Bodybuilding Tips and Tricks

I’m going to start off the discussion of this technique by making sure that you’re familiar with the negative and positive portion of a repetition. The positive (sometimes called the concentric) part of a rep is typically thought of as the “working” part, the portion where you are exerting more force and contracting the muscle. The negative portion is the part of the rep where you return to the original position for the exercise…in most cases, this is the easier part of the repetition. For example, when doing the bench press, pressing the bar upward is the positive portion and lowering the bar back toward your chest is the negative porton. When performing barbell curls, curling the weight upward is positive, lowering it back down is negative. And so on.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the Negative Reps technique. Like Forced Reps, Negative Reps will require you to have a training partner or spotter to help you out. Let’s take the bench press for example. To perform negative reps, you’ll load the bar up with a heavier weight than you’d normally use. Then, you’ll have your partner help you perform the postive (pressing up) portion of the exercise while you (and only you) will perform the negative (lowering back down) portion. Repeat this process for reps. What this allows you to do is handle more weight in the negative part of the rep than you normally would if you were performing conventional reps. Negative reps are great for building up ligaments and tendons quicker than normal reps and this will then enable you to lift heavier weights in the future and stimulate new growth. Give these a try and see what ya think!

Forced Reps are another great bodybuilding technique that you can use to break out of plateaus, kick your muscles into new growth and add some extra “oompf” to your workouts. This technique requires a partner to help you out so if you don’t already train with someone, you’ll need to ask someone at your gym to lend a hand. To perform forced reps, you should rep out on an exercise as you normally would. Once you’ve reached a point where you can no longer perform another rep, your training partner should help you do one or two additional reps. Even though your partner is helping you, you’re still making your muscles work past the point of fatigue which is a great way to shock them into some new strength and size gains. It’s very important that your partner only helps you just enough for you to complete the rep…you want *your* muscles to be doing as much of the work as possible. You can utilize the Forced Reps technique with a multitude of bodybuilding exercises; some of my favorites include the bench press, barbell curls, and skull crushers. Give ‘em a try!