Body And Fitness Blog

To increase the size of your muscles, you need to overload them, this is not exactly a well kept secret, but what is perhaps not so widely known, is that there are various ways you can overload the muscles. What I aim to do is explain two types of muscle overload training that I use to increase my strength and muscle size during my workouts.

Overload with time

What I mean by this is largely following the principles of heavy duty bodybuilding principles, whereby you train with a slightly lower weight, but you take more time over each rep - much more time, approx 10-12 seconds per rep - and thus over the course of one set, you may have put the muscle under tension for 1-2 minutes.

It’s the amount of time that the muscle is under tension (lifting, holding and lowering the weight) that over the course of a set achieves muscle overload. So even though you may only use a weight of 70%-80% of what you could lift for a good set of 10 reps usually, the extra time that the muscle is under tension stimulates growth in the muscles.

Overload with weight

This is more conventional weight training, whereby the intention is to overload the muscles by using heavy weights which you achieve failure on in the course of 4-8 reps. By using weights at this level, you will be training with nearly the maximum weight you can lift, and by training to failure, you will achieve muscle overload this way.

Which way is better?

I would argue that neither way is better by itself, you will achieve results with either method of training, though it is arguably safer to use the first method, in terms of injuries (ie, you’re probably less likely to injure yourself training this way).

To get the best results, you will need to combine both training methods into your workouts, this way keeping your muscles guessing every time you train them. The body is adept at adapting to physical demands placed upon it, so to keep progressing, you need to continually adapt your training, so that you don’t give your body time to adapt to any training demands.

It’s because of this that you should use periodisation in your training to ensure that your workouts are fresh. Periodisation is whereby you train in cycles of 6,8 or 12 weeks, taking a week or two off between each period, and changing the routine significantly for each period.

Other useful posts:

• Dymatize Elite Whey Protein Isolate Review
• Bicep And Tricep Workout Friday 1st May 2009
• How Much Protein Should I Eat To Gain Muscle
• Training Journal: Monday 9th February 2009
• Full Body Workouts – Are They A Good Idea?