Training intensification methods are challenging, exciting, and brutal to say the least. They're used by the best bodybuilders in the world and programmed by the most experienced trainers as well because we know the benefits they hold and just how much they can level up someone's training program. And what I'm talking about here is drop sets, Myo reps, rest pause methods, Amraps, giant sets. And in this episode of the podcast, I'm going to teach you exactly what intensification
methods are by definition. I will give you multiple examples of those intensification methods for you to to use in your training program right away, and I'll be teaching you how to perform these intensification methods properly so that by the end of this podcast, you'll know whether or not you should be implementing them into your training right away. The greatest things in life all start with a challenge. You must accept that everything
is hard before it gets easy. Every, every every everything you want in life begins with a hard path. First defining what a intensification method is. Really, this is just any training method we can use inside of a workout to intensify the workout itself. This is usually going to be done on any given exercise at the last set, or you can do it on every set depending on what exercise this is used on. Usually this means dropping load and doing as many reps as possible.
It might mean tweaking your rest periods, it might mean tweaking your tempo where you're pausing within a actual range of motion. And it could also be adding things to exercises, whether that's a deeper range of motion like a deficit or we are combining exercises in a certain way to make it more challenging. Regardless, all's and intensification method is, is something that is thrown into a workout to challenge an exercise
even further. You're not doing just a regular bench press, you are doing a bench press with a specific method that is going to make it more challenging and ideally more stress inducing to the muscle because that's the whole point, adding these for more muscle growth. Now what are the benefits or the pros of intensification methods? You know, the first and foremost thing to think about here is just making the workout more exciting.
I think there's a lot of old school bodybuilders that use a lot of the methods I'm going to share today, and some of them have actually been proven in research to be less effective because it demolishes or diminishes volume accomplished in a session, which I'm going to get to soon.
But the reality is, is some of those like dungeon style workouts from like the vault of these old school bodybuilders, they're just fun because one of the things that we love doing inside the gym, anybody who likes to lift weights, whether you're after muscle growth or strength or fat loss or anything, is kind of go to that pain cave, right?
Go to that dark place where you get to let out stress and you get to push yourself and challenge yourself in a Safeway and really let out some aggression. And some of these things do that. So outside of muscle growth and strength and, and you know, neurological adaptations and all these things, just considering the number one benefit in my opinion, being the, the satisfaction of challenging yourself. I think that's the biggest thing.
I think that's the the best pro inside of any of these that I'm going to share with you is just the fact that they challenge you in a way that really motivates you. And when you have something exciting to look forward to in the gym, in your training session that does a lot for your effort and your intensity because you are excited, you are motivated and you are driven to push yourself really hard.
Now, some of these actually have benefits aside from just mentally being more challenged and excited about the workout as well. Some of them will help us save time on a workout because maybe we don't have as much time or we're trying to fit in a lot of exercises and volume in a single session. And so we need to throw things like this in to speed up any given exercise or set so that we can accomplish more in a single workout.
It might also be that you're trying to squeeze in a 30 minute workout before work or in a hotel while you're you're travelling or whatever it may be. And these come in handy when we need to get a solid workout in, but we're limited on time, space or equipment. Last benefit I see inside of these intensification methods is really learning how far you can push yourself.
I think there's a lot of people who fail to accomplish the right RIR reps in reserve, which is kind of our gauge for effort and intensity. They fail to accomplish a high enough intensity or hard enough effort in the gym to really stimulate as much growth as they can. They're not getting the results that they could get because they don't know how to push themselves to that place or to
that level. And what some of these intensification methods do is allow us to do to accomplish that, to push ourselves beyond what we're used to, beyond what just the sets and reps say on a piece of paper, but really to a place that shows us how heavy we can lift, how many reps we can do, or just how hard training really feels. So for example, if you do a set to failure, you'll actually begin to learn what training to failure looks like.
But if you never trained with A0R IR reps in reserve, you'll never actually learn what that is. Now, you can't train with to failure all the time because if you do that, you won't fully recover and then you won't adapt and then you won't be able to progress. So it's not smart and injury risk goes up. But if you never trained a failure, you never learn how to gauge your training effort in the gym.
