The techniques I’m talking about are Drop Sets & Negatives.

To be most effective, these should be hard sets that take you deep into the house of suffering and make you do all the ugly workout faces.

Save these until the end of your workout. Because there won’t be much left for anything else.

And if you are brand new to training, you don’t need to do these yet. Stick with the basics for at least six months before adding these in.

Drop Sets.

The classic way to do these involves a few sets of dumbbells.

You perform a set of curls until you can’t maintain good form.

Then switch to a lighter set of dumbbells and rep out until once again: you hit technical failure.

And then repeat this process 2 – 3 times.

But, this can be a little tricky if you workout in a public gym. As it requires you to occupy several sets of dumbbells

A more convenient, and arguably, more effective, way to do drop sets is by using a TRX or a pair of gymnastic rings.

Unlike the classic version, where you’ll find momentary relief by putting the dumbbells down. This one offers no respite and keeps tension on the muscles the entire time.

And accumulating time under tension is one of the keys to muscle growth.

Negatives.

The Negative or Eccentric is the part of a lift is where you’re lowering the weight. And you are 25 – 30% stronger here than you are in the Concentric, or lifting phase.

Which means you can use more weight.

And more weight, means more gains.

The Negative is also the part of a lift where you do the most significant amount of damage to the muscle fibers. And it is this damage that will force the muscle to adapt and gain in size and strength.

The challenge with Negatives is that that you usually need help to get the weight into position so you can lower it.

But with a set of rings or a TRX, you can make it work all by your lonesome.

You don’t need to do a lot of these to get a significant training effect.

Enjoy the burn, my friends.