Experimenting

[alex]

Why is it that so many people refuse to step out of their comfort zone to try new stuff or experiement with variables?

Not to be a gym elitist, but thats why so many people fail to progress or stagnate at a plateau.

Day in day out, you see the same programme.And they dont gain mass or strength.

Even if you want to "maintain" your physique it does not mean that you have to do the same old as 'stale as 30 days old bread' programme.

Thru experiementing i found several things.To most of the guys here, i doubt they would be alien to you.

1)Being very lean does not equate to good physical conditioning.Your body will adapt itself to an optimal level of bodyfat for performance, trying to reduce more weight will only aggravate the lost of strength and cardio.I learnt this the hard way late last year.Some athletes, although they might look damn fat.They are well conditioned.

When i bulked back clean my body inevitably put on some fat also.

2)Refer to my tips for OHP in "strength and power" section.

3)I found antagonistic muscle pairing workouts good for increasing strength and it ensures you perform fresh and optimally at the next exercise which involves a different plane of motion.

4)Never neglect bilateral work or single limb work.Isolations are good also but keep it as an auxilliary exercise not the staple.

5)Quads/hips and chest somehow take the longest to heal.Back seems to take the shortest time.

6)IMHO.Having good grip on the ground for exercises attributes to 50% of the exercise being executed with proper form.Without a stable platform to bench press on, you would be swaying like a coconut tree.

7)Massages helped me to recover much faster.

8)Use a good mixture of reps.I do as low as 3 heavy reps for sets to as much as 20-25 reps on very light weights.

[lips]

google for a blog, i saw all these tips inside and there's much more.

[AhBen]

Quads/hips and chest somehow take the longest to heal.Back seems to take the shortest time.

Lower back takes the longest to recover while lats the hardest to be overtrained.