There are many different Muscle Building Techniques that you can use for building muscle mass. These techniques are meant to push your muscles past the point of failure. This way you can lift lighter then your maximum weight and still get your muscles to grow. Some of my favorite techniques are…

• Quality Training
• Superset
• Triset
• Giant Set
• Forced Reps
• Negatives
• Burns or Quarter Reps
• Drop Set

Quality Training

Use Quality Training when you want to get in shape and lose body fat. All you do is lessen the rest time between sets. If you are having a rest of 60 to 90 seconds between your sets, reduce the time to about 30 seconds. 90 to 60 seconds is great for when you want to build muscle mass. But, when you want to lose fat and get ripped, cutting the time will help you do just that. Combine this with a low calorie diet and you will see a dramatic decrease in your body fat.

Superset

This is when you combine two exercises into one set. This can be done two ways. The first way and the easier way is to combine two exercises that work out different muscles. Some of these superset would look like this…

• Biceps and Triceps = barbell curls and triceps extensions
• Chest and Back = bench press and bent rows

The second way is a little bit more challenging. In this form you will combine two exercises of the same muscle group. For example…

• Chest = bench press and flyes
• Back = pull ups and bent rows

When you execute these superset, there is no rest in between the exercises. You do one exercise and go right into the second one. Then you will rest after you have completed both exercises within the superset.

Triset

Triset are similar to a superset except now you are doing three exercises back to back to back without rest. These triset are to be done with exercises with the same muscle group. For example…

• Shoulders = military press, side lateral, bent laterals
• Quads = leg press, squats, leg extension

Triset are very intense and you should build up to this point by doing the superset first. Triset work best with the bigger muscles groups but can also be incorporated into the smaller muscle groups as well.

Giant Set

Basically this is a grouping of 4 to 6 exercises for one or two body parts. The giant set for the two body parts must be one of similarity. For example…

• Chest and Back
• Biceps and Triceps
• Hamstrings and Quads

Doing 4 to 6 exercises back to back without rest is very hard to do for beginners. I recommend you do superset and triset before moving onto this type of giant set. After you have perform a giant set, you can either rest for 1 to 2 minutes if you are trying to build mass and 45 to 60 seconds if you are trying to lose weight.

Forced Reps

Forced Reps are great for pushing your muscles past the point of failure. When you are at the end of your routine and you can barely complete the last rep, have your training partner help you push up the weight but, not too much. Just enough so that it feels like it is 5 to 10 pounds lighter. You should be able to do another 3 to 4 reps that you wouldn’t have been able to do on your own.

Negatives

Negatives can be used in two ways. You can either do negatives only or you can use the negative principle with your ordinary rep. Negatives are pretty much moving really slow on the way down. When it usually takes 2 to 4 seconds on the way down on each rep, using the negative principle will take you 10 to 15 seconds to lower your weight.

One example of doing negatives only without actually pushing the weight at all is have your training partners lift up the weight and then you can slowly lower the weight for the 10 to 15 seconds.

Another example, If you have problems doing pull ups, using this method will really help you strengthen in your lats. Simply have a chair near the pull up bar and start out with your chin near the bar. Then, slowly lower your body. Get back on the chair and repeat the process.

Burns or Quarter Reps

This is a great way to get your muscle past the point of failure. When you are at the end of your routine and can not do a full rep, simply do a 1/2 to a 1/4 rep. For example, when doing curls, a burn or quarter reps would be to curl the bar about a 12 inch arc to get a few more reps until your muscles completely fail. Burns are never to be done in the beginning of your exercise, always at the end when your muscles are completely fatigued.

Drop Set

Here is a method where after every set, you will lighten the weight by 5 to 10 pounds before you start your next set. The rest period between these sets should only take as long as it take to remove the weight. If done right, the bar at the end of your sets should feel just as heavy as when you first began with your starting weight.

These techniques can be used in any muscle group. You can change up different techniques from week to week or month to month to confuse the muscle, which will help your muscles grow even more.

Henry Chervenka