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Change Your Workouts, Change Your Workout Intensity!

By Ken Karnack

You have heard it before, I change my workouts, and still nothing happens. My weight stays the same, my clothes do not fit any different, and I change my workout intensity. Well, lets take a hard look at the program your on? Do you track reps, sets, intensity of the exercises your doing? Hum-mm. Do you even know how to measure the intensity. Butt I always "mix it up". Great, but is it working?

For years I always hear that most people change their workouts and mix it up. If you change your incline chest press with dumbbells to decline dumbbell press, is that really a change in your program and intensity or just the exercise? The normal response is, well, I feel it working the muscle differently. That is true, however the intensity is most likely the same. That means the end result is the same, no change in muscle growth and no extra stimulation to your muscles. So what to do?

Intensity change means that you should increase the workload with more reps, or more weight or both if possible. Normally most people will try to add so much extra weight every workout that they tend to over train their muscles and still no result. Let's say you have been doing incline dumbbell press for 3 sets of 12 reps and the weight for the last 4 weeks. Now it is time to change the intensity. Maybe add an extra set of lower reps and add more weight. So lets try 4 sets or 6-8 forced reps. This will create some change in the muscles capacity to do more work. Then after another 4 weeks you may want to change to drop sets. Using 60 pound dumbbells for 6-8 reps for the last 4 weeks, and now doing your first set with 60 lbs, 6-8 reps and then immediately drop to 50lbs for 8-10 reps and then drop to 40 for 12-25 reps.... If your really brave you can drop to 20 lbs for 30 reps.

This should have your muscles burning like no tomorrow. So you see, that changing your weight rep scheme is better than changing the exercise within the same muscle group.

What about the Tempo? What is tempo? Your tempo is how long it takes you to perform a repetition from start to end and back to the top again. So you may have a 1-1-1 tempo which is fast like a power lifter or you might have a 2-2-4 for stability. So here we go, start with your bench press when you descend the rep and it takes you 1 seconds to get to the bottom, that is the 1, then you hold for 2 at the bottom of the rep and then back up for 2 seconds. That is 5 seconds per rep, or a 1-2-5 tempo. Add 12 reps and that is 96 seconds with your muscles under tension. Most people get 20 seconds because it hurts and they just want to get the sets done.

Most studies if you look sat "time under tension" will tell you that you need at 38-60 seconds of TIME under tension to create Change in your muscles density, and capacity to grow. Anything less is just a workout. Do something great!

About the Author:


Ken Karnack is the owner of Old School Fitness with the best Dallas Personal Trainers.