6 Ways To Build The Biceps Short Head

New Exercise and Fitness Review

Targeting a lagging body part is as easy as devoting a few more exercises to it. If your upper pecs are weak, simply do a few more incline bench presses. Got weak middle delts? Add some lateral raises and overhead shoulder presses. Poor quad development? Front squats, sissy squats, and leg extensions can help.

But what if you want to focus on the short head of the biceps? That’s trickier.

The short head lies underneath the long head, which is why it’s sometimes called the inner head. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean you can ignore it. Beefing up the short head as well as the long head, in addition to the brachialis, can go a long way toward your goal of bigger arms.

So how exactly do you focus on the short head? In their book, “Stronger Arms & Upper Body,” Joe Wuebben and Jim Stoppani, Ph.D., note: “Because the long head of the biceps is located outside of the short head, using a narrow grip (inside shoulder width) when doing barbell curls emphasizes development of the long head. Taking a grip that is outside of shoulder width, on the other hand, will target the short head.”

There’s your first clue.

While curling, elbow position and grip affect which head—or both; biceps means “two heads”—is recruited most strongly. Typically, those movements in which the long head is incapable of being fully stretched better target the short head, and vice versa.

Nowhere is that distinction more clear than when comparing incline dumbbell curls (arms hanging straight down behind the plane of your body) with preacher curls (arms well in front of the plane of your body). In the first movement, the long head is fully stretched in the bottom position; in the second, it’s hardly stretched at all.

Selecting the right exercises that focus on the short head is just one aspect of a larger strategy to bring it up. Here are six sound ways to target the short head of your biceps in your pursuit of bigger arms.

1 Train Your Biceps Twice Over The Course Of Your Split

A smaller muscle group like the biceps recovers from a hard workout more quickly than a larger one like legs or back. You can train it more frequently over the course of your split, especially if your training split lasts five or more days.

That being said, how you construct that split becomes crucial. In a worst-case scenario, you wouldn’t want to train biceps on Mondays, back on Tuesdays, and biceps again on Wednesdays. Your arm flexors wouldn’t be given sufficient recovery time to grow. Nor would you want to train biceps the day before or after a back workout. Strategically working in other upper-body workouts, leg days, or rest days between biceps workouts can help pace your pull-day routines.

Just because you’re training your biceps twice over the course of your split doesn’t mean you simply have to repeat the same workout.

Just because you’re training your biceps twice over the course of your split doesn’t mean you simply have to repeat the same workout. Consider the first workout to be a general mass-building biceps routine that includes movement for both the long and short heads, and the second workout to be one that emphasizes the short head with a variety of moves, grips, and rep ranges.

You can even consider alternate techniques to use—negatives instead of forced reps, partials instead of dropsets—to work the biceps in very different ways as well.

2 Add A Biceps Workouts After Back Training

TRAINING TIP

By taking a grip a few inches outside shoulder width on your standing curls, you can better emphasize the biceps short head, building more overall size on your arms.

One easy remedy for the problem of training the biceps is to do your biceps immediately after your back workout. (Never train biceps before back; it would adversely affect your strength on many of your back movements, as well as your ability to hold on to the bar or handle.) Most back-day movements are multijoint exercises, so the biceps are already carrying a significant load. It makes sense, then, to just finish them off because they’re already highly fatigued.

Training a smaller muscle group immediately after a larger one is familiar terrain to most bodybuilders, but usually you’re not able to generate the same degree of intensity after you’ve just finished a bunch of heavy pulls.

That’s one reason the second biceps workout should be done on an arms-only day. Here, the biceps won’t be prefatigued so you’ll be able to hit them with more energy—and more weight—a great combination for maximal stimulus.

3 Start With A Mass-Builder That Focuses On The Short Head

Since curling movements for the biceps are almost exclusively single-joint exercises, the usual advice to start with a multijoint movement just doesn’t cut it here. Choose a movement with which you can move the most weight. For most people, that’s standing curls. Standing movements allow you to generate a bit of momentum through your lower body and thus are better leadoff hitters, if you will, in your arm workout.

Standing movements allow you to generate a bit of momentum through your lower body and thus are better leadoff hitters, if you will, in your arm workout.

