High Intensity Weight Training | Intense Workouts

Weight Training Advice

High Intensity Weight Training

To get the most out of a weight training routine you must train with the proper intensity. It's not enough to go through the motions when you weight train to gain size and strength, you need to go all out to get results.

To get the intensity you need, you have to strive for positive failure on your sets while weight training. To train to positive failure simply means to keep doing reps until you can't possibly do 1 more rep. Sure, it sounds easy, but if you're doing too many sets during a weight training workout, you may not be going all out towards the end of your workout. As pointed out in the gaining strength page of this site, to gain strength you must always try for 1 more rep or a few more pounds with the same amount of reps during your sets. It takes high training intensity to do this, as you have to push or pull hard to get that last rep. If you just do the same amount of weight for the same reps at every weight training workout you'll never reach your full potential.

Doing forced reps at the end of your sets is a great technique for high intensity weight training. Once you get to positive failure on an exercise, have a spotter help you get 1 or 2 extra reps. This will help your body adapt to how the weight feels after going to positive failure, and eventually you'll be able to get that extra rep without help. Of course you shouldn't do forced reps at the end of every set during a weight training workout as it could induce overtraining. Doing 2 forced reps at the end of a set should make you more sore than usual the next day. Forced reps are best used on chest, shoulder, and bicep exercises.

Another high intensity weight training technique is to use drop sets. You go positive failure on a set, quickly decrease the weight 20-50% and do a set with that weight. You can drop the weight a few times for higher intensity. Drop sets are best used while working out on cable machines that allow you to pull a pin and decrease the weight quickly or on exercises using dumbbells, as you can quickly grab a lighter set of dumbbells. For exercises like the bench press or leg press you could have a person on each side of the weight quickly strip plates for you. It's probably best to use drop sets as a finisher to your weight training workout; doing them at the beginning of your workout may leave you too taxed to do the rest of your routine with high intensity.

For upper back and biceps exercises you could do a couple of cheat reps to add high intensity to your weight training workout. For biceps curls bend forward a liitle bit to get the weight started on the last few reps. For upper back exercises, use your lower back to get the weight started. You could injure yourself by overdoing it with cheat reps, don't use the lower back too much.

One rarely used form of high intensity weight training is negative failure training. For this kind of training you will definitely need a spotter, probably 2. To get to negative failure you have to get to a point in your set where you can't even lower the weight under control. This is way beyond positive failure as you aren't actually trying to lift the weight, you're trying to resist it while lowering it. This is a very intense technique, and should rarely be done unless you give yourself a lot of rest before your next weight training workout.

Using a combination of these techniques will help you find the intensity you need to make strength and size gains while following a weight training routine.