The True Importance Of Recovery

After H.I.T Training

 

This has to be with out a doubt the most over looked and most misunderstood part of any body builders A TO Z. We get many questions asking how long you should rest between routines and as i always explain, everyone is so so different, one persons recovery time can be half of what anothers is. Some take a little as 48hrs while others can take 4 to 5 days before being fully fit and restored. This subject also depends alot on your training style and what supplements you take.

Training style can have a huge effect on your recovery time out side of the gym, when we say training style we mean the total effort you put in at the gym. Basically if you train with a light weight and never really push your muscle to failure each and every time, your recovery time will be far less than someone who works to failure each and every work out.

How we explain recovery is in a easy straight forward way that hopefully all should understand. As you progress in your gym work outs, naturally  you get stronger and bigger your weights increase your muscles get larger you start to carry more weight, all in all your body is constantly improving in size and strength. So why is it most people only rest between work outs for the exact amount of time as they did when they first started training.

Surely as your weights and strength increase so does the stress on your body and your muscles, there for the more stress you put your body under the longer it takes to recover from the last all out gym session.

This is a area that many fall foul on, i myself train once every 4 to 7 days this enables my body to not only recover from training which takes about 2 days, but also gives my body enough time to build new muscle ready for my next huge training session.

How i look at my recovery is like this. When i go to the gym and train i look at it as if im building a house. First i dig out my foundations, which is my training session, then i build my house, which is my recovery period and finally my new built muscle is me putting a roof on my new house, there is zero point hitting the gym again until im fully recovered and strong ( you cant put a roof on until you house is built and this takes time, food and plenty of sleep ) basically you cant put a quality roof on a shit house.

Now i know that wont make sense to everyone but thats how i how understood the true importance of recovery before hitting the gym again.

For a natural body builder a rest period of four days+ is a must if you wont to progress in the long term.

Heavier weights = more body stress = longer recovery = bigger muscle

Give your muscles chance to grow and recover between sessions, and use your head to fully understand what your body wants and needs, dont just read from a bodybuilding magazine a be blindly led.

As you progress in your body building career the one subject that should never be put on the back burner and should play just as a bigger part as your training and supplements is quality recovery time.

Give it a whirl, after your next big session rest at least four days and see the difference in your body and attitude when you next hit the gym. What have you got to loose.

BICEP'S BLAST

ARM TRAINING IN A NEW DIRECTION

 

Hello and welcome to another blog post from Pitbull Syndicate, in this blog we are going to go through a new idea we have been using for bicep training. When ever we train we always look for the fastest and most efficient way to bring the muscle to total failure, because to be honest who wants to spend hours in the gym when you could be blasting your muscles in under 20 minutes and spending more time on recovery and the building of your new muscle.

We know our ideas towards training are very different from the norm and always raise a few eye brows but once these people have used our methods, its then that they suddenly make sense on a huge scale. If you have been reading our blogs you will know that we are huge advocates of the no rest Principal with a heavy weight. We know that this is not everyone's cup of tea but if you are serious about your training, then this style cant be ignored.

Now lets talk about our bicep routine, again very unorthodox but hells bells does it work. Biceps are often over trained and thrashed to death, what you have to remember is that the bicep is not a huge muscle and does not really need loads and loads of stimulation to get the best from them. To train biceps effectively you need to be precise, strict and slow, this will produce maximum bicep growth in the very shortest time possible.

Our bicep routine consists of three exercises, all done one after another with no rest period, so once you have completed one go straight to the next without a seconds rest, always maintain a precise style and allows follow the 4-2-4 rule when lifting and lowering the weight. So four seconds to lift two seconds to hold for max concentration of the muscle and four seconds to lower.

After a good warm up the first exercise we are going to use in this super set is, palms up pull downs this exercise is so over looked as a bicep exercise and many just use it to train the lats, but used with your hands very close together is one of the very best and most most officiant exercises to train the bicep. Normally a bicep curl with a dumbbell would would just train the lower part of the bicep, but with close grip palms up pull down the bicep is trained at both ends of the bicep, top and bottom.

Please see the above diagram for the correct way in which to do palms up pull downs, personally i always do this exercise on my knees, but you could do it sat on a bench. So as you can see from the diagram fully extend your arms, then with your elbows close to your body squeeze the bar into your chest and hold 4-2-4.

The next exercise is cable curls with a bar, we prefer these over dumbbell or barbell curls because the exercise gives you greater resistance on the way down for the negative part of the exercise. The cable curl is done in the same way as a barbell curl just on a machine, once again nice and slow following the 4-2-4 rule.

And the final exercise is concentration curls done with negative reps.

This is with out a doubt my favourite bicep exercise, especially when done with forced negative reps, basically when you cant curl one more rep, grab the dumbbell with your other hand to bring to dumbbell back to your chest and then let go, and allow your bicep to slowly lower the weight back down, do this until not even a negative rep can be performed.

The form for performing has to be strict and slow, this removes any form of cheating and also removes any motion cheating with the weight. The weight should be in the region where you are going to achieve 6-8 reps for each exercise, that's your goal.

Exercise 1 = Palms up pull down x 1 set of 6 to 8 complete failure

NO REST NOT EVEN A SECOND

Exercise 2 = cable curls x 1 set of 6 to 8 complete failure

NO REST

Exercise 3 = Concentration curls x 1 set of 6 to 8 then with forced negatives

Its very important to remember to go to complete failure on the muscle, not just ( it hurts a bit ) you have to take the muscle to the point were it cant even manage a half rep, this really is leave your ego at the door training.

