Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Muscle Growth, The 60 Seconds That Make The Difference

By Ricardo Daryans

In the same way a small fraction of a second is crucial in a sprinter's race during a 100 metre dash, fractions of seconds can mean success or failure in a bodyduilding process. That seconds will make or break your body's muscle growth response in the gym.

In fact, your entire margin of success in the gym can ultimately be reduced to just a short time span of 60 seconds. That's correct, how you choose to handle a short 60 second time period during your workouts will translate to either poor, mediocre or significant muscle building results. Although each entire workout will last for about an hour, only 60 seconds of that actual time will determine what kind of gains you achieve.

How does it works? Well, the first reps in your set means just a little bit than nothing in terms of muscular growth. However, they play an important role.

Reps 1-4 are only performed in order to get to reps 5 and 6. But there's more than meets the eye in that. The last reps you perform in a set actually are the ones that will determine if the results of your workout are or not the results you desire.

What's important then, is to overload the muscles on reps 5 and 6. And the most important thing to achieve better results is try to keep that stress level as long as you can at the end of each set.

The best way to trigger your body's adaptive responses is training until your muscles cannot move the weight another inch. Drop the weight some seconds before the guy next to you and you will see the difference between his and your muscles after some weeks.

The closer and closer that you can come to muscular failure, the more dramatically your body will respond. This time frame is literally measured in single seconds. If you drop the weights 5-6 seconds earlier than the next guy (the margin is probably even smaller than this), you'll be significantly sacrificing your muscle growth.

Then, your succes in the bodybuilding process is measured by the short moments at the end of every single set you perform in the gym.

As long as you can force yourself to train to all out muscular failure, you'll see the best possible results. If you drop the weight 3 or 10 seconds before muscular failure, it will mean a great difference in muscular growth terms.

You have to train really hard and with full effort every single day. When your muscles aches and you can feel they're burning, if you feel the weight really heavy, that's the right moment to give your maximun effort until true muscular failure is reached.

You must train hard and with full effort at all times. When the weight feels heavy and your muscles ache and burn with discomfort, you must push through and continue until true muscular failure is reached.

If you stop short, even a second short, your gains will be compromised. Keep this in mind at all times in the gym and you'll experience better results than ever before.

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