As noted above, a slightly wider grip on the bar (or EZ-bar if your prefer) can shift some of the emphasis to the short head. One approach I’ve used is to do 2 sets with a slightly closer grip and 2 more with a slightly wider grip (or 3 and 1) rather than 4 sets with the same shoulder-width grip. That allows you to better emphasize both the short and long heads on your different sets right at the start of your arm workout.

Further, don’t be shy about putting some challenging weight on the bar at the start of your workout, when your energy levels are highest. After a few warm-up sets, use a weight that causes you to fail at 6-8 reps, the lower end of the muscle-building rep spectrum. If you can do more than 8 reps, add more weight.

4 Emphasize The Short Head In Your Workout

YOU SHOULD KNOW

You can never totally isolate a particular muscle within a muscle group (like the short head in the biceps), but you can emphasize it so it’s recruited more strongly over others by changing body position, angles, and grips.

We spoke about prioritizing a lagging body part in the first paragraph of this article, so by all means add another 1-2 movements that focus on the short head. Your best bet is to target it early in your workout when your energy levels are a little higher. Assuming you did some wide-grip barbell curls as your first movement, consider adding other short-head-focused movements next. Good options: preacher curls, lying cable concentration curls, and high cable curls.

Hitting the short head with a different relative intensity—that is, instead of choosing a weight that causes failure at 6-8 reps, choose one that causes failure at 8-10 or 10-12—also allows you to target the short head in new ways.

Adding a second movement from a slightly different angle and with a slightly different relative intensity is the best way to work the short head for better overall gains.

5 Try “New” Short-Head-Focused Movements

Since preacher curls focus on the short head of the biceps more than the long head, they’re obviously a good choice to include in your workout. But preachers can be done any number of ways: the one-arm dumbbell version, the EZ-bar version, or curling off the steep side of the bench (sometimes called a Scott curl, with a barbell, EZ-bar, or dumbbell). Doing your preacher curls standing rather than seated can even allow you to use just a bit more momentum, allowing you to do a few cheat reps as well.

Preacher curl

Standing upper cable curls are another short-head movement. You can alternately try them one arm at a time, or even slightly change the angle of pull coming from the sides by positioning the pulleys higher—or slightly lower—than you normally would.

You can find more short-head exercises in the Bodybuilding.com Exercise Database. When you find a movement you like, stick with it for 6-8 weeks, at which point it might be a good idea to change things up again as progress starts to stall and a new stimulus is required for continued adaptation.

6 Work Past Failure

Choosing the right variations of exercises with the right loads is a good start, but you still have to do the work. When it comes to initiating growth processes at the cellular level, you won’t get away with stopping your sets short of muscle failure. In fact, taking 1-2 sets of each exercise past failure is superior for building maximal muscle. Hence, combining the move with an intensity-boosting training technique can elicit greater overall growth.

When training arms, here are a few advanced techniques that work especially well:

• 
  

  Forced Reps: If you have a workout partner, taking 1-2 of your heaviest sets past muscle failure is pretty easy to do with preacher curls. The spotter simply has to provide just enough help to get you over the sticking point. If you’re doing one-arm preacher curls, use your free hand to self-spot for a few extra reps.

  
  


• 
  

  Rep-and-a-Halves: This technique works well with biceps, but probably toward the end of your workout so you don’t compromise your strength right off the bat. Do a full contraction, then release the weight just a few inches and strongly contract the biceps again before lowering to full arm extension. This technique focuses on the peak contraction.

  
  


• 
  

  Dropsets: This is really easy to do with cable movements in which changing the weight is fast. Instead of ending your set quickly once you reach muscle failure, reduce the weight by about 25 percent and resume to a second point of muscle failure.

  
  


• 
  

  Go for the Pump: Toward the end of your workout when fatigue has set in, do a few short-head sets for higher reps (and cut your rest time in half) to pump the muscle, which brings in fluids, pushes on the muscle fascia that encapsulates the muscle fibers, and stimulates the release of growth hormone. The pump you feel is hard to miss—and good luck taking off that sweaty T-shirt!

  
  

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6 Ways To Build The Biceps Short Head

Build Muscle Strength, Size, And Endurance In One Workout!

New Exercise and Fitness Review

Most of us who lift use heavy weights to focus on strength, moderate ones to emphasize building muscle size, and light weights to focus on muscle endurance. Hence, the weights we use are a reflection of our training goals.

While these modes of training are oftentimes very distinct, they can actually be combined into a single workout. That is, you can train for strength, muscle size, and endurance in the same workout, which allows you to generate some of—but not necessarily maximize—the benefits of each type of training.

