2 for 1: The Best Moves to Shatter Your Personal Records
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The Progression Principle
Improving your workout is an endless quest, and can get frustrating. There are certain parameters you must fulfill to improve, mainly adding weight to the bar or squeezing out more reps in the same amount of time. This is were the tried-and-true method of progressive overload comes in where you force your body to constantly adapt to higher weights while taking a deload week every 5-6 weeks.SEE ALSO: The 5-Week Workout for Progressive OverloadThis principle of progression states that your training intensity must progress at a rate that continues to be an overload for your bodies current fitness state. By staying one step ahead of your bodies adaptability, you will continue to see progress toward your fitness goals. In a perfect world we would just get stronger and leaner ad infinitum until we all look like Phil Heath or one of the other physique idols. And in the beginning of everyone’s gym career, things are going great: we are adding weight to the bar pretty much every session while getting leaner and more muscular at the same time.Sounds great but all good things come to an end as progress stalls at some point, for a variety of reasons. Mainly, progress stops because your body hates you. Actually that is not true, your body loves you, indeed so much that it does not want you to become too lean and muscular. You see from an evolutionary standpoint it does not make sense to carry around 200+ lbs of lean muscle since it is much costlier to feed. Therefore our bodies love to shut down and keep us small and chubby. Depressing, no? Bear with me!
Beating Your Best
The key to break any plateau is change but not change for the sake of change. First, check your nutritional intake. If you are not putting on muscle, add another 300 calories a day. Secondly, how is your sleep? You should be getting anywhere from 7- 9 hours of good quality sleep. Sleepcycleappp is a great way to monitor the quality of your sleep via your phone. Mediating before bed can also very helpful to improve the quality of your time in bed.From a training standpoint. It makes sense to add certain advanced techniques to overcome a plateau such as drop sets, cluster sets or one of my personal favorites, the two for one method. The two for one method basically combines two exercises in one motion. Here is how to do it: during the positive aka concentric phase you are doing the easier exercise, the more difficult one is done during the negative or eccentricThe thinking behind is the following: your muscle is about 30% stronger in the eccentric ( negative) phase than it is during the concentric (positive) phase. Because of that, you can not quite fatigue the muscle during a regular set. By the same token, by fully exhausting the negative phase you are setting the stage for further growth down the road since you are priming the nervous system for higher loads. Here is a list of exercises that can be used for the two-for-one method.
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Zottman Curls (biceps)
Here you perform a regular curl on the way up, turn the hand and lower the dumbbell in a reverse curl fashion. By doing so you ll be able to overload the stronger phase.
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Skull Crusher (triceps)
The set up is on a bench, lower the dumbbells in a skull crusher motion next to the ears, push the elbows forward along the body and bring the weight up in a close grip press. You should be able to use a weight that is 20 percent heavier than your regular extensions.
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Rows (back)
Here, I use the in vs. out rows. You bring them up in a bent over, parallel row, turn the elbows out for 90 Degrees and lower the dumbbells for a four second count.
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Flye/Press (chest)
Combine a chest flye with a press. Lower the dumbbells in a flye motion and, bring them together in a press. Hereby you can overload the flye and maximize the stretch. The additional fiber damage will then result in strength gains.
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Poliquin Side Raises (shoulders)
Poliquin side raises: Those are evil but very efficient as they allow for a heavier side raise. Here is the the set up: hold the dumbbells next to the thighs, do a hammer curl until you hit 90 degrees in the elbows, then rotate the upper arm up until parallel to the floor. Now move the forearms outward until the entire arm is parallel to the floor, lower for four seconds.
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Leg Press (legs)
As for the legs, the choice are more limited as I would not advise to change your foot stance during the squat. The leg press works much better, simply drive the weight up in a wide stance with the feet rather high on the sled. Then bring the feet together so that there is only about a two inch gap between the heels and lower the weight for five seconds.
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Leg Extenstions (quads)
Push weight up with both legs, lower with one leg. Alternate legs on each rep.
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Conclusion: Use 2-for-1 Sparingly
In closing, I would not recommend doing the tow for one method for an entire workout, rather pick one or two lagging body parts and finish the workout with the the exercise I have listed.
