceps exercise is to get a few extra “cheat” reps when you’re doing a set of curls after you’ve done as many with good form as possible. Once you get to the point where can’t do another rep with good form bend your back a bit and straighten it to get the weight up. When you have the weight at the top part of a rep lower it as slowly as possible. Doing this allows you to take advantage of the negative part of a repitition when you’re doing sets of biceps exercises. This should give you a great pump in the bis and give you a better chance at more muscle growth in the arms. You can use cheat reps on pretty much any biceps exercise.

  Another great way to add some high intensity weight training into your biceps workout is to do some drop sets. To do drop sets for biceps do a set of curls and when you get to failure drop the weight and do more reps. You can drop the weight a few times if you want to get a great burn in the biceps. Barbell, dumbbell, cable, preacher, or concentration curls will all work well for drop sets. Drop sets are best used as a finisher to a biceps workout.