This kind of program is called the Four-Rep Method, and it’s very easy to implement. Quite simply, you do 3-5 exercises for a given body part, choosing moves that work the target muscle group from a slightly different angle. What makes the protocol unusual is that each movement provides a unique training stimulus.

If you’re looking to build muscle, training across multiple rep ranges can have a synergistic effect, says Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., CSCS, Director of the Human Performance Lab at Lehman College (Bronx) and author of “The M.A.X. Muscle Plan.”

“First off, low-rep training with heavy loads translates into an ability to use more weight during [your] ‘hypertrophy range,’ which increases mechanical tension and thus enhances growth processes,” he says.

“Alternatively, high-rep training with light weights helps increase buffering capacity, allowing you to crank out an extra couple of reps at a moderate-rep range,” says Schoenfeld. Moreover, heavier-load training tends to target the high-threshold motor units associated with the largest type-II muscle fibers, while light-load training focuses more on the endurance-oriented type-I fibers.”

What does all of this mean, you ask? “This combination of training approaches maximizes hypertrophy along the spectrum of fiber types,” Schoenfeld says. In other words, training with this variety of volume and intensity will maximize your ability to grow!

To help you put the Four-Rep Method into action, I’m going to break down each distinct training segment in a sample—but extremely effective—back workout. If you want to make exercise substitutions, please ensure you always start the workout with your major mass-builders, use a variety of equipment, integrate different grip positions, and consider finishing with a single-joint move (when applicable).

Because you start any Four-Rep Method workout with very heavy weights, a good warm-up is essential. Include several lighter sets, pyramiding the weight up each successive set, but never take your warm-up sets to muscle failure. Make sure your shoulders are good and loose. Remember, warm-ups don’t count as working sets.

Here’s the progression of the four exercises:

1 Do 3 sets of 4 reps

After nailing your first heavy working set, adjust the weight as necessary on your next 2 sets (for 3 sets total) depending on whether the first set was too light or too heavy.

Don’t perform these sets with small, isolation-based exercises. Select basic, mass-building moves to begin the workout when your energy levels are highest, which will help you get the most out of these moves and build maximum strength.

One-Arm Dumbbell Row

“It’s important to train for strength early in your workout, as fatiguing sets in a higher rep range cause metabolic buildup that impairs your ability to generate maximal strength in the lower rep ranges,” Schoenfeld explains.

On back day, the T-bar row is a good choice because it’s a basic back exercise that allows you to generate just a bit of body English to complete the move. If, however, you can’t keep a flat back because the weight is too heavy—remember, you’re aiming for just 4 solid reps per set—then opt for the chest-supported version.

Take a slightly longer than normal rest period between these sets. You’re in no hurry on your heaviest sets, which ensures that you’re fully recovered for your next effort. Do 3 sets total and move on to the second exercise.

Alternate Four-Rep Workout

While the Four-Rep Method is typically done by going heavy on all sets of your first exercise, you can instead work the muscle from heavy to light for each exercise.

For example, for each movement, do your first set for 4 reps, the second set for 8, the third set for 12, and the fourth for 16 reps. Because this technique adds a fourth working set and increases total volume, consider reducing the total number of exercises, like this:

• T-bar row with handle: 1 set of 4, 8, 12, 16 reps


• Wide-grip lat pull-down: 1 set of 4, 8, 12, 16 reps


• One-arm dumbbell row: 1 set of 4, 8, 12, 16 reps

2 Do 3 sets of 8 reps

If you’re familiar with research on hypertrophy, you’ll recognize 8 as the lower limit of the optimal muscle-building rep range, so long as you’re using good form and training close to muscle failure.

“The ‘hypertrophy range’ is theorized to maximize growth because it provides an ideal combination of mechanical tension and metabolic stress—two factors that have shown to drive anabolic signaling,” explains Schoenfeld.

“Moreover, this rep range allows for the performance of optimal training volumes without overtaxing bodily systems,” he says. “A clear dose-response relationship has been found between volume and muscle growth, with greater amounts of work translating into greater gains—at least up to a certain threshold.”

In other words, sets of 8-12 hit the muscle-building sweet spot. They provide enough volume to stimulate growth, but the amount of weight you can handle in that range won’t fry your central nervous system.