Improving your workout is an endless quest, and can get frustrating. There are certain parameters you must fulfill to improve, mainly adding weight to the bar or squeezing out more reps in the same amount of time. This is were the tried-and-true method of progressive overload comes in where you force your body to constantly adapt to higher weights while taking a deload week every 5-6 weeks.
This principle of progression states that your training intensity must progress at a rate that continues to be an overload for your bodies current fitness state. By staying one step ahead of your bodies adaptability, you will continue to see progress toward your fitness goals. In a perfect world we would just get stronger and leaner ad infinitum until we all look like Phil Heath or one of the other physique idols. And in the beginning of everyone’s gym career, things are going great: we are adding weight to the bar pretty much every session while getting leaner and more muscular at the same time.
Sounds great but all good things come to an end as progress stalls at some point, for a variety of reasons. Mainly, progress stops because your body hates you. Actually that is not true, your body loves you, indeed so much that it does not want you to become too lean and muscular. You see from an evolutionary standpoint it does not make sense to carry around 200+ lbs of lean muscle since it is much costlier to feed. Therefore our bodies love to shut down and keep us small and chubby. Depressing, no? Bear with me!
Beating Your Best
The key to break any plateau is change but not change for the sake of change. First, check your nutritional intake. If you are not putting on muscle, add another 300 calories a day. Secondly, how is your sleep? You should be getting anywhere from 7- 9 hours of good quality sleep. Sleepcycleappp is a great way to monitor the quality of your sleep via your phone. Mediating before bed can also very helpful to improve the quality of your time in bed.
From a training standpoint. It makes sense to add certain advanced techniques to overcome a plateau such as drop sets, cluster sets or one of my personal favorites, the two for one method. The two for one method basically combines two exercises in one motion. Here is how to do it: during the positive aka concentric phase you are doing the easier exercise, the more difficult one is done during the negative or eccentric
The thinking behind is the following: your muscle is about 30% stronger in the eccentric ( negative) phase than it is during the concentric (positive) phase. Because of that, you can not quite fatigue the muscle during a regular set. By the same token, by fully exhausting the negative phase you are setting the stage for further growth down the road since you are priming the nervous system for higher loads. Here is a list of exercises that can be used for the two-for-one method.
Zottman Curls (biceps)
Here you perform a regular curl on the way up, turn the hand and lower the dumbbell in a reverse curl fashion. By doing so you ll be able to overload the stronger phase.
Skull Crusher (triceps)
The set up is on a bench, lower the dumbbells in a skull crusher motion next to the ears, push the elbows forward along the body and bring the weight up in a close grip press. You should be able to use a weight that is 20 percent heavier than your regular extensions.
Rows (back)
Here, I use the in vs. out rows. You bring them up in a bent over, parallel row, turn the elbows out for 90 Degrees and lower the dumbbells for a four second count.
Flye/Press (chest)
Combine a chest flye with a press. Lower the dumbbells in a flye motion and, bring them together in a press. Hereby you can overload the flye and maximize the stretch. The additional fiber damage will then result in strength gains.
Poliquin Side Raises (shoulders)
Poliquin side raises: Those are evil but very efficient as they allow for a heavier side raise. Here is the the set up: hold the dumbbells next to the thighs, do a hammer curl until you hit 90 degrees in the elbows, then rotate the upper arm up until parallel to the floor. Now move the forearms outward until the entire arm is parallel to the floor, lower for four seconds.
Leg Press (legs)
As for the legs, the choice are more limited as I would not advise to change your foot stance during the squat. The leg press works much better, simply drive the weight up in a wide stance with the feet rather high on the sled. Then bring the feet together so that there is only about a two inch gap between the heels and lower the weight for five seconds.
Leg Extenstions (quads)
Push weight up with both legs, lower with one leg. Alternate legs on each rep.
Conclusion: Use 2-for-1 Sparingly
In closing, I would not recommend doing the tow for one method for an entire workout, rather pick one or two lagging body parts and finish the workout with the the exercise I have listed.