So you have to, right? There's other times too where I will program for somebody the weight to lift and Max reps if I don't think they're pushing themselves hard enough. I will program 40 LB dumbbells for Max reps 'cause I saw them do 40 lbs for 8 reps last week and I know they can probably do more. And I want to challenge them and
show them that this is possible. Or if they do a drop set or a rest paw set, and I can say, hey, if you do more than blank rest paw sets or blank reps in the rest paw set or blank Mio reps, both of which I'm going to get too soon. As far as how to perform these intensification methods, then I know you're not lifting heavy enough or hard enough. And so this person can do 6 Mio reps after their last normal Rep
of the set. And I told them, if you get more than three, we're not lifting hard enough. So these can be indicators to allow us to better gauge our training in the future. So what are the negatives or the cons? Well, one of the main cons of this I would say is a lack of progression and an ability to progress or even to track progression, right? If I'm doing a drop set or a Myo Rep or any of these things that we'll cover, it's very difficult to actually progress those and
track your progression. If you're doing 4 sets of eight of dumbbell flat bench press with a 2 minute rest period in between, it is so standardized and simple that we can repeat that exact format and increase weight and track the weight that we increase week after week after week.
But if we are doing 4 sets of eight plus as many mile reps as possible with the same load or we're doing a drop set with a 25% load reduction, it it's very difficult because you know, did it take you a little bit longer to walk over to the dumbbell rack and grab another dumbbell? Did you take a couple extra breaths? Were the 30 LB demos gone? So you actually did a drop set to the 20 fives. Are you doing Max reps? Are you doing 10 plus reps on a
drop? Like there's so many variables that get thrown around, which is part of the reason why it's exciting and challenging 'cause you never know what you're going to get. But the problem with that is we can't really progress that. And so if we just did all intensification methods, as fun as that might be, you're probably not going to progress properly or be able to track your progress in a way that allows you to standardize it and
progress properly going forward. The next thing I would say is the injury risk is higher if we are doing crazy drop set methods and all these things that these, again, dungeon gym style bodybuilders have done in the past that are really exciting and fun. They also pose the risk of injury because if we didn't warm up properly today, if we didn't get enough sleep, if we're a little dehydrated or glycogen depleted, or we're on week four of the same program and probably
need to deload. But we didn't take one. And then we do this monstrous giant set with the drop sets included or whatever it may be. Or you're at a new gym and use a new machine and you do this drop set on it and you're not used to that machine. Any of these things could cause an injury to a tendon, ligament or muscles. And we don't want to cause a strain or a tear or anything like that 'cause that just sets us back from the gym even
further. And when we're doing really well formatted and standardized exercises that we know we have great form on, we can control the movement pattern and the progression pace that we take week to week. Injury risk is extremely low. There's just more control. And again, most intensification methods are ballistic. There's less control. Again, part of what makes it fun, exciting and challenging, but also does increase injury risk, especially if we're doing it all the time.
Lastly, the the main con that has been actually demonstrated in research is that it could potentially decrease the volume you're doing. So for example, if you do four sets of eight to 10 on that same dumbbell bench press and you are just doing four straight sets and you're taking adequate rest, your general metabolic fatigue and your direct localized fatigue to the muscle and all these things, it's going to be lower. You're going to be able to
control those things. If you're doing a drop set on every set, you're going to get a really gnarly pump, which is great. You're also going to be metabolically fatigued because instead of doing 8 to 10 reps, you did 8 to 10 + 10 to 20 with a lighter load between each set. So you still have the same rest, but we're doing more reps. We're going to be metabolically fatigued and our joints, tendons, and muscles are more fatigued going into set 2.
