Instinctive Weight Training
Having
noticed sound muscular progress, feel free to form your own patterns
of exercise. Begin as soon as possible to train instinctively. Recognize
your own body feelings and needs. This can be the most enjoyable
and productive time in your training life, as you begin to train
for yourself and with methods and styles you've begun to develop.
You're
maturing in your training and gaining a new level of mind-body coordination.
Each of us has a different personality and style and it should be
expressed in your training. Make a statement with each workout.
Strive for quality and learn to use the entire body with each movement
- like a Clydesdale draft horse pulling a heavy load. Look for full
range for motion in each exercise, thereby involving the entire
muscle to assure full development and strength.
At
some point, you'll want and need to increase your pace to overload
your muscles and to satisfy your increasing enthusiasm. The best
way to accomplish this is to perform a combination of either two
or three exercises the complement each other. With these vigorous
supersets or trisets you condense your workout, intensify your focus,
quicken your pace and gain a better muscle pump. The increased pace
and muscle pump bring more nutrients and oxygen to the muscle tissue
and force more blood into the finer capillaries. This causes finer
tissue development and increased growth, while providing quality
to the workout.
Superset
training will improve your endurance, keeping your heart rate consistently
higher through the workout. With the blood flow more constant to
the muscle, I sense a greater purging of impurities, toxins and
lactic acid from the system. Supersetting provides the capacity
for greater output as your endurance increases. Almost aerobic,
it's a more athletic way to train, allowing you to gain more physical
fitness, and a more practical and useful body. I find my superset
and triset workouts are more interesting, exciting and involving
of the mind and body, and certainly more fulfilling than single
set/rest routines.
The
most common supersetting is the training of the same bodypart with
similar exercises, for instance bench presses followed by flys.
This type of intense training, though very effective, should only
be done periodically and only for a couple of weeks at a time as
it tends to cause burnout.
My
favorite type of superset program involves opposing bodyparts, antagonistic
muscle groups such as biceps and triceps. In this training, you
allow one bodypart to rest while working another. I've trained this
way for many years and have never burned out on it - as a matter
of fact, for me, it's the most successful way to get a good workout
and a fast and full pump.
With
opposing bodypart superset training, you can move more quickly through
the workout, exhausting the entire body, push to exhaustion one
bodypart, but still having energy and endurance to work another.
This provides momentum and rhythmic style, a greater burn in the
muscles and less workout interruptions.
As
you complete your first exercise, immediately shift into the
next. After your second set, rest briefly — the recuperation
from both exercises leading to anticipation of the next superset.
As you finish your first group of supersets, begin setting up
the next pieces of equipment, allowing no idle time.
Let
me put an accent on the supersetting principle by sending you on
to the SlumpBusters page. And for an expanded discussion of instinctive training, click this link.