In the same way a small fraction of a second is crucial in a sprinter’s race during a 100 metre dash, fractions of seconds can mean success or failure in a bodyduilding process. That seconds will make or break your body’s muscle growth response in the gym.
There’s more…although each entire workout will last for about an hour, only about 60 seconds will determine what kind of gains you achieve. That’s right, how you choose to handle that 60 second time period could means great, mediocre or poor muscle building effects.
Let me try to explain. Every set of execises that you perform in the gym will give you benefits on the last 1-2 reps. Why? Because muscles respond to stress, so, the first reps you perform are nothing but a mechanism to trigger the stress your muscles need to grow.
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.
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.
Let’s do some math. If you perform 10 sets per workout, and have a margin of 6 seconds between success/failure per set, then it means that the way you handle that 60 seconds could mean a significant muscular growth…or a total waste of time.
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.
The closer and closer that you can come to muscular failure, the more dramatically your body will respond. Two seconds, five seconds, maybe another one rep, or two, would actually mean a great difference.
Training your muscles to muscular failure is the way to achieve betters results. If you drop the weight before you reach it you are compromising the results.
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.