Push yourself hard in your workouts

by Steve L
(USA)

The harder you workout, the more muscle fibers you will tear and the stronger you will get, its that simple!

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How to Push Hard in Strength Training

Many people that are involved in strength training find that after training for some time, they are often not able to build more muscles or increase in strength. There are many reasons why this can happen. There first is often that they are not getting enough rest and so they have hit a plateau, and the other is that they are not giving their all.

The first one is often overcome by giving yourself enough rest which can be accomplished by taking a week or two off training and giving your muscles time to recover before going into training again. The other way is learning how to push hard during your training sessions to as to develop more endurance, strength and muscles. Here are some useful tips on how you can push yourself during strength training.


Increase the weights in small quantities

Many people get discouraged because they try a weight that is far larger than their level of preparation, and they can even get injured in the process. The best way to push hard is to make sure that you increase the weights only in small quantities. This gradual shift is enough to strengthen your muscles gradually from strength to strength.


Make sure that you take a slightly larger weight during each exercise session
Another mistake that many people make during strength training is that they keep using the same weight over and over again during every training session. After a while you won’t be developing muscles any more. If you are really serious about building muscles, then you can do this by increasing the challenge during each training session with a slightly larger weight. This is because each training session builds your strength to a new level. So that new level should be tested against a higher weight in order to improve to the next level.


Increase the repetitions

Increasing the number of repetitions using the same weight can also increase the work load that you are subjecting your muscles under. This will also help improve the strength of your muscles and also build new muscle mass. One of the best ways to do this is to make sure that you exercise to failure.


Do pyramid exercises

In one exercise session, you start by performing your exercises using a smaller weight, a medium weight and then a larger weight (you can have more weights in increasing sizes in between), and then rest a while at the top and start by using the larger weight, the medium and smaller weight. This is a great way to intensify your training and push yourself to the limits.