Weight Training Tips and Articles

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.

Switch Your Rep Ranges Regularly

  If you’ve been weight training for a while, there’s a good chance that at some point you’ve hit a wall, or plateau, in your size and strength gains. This is something that happens to every weight trainer because you can’t get bigger and stronger all of the time. If you could powerlifting records would constantly be broken and bodybuilders would weigh 400 pounds of pure muscle. Hitting a plateau can make your workouts much less enjoyable if you can’t do any more weight or reps than you have before.

  The best way to break through a weight training plateau is to make a change in your routine. One of the easiest ways to do this is to use a different rep range on your sets of weight training exercises regularly. If your body gets used to doing the same amount of reps for every set you’ll certainly hit a plateau. Doing a different amount of reps per set way be just what you need to get past it.

  One great way to keep your muscle size and strength gains coming is to try a weight training routine where you do a light day, medium day, and heavy day for each muscle group. On the light day do sets with higher reps (15-20), on the medium day do sets of 10-15 reps, and on the heavy day do sets of 5-10 reps. If you do this you’ll hit both your fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers and give yourself a better chance of continual gains.

Building A Stronger Core

  If you’re into weight training it’s very important to have a strong core. The core is made up of the muscles in the midsection area of the body, including the abdominals, obliques, and lower back. Strengthening these muscles will help your body support and stabilize more weight on many major weight training exercises for other muscles, especially ones that involve many muscle groups like squats and deadlifts. Strengthening your core will also help you avoid injuries and improve your posture.

  To build a stronger core you need to perform abdominal and lower back workouts regularly. For your ab workouts do exercises such as crunches and leg raises, along with some ab training on a core ball. The abdominals recover quicker than most muscle groups so you can train them as much as every other day. For the obliques you should do some ab exercises where you twist on the way up, whether it’s on an upper ab or lower ab exercise. You can also do some side bends with a dumbbell in one hand or on a cable machine, or on an ab machine that allows you to do some more direct oblique training. Deadlifts and hyperextensions are great for building strength in the lower back. Some exercises for other muscles like dumbbell bench presses for the chest can be done on a core ball to build more core strength. Training the abdominals and lower back will also help you get a ripped midsection if you don’t have too much body fat covering them up.

  Even you’re more concerned with lifting as much weight as possible than getting ripped you’ll still need to strengthen your core so you can handle those weights. You’ll be glad you did.