Real body changes only come when you challenge your own body. Increase the pace of your workouts for faster progress with these intensity tricks!
You may be familiar with the term “training intensity”. But what is its real meaning? For a kinesiologist, intensity is a way of determining how much energy your body expends during exercise. This is the ratio of effort to maximum capacity. In other words, it is a way to measure output power.
Depending on the amount of energy expended or the intensity of your workout, your body will use different types of “fuel”. For example, high-intensity exercise leads to the consumption of carbohydrates by the body, because they are the source of fast energy. Unfortunately, carbs are limited and depleted fairly quickly, leaving you with an empty tank.
Research has shown that high-intensity training is a powerful way to increase your body’s ability to rely on existing fat stores for fuel, allowing you to train longer and have a positive effect on body composition.
Increasing the intensity not only helps burn excess calories but also challenges the cardiovascular and muscle systems. The need to perform unfamiliar tasks in general leads to large positive changes in fitness and performance.
The following intensity-building techniques will help you maintain high muscle mass and low body fat throughout the year.
1. Use more weight
The number of repetitions should correspond to the goals of training. In strength training, sets consist of 3-5 repetitions. To strengthen the muscles, give preference to 8-12 repetitions. To increase muscle endurance, use 12-15 repetitions. To effectively increase muscle volume, the last few repetitions are done at the limit. In fact, the effort with which the exercises are performed determines the sufficiency of the load. If you can easily do 15 repetitions, you should take heavier dumbbells!
Never underestimate the effectiveness of heavy lifting. If you’re not using heavy weights, you’re not tensing your muscles enough to make positive changes. It takes energy to lift weights, make sure your body is working at full capacity!
2. Increase the duration of the exercise
In order to grow, muscles must be tense. The level of stress you provide to the muscles is important. Excessively long workouts increase the risk of injury and overexertion. But if you don’t spend enough time under stress, the level of achievement will never be what you want.
Time under tension is the total amount of load on the muscles or the total amount of time the muscles resist weight during a set. You can change the length of a set for specific purposes. For strength training, the time under tension is about 20 seconds. To build muscle mass, it must be increased to 40 seconds. For stamina, your goal is 70 seconds.
To prolong each rep, simply increase the time of the eccentric phase by increasing the duration of the muscle work in each rep. You can also pause for 1-2 seconds at the peak of the contraction instead of lowering the weight immediately.
Within a set of 8-12 repetitions, each of them should last 4-5 seconds. You don’t have to expect phenomenal results from slow-rep training, but it’s worth a try. Serious pain awaits you during and after such exercises.
One way to improve your time under tension is to practice rhythmic training. Rhythm refers to the speed with which the weight is lifted. In numbers, this is expressed as 3:1:2:1. The first number is the duration of the eccentric phase or descent. The second digit is an intermediate pause. The third number is the concentric phase or weight lifting. The fourth digit is a pause at the peak.
You can beat the rhythm of the exercise in several ways: slow down the eccentric phase by accelerating the concentric, and extend the pause at the peak of the contraction. Or you can do the opposite.
Rhythm training will allow you to have maximum control over your lifting, becoming a more proficient lifter in the process. Rhythm gives the exercise extra energy. Contraction delays and a slow eccentric phase will make your muscles scream!
3. Shorten rest periods
The intensity of training is directly affected by the rest time between repetitions. If you are a powerlifter, your rest is approximately 3-5 minutes between sets, which allows you to generate the maximum amount of energy during the exercise. But if you’re working on muscle hypertrophy, the biggest hit to fat will come from reducing the number of gaps between sets.
In general, I suggest sticking to rest periods of 30-60 seconds. This means having a watch with you and being mindful of what you do between sets. No time for chatting with friends, browsing Instagram and taking selfies. Those 30-60 seconds are for recovery, a sip of water or a protein shake.
If 60 seconds seems too long for your cardiovascular system, cut your rest down to 45 or 30 seconds. Your task is to monitor the reaction of the body and your own well-being. If you’re still panting for the next set and can’t complete the rep, you need to give yourself a little more time to rest. However, the heartbeat should not be allowed to return to its normal rhythm. The frequency should be high enough, just enough so that you feel tired, which will not interfere with the set.
4. Use supersets, drop sets, and circuit training
Regular sets work well – don’t get me wrong. One exercise of 3-4 sets of 8-12 repetitions will definitely be enough for muscle development and weight loss. However, to intensify your workouts, there are ways to spice up the usual approaches.
One of the best ways to make your workouts more effective is to introduce supersets. They involve doing two exercises directly one after the other, without interruption. The transition from one exercise to another without gaps between them creates an excellent load on the heart and muscles.
A similar principle applies to more exercises. For example, you can complete the entire workout as a cycle of five exercises, one after the other, without a break. You should rest only after completing the last exercise of the cycle. Circuit training often involves using less weight because the intensity is too high. This means that while you are pumping iron, your heart is pumping more blood.
Another great way to turn up the intensity is to use drop sets. On a regular set after the final rep, simply reduce the weight you lift and keep going. You can lose weight several times in one set, or only once. The point is to keep the muscles at their limit. Their tension in this way will help achieve fabulous results.
5. Mentality
There is a tangible difference between someone who wants to achieve a goal and someone who is willing to do anything to achieve it. When you work out in the gym, the main task is to use the maximum possible weight, working with full dedication in order to make the workout hard. If you constantly train through your sleeves, without challenging yourself, progress will come to naught.
The workout has to be hard. Of course, you don’t need to crawl out of the gym every day in a state of squeezed lemon, but after a workout, you should feel tired, if not exhausted. To achieve results, the muscles should be given unusual loads.
Next Step
When using methods that increase the intensity of your workouts, try doing them one at a time. For example, if you haven’t tried increasing the time under tension on your sets, start there. Check out how the extended reps feel and see how much progress you can make with this technique in 4-6 weeks. Having done this, check what happens if you reduce the rest periods.
Critically evaluate your workouts and your own well-being. When you notice changes for the better, work in the same direction. If you don’t like the method, change it. Fitness is individual – let your workouts fit your needs.