You might be thinking I don't need to add muscle fast, I just want to get fit and lose a bit of weight. Well adding muscle is the fastest way to a lean and fit body. As long as you have your nutrition under control and get enough quality rest and recovery, these workouts will rip your body into shape in no time! A word of caution however, these programs are designed for people who who have plenty of strength training experience, with no injuries and are already training regularly. If you are a beginner, these workouts maybe too challenging for you at the moment. I suggest building some baseline strength with a focus of improving your skills and techniques across all movements before trying these programs. Read our article Why People Get Hurt When Starting An Exercise Program. Also if you are injured or are coming back after a long break, it would be wise to address your injury first or have a few months of regular training before you try these workouts. For the rest of you buckle in as I am going to give you some tough workouts to try out!

Why Mix Things Up?

Why do we use these advanced techniques and regularly change exercises?

The body is very good at adapting to exercise. It tries to find more efficient ways of coping with the challenges you throw at it. This is why a new workout always hurts the first few weeks but over time it can be very boring and never leave you sore or tired. A common problem I find with many experienced exercisers is they do the same workout all the time! The same exercises with the same sets and reps every week, every month and every year. Many are good at changing exercises at times but rarely do they play with the way they do them. Once you have good exercise library to play with it is time to start challenging your brain and your body with new concepts like the ones I am going to share with you today.

Reasons for using advanced methods are:

1. Get more done in less time
2. Creates much more muscle damage to create more growth and strength gains
3. Increases metabolic rate which helps for weight loss
4. Keeps your workouts fun, exciting and fresh

And if you want over 100 workout ideas then you have to get your hands on our latest special report - The Little Black Book Of Training Secrets with 101 programs! Click here for more information or on the image below. There is also a preview trailer at the bottom of the page if you want to check it out.

Use Drop Sets To Add Muscle Fast

Supersets contain pairings of exercises that can target the same muscle/muscle group, One set is performed of one of the exercises in the pair, then the other immediately afterwards. A short recovery can be taken between each pair before the next set is performed. Supersets are great at hitting muscle fibres and stimulating growth, particularly if they target the same muscle group and medium to heavy weights are used. They are also great for being able to achieve more volume of work within the session. I usually keep the total sets to a max of 25.

The Drop Set method is one of the very advanced version of supersets. This system will have a serious anabolic (growth) effect and very quickly overload muscles. You will get a huge sweat doing this workout too, so anyone who thinks you cannot get fit from doing weights has never tried this before. Because it is so tiring and destructive make sure you have at least 48 hours’ recovery between workouts.

How To Do The Drop Set Method

Just a quick reminder that before taking on this type of training that your technique is of the highest standard. Never sacrifice technique for harder training. Read our article on exercise technique where we cover techniques for most basic movements. Watch the video below to see a detailed explanation of how this workout works.

This method is used to extend a set beyond its normal finishing point. It takes advantage of the fact that, just because you can no longer lift a weight, it doesn’t mean that your muscles are completely gone! Often when doing this workout you end up lifting the tiniest of dumbbells or barbells but it still hurts as much as the big weights as your muscles are being forced into complete meltdown.

For example, if you were using 100kg on a barbell squat and could just manage 10 reps and not an 11th, all that has happened is that you are no longer able to generate 100kg of force. You could, however, probably generate 75kg of force. So by lowering the weight to 75kg, you can continue the set beyond the point you normally would have stopped at. After a few reps, 75kg begins to feel like 100kg again and cause your muscles to burn and quickly run out of power. So then you take more weight off the bar to 50kg and continue the set for a few more reps, and again it will feel like 100kg in next to no time. I usually stop this process after the 3rd lowering of the weight.

It is important to note that to get the most out of drop setting, it’s important to try and reduce the resistance as quickly as possible once muscular failure has been reached. I like to set up the bar with the exact plates so I can make it a quick drop and minimize the time between sets. It should take no more than 5 seconds to reduce the load for a given exercise otherwise, muscles will recover too much and the effect will be lost. Roughly drop the weight by 10-15%, but this can vary with each exercise so you have to experiment a bit. Just make sure that the drop isn’t so great that your reps start to go up! 

Okay let's take a look at a couple of workouts to try.

