Tips of the week Perform purely negative curls for more bicep growth

1. Load the barbell with a weight with which you can only perform 4 repetitions of curls.
2. Put the weight down after the fourth repetition and increase the weight by about 20%.
3. Pick the weight up again immediately and then curl the weight upwards with the help of a training partner. Your training partner will have to help you a lot here. You yourself will do very little during the concentric phase of the movement.
4. After your training partner has helped you to move the weight upwards, slowly lower the weight over a period of 8 seconds. Repeat this purely negative repetition one more time.
5. Perform a total of 3 of these descending sets with 4 minutes rest between sets.

Tip: Improve your technique with wall squats

Improve your squat and deadlift technique with a simple exercise you can do at home

By Chad Waterbury

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-hone-your-technique-with-wall-squats

Most bodybuilding magazines extol the virtues of classic squats for building muscular thighs. The problem, however, is that classic squats are usually not an effective muscle building exercise for the quadriceps unless you have a specific skeletal structure (short hamstrings, long torso) and sufficient mobility. Here's a simple test to find out if classic squats are right for you or not.

Stand in front of a mirror. Start with your arms crossed in front of your chest and your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. Get into a full squat position while keeping your torso as vertical as possible. If your knees are fully bent in the lowest position, your heels are on the floor and (and this is crucial) your torso has an angle greater than 75% relative to the floor, then your body is built for classic squats.

Tall people with long femurs, or those who lack mobility, will have a torso that is too bent forward in the deepest squat position to properly overload the quadriceps. This doesn't mean that squats won't have benefits, but you need to understand that if you can't achieve the position described above, squats won't build big strong thighs as quickly as other exercises.

Assuming that you are shorter than 190 cm and don't have the long hamstrings of a professional basketball player, it may well be that you just need to work on your technique and flexibility. Wall squats, also known as wall squats, are an effective exercise for this(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VIm3eZaA5I)

Wall squats

1. Stand facing a wall with your nose and toes touching the wall. Your feet should be slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, with your toes pointing slightly outwards.
2. Descend as far as you can into the squat position with your arms hanging between your legs in front of your body or raised above your body. You should be able to go down a little further with each repetition.
3. Do 3 sets of 15 repetitions per day until you can lower your hips to below your knees.

Those who are unable to lower their hips lower than their knees even after two weeks of performing wall squats daily should focus on front squats and one-legged squats for their quadriceps development.

Wall squats, on the other hand, are a great exercise for everyone. They will improve your squat and deadlift technique regardless of your skeletal structure and stature.

Tip: Make hip thrusts even better

Hip thrusts are perhaps the best gluteus exercise on the planet. Here's an easy way to make this exercise even more effective

By Bret Contreras

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-make-the-hip-thrust-even-better

The upper range of motion in hip thrusts is the most difficult part of the movement, and many exercisers cheat on this part of the movement when trying to perform as many repetitions as possible. They go less and less far up with each repetition. Combat this tendency by performing a 10 second isometric hold on the last repetition of a set.

This will keep your form solid while you build strength. Additionally, this technique will create a killer muscle burn in the gluteus. After 6 to 8 seconds of holding, you will notice that your hips want to drop. When this happens, push the hip up by contracting the gluteus hard, ensuring that the last few seconds of the isometric hold are maximally effective.

Even if you are performing a heavy single repetition or a max repetition, try to hold the highest position for a few seconds.

Tip: Perform javelin presses for your shoulders

Start your next shoulder workout with this unique exercise to activate your nervous system

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-do-the-javelin-press-for-shoulders

This exercise is simple but challenging. Simply perform one-arm shoulder presses using a barbell instead of a dumbbell. The grip position will be similar to that of a javelin thrower.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t5shgOhKyE)

Javelin presses have several benefits that make them an excellent pressing exercise

1. The neutral grip reduces stress on the shoulder joint.
2. The use of a barbell increases the need for stabilization of the weight, which leads to activation of the nervous system. Although Javelin Presses are perhaps the best exercise for building raw strength, when performed at the beginning or early in a training session, this exercise can increase the productivity of subsequent exercises.
3. The triple balancing action (hip, trunk and shoulder joint) makes Javelin Presses an effective exercise for building the body's capacity to adapt to external forces that can throw the body off balance. This makes this exercise a highly effective injury prevention tool.

Tip: Take on the plank and push-up challenge

It's time to add variety to your training. Challenge your friends (or foes) and see who can last the longest

By Dan Blewett

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-take-the-plank-and-push-up-challenge

The rules are simple:

1. First, perform a set of push-ups through the full range of motion to muscle failure.
2. Multiply the number of repetitions by 2.5.
3. Then perform push-ups with this new number as your target...without allowing your knees to touch the floor. You can "pause" in the highest position for as long as necessary, essentially holding a push-up plank position.

