What's going on nation I'm Scott from muscularstrength. com and today. I want to talk to you guys about the three things
I wish I knew before I started training which would have helped me get a lot more
gains in my teenage years and those three things are the
Three muscle building mechanisms they are mechanical tension
Metabolic stress and muscle damage and now why are these important?
Well if you apply these three concepts to every single workout that you do you're not only gonna see more gains
But you're gonna have much more efficient workouts as well. Let me explain first
I'm going to talk about is metabolic stress now guys. I am talking about bodybuilding right now. I'm talking about
Building muscle not strength not how much weight you can lift on every single set
Pure muscle building and when it comes to muscle building if you're resting too long in between your sets you're not
maximizing the metabolic stress that you're placing on your muscles in order to do that you need to keep your rest periods
Between like 60 to 90 seconds and for those of you can handle it you can even go thirty to sixty
seconds in between every single set the entire point of training is to
absolutely
obliterate the muscles you're trying to work and
A lot of us get this backwards a lot of us think that if we did if we did a hundred pound chest press
you know on on set 1 if we can't do 100 pound chest press on set - then we failed the gym and that's
Backwards thinking guys if you do a hundred pound chest press on set one
And then you get to set to 60 seconds later, and you can do a hundred pounds again
And it's kind of easy well, then you're not lifting enough weight
it's basically a useless set if
You are lifting so
Intensely for every single set that by set two or three you're forced to lower the weight a little bit
It's because you are causing muscle damage
And if you want to get that pump that we all love you got to keep those rest
Periods short so something that I like to do for my workouts is I keep my timer with me at all times I?
Can get easily distracted in the gym
mainly because
I have some friends that I like to talk to whether it's about anime or TV shows or whatever and I get distracted and before
I know it three to five minutes has gone by which if I was power lifting or strength training
Three to five minutes is okay to rest in between sets because you're trying to lift as much weight as possible
And trying to increase your weight every single set when you power left or strength train when muscle building though
You're trying to fatigue the muscle and break it down for regrowth, so all I do
Is I just put stop pushed out of my timer?
And then the students that hit 60 seconds or 90 seconds max no matter what I'm doing. I look at my clock
I say bye to my friends, and I do my set and that's metabolic stress now number two
Mechanical tension, and that should be self-explanatory guys
It's exactly what it sounds like it's the amount of tension
You're placing on the muscles you're training on every single set a lot of us have a really bad habit
So let's say we're doing like a bent over row
We'll come over to the exercise and the first set looks like we could have done it basically half asleep
We're just kind of like banging through repetitions like this and by the time we finish our set let's say we're doing eight repetitions
we look like we could have went and done like fifteen more reps because the weight was so light if
anything you should take that set as a warm-up and not count it as one of your working sets a
Working set is a set in which let's say you're doing eight repetitions
By the time you get to seven your rep should look more like this
Like you're having a hard time with it and by the time you get to that eighth rep. Maybe you even need a little momentum
To help you get it done, but you're still in control
That is maximizing mechanical tension
We have this like thought in our head that we're supposed to increase the weight every single set when we go to the gym
So we put this like mental block in our head that
Forces us for set one to lift like 15 or 20 pounds lighter
Then we know we can actually handle
And it's just because there's a lot of bro science around what progressed of overload actually means
Every single set you do for bodybuilding number one you should be keeping those rest periods short
number two in order to maximize mechanical tension you need to be lifting as heavy as
Possible for the amount of reps you're doing and that also includes
Let's say set one you lift as heavy as you can
Let's say you're doing like a hundred pound dumbbell row and you get those eight reps
But you barely got seven eight
maybe the next set in order to
maximize that rep range you drop the weight down to 90 pounds or 95 pounds to ensure you get all those reps in and
Maximize the overload and then this brings us to the final
Thing I want to talk to you about which is muscle damage. This is going to complete the three muscle building mechanisms
Muscle damage highly depends on the total volume that you're training a muscle for me in particular
I have a higher ratio of slow twitch muscle fiber
Which means if I don't get enough volume in my workout so total working sets and reps
I will not grow period now obviously you have to lift heavy too, but if I do not do enough volume
I will not grow and typically for bigger muscle groups
That's anywhere between like eighteen to twenty-four working sets and for smaller muscle groups
Anywhere between ten to fifteen working sets divided among as many exercises as you want
I try to keep it as small as possible, maybe two three exercises max per body pot now
metabolic stress on me muscle damage
I'm sorry a lot of us have this problem where let's say we're doing well. This is the easiest exercise
Right here. I'll just do a hammer curl for example stand up, so let's say we're doing hammer curls
And we're trying to get eight repetitions right and so we're like yeah one yeah
Two we're crushing it three and we go four and then we get to five and we're kind of like oh
we can't do any more reps a
Lot of people will put the weight down and then be done with the set like well. My goal was to get eight repetitions
But I was only able to get five so now I'm done
I don't have a spotter to come over here and help me so I'm not gonna
Do those reps anymore what I want you guys to do from that one is if you're trying to do eight repetitions
And you're focusing on the concentric and eccentric portion of the rep
Put the weight down for literally ten seconds
And I'm not just saying ten seconds and pulling that number like out of thin air
Literally put it down for ten seconds and then pick it back up and you'll be surprised
But you'll probably be able to get those last three repetitions and still be able to maintain good form
Another thing you can do is
Incorporate some momentum reps or some cheat reps, so let's say you get five repetitions
With perfect form you want to get those last three so use a little momentum to fight the negative
on those last three reps
And that's totally fine because we're still utilizing the eccentric portion of the movement where's which is we get the most muscle breakdown
anyways
However if you were doing an exercise like a dumbbell bench press where obviously you would be laying down like this
well
You can't exactly use momentum
To do your reps so what you would do is you would sit up you would wait ten seconds?
And then you would roll back and complete those last few reps until you get them all in so guys
These these concepts believe it or not like these are such easy quick tips that
even me as a trainer now I
Forget how important they are I forget how?
Like how how simple things like this can really impact a workout for someone who doesn't know better. You know for me
It's like oh yeah, of course. That's what you should be doing but me when I was 18 like I was an idiot
I wouldn't say an idiot
It's pretty smart kid, but you know what I mean like I didn't know this there was no YouTube
You know trainers in the gym
We're still we're still being taught that if you squat past 90 degrees you're gonna blow your kneecaps out
you know like the industry has changed a lot, but just
Applying these three simple tips to no matter what training program. You're doing whether you're doing mine or someone else's will make an
astronomical difference in the in terms of the gains you make so if you guys enjoyed this video, please
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