Muscle Growth, The 60 Seconds That Make The Difference

In the same way a small fraction of a second is crucial in a sprinter’s race during a 100 metre dash, fractions of seconds can mean success or failure in a bodyduilding process. That seconds will make or break your body’s muscle growth response in the gym.

That’s right, your workout session maybe lasts for about an hour, but there’s a small fraction of time in your session that really matters and that’s something you have to know in order to achive the best results. How you handle that seconds would mean poor, mediocre or great results.

You see, every individual set that you perform in the gym is ultimately being performed for the benefits that will be achieved on the last 1-2 reps. Muscles respond to stress, and the only truly stressful reps that actually trigger your body’s muscle building mechanisms are those at the end of each set when the body is on the brink of muscular failure.

Reps 1-4 are only performed in order to get to reps 5 and 6. But there’s more than meets the eye in that. The last reps you perform in a set actually are the ones that will determine if the results of your workout are or not the results you desire.

What’s important then, is to overload the muscles on reps 5 and 6. And the most important thing to achieve better results is try to keep that stress level as long as you can at the end of each set.

There is simply no better way to trigger your body’s adaptive responses than to train until your muscles cannot move the weight another inch.

The closer and closer that you can come to muscular failure, the more dramatically your body will respond. This time frame is literally measured in single seconds. If you drop the weights 5-6 seconds earlier than the next guy (the margin is probably even smaller than this), you’ll be significantly sacrificing your muscle growth.

So, your success will be measured by this really short period of time, and the amount of effort you are willing to exert during this time.

It really is true; your bodybuilding success is literally measured by the short, precise moments at the very end of each set and the amount of effort you are willing to exert during this time.

If you can force yourself to train to all out muscular failure, you’ll achieve the best results possible. If you drop the weight 3 seconds before muscular failure, your growth will be compromised. If you drop the weight 8 seconds before muscular failure, your growth will be compromised even further.

If you can’t move the weight another inch, if your muscles ache and you feel them burning, you are going in the right direction to true muscular failure.

If you stop short, even a second short, your gains will be compromised. Keep this in mind at all times in the gym and you’ll experience better results than ever before.