Intensity is what can make the progressive workout effective.

What is Intensity?

One kind of it involves how hard you try. This is the intensity of the effort. Another type is the amount of stimulation you can deliver to the muscles, which results in their response and growth. This is the intensity of the effect. It is important to understand the difference between these two types of intensity, otherwise, you will probably continue to put too much effort (often to the extent of getting injured) rather than master the types of intensity techniques.

Increase in training intensity



Increasing the intensity at the beginning is not so difficult. You learn how to do more exercises and how to do them properly. You become stronger and better trained so that you can train harder, for a longer time, and put your muscles under greater strain. However, once your body becomes accustomed to this effort, it will be more difficult for you to continue to increase the intensity at the same pace.

If you take great breaks and exercise very slowly, it will take you half a day before you complete your workout, and the actual intensity of your efforts will be minimal.

By organizing time, you can increase the intensity in two main ways:

• by doing the same amount of work, but in less time
• doing more exercises at the same time

However, the most obvious way to increase your workload is simply by training with more weight. Another valuable method is to reduce the rest time between batches and to try to do two or three exercises in a row without stopping.

This puts greater demands on your strength and endurance. In the same way as strength, endurance is something that can be developed progressively and little by little. Also, you should train at the fastest possible pace for you, but without being careless about your technique. This will help you complete the maximum amount of work in a minimum amount of time.



In addition to increasing your intensity by manipulating time or by adding extra weight, several special training techniques can help you secure your progress. These all involve methods of insertion and additional, unusual or unexpected stress on the muscles, thus forcing them to adapt to the increased demands on them.

Shocking principle

The principle of shock involves shocking and surprising the body by changing the different aspects of your workout. The body has incredible adaptability and can adapt to a training load that would also make it difficult for a horse. However, if you are always subjecting your body to the same type of stress, and in the same way, getting used to it, and even intense training will result in a smaller response than you expected. You can shock it by training with more than your usual weight; by doing more reps and/or series; accelerating your training; reducing the break time between batches; unusually doing your exercises, or using any or all of the intensity-enhancing techniques listed here.



Change in itself has the property of shocking the body, even if a workout whose content or consistency you are not accustomed to is already beginning to make less and fewer demands on your body. But you will get to the point where you will find it difficult to make extra success without shocking your muscles so that they become bigger and stronger, more fulfilled, firmer and harder embossed.

Forced training reps

One method of performing involuntary repetition is by getting the support of your training partner through a little extra lift on his part to help you continue. However, we have never liked this method because the partner will not know how much to help you and what you can do on your own. We prefer the kind of forced reps that are sometimes called rest/pause workouts. This method uses a relatively high weight and a failure occurs during the series. Then you stop, leave the weight for only a few seconds and then do a forced extra repetition. Again, rest for only a few seconds before you force yourself to do another repetition.



This method depends on the rapid initial muscle recovery after exercise, and you can use this recovery to perform a few additional forced reps. If you rest for too long, many of the tired fibers recover and so you end up reusing them instead of stimulating new ones. To get the most out of this method, you can put the weight on the floor for a moment, pick it up again, and force yourself for extra reps. In exercises such as lever dialing, you can do your reps, let go of the lever, rest for a moment, and then force yourself to do a few more.

Partial repetitions



Performing partial reps when you are too tired to complete a full repetition  is a shocking method that I have always used for almost all the muscles in my body. The method is especially beloved by Dorian Yates. Dorian did a lot of training in which he forced his muscles after reaching the point of instant failure to almost complete exhaustion, using techniques such as forced and partial repetitions.

Partial reps are most effective when performed at the end of a series when you are almost exhausted. For example, if you make cattle folds, your partner should help you lift the weight, and then you should lower it by a few degrees, then lift it as far as possible, even if they are only a few inches. Then you lower it a little more and do a few more partial reps from this position, repeating it until your muscles burn and exhaust.