It's very unlikely we're going to be able to use the same amount of load as we did in set 1. And at the end of the workout, if we just tally up the sets times, reps, times, weight, you are probably going to progress more if you do more straight sets with heavier loads in your training than you would if you were doing drop sets on everything. Because again, the metabolic fatigue more than anything goes up really high. Your heart rate's jumping. It's almost like you're doing
cardio now. You're trying to lift heavy again. And So what they see in research is that this can actually negatively impact us because it can lower your load depending on the type of intensification method you use or how often use it. And they also see this with supersets, which is one of the methods we'll cover today. When doing a super set, you might actually be hurting yourself because if it's not paired up perfectly, now we are creating more fatigue globally.
So across every general metric of fatigue that we're looking at, that's going to make your performance worse and your load and potential, your reps, both key metrics of volume are going to decrease as the workout progresses. So in general, the negatives are pretty strong and I would say so are the positives. Because even if the only main positive, let's say is which it's not just being more motivated, that is going to carry somebody consistently
beyond anything else. You are consistently going to train harder with more effort over time. If you are consistently highly motivated to work out and if things like this make your workouts exciting so that you can be in that state, that is a very, very big pro. OK, so the first intensification method supersets, this is the one we're going to cover. This is probably the most popular. A superset is just where you go
from one exercise to the next. And, and what this might look like is a, you know, AB structure. So our first exercise, 1A might be a bench press, 1B might be a bent row and we are doing 8 to 10 reps on both. We're going to do 8 to 10 reps on the bench press, go right to a bent row, do 8 to 10 sets there or 8 to 10 reps there. Then we are going to take a short rest period, 2 to 4 minutes and then we go back to the top.
This is 2%. Instead of doing all four sets of the bench and then all four sets of the bent row, we are going to put them together and go back and forth with taking a rest period after both exercises have already been performed. There has been multiple studies that show this to be really effective. In fact, there has been multiple studies to show specifically this helped people save 30 to
40% of the time in the gym. Compared to doing straight sets, which is a lot of time we're spending an hour. You're almost cutting that in half if you get up to 40%. And that's a lot of time saved, which also means if you want to keep going for an hour and do this, you can actually just do more within that hour and accomplish more volume, which is huge. Now, one of the things that they did see that was a negative in these studies was that metabolic
fatigue increased. So again, metabolic fatigue, think of this as like high intensity exercise. Your heart rate gets up, you are metabolically challenging yourself. That is a type of fatigue that can make performing in the gym really difficult, especially if we're lifting heavy. What they saw is as metabolic fatigue increase, it led to potential nausea and literal
nausea in multiple participants. So I would just say as somebody who has been coaching and training for a long time that this is just a matter of making sure somebody's a robot capacity is good. Even if you are a lifter that just wants to build muscle, you need to do some form of aerobic training in cardio because if you are not conditioned at all, it is going to be very difficult for you to hang in the gym and
push yourself in these workouts. You need that your aerobic system helps you recover and take in oxygen literally between reps, sets and even days in the gym. And so if you are completely ignoring cardio, and this is a side tangent, that is a mistake and that could actually fix this issue. But 30 to 40% save time is huge. There is a potential drop in volume if load suffers due to
shorter rest periods. So as I mentioned, you know, depending on the superset you create as well as just generally speaking, you might have more metabolic fatigue if you're not cardiovascularly adapted or or have a high aerobic capacity. And that might lead to you lifting lighter because you're just tired, right? And so you might lift heavy your first set, but then after a couple sets, you're just more fatigued. And this is going to cause a
drop in volume. And if your load or the reps you can accomplish each set drop, that's going to lower the amount of muscle you can build in that session. So it might be counterintuitive. However, this is only some people again, like it can potentially lead to nausea. And I would say that part of the study just tells us that some people get metabolic fatigue during super sets and others don't. So if you feel that way, you just got to step up your aerobic game and get back to it because
I think this is a game changer. 30 to 40% can save you so much time that you can either A, not spend as much time in the gym or B, if you like spending that time in the gym, you can do more while you're there. And then lastly, I would say that this must be antagonistic for them to be beneficial. And So what an antagonistic example is or an antagonistic superset would be is doing opposites.
