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Wimp Out In The Gym And Your
Gains Will
Be Gone In 60 Seconds
The margin of time that determines muscle building success
or failure in the gym is a heck of a lot shorter than you might think. Just as
fraction-of-a-second moments during a 100 metre dash will make or break a
sprinter's race, fraction-of-a-second moments will also 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.
You may be scratching your head right now and wondering what the
heck I'm talking about, but allow me to explain…
You see, every individual set that you perform in the gym is
ultimately being performed for the benefits that will be achieved on the last
1-2 reps. Muscles respond to stress, and the only truly stressful reps that
actually trigger your body's muscle building mechanisms are those at the end of
each set when the body is on the brink of muscular failure.
If a given set consists of 6 reps, then reps 1-4 are only performed
in order to get to reps 5 and 6. Reps 1-4 will do very little in terms of
stimulating muscular growth, but are necessary to perform in order to overload
the muscles on reps 5 and 6.
In other words, it is only the very last 1-2 reps that will
ultimately yield a muscle building response from the body. The longer you can
push yourself to battle the weights during this small time frame at the end of
each set, the greater results you will achieve.
Any of you who have read my articles know that I'm a big advocate of
training to muscular failure. There is simply no better way to trigger your
body's adaptive responses than to train until your muscles cannot move the
weight another inch.
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.
So, where did the 60-second time frame come from?
Well, if we assume that you perform 10 total all out sets per
workout and have a margin of 6 seconds between success/failure per set, this
gives you 60 seconds of total time per workout to either battle through with
full effort or to surrender and settle for mediocre results.
It really is true; your bodybuilding success is literally measured
by the short, precise moments at the very end of each set and the amount of
effort you are willing to exert during this time.
If you can force yourself to train to all out muscular failure,
you'll achieve the best results possible. If you drop the weight 3 seconds
before muscular failure, your growth will be compromised. If you drop the weight
8 seconds before muscular failure, your growth will be compromised even further.
If we multiply our 60-second figure by my recommended number of 3
workouts per week, this means that your bodybuilding success in the gym will
literally be measured by how you choose to handle one short 3 minute long period
per week.
I bet you never thought of it this way before!
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.
If you want to learn some awesome psychological techniques for
breaking through the pain barrier and “mentally numbing” the discomfort
associated with hard training, make sure to visit my website using the link
below for details...
About The Author
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