The 12 Untapped Anabolic Targets Part 2
August 29, 2010 by Jamin Thompson
Filed under Muscle Building, Recent Posts
Yesterday we discussed the first six anabolic targets.
In today’s post I’m going to reveal the final six targets that will help accelerate your muscle growth and take your physical development to the next level.
As you read this post today, I trust that you’ll maintain a teachable spirit and an open mind – as you have already done – and use this information to build your body beyond its potential – but then take it a step further and build your life beyond its potential!
I have no doubt that you will, so let’s get into it.
Untapped Anabolic Target #7 – Heavy Lifting
Here’s why it works: muscle damage, activation of the high threshold muscle fibers (growth fibers), potentiation of the nervous system; which means when you get back to your normal bodybuilding routine you will be able to recruit more muscle fibers for the same exercise.
How to use it: use every means in your power to increase your maximal strength, power and explosiveness. Dedicate a period of time each year to this style of training – it’s in my experience that after a period of focused heavy lifting, your gains from the subsequent program are always far superior.
Methods you can experiment with: regular sets in the 2-4 and 4-6 rep ranges, rest-pause sets (multiple mini-sets of heavy weight using 90% of your max weight taking only 10-seconds rest between reps), wave loading (1 x 5, 1 x 4, 1 x 3, 1 x 5, 1 x 4, 1 x 3), contrast loading (1 x 1, 1 x 5, 1 x 1, 1 x 5, 1 x 1, 1 x 5).
Other details: longer rest intervals of 2-3 minutes in between sets are required during heavy lifting phases.
Untapped Anabolic Target #8 – High Intensity Lifting
Here’s why it works: muscles “fail” and sometimes you go beyond failure with a training partner after your muscles have given up. Carrying a set to 100% of your momentary ability is the single most important factor for building size and strength. Working to this “point of failure,” when another rep is impossible despite the greatest effort, ensures that you pass the “break-over point,” a point in the set below which growth cannot be stimulated, and above which growth will be stimulated. Once you transcend this break-over point in the area of intensity, your results will increase geometrically. The more often you crash through this break-over point, the more rest you will need.
How to use it: short, straightforward, gut busting and infrequent workouts – twice a week going down to once a week if necessary. Usually you break your body parts up into full body workouts or into a 2-day split and only one exercise is used per body part.
Methods you can experiment with: Anything you do to make the workout harder will be a step in the right direction. Raising the intensity factor in your workouts can be done in three ways:
1) By progressively increasing the amount of weight you use.
2) By progressively decreasing the amount of time it requires to perform a certain amount of workout (work density).
3) By carrying each set to a point of total failure.
Other details: can vary from 30-60 seconds or 1-2 minutes or 3-5 minutes. High intensity training is short-lived and can produce mind boggling bursts of muscle for 4-weeks but needs to be cycled on and off into a yearly plan. High intensity training is brutally hard, which is the reason it cannot be carried on for long periods of time. Until you either experience it yourself or watch someone else do it, you can’t possibly appreciate it.
Untapped Anabolic Target #9 – Volume Lifting
Here’s why it works: cumulative fatigue, hormonal production, and achieves a good pump. If you understand the importance of pre and post workout nutrition, jamming your muscles with workout drinks that include dextrose and amino acids, then guess what? Increase blood flow to a specific muscle will increase the amount of aminos being
pumped into that muscle and it will significantly increase amino uptake. This means a much more anabolic (muscle building) response to your workout.
How to use it: maximize the pump as well as muscle fatigue. Methods you can experiment with: regular sets in the 8-10, 10-12 and 12-15 rep ranges, drop sets, pre-fatigue (super set isolation plus multi-joint), post fatigue (superset multi-joint plus isolation), giant sets (3 sets in a row for the same muscle group), slow reps ( 6 seconds up, 6 seconds down), “burns” (partial reps added at the end of a regular set).
Other details: 30-60 seconds between sets (or less). Do not chase after a pump in each set. Strategically place it at the end of each workout for your very last set and this will greatly increase the rate of muscle gain.
Untapped Anabolic Target #10 – High Frequency Lifting
Here’s why it works: more frequent stimulus and specific attention to each muscle fiber.
