The right use of Negatives for rapid Strength gains

This article will assume that you are trying to increase your strength. If you go to the gym to stay in shape, maintain your strength, or even worse, to avoid getting fat, than don't waste your time reading this. However, if you set your goals for yourself, have an open mind and want to get bigger and stronger than read on.

Negatives can be applied to any exercise to help shock your muscles. First lets review what exactly a negative is making sure everybody is on the same page. Using the bench press as an example let's review a negative set. You will load the bar with a weight that is about 40 lbs heavier than your one rep max. Three spotters will be needed. The most important spotter is the one that stands behind you because he will keep his hands on the bar throughout the entire lift. The two remaining spotters will stand on opposite ends of the bar. Of course you will need a lift off unless you plan on turning negatives into a positively bad idea. You will now begin to lower the weight as slowly as positive. At first you'll do fine, but about half way down you'll feel like you are trying to stop the weight from falling. Once the bar touches your chest all three spotters lift the weight to the lockout position where you start again. When you are lifting poundage this heavy only a few reps will be possible so don't feel discouraged.

Okay so why in the world would you want to do this? Won't you look like an idiot in the gym when three people have to pull the weight off your chest? People have even said that the exercise is just an ego booster and doesn't do much for you. Some clowns might even say that you are cheating! Well don't believe any of it. Luckily, I'm here to tell you why negatives are so important.

1. Heavy Negatives Overload the Muscles
Most of us will agree that singles help improve strength because you overload your muscles will heavy poundage that your body is not used to. Based on the same principle, if you do negative sets with even more than your max weight you will overload your muscles even further.

2. Conditioning Your Body
Let me give you a few examples of this. A basketball player who is shooting jump shots while he is wearing ankle weights. A swimmer who does laps wearing pants and a t-shirt. A football player preparing for camp by running in the middle of the afternoon during a 90-degree summer day. A sprinter that runs with a parachute tied to his back. How about a powerlifter that does negatives with a weight that is much heavier than his one rep max. Are you beginning to see the correlation? When you run in 90-degree weather, practice in 80-degree heat doesn't seem so bad. When you shot jump shots with ankle weights, you feel pretty light and explosive when you take them off. When it is time to unload in each situation the body can perform better because it has been strengthened by the overload. You get the point. Let's say your goal is to bench 400 lbs. If you've never tried it, the initial shock might surprise you. If you've felt the weight of 450 lbs and done negative sets with it, your mind and your muscles will be preconditioned to handle the 400 you were aiming for. You've felt heavier weight, making this weight seem lighter. Your muscles need to feel the shock of heavy weight to prepare for a max. So why not take it to the extreme?

3. The Challenge
If your training lacks intensity I'd like to see you have the courage to take this exercise lightly. Actually I wouldn't, but don't worry about it because it's not possible anyhow. Your heart will begin racing, and you will be pumped with adrenaline. Not to mention the fact that you have three people watching you. You'll be ready to perform, because there is no other choice. This is more weight than you've ever lifted in your life, so you will get psyched up for the big challenge. As mentioned earlier, some people call negatives ego boosters. They are partially correct. It does feel good to load the bar with the heavy poundage. Whipping out a few reps will definitely give you confidence when it's time to max out for real. The only difference will be you've felt heavier.

4. Letting It Down Slow
Still not convinced? Let me pull out the textbook for you. The eccentric phase is the opposite of the contraction. For the bench press it is the lowering of the weight. Many bodybuilders treat this phase as an after thought, which they shouldn't because it is very important. Research confirms that the eccentric component of a lift may be more important than the concentric phase for promoting muscle growth. One study showed that, when compared to normal weight training, concentric-only training required twice as many repetitions to produce similar results. With normal weight training, during an eccentric contraction (negative) you lower the same weight with fewer muscle fibers, and that means that each fiber involved has to sustain greater force.

5. Get The Last Laugh
We all know variety is important as well. If you haven't done heavy negatives before than give them a try. It may be just what your muscles are screaming for. If you get funny looks at the gym, don't worry about it. You're not there to impress anybody; you're there to get stronger. The only person you have to look at in the mirror is yourself. The weights will always weigh the same so you can't compete with them. You may want to practice negatives with lighter weight before you jump right into this. Round up a couple buddies and show them why heavy negatives are positively a good idea.

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HIT Vs. Volume Training

Many people that train using HIT have the opinion that something just isn’t right with those guys that spend day after day in the gym doing endless sets of every lift under the sun.

A common opinion is the volume guys don’t understand the “scientific” approach to building muscle, and just don’t push themselves hard enough to get the job done in a few sets.

Many volume guys on the other hand look at the HITers as not being as devoted as they are, and truth be told, maybe a little lazy. They figure if you really want it you’ll do as many damn sets as required as many days of the week as possib

HIT Vs. Volume Training

 

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER AND MIKE MENTZER BOTH ACHIEVED A GREAT BODY BUT
 ADVOCATED VERY DIFFERENT TRAINING PHILOSOPHIES, WHICH ONE WAS CORRECT?

le. It doesn’t interfere with life, “it is life!”

While there are lot’s of “in between” trainers that do moderated versions of one or the other training styles, the HIT guys and volume trainers make up an extremely large segment of the training populace.

Both of these almost diametrically opposed training styles have a large following for the simple reason they are both very effective for those that are suited to each method.