So a leg extension and then a leg curl, quads, hamstrings, opposite sides of the leg, obviously of the femur bone that is going to be opposite muscle groups, opposite movement patterns from knee extension to knee flexion. And so when we fire our quad, we are releasing tension in our hamstring, and then when we fire our hamstring, we are releasing tension in our quad. This is similar to a bicep curl and a tricep extension. You can do a bench press or a
bent row combination. You can also do an overhead press like a military press and a pull down or a chin up. They've even shown calf raises with leg presses or squats to be beneficial as well, which is most likely less to do with the actual blood flow or tension inside of a muscle and more to do with the range of motion. Because when we do calf raises, we're taking our ankles through complete planner and
dorsiflexion under load. When we open up our ankle, we're going to be able to get into a deeper squat or a deeper a leg press. And what that's going to do is create a fuller range of motion, a longer stretch or a bigger or more tension based stretch phase of that movement. And we know that the stretch phase of any movement is a key. It's a direct correlation between stretching the muscle and muscle growth. So if we can stretch the muscle more under load, we're going to build more muscle.
And so I think the calf raises actually allow us to do that with the leg press or squat. But all these other variations are all upper body except the leg extension of leg curl. And as you can see, it's opposites, Tricep curl, tricep extension, leg curl, leg extension, bench press, bent row, military press, pull down, vertical, vertical push, pull, horizontal push, pull, elbow flexion, extension, knee
flexion, extension. And this again is is directly taking blood flow out of the muscle from the last exercise. And that actually speeds up recovery. So now we're able to accomplish plenty of load in tension on the muscle while doing it and then take away some of that tension to help recovery so that we can get back to it and keep the loads higher. And This is why they have seen a lot of success with supersets and muscle growth for
antagonistic muscle groups. However, just know that this does not apply to the same muscle groups. Meaning if I do a supinated like a barbell curl or easy bar curl, supinated grip, bicep curl, and then a neutral grip like a hammer curl, bicep curl, I'm not going to progress faster. I'm actually just going to fatigue myself more, potentially overtrain my bicep or my elbow tendons and ligaments. And that's not going to help me create more volume for growth.
So it's very specific to opposite muscles. You don't want to superset them together. However, there is something called a giant set which does exactly what I just said don't do and I still advise not to do. But it is an intensification method that is very popular and I think it makes sense to share it on this video. So a giant set is super setting three to five exercises that all target the same muscle. You take no breaks from going
one to the next. And it it typically decreases difficulty as the set progresses. And so this is doing again, exactly what I said not to do. And so I wouldn't recommend doing this very often, but there's times where this might come in handy at a hotel, you don't have any, you know, much to to work with. And so you're just going to hit chest really hard today. OK, cool. Do a chest giant set and just demolish your chest. Get a good pump, get out the door. You're not training in a hotel
expecting to build muscle. You're just in there to release some stress. Stick to the plan, maintain muscle, maybe get a workout in. So there's times where this makes sense and this is a very old school bodybuilding approach, but it clearly limits your ability to lift heavy or create maximum tension because it is so fatiguing.
And I would say injury provoking because if anybody has ever had a bicep tendon or rotator cuff injury or even a a PEC minor major tear or anything like that, you know that you should not do heavy loaded chest presses in three different styles of exercises back-to-back to back and expect not to potentially get injured. So an example of this would be really simple. You could do a chest press.
So this could be a bench press or a hammer strength machine chest press, then go right into a chest fly, then go into a push up. And so typically you lift heavier and it is a little bit harder to do a heavy chest press, whether it's a barbell or a machine. Then it's a little bit easier, but still very difficult from a tension perspective to do a chest fly, whether it's a PEC deck or a cable or anything like that.
Would not recommend dumbbells on that chest fly because you can drop the dumbbells, a machine or a cable. You can drop those, not injure yourself. And then lastly, a push up, which is self limiting. So you're going to go until you just can't and you're not going to get injured because you're just not going to be able to get off the floor on your last push up. So this would be, again, chest press, chest fly push ups, doing
them back-to-back. Usually, let's say you start with 10 reps, 10 to 15 reps, and your goal is to try to stay in that range or just do as many as possible as the sets progress. And you would take a long rest period before doing it again. Or you would just never do it 'cause it's really not that smart of a intensification method to try. Next we have drop sets. So drop sets are really popular, really well known. And typically you just drop the weight and do another set. Really simple, right?