How to use it: train each body part with up to 3-5 workouts per week.
Methods you can experiment with: Experiment with a variety of different loads, rep ranges, rest intervals, and movement patterns. You will not be able to lift heavy weights each day or else the joints and nervous system would be overtaxed. An example is training a body part 3 times in a week, while incorporating a heady day, medium day and a light day; using all different exercises, sets and reps.
Rest intervals: On the heady day of 4 sets of 6-8 reps you could take 2 minutes. On the medium day of 3 sets of 8-10 reps you could take 90 seconds rest and on the light day of 2 sets of 25 you can take 30 seconds rest.
Untapped Anabolic Target #11 – Escalating Build-Up Running
Here’s why it works: with each interval, the duration of the sprint and jog increases in length. This is my personal favorite fat-burning strategy, even more preferred over interval training which involves alternating high-intensity cardio with low-intensity cardio for set periods of time.
How to use it: I like to do approximately 10-15 minutes of Escalating Build-Up Running at the end of each weight-training workout or before each weight-training workout or both if I need a more aggressive fat-burning strategy. I save my full-blown 45-60 minutes fat-loss cardio sessions for days I’m not doing any weight training.
Methods you can experiment with: Practice Escalating Build-Up Running either before or post weight-training or both. Here’s what I do: I begin running at 5.0 mph (at a 2.0 grade) and increase the speed 0.5 mph every 1-minute. At 10-minutes you’ll be over 75% of your max heart rate and running around 10.0 mph! This is VERY challenging and will take a few weeks or months to build up to if you’re cardio conditioning is poor. You can also increase the speed 1.0 mph every 2-3 minutes as a modified version of this workout.
Other details: This cardio protocol is advanced and challenging and will be a very stimulating warm-up and an excellent way to keep your metabolism revved, appetite soaring and body-fat levels minimal; which are all factors contributing to maximal muscle growth.
Untapped Anabolic Target #12 – Body Part Specialization
Here’s why it works: especially for intermediate and advanced lifters, muscle growth happens in spurts. The longer you’ve trained, the harder it becomes to gain muscle under the same conditions you’re used to applying – body part specialization programs create an “emergency response” of your entire bodies resources to promote recovery and growth when it’s under abnormal attack.
How to use it: short, laser-targeted focus for 3-weeks, and no more, and only one body-part at a time. Choose your most underdeveloped body part and plan to prioritize it with more sets and reps and higher frequency.
Methods you can experiment with: Maintain your current training program but add in three separate “targeting sets” at the end or start of each workout. For example, if you’re doing three full body workouts each week and your target body part is shoulders than you’ll do some “shoulder targeting work” at the end of each full body workout. Not only is the frequency increased, but the sets and reps also need to be mixed up, in order to stress different muscle fibers.
For example, you may do heavy lifting such as 8 sets of 4 on Monday for shoulder press (heavy day); on Wednesday you would do 3 sets of 25 with lateral raises (light day); and on Friday you would do 4 sets of 10 (medium day) with Military Press.
Other details: Vary the rest periods as well. So on the heavy sets take 2-3 minutes rest; on the light day take 30 seconds rest and on the medium day take 1-minute rest. Ensure you take a full week off your shoulders after the 3-weeks of target training so that they super compensate and grow.
Closing thoughts:
Bottom line – as long as you train only 1 or 2 ways, you’ll always be limited by your genetic potential and get left in the dust. Remember that building muscle is not as simple as training hard, eating a ton of calories and getting enough sleep or every person you know would have a cover models body. This information is not common sense.
Here’s the catch…
The more advanced you become (i.e. the longer you’ve trained), the harder it is for your body to respond and the harder it is to hit these twelve-different anabolic targets. They must be combined in a precise way to build the complete package you deserve. I know…you just can’t win. But I will be discussing specific combos you can use to help your body respond later this week so check back in the next day or so.
I’m not sure exactly what your goals are, but if you have read this far I know you are serious about your training and I respect you for that. So now that you have opened your mind to the new realms of possibilities with your physique, I just want to let you know that whatever YOUR goals, I support you in all of them.
Jamin
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