Once you’ve been training for a while, you will hit a plateau. Gains will grind to a halt, and you’ll find yourself going nowhere. What you need is a new approach and 5% Nutrition has it, with 6 Tricks To Shock Your Muscles Into New Growth!

Trick # 1 - Drop Sets

Drop sets are one of the best ways to ramp up the intensity. Here's how they work. After warming up, pick a weight that will cause you to fail at your prescribed number of reps. When you fail, drop your working weight by 10%, and keep going. When you fail again, drop your weight another 10% and knock out a few more reps. You can do drops using compound exercises but you'll need a couple of training partners. As you can imagine, you're better off using a machine or dumbbells.

Trick # 2 - Supersets

Here, you’re doing 2 exercises back to back with no rest in between. You can do 2 exercises for the same muscle group, or for opposing muscle groups. For example, let’s say you’re working chest. After warm-ups, do dumbbell flyes and then go right into bench presses. This “pre-exhausts” the chest muscles. In contrast, you can do benches first, followed by flyes. Or, you can do chest/back supersets, or biceps/triceps supersets. 

Trick # 3 - Tri-Sets

In this case, you’re doing 3 exercises in a row with no rest in between. Like supersets, you can do these for the same muscle or opposing muscles. As noted, the secret to this technique, and any technique, is to work each set hard. If you have 3 biceps exercises in a row, it’s natural to hold back on the first couple of exercises. If you’re looking to shock your muscles into new growth, you have to do better than that. Work all these techniques hard to get the maximum benefits.

Trick # 4 - Static Holds

There are several types of static holds. In strength training, performing an isometric static hold at various points along an exercise’s range of motion improves strength. What we’re talking about here is similar. Using an EZ curl as an example, here’s how it works. Let’s say you’ve lifted the bar to the top position and have begun your descent. About ⅔ of the way down, stop the rep and hold the bar for an 8-10 count, or as long as possible. You can do this at any point in the exercise. Still, the best point to do it is at the fully stretched position as you’re performing an eccentric phase of the rep. 

Trick # 5 - Rest-Pause

Even though it’s been around a long time, the rest-pause technique came into its own back in the late 70s - early 80s. The most popular version is as follows: after warming up, complete your working set, rack the bar, count to 8, unrack the bar, and do as many reps as you can, re-rack the bar, and again do as many reps as you can. 

Trick # 6 - Manipulate Carbs And 5% Supplements

This technique works especially well if you usually eat a lower carb diet. If you’re not currently using creatine, load for 3 days before trying this. Continue loading while trying this trick. 

Here’s how it works:

This is to be done over a couple of days.

• Up your carb intake to 4g per lb of bodyweight (for no more than 2 days)
• Limit simple carbs to early in the day
• Take Freak Show with your 2 biggest carb meals of the day
• Consume 2 servings of Full As F*ck per day
• Take Core Creatine Monohydrate
• Add Core L-Citrulline 3000
• Drink lots of water

What will happen is that the carbs pull extra water into the muscles (3g of water are pulled into the muscles per 1g of carbs). You’re basically optimizing that simple concept by adding the 5% supplements, which act as cell volumizers and nitric oxide boosters. (1)

Applying It To Your Workouts

All of these 6 tricks to shock your muscles into new growth are a form of progressive overload. You’re increasing intensity. One of the best ways to apply these techniques is to pick a technique, use it for 2 weeks, then add another. That’s progression. After 6-8 weeks on a program like that, deload for 2 weeks. Then start back up with new techniques. No doubt you’ll break that plateau and get your gains going again! If you choose to go back to your original routine, keep it progressive by adding weight consistently. Work each exercise hard, eat right and recover. If you hit another plateau, you’ve got 6 weapons at your disposal!

References:

1. Fernández-Elías, V. E., Ortega, J. F., Nelson, R. K., & Mora-Rodriguez, R. (2015). Relationship between muscle water and glycogen recovery after prolonged exercise in the heat in humans. European journal of applied physiology, 115(9), 1919–1926. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-015-3175-z