So if you can perform 30 push-ups in a row, your goal is to perform 75 push-ups (30 x 2.5). Only about 10 out of 100 athletes manage this challenge. Are you one of them?

Tip: Activate your latissimus for better deadlift performance

Bringing the latissimus into play will change everything in heavy deadlifts By Tony Gentilcore

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-fire-up-the-lats-to-deadlift-better

The latissimus dorsi is the largest back muscle, attaching to the humerus, scapula, rib cage and pelvis. It provides your spine with a ton of stability under heavy loads. Use these two cues to activate your latissimus more:

1. Protect your arm flexors
2. Squeeze an orange with the crook of your arm

Both work well, but sometimes it's beneficial to take it a step further to let someone feel what it feels like to activate the latissimus. Try the following:

Learn to build tension in the latissimus using deadlifts:

(https://youtu.be/-J1E3IEc3b8)

Simply attach a resistance band to a barbell bar and perform deadlifts, keeping the barbell close to your body the whole time. Once you've done this exercise, you'll immediately understand what we're talking about.

Tip: Hunt for the pump for more muscle growth

The pump is more than a temporary cosmetic effect - it's essential for muscle growth. Here's the science behind it.

By Bret Contreras, Brad Schoenfeld, PhD

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-for-muscle-growth-chase-the-pump

Arnold was a big advocate of training aimed at achieving a pump. The pump is a phenomenon in which the muscles are pumped up with blood after resistance training. This is primarily achieved by performing multiple sets of moderate to high repetitions.

Here's the short version: During a set with a moderate number of repetitions, the veins that carry blood away from the working muscle are compressed by muscle contractions. However, the arteries continue to supply blood to the muscle, causing an increased amount of intramuscular plasma to accumulate. This causes the plasma to leak out of the capillaries into the interstitial space - the area between muscle cells and blood vessels.

This accumulation of fluid in the interstitial space, together with the osmolytic properties of lactate, generates an extracellular pressure gradient, which in turn causes a push of plasma back into the muscle. The net result is blood that builds up in your muscles and causes them to swell. Scientists also refer to the pump as cell swelling.

Where the prophets of doom are wrong

Many see the pump as a temporary condition that is purely cosmetic in nature. This is a little too short-sighted. Studies have shown that a hydrated cell stimulates protein synthesis and inhibits proteolysis (protein breakdown).

Muscle hypertrophy (muscle growth) is ultimately a function of protein balance - synthesize more protein than you break down and you will build muscle mass. So the fact that cell swelling simultaneously increases protein synthesis while reducing protein breakdown is a big win for muscle building.

What drives this cell swelling-induced hypertrophy response? An increased amount of fluid in the muscle fibers leads to a stretching of the cell membrane. You can imagine the whole thing like a balloon overfilled with water. The muscle perceives this as a threat to its integrity and responds by initiating an anabolic signaling cascade that ultimately serves to reinforce its ultrastructure.

Usually, targeted exercises that keep the muscle under constant tension induce a pump. The occlusion and hypoxia that results from training with the goal of a muscle pump leads to a long list of hypertrophy-stimulating mechanisms. One of these includes increased satellite cell activity, which enhances the muscle cell's ability to grow.

So if muscle growth is your goal, don't shy away from including a few pump sets in your workout.

Tip: Build triceps with mechanical descending sets

Increase the pain to boost your gains. Try this smart technique to build those lagging triceps

By Ben Bruno

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-build-triceps-with-mechanical-drop-sets

Descending sets are a proven muscle building technique. You use a weight and perform as many repetitions until you reach the point of muscle failure. Then you reduce the weight and go to muscle failure again. You then reduce the weight again and continue the set until muscle failure. Basically, you reduce the weight as a way to continue the set.

Mechanical descending sets follow a similar concept, but instead of reducing the weight when your muscles become fatigued, you keep the weight the same. You simply move on to a lighter exercise or a lighter variation of the same exercise to continue the set.

The key is to use exercises that can easily be performed one after the other, without too much transition time, so that you can move from one exercise to the next with minimal disruption, without unnecessarily breaking the flow of the set. There are many different and effective ways to use mechanical descending sets for upper and lower body training. Try the following for your triceps.

Triceps: mechanical descending set

Here we will use lying tricep presses and then move on to close bench presses. Start by performing lying tricep presses with a weight that allows you to perform 8 to 12 repetitions. Then go straight to close bench press for the same number of repetitions as the first exercise.

This version of a mechanical descending set involves the transition from an isolation exercise to a multi-joint exercise. Start with an isolation exercise and, as soon as you can't do any more repetitions, go straight to the multi-joint exercise that trains the same muscle.

Another example of this technique is to start with flying movements with dumbbells and finish the set with dumbbell bench presses to train your chest muscles.

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-for-biceps-growth-do-negative-only-curls

From Charles Poliquin