Workout: Lower Body, Day 1 and Why Someone Can Do a Hundred Reps and Not Grow

-           Power clean 3x3 (two warm up sets)

o   Superset box jumps x3

-          Front Squat 5x5          

o   Superset w/ vertical jumps x5

-          Quadruped Series 3x8 each leg

-          Single Leg Plyo ball leg curls 2x8 each leg

o   Superset w/ Single Leg Plyo ball knee tucks 2x8 each leg

-          Partner Bosu Balance w/ med ball x5 minutes

The Quadruped series is a series of hip joint based movements in which the athlete will perform
- bird dogs
- scorpions
- fire hydrants
- hip circumduction

 During hip circumduction, you will begin on all fours, then extend one leg backwards then bring it around to the side in the fire hydrant position, then lower and repeat so as to create a circular motion with the hip. If single leg plyo ball leg curls or knee tucks are too difficult, then do double leg instead. For the partner bosu ball balance w/ med ball, stand on the flat side of a bosu ball and toss a medicine ball back a forth between partners. If working out alone, the ball can be bounced off a wall, or held if different positions to make balancing more difficult. Enjoy.

Why Someone Can Do a Hundred Reps and Not Grow

In the gym that I work out at, there is a particular group of guys that are always there when I am. These guys are fairly muscular, but for the amount of sets and reps they do and how long they workout for, you'd think they'd look like young Arnold Schwarzenegger's each. And from what I've been told, the leader of this posse (I call him "Gloves" because he is always wearing a pair of heavy duty lifting gloves with weight straps around them, so he looks like a boxer) works out twice a day, for about two hours a piece. So why in the world does this guy not look like Jay Cutler, or Arnold?

Although the greatest reason people who work out can't build muscle is poor diet, I do not want to assume that he has a bad diet, or drinks/smokes simply because I do not know for sure. What I have seen however, is the way that this guy and his band of lady killers lift. They follow a typical body builder style routine: train chest and triceps, the back and biceps, then shoulders, and then the dreaded leg day. This form of routine is pretty standard and allows for good muscle growth if done properly. That is the issue, however. Down at the very core of their program, they are doing their repetitions in such a manner that they are seriously limiting their potential muscle growth. These fellas will sit down on the leg press machine, and do very rapid quarter or half reps, with some ridiculous volume, like 4 sets of 25 reps. They will do the same thing with every different exercise they do.

I do not think that these guys are incompetent, I think they've just fallen into a particular misconception of how muscle is built that is very common among the amateur body building community. They misunderstand how to manipulate the volume of there lifts. Most lifters understand that to build muscle, they must lower the intensity (weight) and raise the volume (reps), right? Technically. The problem is that they will raise the volume far too high, like 3 or 4 sets of 20 or even more reps. Once that high in volume, you've passed into the realm of muscle endurance, and there will be little muscle built. Volume is most effectively manipulated by focusing on this term: Time-Under-Tension. This refers to the amount of time that a muscle is under tension, or contraction, while performing an exercise. Volume and time-under-tension are directly correlated. So if volume increases, so does TUT, and vice versa. So anything with higher sets and reps will have higher volume and TUT. In my experience, the best muscle building parameters are 3x8-12, and 2x15. Anywhere past this and your training muscular endurance more than hypertrophy. The most effective way to increase volume and TUT, I've found, is to slow the tempo. These guys will do the reps so quickly that even though they are doing really high volume, their TUT is bad because they move through the reps too quickly. So slow the reps down, take a second or two for the concentric phase, and then even longer for the eccentric phase, like 3 to 5 seconds. This will drastically increase the volume and TUT of your workout, but with fewer reps. My personal favorite is a !-1-3 tempo. The "!" means to lift concentrically as explosively as possible while still maintaining proper form and muscle control. The second number, "1," means to pause at the top or midpoint of the lift and stabilize the muscles. The final "3" means to allow for 3 seconds to pass during the eccentric phase. This tempo allows for strength building concentrically and muscle building eccentrically.

One other thing that is commonly disregarded in the amateur body building community is range of motion. Not only is full range of motion good for the joints and flexibility, it also allows for much greater time-under-tension. It is easy to see how someone doing full bench press reps will have greater TUT than someone doing half reps. Full range of motion does not mean "lock out." It is rarely a good idea to lock out any joints while they are under a load, this can lead to countless injuries. But someone can come very close to locking out, while still having their muscles bearing the load. I think that as far as lifting goes, full range of motion can be defined as moving as close as possible to extending a joint to such a point that the load is on the frame, but not reaching that point, and keeping the load on the musculature.

Always move through full range of motion, and manipulate volume by increasing time-under-tension, not just by increasing repetitions. If these two principles are applied to body building parameters, building muscle is far more achievable. Unfortunately for Gloves, his ego is even bigger than he thinks his biceps are, so I am afraid that he may spend the rest of his life doing half reps. But for every body out there reading this that cannot seem to gain muscle mass, or is just looking to grow even stronger, then I strongly encourage applying this to your lifting programs. I guarantee that it will only offer positive results.

Thank you.