While most new trainees end up sampling a good variety of different training modes while learning what works best for them, many never get past the “same old, same old” they learned through haphazardly watching everyone else do the same thing.

This is especially true of guys that start with volume if you don’t mind me saying so. Even those that experiment often experiment around an extremely narrow portion of “what seems to work for them.”

 In a good majority of the cases this is well and good if the trainee has found a system that works for them, but a waste of time and energy if they are spinning their wheels making little or no progress from week to week.

What I’m going to discuss in this article are those trainees that play both sides of the fence; I am also going to go over some ways that may make volume and HIT more agreeable for those that strictly choose one or the other.

To say that volume work is responsible for the largest percentage of the top physiques is an understatement. But by and large, volume training tends to overtrain the average person.

What many average Joes find is that doing a little gear (or these days, some of the more effective pro-hormones like ([insert your product]) makes them no longer average.

For many people, gear/PHs can greatly increase the trainee’s ability to recover from sessions that would have left them hopelessly overtrained while clean. Knowing this, many methodical lifters train HIT, or low volume while clean, and then gradually ramp up the workload when “on.” They then ramp the volume back down as the cycle ends.

My usual rule of thumb for people that don’t have either a lot of gear experience or overall training experience is to pick a routine that you KNOW is effective for you while training clean, and then let the gear amplify the results.

Doing this as a planned approach makes a lot of sense for most trainees. This approach is especially beneficial to those of you who are still getting to know how your body responds to different stimuli.

All newbies out there reading this take heed. One of the biggest mistakes people make is getting on a cycle, believing that now they can train “just like the pros,” and overtraining so badly they hardly grow.

I have seen COUNTLESS people blaming their lack of progress on “bogus gear,” when the truth of the matter is they never had a chance on their newfound six day a week 20 sets a body-part routine.

Even the most dogmatic HITer has to admit that SOME people, even those that respond well to HIT while clean, often don’t grow as well as they do when combining a volume approach with good gear. And if it works…

Okay, so what if you are the type of lifter that trains clean (at least most of the time)? Here are some approaches that can allow the HIT (or low-volume) trainee to get some potentially productive volume work into his routine without too much of a chance of overtraining.

Conversely, I will recommend some approaches that will give you volume guys a break from endless sets and stalled poundage, and should usually spark some new growth in the process.

The simplest method, and the one most often used in a haphazard way is to do either a high volume or HIT routine until progress stalls, at which point you can slowly work into the higher/lower volume routine, or do a sudden switch.

Given the choice I like the “quick switch” to the new format, as it tends to result in better gains. The problem with how this is usually carried out is that the trainee waits WAY too long before it finally occurs to him that he is truly stuck.

And, by then the trainee has not only wasted valuable time, he has also managed to make his body less apt to be responsive.

Better ways of making this transition start with having a game plan in place with some structure to the switch. Additionally, it is wise to be truly aware of what your body is telling you. This will allow you to transition from one training mode to the other without becoming totally burned out on either method.

This means the trainee performs a volume routine the first week, and switches to a low volume/hit routine the next. Lifts can stay the same, with only the number of sets and days spent in the gym changing from week to week.

Conversely, you can change all the loading parameters each week. This method usually results in less strength gains since there is less nerve improvement, but in my experience it also tends to produce more size gains.

Guys that are not naturally at least somewhat strong do best keeping the lifts constant and modulating the volume and rep count/cadence instead of performing different lifts.

This simple hi/low schedule truly works wonders for many people. The loading is constantly changing, and the fluctuating approach allows recovery from each of the different training variables (volume, frequency and intensity). Shifting your training approach in this manner goes a long way toward preventing stagnation and overtraining.

And as an aside, please keep in mind that the term “volume” is relative. The 10 sets that would leave a true hardgainer totally overtrained may be a reasonable load for someone with fairly good recovery ability, and may in fact be a low level of loading for the guy that can progress on 16 sets a bodypart.

And of course those same 10 sets are a huge load for a hardgainer/or HIT style trainee, who usually only performs 1-2 sets a bodypart.

Of course you can make the switch from volume to intensity a lot less frequently than once per week; performing 2-10 weeks of either style of training before changing to the other style works well for some…and much worse for others.

The key here is not waiting until you are totally “had” before transitioning and understanding why the switch can be a big boost over what you might have achieved running either style constantly.

And while this definitely qualifies as a cycling strategy, it is really not intensity cycling in its truest form. But that’s another article for another day.

If you respond well to volume, yet find yourself stuck way too long at the same poundage, you may find that doing volume for 60-75% of a given period, and inserting HIT/low volume/power training (call it what you will) as a means to reduce overtraining tendencies and boost strength levels goes a long way towards a bigger, better you.

Say whatever you want, but an exceedingly large percentage of those doing volume training experience very irregular poundage progression.

 If the volume and frequency is right for YOU when doing a low volume routine, strength increases are usually like clockwork.

So with this scheme you do some volume, make progress on the weights and make good size gains.

Then, BEFORE you are hopelessly stuck, you switch to HIT and rack up some solid poundage increases, and then HIT the volume (ha-ha) with more weight on the bar and climb another size rung.

This is a good plan for those of you that don’t tolerate volume well and tend to overtrain, yet get good size gains from using high volume for short periods of time.

Doing your HIT routine for 60-75% of the time, and then periodically switching to a volume approach gives some people just the right balance they need to get the best of both worlds.