These are great. These are. This is a great way to add intensity to a training session. It's also a really great way to increase volume. As long as you're not doing this every set. This is an awesome way to train because I do believe this can actually progress you faster. Doesn't take very long at all. It's very intense and challenging. It's fun and it can accomplish more volume. For example, if I were to do 4 sets of 10 on any exercise and do a drop set in between each set.
So I would go four sets of 10 + a drop set 4, or I'm sorry, I would do a set of 10 + a drop set 10 + a drop set 10 + a drop set for all four sets. After each drop set, I'm going to be more fatigued locally, globally, metabolically. Now moving into set 2, it's going to be harder for me to stick with that same weight. So if I had £100 dumbbells on set one, it's very unlikely I'm going to be able to do set 2 with those same 100 LB dumbbells.
And if I have to drop to 90s or 80s, that's a dramatic drop in volume. When we do sets times, reps times load the total tonnage and that's a disadvantage for overall volume and muscle growth. However, if we do sets one through 3 without a drop set, we can still do set four with that same load. So now I can do 100 lbs for set 123 and 4, but on my 4th and final set, I'm going to throw a drop set in there.
So I dropped the weight. I grabbed 50 to 60 LB dumbbells and I do as many as I can on that exercise. Say it's a dumbbell bench press. Again, that's an easy way 'cause now I have four sets of 10 with 100 lbs, which is a great amount of volume. Then I added in a drop set, which if I didn't, that wouldn't have happened at all. So I went from zero extra volume to, you know, one set times however many reps I got. Say I got 15 reps times 50 to 60
lbs. That's a lot of total tonnage added into a workout that took me an extra 30 seconds to a minute. So it can be a great tool. However you have to do it in that way. And I would also say that you you make got to make sure that you don't have another chest exercise coming up or exercise for whatever muscle grip you're training with that drop set.
Because if I did that on my first exercise, which is a bench press, and then I have a dumbbell bench press and then a chest fly, the dumbbell bench press and the chest fly are going to suffer because of that drop set on the initial bench press I did. So when doing this, what you want to do is set it up for your last set of an exercise that is the last exercise for that muscle group during that
specific workout. And so a traditional drop set would look like immediately reducing the load after your last Rep and performing as many reps as possible. So again, last set, I do 100 lbs, I drop them, I grab 50 LB dumbbells up to 75. I always recommend 25 to 50% load reduction depending on the exercise you're doing curls with. You know 30 LB dumbbells because you might not want to do a 50% drop because now you're going to fifteens. You can do a 25% drop and go
towards 20 to 25 lbs, right? You can also take the math out of it and just go down a dumbbell depending on the exercise. But point is you you reduce the load and then do a Max Rep set right afterwards. And then there is a mechanical drop set, which is a really cool variation as well. And with this one, you decrease the performance advantage as the sets progress by changing
something like the angle. So for example, a incline bench press is more difficult than a flat bench press and a flat bench press is more difficult than a decline bench press. So you can do a dumbbell incline bench press for 10 reps, sit up, have your training partner drop it to a flat bench, sit back, do 10 more reps because now it's easier than it was.
Even though you reached near or to failure on the incline, taking that small 5 second rest while the person drops the bench down on the angle, you have enough in you to do another set of 10 reps with the flat. Because a flat bench is easier than the incline. Once you do 10, you sit back up, they drop it to a decline, then you go into a decline bench press, which is easier than the flat, and you might be able to accomplish 10 reps, 10 reps, 10 reps, or even just close to it.
So maybe it's 12108. That's fine too. Either way, we're increasing volume to the chest and we're just doing it by changing the angle of the bench, right? You could do this with a row, you could do this with a lot of exercises. And what we're really doing here is we're decreasing the disadvantage or the advantage, however way you want to look at it.