Delts Further Explanation

In this chapter of our blog we are going into further detail about our delt training exercises and how they should be executed in terms of speed and style. In our last blog we out lined a different way to train delts in terms of volume and rest periods, now that you have had time to read through those exercises and get your head around the angle of which we hit the delts, now its time to help you understand just how this routine all comes together with the combined exercises and the way and speed in which we tie them all together.

Yesterday we spoke about how there is zero rest period between any of the exercises, so as you finish one you go straight onto the other, this allows the muscles to be totally fatigued and produces total muscular failure, now most people think they train to failure but they dont, they just train till it burns. There is no burn with this style of training, the muscle does not have time to burn, it reaches failure long before the burn comes in, theres no place for a muscle burn in this style of training.

The exercises although done back to back with no rest, are done with the strictest of style, there is no jerking, no bouncing and no show boating, its called weight train/lifting not weight throwing and bouncing. The exercises are also done in the slowest manner, this enables maximum muscle contraction and maximum use of the weight you are lifting. We use the 5 - 1 5 rule when doing this style of training. Which basically means if your were doing shoulder press you would take a count of five to raise the barbell a count of one at the top to squeeze the muscle and then a count of five seconds to lower the barbell. What this basically does is it stops you from jerking the weight up in the first place and stops you from bouncing the barbell when its coming back down, your removing any element of being able to cheat or cut corners, you are training your muscle to the max, and allowing for maximum muscle stress.

So now we have explained the speed and style of the training plan, hopefully this has tied everything together and makes perfect sense. If it doesnt just drop us a email or post and we can go into greater detail.

Kindest Regards and Happy Training

Pitbull

web www.pitbullsyndicate.co.uk

email pitbullsyndicate@hotmail.co.uk

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Hello and welcome to Pitbull Syndicate.

You can view our products at www.pitbullsyndicate.co.uk or email us with any questions at pitbullsyndicate@hotmail.co.uk here at Pitbull Syndicate we are a small team of bodybuilders and power lifters that have over the years combined our knowledge to help develop our own brand of products, products that really work, products designed for bodybuilders by bodybuilders, also on top of our products we offer any help or shared knowledge that we can give to aid any budding or experienced bodybuilders, at the end of the day knowledge is power and we strive to help in any area we can.

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Every month we are going to talk about different training styles or ideas that we are using at the moment in the gym, now please don't think of us as some kind of bible, we feel its good practise to share knowledge and learn as we go along.

THIS MONTHS TOPIC

TRAINING DELTS

This area has and always will be a bed of hot coals, nearly everyone you talk too has a different approach to training delts, high volume, low volume, drop sets you name it and all fairness none are wrong, this is the beauty about bodybuilding, no two bodys are the same so there for no two body's will adapt the same to any style of training, yes theres a bench mark and there always will be = lift weights. Apart from that the rest is all about you, how you train, what you eat, and most importantly what you as a individual put in. But like we have mentioned before in this blog and guidance is good guidance and any help is help happily received. 

Now like we have said there is no real mecca just different ways of trying to reach it so below this is our current shoulder routine.

Exercise 1

Dumbell Side Raise = 1set of 10 easy weight just to warm up those delts

Dumbell Side Raise = 1set medium weight at around 12 reps not to easy but not to failure.

Dumbell Side Raise = 1set this set should be all out with your heaviest weight possible without spoiling form, the rep range you are looking for here is around 6 reps to complete failure, after failure do a few half reps just to completely fatigue your delts.

Easy so far isnt it, nothing really out the norm, well this is were it gets interesting, we do not rest, not even for a second, you now go straight into your next exercise like a rocket, don't rest, don't stop just work those muscles.

Exercise 2

Behind the kneck press = 1 set. all out at your maximum weight, your looking to do around 6 reps

Behind the kneck press = 1 set. after your first set you don't rest drop the weight and go again for as many reps as you can, so if you just pressed 70kg for all your worth, now half that weight to 35kg and go again, don't rest push yourself and go for broke.

If done correctly with no break, not even a seconds rest this will bring your delts to complete failure in a matter of minutes, its that fact you pre exhaust your muscles first then hit them straight away with your compound movement that makes this so good, your not allowing muscles to recover so your body has no choice but to involve muscles you never thought you had, again no rest here straight to your next exercise.

Exercise 3

Low Pulley Side Raise = 1 set to complete and utter failure, dont stop when it burns or hurts you stop when your body cant even do one more rep, you should be aiming for a rep range of around 6 to 10 here with perfect form so adapt your weight choice accordingly.

Now for your last exercise, at this stage your muscles in your delts should be exhausted to the extreme, so with not even a seconds rest go straight to your last and final exercise.

Exercise 4

Rope face pulls = 1 all out set to failure, if your not aware or familiar with this exercise please email us and we will talk you through it, basically go to any cable weight machine, this can be tricep extension weight machine were you do your tricep push downs and attach the rope bar, facing the machine hold on to rope with a neutral palms position, palms facing each other. Now if your pulley machine does not have the ability to lower or raise the cable connection you will need to take a few steps back to allow for the correct leverage, once the cable is tite and the weight slightly lifted pull the rope directly towards the centre of your face so basically your elbows are as near as dam it in line with your ears. Squeeze and hold for one second and return weight in a controlled manner.

Now i know this way of training is not going to be to every ones style especially for those who like to take their time and have a little pose in between sets. Basically what this routine is all about is get in the gym, train the living hell out of your delts and get out, go home start your recovery and grow. No nonsense and no bullshit, its hard trust me, its has hard as hell, but it just might be what your delts need, you never know.