6 workout tips to make your muscles stronger

Author: Timko Ilya - master of the whole project and fitness trainer.
2016-03-12

Hello everyone. In this article, I want to talk exclusively about muscle strength. It is possible that along with strength, you will also gain mass, but that will be a side effect. I will outline 6 techniques that will allow you to increase your muscle strength.

This article is more aimed at somewhat experienced individuals. That is, those who already have a basic understanding of how to train for strength. I won’t be discussing such obvious things as: rest, number of repetitions, basic exercises, weights, and so on. There are separate articles for this:

• The impact of repetition count on muscle strength
• Strength training features
• How to increase muscle strength without gaining mass?

Now I will talk about less obvious factors for increasing strength. These factors may be subtle nuances that few think about, but they can have a significant effect.

1. Do the last repetition in a yielding mode

For those who are unaware, there are 3 types of muscle work:

• Overcoming
• Yielding
• Static

The names speak for themselves. In yielding work, the muscles stretch while resisting external weight (load on the apparatus) as they lower the weight. That is, when you curl a barbell for your biceps, you are performing overcoming work. When you lower the bar after the curl, you are performing yielding work.

So, what I mean is this: the last repetition of each (or not every) set when you lower the barbell for the last time, pause for a few seconds halfway down while resisting the weight. For example, during pull-ups, when you have pulled yourself up for the last time, do not just drop down immediately; lower yourself slightly and hold that position for a few seconds.

Why does this technique work? The point is that in yielding mode, muscles can develop strength that's about 25% greater than in overcoming work. Additionally, you force your muscles to develop that strength under fatigue since you are doing this on the last repetition.

From this, we can conclude that this method will work well only if you are doing a set with a heavy weight and your last repetition is done with your last ounce of strength. In this case, a brief pause halfway down will indeed create stress in the muscles and increase their strength. The versatility of this method is that it can be applied to any muscle group and almost in any exercise.

2. Combine incompatible basic exercises

A vivid example is this:

Any coach will tell you that you shouldn’t do these 2 exercises in one training session. And they would be wrong. Back when I was involved in powerlifting, I thought the same way. But when I switched to weightlifting, I saw that weightlifters often do squats and deadlifts on the same day. At the same time, their legs and backs are very strong.

I started practicing this method on myself and my clients. In all cases, leg strength increased by about 20% in 2 months. Typically, we started with squats, followed immediately by deadlifts.

Why does this technique work? It’s all about the stress on the muscles. When you perform 2 heavy exercises that you’ve never combined before, it creates an unusual load on the muscles, which causes stress and growth in strength (if you’re training with heavy weights).

Another example could be: do

You can come up with more examples yourself. Just think about what 2 heavy basic exercises for one muscle group you’ve never combined.

3. Use a negative "ladder"

This is also known as a "pyramid" (more about the pyramid). A pyramid workout involves adding weight and decreasing the number of repetitions in each set. A negative ladder, on the other hand, is when you start with maximal weights and then decrease the weight with each set while increasing repetitions. For example, you bench press 100 kg for 1 rep. After warming up, you set 95 kg. You do 3 repetitions. The next set is 85 kg for 6 repetitions. The following set is 75 kg for 10 repetitions.

The essence of this technique is that you need to make your muscles work thoroughly in the strength zone. If you started from the bottom up, when you reached 95 kg, you would, at best, manage to press it once and wouldn’t allow your muscles to show their maximum in the strength working zone.

But someone might ask: why not just do all 3 sets at 95 kg? You can, but then the chance of providing a stressful load decreases, as you likely won’t be able to do all 3 sets for 3 repetitions. In general, I can’t fully explain how this method works. But it does work.

4. Use cheating

For those who don’t know what this is, here's the information. But it should only be used on heavy weights during the last few repetitions. For example, you attach 20 kg to your belt and plan to do pull-ups. But you know that you can only do 5 clean ones without swinging. So do those 5 clean repetitions and then try 2 – 3 more with some swinging. Ignore the technique and just aim to get a couple more repetitions however you can.

This can be used in many exercises (except for the most dangerous ones). But cheat only if you have already mastered the classical technique well. In this case, your cheating will be more conscious, and therefore, effective.

5. Train each muscle group less frequently but heavier

If you want to increase your strength, there’s no point in training a muscle group if those muscles have not fully recovered yet. Now imagine that you trained your arms using my recommendations: with negative repetitions, heavy weights, cheating, etc. How quickly do you think they will recover? At least a week. Therefore, train each muscle group hard, but no more than once every 7 days. But not less than once every 10 – 11 days.

The point is that muscles can only increase their strength if you take heavy weights and provide a huge stress load. If the muscles have not fully recovered, they simply won’t be able to handle the load when it becomes stressful and will refuse to work midway. Therefore, when working for strength, there’s no reason to train muscles if they haven’t fully recovered.

6. Train a maximum of 2 muscle groups per day

As you can understand, if you work your muscles as I suggest, the most you can manage is 2 muscle groups. And even then, if they are small. In this variant, you would need 3 to 5 training sessions per week. Personally, I currently train for strength 4 times a week:

• Shoulders
• Legs and glutes
• Chest and back
• Biceps and triceps

But this is not the only option. Everyone adapts as they can. The main thing is not to train more than 2 muscle groups at a time. You can look at different combinations of muscle groups in this article.

There are many more training factors that influence muscle strength increase. But in this article, I wanted to provide some interesting techniques. Interesting even for experienced athletes. I hope you learned something valuable and interesting for yourself. Good luck!