And so the disadvantage of an incline bench is that when you're in an incline, you're going more overhead, you're doing less chess, a little bit more dealt, but regardless, it's more difficult. So we can essentially decrease the difficulty by changing some factor like the angle of the bench. Next we have Myo reps and rest paw sets. Rest paw sets are really well
known. They've been used in many different types of weightlifting, whether we're talking about powerlifting or strength training or CrossFit. Myo reps are almost exclusively known in the old school bodybuilding world. So if you've never heard of that, I'm going to explain it, but it's very similar. So I put them in the same category. And this is really just a way to take your muscle to absolute failure. It's really what it is and it's a Safeway to do it. So I, I do like this.
So a rest pause set is pretty simple. You're going to perform a set of reps until near muscular failure. So let's say you know, one Rep in reserve, then you're going to take a very short rest period, usually 10 to 20 seconds. And then you're going to immediately continue to perform as many additional reps as possible. So this is similar to a drop set. The difference here is you're not changing the load, you're just taking a short break and then you're doing as many reps as possible.
So if I did 10 reps on a bench press, I would rack it, I'd wait 10 to 20 seconds, and then I would do as many reps as I can. And I would suggest doing this with an exercise that's safe. Not like a barbell bench press where you can drop it on your throat and die. Don't do that. Do this on next size like curls or leg extensions or something like that, or if you have a training partner that can spot
you. Now, Myo reps are very similar, but you're going to do what they call an activation set, which is really just your first set. You do your 10 reps, you rack it, then you're going to take 3 to 5 seconds. A lot of times the way I coach this is just take three to five breaths. You don't want to worry about having a timer. Just breathe three to five times. Once you do that, you're going to move into back off sets. And so these have the same load
just like the rest pause. But the difference is, is you're only doing 3 to 5 reps. So what this looks like is doing your normal set of 10, you rack it, wait 3 to 5 seconds or take 3 to 5 breaths, unrack it, do three to five reps, rack it again, take a three to five second break. And then you repeat that as many times as possible until you can
no longer get 3 full reps. So I would rack it, do three to five, rack it, do three to five, rack it, do 3 to 5 over and over and over again with just three to five seconds or three to five breaths in between each of those mini sets. These are called Myo reps and when I can no longer get more than three, so let's say I get 5 and then I get 4 and then I get 3, then I get 3 and then I get 2, I'm done. As soon as I hit 2 or I cannot get three or more, I am done.
And you can add a lot of volume with this. So this is another one I really like and just like the drop set. I suggest doing this when you don't have any more exercises to target that same muscle in that last session so that you don't, you know, decrease the performance of the load used in the this the next exercises coming up for that muscle group and you do it on your last set. You don't want to do this on every set. It just doesn't make sense.
Descending RIR is another really good one and this is probably the one that I would recommend using more than any other one. That's why I put it last. A descending RIR is an intensification method, but really it's a coaching technique to help make sure that your clients are reaching near enough to failure to really stimulate muscle growth or get the best results possible. So if you're not a coach, you can just use this on your own program, obviously.
And So what you do is you start with leaving a few reps in the tank and you get progressively closer to failure as the sets progress. And this is something I've been doing ever since reps in reserve has been studied extensively. And so the last couple years I've used this and it has taught people how to train harder. It has taught people what real failure looks like. It has taught people how to use
an RIR scale better. And it has ensured to me that I know my client is going at the exercise hard enough to really get the good result. And if I question their ability to do so, then I'm going to program something like I mentioned before, where I throw in an exercise with a specific weight for Max reps and I ask them to track the amount of reps
they got. And then we compare it to when they were doing that same load for only 8 reps at A1 RAR to show them and deprove, like disprove, you know, that isn't enough weight for you on that exercise. And this is actually a really cool method that I talked with Doctor Brad Schoenfeld about on my podcast about a year ago as I'm recording this when he was on as a suggestion from him as
well. And it was something I brought up that I do and he suggested it and says that he does it with his clients and he really promotes it now after seeing the studies that he was a part of inside of muscle hypertrophy. So an example of this is pretty simple.
