Whether you go to the gym to build confidence, fitness levels, lean down, get stronger or any other goal…there’s always a huge benefit to trying to build more lean muscle. From stronger bones, better metabolism, a leaner appearance or to simply change your physique, here’s the two things we highly recommend you focus on to a great extent in the gym with your workouts.
Slow Down
Ever noticed when you’re looking around the gym, how people will all do their reps in a totally different way. From fast reps, half-reps, slow reps, explosive ones…everyone will move weight differently. When it comes to trying to build more muscle, learning to control the downward phase (I.e. lowering into a squat, lowering the dumbbells to your side on lateral raises etc.) there’s a HUGE benefit to slowing this phase down and controlling the weight. Negative strength training (lowering slowly under control on every rep for about 3-4 seconds) produces a lot of muscle damage. This may sound scary but actually the more muscle tissues are damaged during a workout session, the more gain in muscle strength and size during recovery. So leave your ego at the door and use weights that allow you to do this on every workout! When the weight gets too light…increase it with the same control.
Stretch
Now for this we don’t mean don a bright purple workout leotard and join in with Mr. Motivator on morning TV..we mean focus on the total amount of stretch on the exercise you’re doing. This ties in massively with the point above, so slowing your reps down on the eccentric phase, but then working on HOLDING that exercise where you feel the most stretch for a second or two on every rep. This is why dumbbells can have a bigger benefit over barbell on some exercises as it’ll allow you to drop into a deeper stretch of that exercise without being limited by the bars pathway. This extra tension on a muscle during your reps is called passive tension. When you combine active tension (moving the weight) with passive tension (the full stretch and hold while the muscle fibres are active), then we have more overall mechanical tension on our muscles, stimulating way more muscle growth. Furthermore, we’re stronger in the downward phase of exercises so when you can build up your weights over time with control and be able to hold them at full stretch too…you’ll see amazing results!
Now…go get yoked!
Rep by rep you'll experience what proper gym training can do.
Save time structuring your routines and avoid making mistakes with your workouts.
With exercise tracking, progress monitoring and the ability to modify existing workouts.
Crush your goals and achieve more than you thought possible.
Start training with us today and unlock a fitter, stronger and healthier you!