On back day, choose another multijoint exercise, this one done from a different angle and with a different piece of equipment. So, if you started with a T-bar row, a wider-grip lat movement—like a lat pull-down—makes a nice complement since it better targets your upper lats.

3 Do 3 sets of 12 reps

The relatively lighter weights you’ll lift here provide a slightly different kind of stimulus for muscle growth, but you’ll still be working in the sweet 8-12 hypertrophy rep range. No, you won’t be able to life as much weight for 12 reps as you could for 8, but you will get more time under tension, and your body will probably start to fatigue at this point.

Given that your first exercise was a free-weight move and your second was on the cable stack, consider using a dumbbell exercise as your third move. Dumbbells force each side of your body to work independently, which requires greater stabilizer involvement and coordination.

For this workout, I’ve chosen the one-arm dumbbell row. With your elbow tight to your side, it focuses more on your lower lats, ensuring that you work the entire muscle after your bout with pull-downs.

4 Finish with 3 sets of 16 reps

High-rep sets deliver a significant muscle pump, but the lighter weights you have to utilize are less effective for strength gains. Done late in your workout, you’ll be able to push yourself to the limit without having to save anything in the tank for any exercises that might follow.

Seal Row with barbell

“High-rep training also keeps the slow-twitch, type-I fibers under tension for extended periods,” adds Schoenfeld. “Since these fibers are endurance-oriented, the additional stimulation is believed to maximize their development.”

Your finishing move in this rep range should be an isolation exercise, but other than straight-arm pull-downs there really aren’t many of them for back. In this case, you could opt for straight-arm pulls, or you could go with another well-controlled row like the seal row, which is performed on an elevated bench and really isolates your back musculature.

Either way, make sure you focus on targeting your back, building a big pump, and feeling the burn with this round of exercises.

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Build Muscle Strength, Size, And Endurance In One Workout!

Build Your Best Biceps After 40

New Exercise and Fitness Review

All marketing gimmicks aside, most guys think 40 is no big thing. Maybe they sense the vague enormity of a round number, but most of them successfully bury their feelings and fears. And like the fools men can be, they go right on doing the same shit, day after lousy day, failing to even consider the possibility of a shift taking place.

When they do hit the gym—maybe because they’ve been told they should by a partner or doctor—it becomes clear that something is different. They’re subjected by smug, young trainers to hour after hour of unending balance work, corrective work, and other torturous indignities. Everything they do is presented as a solution to the problems they’ve created in their lifestyle and nutrition. They’re not improving; they’re doing penance. And the worst part: They pay for this abuse!

It would be like graduating from high school and showing up again the next day. One moment you belong, and the next, you most definitely don’t. Somewhere along the line, you start to forget that you were ever cool, sexy, or admirable. You’re just there.

Enough is enough! You deserve to feel good, look good, and get comments for more than losing weight. In short, you deserve strong, ripped arms. Now here’s how you’ll get them.

REDISCOVER THE BARBELL CURL

When you’re 15 and beyond stoked about your first barbell set, there’s no question what you’ll do with it. Curls! Low reps, high reps, 21s, reverse spider curls on the back of a dining room chair—you name it, you’ll do it. Maybe you’ll sloppily clean and press it, too, but mainly, it’s curls man!

Throw the sand bags, push the sled, and do whatever else you need to do to lose weight and feel good, but man, don’t forget about the pure joy of curls.

Things change the next few decades, and eventually, the days of curling madness and iron-fever are forgotten. In the gym, younger people fill the free-weights area while the middle-aged flit from machine to machine, like they’re trying to do anything but lift weights.

Somewhere along the line, a question rose up in their minds: Why would any grown man or woman pick up a barbell and curl it? They no longer had an answer.

How to execute
the perfect curl

• Firm grip, laser focus


• Solid stance on ground


• Slowly inhale and expel breath with force 2-3 times before starting


• Lift with force, pace, and control


• Don’t swing or cheat. Again: Control!


• Be done. Don’t linger forever doing burnout sets.

Curling, as all good CrossFitters know, is a vanity exercise. Large, peaking biceps clearly do not enhance weekend athletic performance. Nor do they make you smarter, taller, or richer.

They won’t help you lose the spare tire or heal your bad back. And if you believe the people who don’t have them, they’ll single-handedly (or armedly) make you shallow, egotistical, and prone to making your sleeves dance while waiting for your entree to arrive.

