Effective Strategies For Increasing Your Workout Intensity
During a pandemic like the one the world is currently experiencing, countless people are stuck at home with minimal exercise equipment. That doesn’t mean you can’t have great workouts and improve your physique. Here are some effective strategies for increasing your workout intensity without adding more external resistance.
Do Negative-Focused Work
The negative, or eccentric, portion of an exercise is the part where the muscle stretches under control. Slowing down the negative stroke leads to increased muscle fiber damage and soreness in the window after a workout. Additionally, you are always stronger on the eccentric part than the concentric, or positive, part of an exercise, so slowing down the eccentric movement enables you to build more strength and control without letting gravity pull you down. Emphasizing the negative builds time under tension, which is important for muscle growth.
In performing an exercise, make the eccentric portion last for 3-5 seconds; for instance, on push-ups, take 5 seconds to lower your torso to the bottom of the movement, and then come up.
Take Shorter Rests Between Sets
Simply reduce your regular rest intervals. Instead of resting for 90 seconds, drop it to a minute.
Another option is to perform two exercises one after another with no rest between them and then rest before the next double set, instead of doing straight sets of each with a rest after each set. For instance, you might do a set of push-ups followed immediately by a set of inverted rows.
Do Unilateral Work
Switch from bilateral (both limbs at once) exercises to unilateral (one limb at a time) ones. This enables you to bring up physique weaknesses and imbalances and improve muscle symmetry. For example, instead of performing squats, do Bulgarian split squats; instead of deadlifts, do single-leg deadlifts; instead of rows, perform single-arm rows.
Create Longer Levers
Place the resistance farther away from the working muscle. The farther the resistance is, the harder the exercise becomes. For instance, during a glute bridge, instead of placing the dumbbell right at the top of your thighs, position it away from your hips or at the end of the thighs; during a lateral walk, instead of placing the band above your knees, put it below your knees at your ankles; during a plank, instead of placing your elbows under your shoulders, plant them outside the shoulders.
Increase Your Range Of Motion
When you increase your range of motion beyond what you can control, you stimulate more muscle fibers. For example, instead of glute bridges, try doing hip thrusts; instead of split squats, do front-foot-elevated split squats.
Increase Your Reps
Doing more repetitions with the same amount of weight is a prime example of progressive overload. So, if you’re used to working in the 6-10-rep range, up your reps to 10-15 while sticking with the same weight. Adapting to the new rep range should lead to new muscle growth.
Become Unstable
I’m referring to your workouts, of course. The more points of contact your body has with the ground, the more stable you tend to be. So, if you reduce points of contact or narrow the base of support, you will have less stability, which will increase exercise intensity. One great example is the bird dog single-arm row.
Use High-Intensity Techniques
Bodybuilding staples such as pre-exhaust, forced reps, dropsets, and rest-pauses got their reputations for a reason. They are proven techniques that will increase blood flow into the muscle and enable you to do more work in a given time.
Do Pulses And Pauses
Adding pulses or pauses during an exercise increases the time under tension and forces your body to work harder in a disadvantageous position. For instance, do a pause or a double pulse at the bottom of a squat or add a pause at the bottom of a push-up.
Change Your Grip
Try different grips to change the exercise slightly and stimulate different fibers; for example, an underhand grip, overhand grip, mixed grip, neutral grip, or over-to-under grip. This tiny difference in execution can make an exercise more difficult.
Try Different Exercise Variations
There are hundreds of variations for each exercise. If you modify your exercises according to the strategies discussed above, there’s no end to the new growth stimulus you can introduce to your muscles.
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