If you're looking for a way to vary your weight room routine, and you should vary your weight room routine, here's a good way to shock your muscles.
Repeating the same exercises and rep counts over and over again can eventually lead to a plateaus in your muscle growth. Your muscles will get used to the same movements and say, (if muscles could speak:-)), "Oh, this again?"
Eventually, your muscles can just become more adept at that skill, not necessarily be growing.
Let me also reiterate here that if you do the same thing over and over, and it works for you, then by all means, roll with it. However, if you notice a lag in your progress, try something new and completely random. Your body thrives on variety.
In this particular workout, we are going to get our major muscle groups used to the same thing, form a habit, if you will, then suddenly shock them in the end.
Pick three multi jointed free weight exercises for the three major muscle groups. I'm recommending barbell squats for legs,glutes, and core, chest press (bench or dumbbells, depending on if you have a spotter) for chest, shoulders, and triceps, and the lat pulldown for your back and biceps.
*Note-when I say multi jointed, I mean working more than one muscle at a time. I always recommend bigger movements over smaller ones. A squat would be multi jointed, and a bicep curl would be single jointed. Leave the single jointed movements behind for this workout.
You're going to pick a weight that is fairly easy/moderate for you to lift for 10 reps. It shouldn't be a struggle, but it shouldn't be a breeze. Find the happy medium. Then you're going to lift that same weight for 10 reps, for 8 sets. Sorry, it may get kind of boring. Again, the weight should not be so heavy that you fail at all for any of the 8 sets.
After the 8 sets of 10 at the moderate weight, you're going to then do one set of the heaviest weight you are able to do for as many reps as possible. It should be so heavy that maybe you can only crank out 2-3 reps. But you should fail here. So we're going to maintain, then shock.
The actual workout looks like this:
Squats ( moderate weight) 10 x 8
Squats (max weight) 1 x failure
Bench Press or Dumbbell Press (moderate weight) 10x 8
Bench Press or Dumbbell Press (max weight) 1 x failure
Lat Pulldown (moderate weight) 10 x 8
Lat Pulldown (max weight) 1 x failure
Your muscles are going to be so used to those 8 sets of 10 that the sudden shock of doing your max at the end of it will send them into high growth. So we're going to "kick the habit" of the 10 reps of the same weight. (Like that?;-))
Also, the fact that this is a full body workout, where we're hitting all the major muscle groups, as opposed to just one, can contribute to that lean look you may be going for as well as growth.
This workout could be very easy for you if you're used to heavy lifting all the time, but so what? It's different, your muscles will be "glad" for something new. But if you wanted to, you could do more exercises for the same rep scheme.
If you find it to be very difficult and you find you don't necessarily have the muscle endurance to keep repeating these movements, drop your moderate weight even lower and finish.
Again, this is just one example of routine variation. There's thousands of way to mix it up. Let me know if you have any questions.
-D
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