Know what else they are? A choice. They’re something you enjoy training, and which produces results you enjoy just as much. (As I have heard reported, they also come in very handy if you find yourself back in the mid-life dating scene.)

So sure, throw the sand bags, push the sled, and do whatever else you need to do to lose weight and feel good, but man, don’t forget about the pure joy of curls.

STEP UP TO YOUR FULL STRENGTH

OK, you’re in the gym. Let’s get down to action. I know your brain wants to assure you that this is all the same as it was yesterday. But that’s just your ego talking. Things have changed. Follow this advice like your life depends on it, because it does.

Alternate Dumbbell Bicep Curl

Today, you’ll focus on the classic barbell curl. EZ-curl bar or straight? I prefer the straight—because that’s what Arnold used—but you can make that call. Just make sure that the barbell is loaded up and waiting for your force to animate it.

As your wiser, more awakened self, walk purposefully to meet the weight. Place your hands firmly on the bar and take a moment to feel the ground beneath your feet. Now let the energy from the solid ground climb up through your entire body as you take three deep, charging breaths. Breathe in full and out with great force, like a martial artist does to elevate his chi before breaking a board.

With your mind centered, focused, and clear of any thought, and your body charged, pick that barbell up and curl it like it matters.

With your mind centered, focused, and clear of any thought, and your body charged, pick that barbell up and curl it like it matters. Like it’s the last rep of your life. Like you’re madly in love with it and like you want to kill it at the same time. Curl it with complete and total control and absolute reckless abandon.

That, my friend, is how you do it after 40. You don’t try to isolate muscle; you pull strength and tension from every fiber of your being and direct it at your target. You lift a heavy weight with power and purpose. That’s the real secret too few ever come to know. That’s how you battle back the years and fight for your place on this tiny, temporary planet.

Decide that from this point on, not a single rep shall pass where you don’t celebrate that you are here in this gym, through all the incredible odds against you, being blessed enough to move this weight. You may have been taking life and the gift of strength for granted before, but that is no longer excusable. Your justification, the ignorance of youth, has just expired.

WAKE UP AND ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE

Face it, life is better with resistance. When you’re challenged, you grow stronger. This is a fundamental truth in every chapter of life, but more so as you face the prospect of getting older.

You can wait for challenges to make you reluctantly change course, or you can actively develop and express your strength of body, mind, and soul, through the regular confrontation with gravity and iron.

Triceps Pushdown

From now on, there is only growth or decay. The choice is yours.

REDISCOVER ARM TRAINING

For the next six weeks, train your arms three times per week, immediately after your other training. Alternate these three workouts:

• Close-Grip Barbell Bench Press
  2 sets of 6-8 reps, 120 sec. rest


• Barbell Curl
  2 sets of 6-8 reps, 120 sec. rest

• Lying Triceps Press
  4 sets of 8-10 reps, 90 sec. rest


• Incline Dumbbell Curl
  4 sets of 8-10 reps, 90 sec. rest

• 
  

  Superset

  
  


• Triceps Pushdown
  3 sets of 12 reps


• Dumbbell Alternate Bicep Curl
  3 sets of 12 reps, 60 sec. rest.

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Build Your Own Weight-Gainer Shake

New Exercise and Fitness Review

Vital Stats

Name: Jim Stoppani, PhD Occupation: Creator of JYM Supplement Science, fitness coach and consultant
Website: www.jimstoppani.com/

To be honest, I have yet to find a quality mass gainer on the market. The problem with most mass gainers is that they are loaded with cheap sugars as a carb source. Not only can this lead to greater fat gain, it can make drinking them several times a day unhealthy.

Of course, many supplement companies try to trick the consumer by using ingredients like maltodextrin instead. While maltodextrin is technically a complex carb, it breaks apart very rapidly in the body and spikes blood sugar and insulin levels even faster and higher than sugar does. This allows manufacturers to list less sugar—or even no sugar—on the product label. The unsuspecting consumer has no idea that the carbs in that product are sugar in disguise.

A mass gainer is not some magical formula that will build muscle better than a regular protein blend. A mass gainer is designed for people who cannot eat enough calories, protein, carbs, and fat to build adequate muscle. This is typically teenage males and males in their early 20s. Instead of buying jugs of product that promise to free you from your ectomorphic ways, I recommend that you make your own with the recipe below.