Workout Number 1 - Simple Drop-sets

Firstly let me explain how the sets and reps are written. I like to write the reps as 10+10+10 to explain the drop sets. Eg for the squat workout example before it would be

Barbell Squats  - 3 sets x 10+10+10 with a 2 min rest after the 3 lots of 10 sets are completed back to back.

Secondly there is a few rules to keep in mind with exercise selection. I always pick the more challenging and technically difficult exercises first when I am fresh. I never use power exercises such as hang cleans, abdominal exercises or twisting movements such as cable wood-chops with a drop set method. I might have them in my workout but I never use drop sets as it interferes with the timing and intricate sequence that these movements require. I prefer to keep my exercise selection simple with this method.

This first program is a good one to get used to the feel of drop sets. Allow a good 60 minutest to do this.

Workout Number 2 - Superset Drop-sets

This second program is a much harder version and this is where you combine Supersets with Drop-sets!

Complete destruction of your muscles is guaranteed with this workout. Ouch! Allow a good 60-90 minutes to get this one done! You will need at least 3 days between workouts after you first try this out. The choice of exercise you can mix up yourself but I like to mix similar muscle groups within the superset to increase the time under tension with the muscle to abnormal levels. This is why it is so exhausting but also so good at providing exceptional results so quickly. If your goal is to lose weight this method will help you as your body goes into a metabolic furnace to repair the damage created. Have fun with this.

What About Exercise Selection

That is a great question. Most people would be using Body Building exercises and splitting these workouts into several days of chest, back, legs etc. I still prefer to use Functional Training exercises that use the entire body for this is the most effective way to move. By using the most effective way to move, with the most effective methods of adding strength, there is a greater chance of success. And without risk of injury! For if you get injured you cannot workout any more and now you will have a new program -  a rehab program!

If you think you cannot add bulk and muscle mass using exercises like this you are poorly informed. You will find a ton of information and video examples across all MUSCLE GROUPS in this article - How to build serious muscle mass using functional training methods.

Below is a video from that article looking at the glutes and the shoulders.

To help you out we have put together a FREE Report for Functional Training you can get below. This is in fact one of the Chapters from the Little Black Book of Training Secrets and we want you to have this for free so you can start using efficient movements and exercises to take you towards your goals.

Conclusion

This is just an example of how you can really transform your workouts from boring same old routine into something that challenges you like never before. It is never about training more to get better results, but about training better. Make sure you read our article on progressive overload to work out how to structure your training week correctly. These workouts give you some great ideas on how you can take your training to the next level and really transform your health and fitness in a matter of no time.

Good luck! Below is the trailer video of the 101 Programs book.

For more ideas and information on specific topics I may not have covered in detail be sure to check out our INDEX PAGE on the website that has over 300 of our best articles. These are all sorted into categories for quick reference so you can find what you are after more easily. You can also subscribe to our FREE fortnightly newsletter by clicking here.

If you do need specific help with your exercise program please feel free to reach out to me for help and we can set you up with your individualised program.

About The Author

Nick Jack is owner of No Regrets Personal Training and has over 16 years’ experience as a qualified Personal Trainer, Level 2 Rehabilitation trainer, CHEK practitioner, and Level 2 Sports conditioning Coach. Based in Melbourne Australia he specializes in providing solutions to injury and health problems for people of all ages using the latest methods of assessing movement and corrective exercise.

References

• Movement - By Gray Cook
• Athletic Body in Balance – by Gray Cook
• New Functional Training for Sports – by Mike Boyle
• Bending the Aging Curve – by Robert Signorile
• Corrective Exercise Solutions - by Evan Osar
• Diagnosis & Treatment Of Movement Impairment Syndromes - By Shirley Sahrman
• Low Back Disorders - by Stuart McGill
• Anatomy Trains - by Thomas Meyers
• Motor Learning and Performance - By Richard A Schmidt and Timothy D Lee
• Assessment & Treatment Of Muscle Imbalance - By Vladimir Janda
• Scientific Core Conditioning Correspondence Course - By Paul Chek
• Advanced Program Design - By Paul Chek
• Twist Conditioning Sports Strength - By Peter Twist
• Twist Conditioning Sports Movement - By Peter Twist
• Twist Conditioning Sports Balance - By Peter Twist