Advanced Exercises for Weight Lifters

Advanced Exercises

If you've been lifting weights for a few months, you've hopefully been changing your workout as your muscles become adapted to each routine. It is estimated that your body adapts to a workout routine in only 6-8 weeks, and then gains begin to slow down or even stop. Your body is an efficient machine, and will modify itself to exert the least effort to accomplish a specific task. If you're not switching up your exercise routine every two months or so, your gains are suffering.

Below are some ideas to shock your body back into growth. Give them a try next time your body needs a change and see if you like the results.

Perform Single Drop Sets

This should only be used on one exercise per body part. Any more than that could result in over training.

The idea is, once you finish a set of an exercise, immediately switch to a different exercise for that same body part. Just be sure to use a lighter weight than you normally would because your muscles are already pre-exhausted. Below are some suggested combinations:

Chest - Barbell Bench Press followed by Dumbbell Flies

Shoulders - Barbell Military Press to Dumbbell Arm Raises

Lats - Behind the Neck Pull downs followed by Seated Rows

Thighs - Squat or Leg Press followed by Leg Extensions or Hamstring Curls

Biceps - Barbell Curls followed by Concentration Curls or Preacher Curls

Triceps - Standing Triceps Pull downs followed by Behind the Head Dumbbell Extensions

Traps - Barbell Shrugs followed by Dumbbell Shrugs

Note that completing each combination of two exercises counts as only one set.

Do Cardio between Sets

This sounds strange, but it can help your body to burn fat while simultaneously building muscle. You should already be timing your breaks between sets, only taking between 60 and 90 seconds before starting your next set. Now during these breaks, try to jump on a stationary bicycle or elliptical machine and work at about 50% of your full effort (so don't go as fast as you can, but don't go too slow, either). If your weights aren't close to the aerobic equipment, then just run in place or, even better, jump rope. This will keep your heart rate and blood flow relatively high, constantly burning fat and replacing nutrients that your muscles lost during the previous set.

You may notice that you are not able to do as many reps during your next set if you employ this technique. Don't despair; your muscles are getting just as much of a workout even though your numbers seem to be lagging. If you continue this for four to six weeks, you'll certainly notice a difference in your physique.

Vary your Weight, Reps and Exercise for each Set

You're no doubt familiar with the fact that different numbers of reps per set affects different aspects of muscular development: lower reps equates to growth in muscle mass, higher reps usually means higher muscle stamina and endurance. The theory behind this idea is that the weight lifter should strive to gain in all three aspects of muscular development in a single exercise session. Three sets are done for each body part, with a different exercise and rep count for each set.

Using thighs as an example,

First set would be squats for 6-8 reps followed by 90 seconds of rest.
The second set would be leg presses for 12-15 reps followed by 90 seconds of rest.
Finally, the third set would be leg extensions for 20-25 reps.

Using this technique, the muscle is exercised in three different ways to prevent it from adapting to just one exercise. Also, you'll notice that your muscles will burn like fire after that last set - a good feeling if you have been at a plateau.

After working out for several months, the weight lifter begins to crave a little variety in their workout. The ideas above could provide that variety, along with sparking new gains in muscular strength and size. However, as these ideas tend towards being high-intensity, it is recommended not to incorporate them for more than 6 weeks in a row.

Want to get fit quick? Head on over to Men-N-Fitness and get a free 7 day training guide.

Different Types of Weight Lifting Workouts - Beginners to Advanced

There are numerous weight lifting workouts available and before you settle in on a specific workout, you must exhaust all your resources and make sure that you have everything considered.

One factor to consider is the difficulty of the workout. If you are just a beginner, you can't expect to simply jump into an advanced workout as you will surely have a hard time. Not to mention that there might be minimal benefits to your body. However if you have been lifting weight for years now, sticking with beginner workouts will just waste your time. Be very honest about what your level is as this is the first step into building muscles.

For beginners, I would recommend doing around four to five exercises that target your whole body, this is probably the simplest to learn and could provide newcomers with some visible benefits. For advanced workouts, weight lifting workouts that involve that target different body parts per day might come in useful. These people have probably about 6 months of experience and their body can take isolation exercises.

Ideally you can divide your workout into three days, first day focusing on chest and triceps, second will be on shoulders and legs and on the third you could probably go abs and ankles.

There is also the kind of workout called pyramids in which you start with a heavy weight and do about 5 reps then slowly make the weight lighter but at the same time increasing your number of reps. It is up to you to decide when you want to stop. Some hardcore weight lifters go to the extent of slowly removing 10 pounds per set until they are left with just the bar.

What I've mentioned above are the just some of the basic weight lifting workouts one can follow. It is important to stick to a certain workout and do it for about 3-4 months before changing. You wouldn't want your body to get used to your workouts that's why you want to rotate it form time to time.

Check out the best Weight Lifting Workouts available in the internet. If you want a straight to the point yet very effective guide on how to get those huge muscles you've always wanted, CLICK HERE