Ways to change up your routine

We have all seen the thousands and thousands of routines out there. You do a search thru Google and bam look at all the results. Many of which are from reputable personal trainers. But what a lot of people don’t stop and realize is these routines you are finding are made for a specific person. Unless your body works in the same manner as this person, you aren’t going to see very impressive results. What will help you the most is getting as knowledgeable as you can on all aspects of weight training, diet, and supplements.
 
Here we are going to look at some concepts behind routines. You might have heard a little about some of these. Like drop setting or super setting. Since I mentioned these and they are fairly common I will talk about them first.
 
DROP SETTING
Drop setting is accomplished by doing a set on any given exercise until failure, then drop the weight down and do more reps with the lower weight until failure. Drop setting is specifically geared toward hypertrophy. Making it a cosmetic/ mass building form of muscle development. So it is not really strength oriented, therefore this wouldn’t be something geared towards sprinters or other power/strength athletes. When drop setting you want your weight high enough so that your final rep takes all out effort to accomplish. Now this is one straight set, which yes you went to failure on this one set. But this isn’t enough to activate every fiber in your muscle. So now you want to strip about 10 to 20 percent off the bar and rep out again. So now you have used more fibers in the muscle by using up some of the reserves. Ok for example of drop setting we are going to bench with a rep range of 8 to 12. We throw on 100 pounds and bam that 12th rep is killer to get up. We can now strip off 20 pounds (our 10 to 20 percent) and try to hit failure again. Ok the tenth rep killed us that time, one more set and we hit a lot of fibers. Strip another 20 pounds, and wouldn’t you know it 60 pounds was tough on the 8th rep.
 
These can be done just about anywhere. Free weights, machines….you name it there is a way to do drop sets. You can also be creative with it. Here are some variations of drop sets people use.
Tight Drop Sets (small drops in weight)
Wide Drop Sets
50% Drop Sets (or halving)
Power Drop Sets (low rep drop sets)
Ascending Drop Sets
Descending Drop Sets
Drop Sets with Grip or Stance Change
Zero Rest Drop Sets
Rest-Pause Drop Sets
Drop-Supersets
 
SUPER SETTING
Super sets are accomplished thru little to no rest between sets, and by incorporating two exercises back to back. Super sets are not a strength building exercise as they actually reduce the amount you can lift due to the lack of rest between sets. There are three categories of super sets. Pre-exhaustion, which is achieved by completing an isolation exercise immediately followed by a compound movement. Then we have Compound supersets. These can produce alot of growth in a short period of time due to the use of two compound exercises back to back. This however can be hard on the nervous system so more rest time is required. Last we have Isolation supersets, which are done by completing two isolation movements in a row. This method is geared more towards pre contest and cutting routines. There are a couple more variations of supersets which I am not going to explain at all but I will list.
Opposing muscle group supersets
Staggered sets supersets
 
TWENTY ONES
Now these are called 21’s but they can be made as to any variation you wish. Let me explain. Basically 21’s are one exercise broken into three movements. The top, bottom, and then a full movement. So you start out by picking a weight you can do with 10 reps. Then starting at the top of the movement lower the bar half way then back up. This is one rep. You want to do seven reps in this upper portion of the movement, Then you want to repeat this but going from the bottom of the movement to the middle. Do this now for 7 reps. Last you want to do 7 reps full movement. See how it gets its name 21, basically you are doing 21 reps in one set. You can make this what ever you wish thou. If you want to do 4 reps then you got 12’s, 5 reps you got 15’s.
 
ECCENTRIC
This is accomplished by lowering of the lift. To perform this you would basically raise the weight at normal pace. But since you want to focus on the eccentric, lower the weight slowly say for 3 to 5 seconds.
 
CONCENTRIC
This is the opposite of eccentric, focusing on the lift as opposed to the lowering. So you want to do the lift slowly for a 3 to 5 second raise. And lower slowly.
 
PARTNER ASSIST REPS
This is accomplished once you have reached failure on a lift. Have your partner assist, you by helping you lift for a few extra reps.
 
REST PAUSE
It is mean to allow you, as an athlete to go past what you normally would have on a given set. You begin by reaching failure on an exercise. Once you have accomplished this, you will rest a few seconds and then continue the set until you reach failure again. The key, however, is to rest as shortly as is possible.
 
ASSISTED NEGATIVES
This is accomplished by simply having your partner apply slight pressure on the negative side of the lift, or the eccentric side.
 
These are just a few of the variations you can use to change up your routine. There are so many things you can do that will keep your muscles guessing.
 

A partner assist rep ......is also known as a spotter !

About the time in the concentric and eccentric rep...these tempos can be set to your goals...it depends what you look for in a workout. It can be 1 sec up to whatever you need...

Alsom the rest pause is not always better when short. If I want to gain strenght, I will need more rest time in order to recover full energy. I might wait 5 minutes between sets. But if I want to work endurance,I might wait 45-60 seconds.

But in deed a very good overview !

Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.

Yeah its known as a spotter, but you are actually haveing the spotter assist you throu some extra reps. Instead of him being there incase you fail on a given lift. This is done once you have reached failure, then he assists you throu a few more reps.
 
Yes the time can be adjusted on the concentric or eccentric, The idea thou is to target the stretching of the muscle for a longer period during eccentric, And the contraction on the concentric side.
 
The concept behind the rest pause is not whats better, its not really based on the idea of specifically training for strength or mass. The principle nehind it is fatigue. I didnt go too in depth into the rest pause but bassically once you reach the rep max for a given set without setting the bar down you will pause in a nuetral position for a certain amount of time. Then try to pump out a few more reps. For instance you are doing bench, you pump out your twelve reps, then rest at the peak of the movement for 15 seconds. Once the 15 seconds has passed you try for more reps. This is where the rest pause comes from, you are pauseing for a breif rest at a neautral point in the movement.

Now it's more complete !!

Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.

Yeah, sorry I should have gone more in depth at the end there. I was hopeing this would get the intrest started for people on ways to change up their routine and dig up a little reaserch of their own. There are litteraly thousands of articles all over on stuff like this.
 
Seems to me based on the types of routines people post, not vary many people incorperate stuff like this.

This is a related topic...

Nine Simple Ways to Increase the Intensity of Any Workout

Marc C. David
Support DB! Buy your supplements at Supplements101.com

Well I even read this one a couple weeks ago !!
But I forgot to mention it here !
We should have a complete lists of those articles Marc in order to know all the stuff that's been in your head !

Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.

I kinda agree with nic on that. Maybe a forum for articles already throught the net. Just a place for beginners to link to for knowledge and helpful readings.