HEALTH INFORMATION - WORKOUT IDEAS

Build the perfect routine or make any workout better with these tried-and-true training principles!

TRAINING TYPES AND TECHNIQUES

Muscle Confusion
Constantly change variables in your workout-number of sets, number of reps, exercise choices, order of exercises, length of your rest periods-to, avoid getting in a rut and slowing growth.

Cycle Training
Devote portions of your training year to specific goals for strength, mass or getting cut. This can help decrease your risk of injury and add variety to your routine. Cycle periods of high intensity and low intensity to allow for recovery and spur new gains.

Diversity Training
Incorporate a diverse selection of variables, such as set, rep and exercise schemes, into your workout. Bodypart routines should utilize both mass-building, multi-joint moves, and single-joint exercises.

Instinctive Training
You know your body best so experiment to develop an instinct as to what works best for you. Use your training results along with past experiences to constantly fine-tune your program. Go by feel in the gym: If your biceps just don't feel like they've recovered from the last workout, do another bodypart that day instead.

Isolation Training
This is a technique designed to work individual muscles without involving adjacent muscles or muscle groups.

Progressive Overload
To continue making gains, your muscles need to work harder in a progressive manner from one workout to the next. During most of your training cycles, try to increase your weights each session, do more reps or sets, or decrease your rest periods between sets.

Continuous Tension
Don't allow a given muscle to rest at the top or bottom of a movement. Control both positive and negative portions of a rep and avoid momentum to maintain constant tension throughout the entire range of motion.

Muscle Priority
Hit your weakest bodypart first in a workout or bodypart split, when you can train with more weight and intensity because your energy level is higher.

Flushing Training
Train one bodypart with multiple exercises (3-4) before you train another. The "flushing" is your body sending a maximum amount of blood and muscle-building nutrients to the area to best stimulate growth.

Changeable Training
Use numerous training techniques to stimulate maximum muscle fibers. Don't always approach exercise with the same 6-10 rep sets; try lightening the load and going for 20 reps in some training sessions to build endurance related muscle fibers.

Iso-Tension
Between sets flex and hold various muscles for 6-10 seconds, keeping them fully contracted before releasing. Competitive bodybuilder use this technique to enhance their posing ability through increased muscle control.

Peak contraction
Squeeze your contracted muscle isometrically at the endpoint of the rep to intensify effort. Hold the weight in the fully contracted position for up to two seconds at the top of an exercise.

Pyramid Training
Incorporate a range of lighter to heavier weights for each exercise. Start light with higher reps (12-15) to warm up the muscle, then gradually increase the weight in each successive sets while lowering your reps (6-8). You could also reverse the procedure-moving from high weight and low reps to low weight and high reps, aka a reverse pyramid.

Supersets
Perform sets of two exercises for the same or different muscle groups back-to-back with no rest in between.

Tri-Sets
Perform three consecutive exercises for one muscle group in nonstop sequence.

Giant Sets
Four or more exercises for one muscle group performed in back-to-back fashion without rest in between.

Burn Out
Continue a set past the point at which you can lift a weight through a full or even partial range of motion with a series of rapid partial reps. Do this as long as your muscles can move the weight, even if only a few inches.

Cheating
Use momentum (a slight swing of the weight) to overcome a sticking point as your fatigue near the end of a set. Do this safely!

Descending or Drop Sets
After completing your reps in a heavy set, quickly strip an equal amount of weight from each side of the bar or select lighter dumbbells. Continue to do reps until you fail, then strip more weight off to complete even more reps.

Forced Reps
Have a training partner assist you with reps at the end of a set to help you train past the point of momentary muscular failure. Your training partner will lift the bar with just enough force to get you past the sticking point.

Negatives
Resist the downward motion of a very heavy weight. Have a partner assist with the positive portion of the reps.

Partial Reps
Do reps involving only a partial range-at the top, in the middle or at the bottom of a movement.

Pre-Exhaustion
Pre-exhaust a muscle with a single-joint exercise before performing a multi-joint movement.

Rest-Pause
Take a brief rest period during a set of given exercise to squeeze more reps out of a set. Use weight you can lift for 2-3 reps. Take another brief rest and go again for as many reps as you can handle, and repeat one more time.

NEED MORE HELP?
Ask our staff for ideas on workouts and recommendations for cardio and weights. We have a large library of resources and ever-changing information to keep you up-to-date on the how's and why's of exercise.