If you have a lat pull down and you're doing 4 sets of eight to 10 reps set 1, you would do three RAR and you leave 3 reps in the tank, 3 reps in reserve set #2 you have a 2 RAR so you leave 2 reps in the tank on your final Rep. Set 3 you have one RAR so you only leave one Rep in the tank on your final Rep of set 3 and then your final set set for zero RAR. You take it all the way to
failure. I wouldn't recommend doing this on a back swat or something, you know, intense like that, or a deadlift, a compound lift, but on a lap pull down a curl, A dumbbell bench press, anything that you know you can bail or you can't hurt yourself because it's self limiting. An inverted row, you can't hurt yourself on that. You just aren't going to pull yourself back up to the bar, any kind of row really. But maybe a dumbbell bench press, you're a little bit more cautious.
OK, well, if you're good at bailing and throwing the dumbbells off to the side, you can use this with it. But essentially what you're doing is you're descending the RAR. Descending as in dropping 4321, right? It's that simple. On a compound lift, on an accessory, in isolation, 3210. So you're going all the way to failure on your last Rep. Now, knowing all of this, how do you apply it?
Really, really simple. You probably gathered a lot of that throughout the context of the entire video after I went through each of these different intensification methods. But here's what I would suggest in a nutshell. Here's my Cliff notes. Use supersets when you need to save time. I think everybody should do this when their antagonist exercises big compound lifts. You're probably not going to do this. You can do this on a bench press in a Ben row.
And they have seen positive results from that. I still do believe if you really want to see strength progressions on that, you probably should just keep them as straight sets. But you know, for 90% of your training, I, I see no reason why, at least upper body training, there's no reason why you can't use super sets. You can save time whether you're in a time crunch or not 'cause if you're in a time crunch, here you go. Training's less stressful to fit in your calendar.
If you're not in a time crunch, there you go. You have more time in the gym now to put more volume into your training and build more muscle. Use drop sets, myo reps, and rest paw sets up to once per workout on a non compound lift as a way to intensify your session. I like doing this with clients. I like doing this with myself.
One exercise per workout. I'm going to throw something crazy on it. A drop set, a Myo Rep set, a rest pause set, you know, go all the way to failure kind of set something different that I can just put in there to make that work out fun. It's waiting for them. They know after they get through these things, they got that one death set, let's say, which is made famous by John Meadows.
And if you want to really a long list of cool intensification methods, look up John Meadows, the Mountain Dog. RIP. He was a legend in the strength industry, but especially with bodybuilding. He has so many that I've taken over the years. But these are great to throw in just for one exercise on a given can work out. It's not overkill and it gives enough to really create some challenging efforts in the gym and excite somebody to go to the gym.
Use things like giant sets almost never but or multiple intensifications methods like I've been talking about with this when training out of hotels or you're travelling or you're in your home gym because you, you can't, you know, it's snowing outside and you can't drive to the gym. And all you got is some bands and a set of Bowflex dumbbells, which is a really common pair that people have in their garage
and that's all they have. If that's all you got and you have no other way to get a workout and you just want to get something in or you're travelling, do it. Do giant sets. They're a great way to create intensity. And if you're in that situation, you probably don't have heavy enough weights to really cause injury anyway, so it's good for those sessions.
And then lastly, use a descending RR model on 90% of your training to ensure effort is high enough for optimal gains and to make sure that you can actually gauge your progress and progressively overload with the right intensity over time. And so literally 90% of your training, you should follow a descending RAR going 3210 on any four sets of any exercise.
That 10% where you're not doing that is going to be on your compound lifts, So your squat, leg press, and leg press, you honestly can too, but you just got to be safe. Dead lifts, overhead press, all those kind of big compound
lifts, especially with barbells. Don't do a descending RIR model all the way to 0. You can still use a descending RIR model, but go to 1. Leave one Rep in the tank at least on your last set to keep it safe and keep it progressive, and everything else go all the way to 0. There's nothing wrong with that as long as it's a safe exercise for you, and that's probably going to stimulate more growth and gains in the future.