For those of you who are truly hardgainers, and can’t gain an ounce no matter how much you eat, this homemade mass gainer is just for you. Drink this mass gainer with breakfast, around workouts (consider making it before workouts and sipping on it before, during and after workouts like I do in this video), and before bed. Having three of these shakes per day will add more than 2,800 calories, 225 grams of protein, 270 grams of carbs, and 90 grams of fat to your daily totals. That should be enough to put some size on the hardest of hardgainers!

HOMEMADE MASS GAINER

Simply combine all ingredients in a blender.

• 2 scoops Pro JYM protein powder blend (or any flavor Pro JYM you prefer)


• 2 cups whole milk


• 1/2 cup dry oats


• 1 medium banana


• 1 tbsp natural peanut butter (or any nut butter)


• 2-3 cups ice

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size (1 shake) Recipe yields 1 serving

Amount per serving

Calories 955

Total Fat30 g

Total Carbs90 g

Protein75 g

Homemade Mass Gainer PDF

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Build More Muscle With These Advanced Strength Techniques!

New Exercise and Fitness Review

Vital Stats

Name: Todd Bumgardner, MS, CSCS
Occupation: Co-founder of Beyond Strength Performance. Strength and conditioning coach and manual therapist at Ranfone Training Systems.
Website: beyondstrength
performance.com/todd-bumgardner-m-s

Most experienced gym rats align themselves with one of two training modalities: powerlifting or bodybuilding. The goal is either strength or size. While a dichotomy exists between the training styles, there also exists a middle ground in which they’re complementary. Here, strength is used to build size.

Once a lifter has passed the beginner stage, his or her body needs greater amounts of stress to continue growing. There are numerous advanced hypertrophy techniques to choose from, but when approached from a strength standpoint instead the size equation remains simple: Lift the most weight possible while employing the greatest volume possible. What’s possible, in this instance, is governed by recovery.

Increased strength can be a catalyst for increased muscle mass, but it requires a specific toolkit and training approach. How, then, do you use strength to build size? By using these training-tested techniques approved by powerlifters and bodybuilders all over the globe!

1 Cluster Sets

Cluster sets utilize rest between reps to help you accrue a total amount of reps with a heavier weight than is normally possible in a straight set.

“Cluster sets utilize rest between reps to help you accrue a total amount of reps with a heavier weight than is normally possible in a straight set.”

To perform a cluster set of, say, 5 reps, you employ 5 single reps with 20 seconds between each rep until 5 total reps are achieved. In other words, do one rep, rest 20 seconds, do another rep, rest 20, and continue in this fashion until you’ve completed all your reps. Clustering reps like this allows you to achieve more volume per set with weights you normally couldn’t use for that many reps.

For example, let’s say you can bench press 225 pounds for a straight set of 3 reps. By adding rest between reps, you could add 2 more reps to the set and press 225 for 5 total reps. Heavy weight for more volume equals bigger muscles.

This, of course, isn’t the only way to arrange your cluster set; clusters of 2 and 3 reps are also useful depending on the application.

Cluster sets can be arranged in two ways: to load the day’s main lift, or to extend the day’s main lift. Let’s explain using examples.

Loading the Main Lift
Exercise	Total Sets	Total Reps Per Set	Clusters @ % 1RM	Rest Between Clusters	Rest Between Sets
Squat	3	8	4 x 2 @ 85%	20 seconds	2 minutes

You wouldn’t normally be able to do 8 straight reps with 85 percent of your 1-rep max (1RM), especially for 3 sets. But here your 8 reps are broken down into four 2-rep clusters per set, so you squat 85 percent of your 1RM for 8 reps. This allows you to achieve greater volume with heavier weight and build more muscle!

Extending the Main Lift
Exercise	Total Cluster Sets	Total Reps Per Set	Clusters @ % 1RM	Rest Between Clusters	Rest Between Sets
Squat	2	5	2×2, 1×1 @ 85%	20 seconds	2 minutes

“The weight is kept heavy to build strength while also engaging size-building volume.”

Clusters are also great for extending your main lift, which would first be done with straight sets. To put this into practice, let’s say you complete 4 straight sets of 3 reps on the squat, but you want to continue to build volume with that lift. Extend your main lift by adding cluster sets after your straight sets. This cluster application works well during heavy, absolute-strength-training phases. The weight is kept heavy to build strength while also engaging size-building volume.

What’s Your 1RM?