Isolated (analytical) training

Analytic training involves focusing your efforts on a specific muscle or muscle group, aiming to maximize isolation from other muscles. Here's an example of what can be gained from analytical training: when you do complex exercises such as pushing a barbell out of bed, the muscles involved are the large chest muscles and allow you to train them at maximum intensity. As a next step, you can take a flight with a hemline dumbbell as a way of isolating only the upper chest. Going even further, you can perform a crossover, emphasizing especially when crossing your arms to get maximum peak contraction of the exercise. This would isolate and develop the upper and upper pectoral muscles.



Analytical training can allow you to fully develop every part of your body, improving the condition of any weak area and helping you achieve the top shape and relief you need.

Negative (eccentric) repetitions during training

When you lift a weight, using the contractile force of your muscles, you are performing what is called a positive movement. When you reduce the weight, this way, the seizures of the muscle are separated, and so you perform the so-called. eccentric muscle contraction, which in bodybuilding is also called negative movement or repetition.

Negative repetition puts the tendons and supporting structures in greater stress than the muscles themselves. This is useful because you want the strength of your tendons to grow in parallel with the strength of your muscles. To take full advantage of the negatives (ie, negative repetitions) in your normal workout, always lower the weight slowly and under control, rather than letting it drop.

To focus more on negative movements, first try using the cheat method when lifting weights, which would otherwise be too heavy to lift it using the strict cheat method (cheat- cheat) is expressed in the use of ancillary movements by the body, so that the movement we aim at is not performed in isolation by one or more muscles, but rather by muscles that help to accomplish the purpose of movement - for example, they allow the "overweight" to be thrown ie through the motions by the entire body. The strict method consists of lifting a weight with the help of well-defined muscles, without the presence of ancillary movements on the part of other muscles. Ie this is the so-called. isolated (analytical) training and then you lower it slowly and deliberately. Your muscles can lift one weight under control, though they cannot initially lift it alone. At the end of a series, when your muscles are very tired, you can get your training partner to help you a little while lifting weights and then do the negatives yourself using the strict method.



Forced negative workouts

To get even more intense with negative reps, your training partner can push the weight while lowering it, forcing you to deal with more resistance. This should always be done carefully and softly so that muscles and tendons are not subjected to unexpected and abrupt movements. Forced negatives are made more easily by machines or ropes than by free weights.

Cheat method

The cheating method is an exception to the general rule that strict technique is required in fitness. This type of deception and outbid does not include the use of negligence in training. This is a method where you intentionally use other muscles or muscle groups to work in conjunction with the target muscles. This is not something that you should do all the time, and it is very useful in achieving specific goals.

For example, you do heavy biceps with the bar. You can lift the weight 5 or 6 times and then find that you are too tired to perform strictly. At this point, you begin to use your shoulders and waist to help lift the weight more easily so you can perform 4-5 more reps. However, you "cheat" only as much as is necessary so that your bicep muscles continue to work as hard as possible. With the cheat method, you force the biceps to perform more repetitions than they could without the help of other muscles so that you put them on a higher load rather than less.



Cheating (the cheat method) is used in fitness environments to make exercise more difficult, not easier. It is also a way of performing forced repetitions without the help of a training partner. However, for this method to work, you need to concentrate on making sure that the effort exerted by other muscles is accurately measured (enough) and not too much so that the target muscles are still being forced to cut to the maximum.

Heavy load method

The concept of "heavy workload" applies to different approaches used in training. For some, this includes many extended series - ie. your regular reps are followed by forced reps, negatives, forced negatives, and partial reps until complete exhaustion. We have always used this term to mean moving to the heaviest weight you can handle (after warming up), rather than using the pyramidal principle, which consists in gradually increasing the amount of weight and reducing the number of repetitions simultaneously.



The key to this type of workout is not to use a weight that is too heavy for you and do the normal amount of series and reps - for example, 5 series of 8 to 12 reps. If you can only do 6 or 7 reps, the weight is too heavy.