Bodybuilders are always looking for way to make their workouts harder. After all, that’s the only way to keep the growth coming. To achieve the goal, bodybuilders look for ways to make individual exercises tougher, particularly during those paths of the movement when added resistance would be useful for growth. Here are a few tips for increasing the workload you are using in the gym. Don’t use these on every set of every workout, or you will find yourself burnt out very quickly. However, you will find great success by using these techniques sparingly in your training.

Bands

Rubber bands are excellent ways to deliver an exponentially increasing workload to the muscle group being trained during each repetition. Essentially, it is the same resistance as if a person was pulling on the weight harder and harder as you move it from the starting position. Powerlifters love using rubber bands because it helps them to develop explosive strength on movements such as bench press and squats.

Chains

Adding a chain to the bar allows the bodybuilders to increase the weight load in a smooth and uniform way as the positive movement/contraction of an exercise is completed. Then, once the peak of the movement is reached, the weight is slowly peeled off in the exact same manner. This method may be superior to rubber bands in that the weight is constant and grows in slow, uniform increments. Rubber bands, on the other hand, add weight in a manner that increases the workload very quickly.

Manual self-resistance

You can add some weight to isolation exercises such as concentration dumbbell curls by simply placing your free hand on the dumbbell to make the weight heavier. This is useful for delivering several failure points along a particular training arc with each repetition. Try this the next time you’re completing biceps curls. You may find that a small nudge here or there increases your muscle mass gains.

Partner resistance

Your partner isn’t going to be as intuitive when it comes to knowing how much weight to add when, but he can provide one or two hands worth of pressure or support as you train using compound movements such as chins, squats, or bench press. As you train together more and exchange feedback, the two of you will become more efficient at adding resistance to each other’s routines.

Partial range

On some exercises, such as the deadlift, the failure point occurs because a support muscle group fails before the main muscle group being trained. In other words, when the lower back (lumbar region) fails, the trainer must stop his set of deadlifts. However, the use of a safety cage with pins set 6 to 12 inches from the floor allows the bodybuilder to train the upper back with more repetitions than he could with full-range repetitions. This leads to greater growth of the upper back. This type of partial movement can also be used for bench pressing, squats, leg pressing, and most other movements we employ in the gym!

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