These workouts require that you know your 1-rep max (1RM), and then use a weight based on that number. If you don’t know it, or how to estimate 75, 80, or 85 percent of it—which is necessary in the cluster and eccentric workouts)—you can use the formula below or a calculator.

Let’s say you can do 7 reps (and only 7 reps with good form) with 225 pounds on the bench press. Using the chart, 7 is 80% of your one-rep max. Mathematically, divide 225 by 0.8 and you’ll find that 100% of your 1RM is 281 pounds. To figure out how much 75% of your 1RM is, simply multiply 280 (which is 281 rounded down) by 0.75. Your working weight for these sets is 210 pounds.

1 Rep Max Percentages

Reps	%1RM
1	100
2	95
3	90
4	88
5	86
6	83
7	80
8	78
9	76
10	75
11	72
12	70

When using clusters to extend your main lift, use the same weight you did for your straight sets. (In some cases, slightly more.) This ensures you achieve more hypertrophy by amassing volume with heavier loads.

In the example above, your cluster set would consist of 2 sets of 2 reps and a set of 1 rep, each set separated by 20 seconds rest. After you complete all 5 reps, rest two minutes before completing a second time (two total cluster sets).

2 Heavy Eccentrics (Negatives)

Hypertrophy fanatics often espouse time-under-tension’s muscle-building virtues. Their enthusiasm isn’t unwarranted—increasing a muscle’s time under tension promotes growth. What’s key, however, is keeping the intensity high while maintaining the tension. Heavy eccentrics, sometimes called negatives, tap into your strength and provide that key.

Eccentric muscle contractions—lowering a weight rather than lifting it—are the most damaging. As a result, eccentrics trigger the most inflammation and have an increased propensity to restructure muscle. If you create a lot of muscle damage, your body will adapt by adding more muscle so the same stimulus isn’t as damaging the next time around.

But the process requires heavy weight. Light eccentrics teach control, but creating a disruption that will build muscle requires intensity to the tune of 75-85 percent of 1RM. (Unless you have a trained and dedicated spotter, I wouldn’t recommend using 90 percent or more of your 1RM for extended eccentrics.)

You’ll lower these heavy loads during eccentric phases for as long as 4-6 seconds while completing 3-6 reps in this manner per set. As the load increases, you’ll extend the length of the eccentrics and decrease the reps per set.

Exercise selection is paramount: You must choose exercises that have a pronounced eccentric phase. Squat variations, bench-press variations, rowing variations, and Romanian deadlifts work best.

“Squat variations, bench-press variations, rowing variations, and Romanian deadlifts work best.”

Heavy eccentrics are well-suited for loading main and assistance lifts. Here’s a programming snapshot of each.

Heavy Eccentric Main Lift
Exercise	Total Sets	Total Reps Per Set	Length of Eccentric	Percent of 1RM	Rest Between Sets
Bench Press	5	3	5 seconds	80%	2 minutes

The reps per set are kept low and the eccentric contraction is kept in the mid-range timeframe because the load is at 80 percent of one-rep max. The eccentric could stay at five seconds as the load is increased to 85 percent, but it’s often advantageous to decrease the length to four seconds to maintain quality reps. Doing 5 sets supplies a total volume that spurs adaptation.

Heavy Eccentric Assistance Lift
Exercise	Total Sets	Total Reps Per Set	Length of Eccentric	Percent of 1RM	Rest Between Sets
Dumbbell Bench Press	3	5	6 seconds	75%	90 seconds

Assistance eccentrics require a few programming alterations. Total volume remains, but we’re dropping the load and increasing the length of the eccentric phase. These alterations maintain muscle-building stress while preserving the nervous system. If you keep the load high, it’s likely that your nervous system would receive more input than it could handle. The result is overtraining accompanied by minimal gains.

Heavy eccentrics are a great loading choice to apply early in your training season. They build muscle and soft-tissue resiliency while setting the neurological stage for big strength gains. This takes place, of course, as you pack mass on your frame.

Build Strength, Get Big

In the end, size and strength training aren’t always mutually exclusive; hypertrophy is often the result of strength-building strategies. If you’ve surpassed the basics, it’s time to employ these lifter-tested techniques to gain new levels of mass and strength.

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About The Author

Todd Bumgardner works as a strength and conditioning coach and manual therapist at Ranfone Training Systems in Hamden, Connecticut.

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Build More Muscle With These Advanced Strength Techniques!