Five Tips to Shock Your Body to Grow

Shocking the body to grow is not for those who are just beginning to lift weights. For them, straight sets will suffice. It is for those, who have hit a plateau and the gains are not commensurate with their efforts or there are no gains at all. Here are a few tips on how to shock your body to grow.

Rest pause sets

If you want to grow your muscles, you have to give it enough stimulus. In a rest pause step, you start with a heavy exercise and continue it for 10 to 15 reps. Then you pause for 15 or 30 second and start again, till you hit 10 to 15 reps. Once you are able to perform a rest pause set with good form, you can increase the weight on your next session. Rest pause sets can be very tiring, so in the beginning start with one or two exercises.

Drop sets

A drop set is a popular body shocking principle. Here you start with an 'x' quantity of weight and keep going until you hit fatigue. When this happens, you take a little weight off and again perform reps.

For beginners, one drop set is enough; as you progress, you can add more.

You can do drop sets on nearly every body part, but be warned that it can hurt terribly. You will need tremendous mental toughness to go to the end of a drop set. You might also lose feeling in the muscle group you have worked, for some time. For beginners, one drop set is enough; as you progress, you can add more.

Super set

In a super set, you perform another exercise as soon as you finish the first (no or little rest). Note that the weight you can lift in the second exercise will be lower compared to if you had taken rest and begun fresh. If you have not performed super sets in the past, make sure you have a spotter. Arnold Schwarzenegger used to perform super sets for a number of exercises.

Giant sets

A giant set is like a super set, but here you perform three exercises and not two as in a super set. Not many people do giant sets because they usually do not have anything left after the second exercise. The risk associated with this type of body shocking technique is also not known.

Forced reps

In forced reps the muscles are forced to work more than their usual capacity. Suppose you are able to bench press 200 lb in six sets (your current failure limit). Increase the number of sets to nine. Once you are comfortable with nine sets, you increase the weight to 225 lb. You may be able to just get six sets out of 225 lb, but that is okay. If you keep going, in a few months you might be able to go up to 250 lb. Now if you bench press 200 lb, you can easily do ten reps. Forced reps can help you gain phenomenal strength and muscle mass. The only problem is, you will need a spotter for all the sets.

Note: that shocking the body can cause a lot of pain and if you do not take care, even injure you. So before you start on this path, speak to an experienced trainer. There might be an alternative or you may get some tips to prevent injuries.