. Relish the hard work. Savor the final and most taxing reps of a set—the
domain of the growth zone. Revel in the opportunity to stimulate further
growth; and then give your pound of flesh.RULE
Get your training well supervised
. Good supervision, whether from a training partner or someone else, is a
first-class way of getting you to deliver more than you would by yourself. Do
your utmost to get supervised over at least the final leg of cycle—when you
need all the encouraging and even bullying you can get to push yourself to
new heights of effort. Quit on the effort, and you will quit on the gains.RULE
At the end of a cycle, reduce your training for each
exercise to warmups plus one intensive work set
. e harder you train, the less of it you can do, and the less of it you can
stand. e greater the volume of your training, the more you will need
to dilute your effort to survive each workout. Reduce your training to the
absolute minimum—i.e., warmups plus a single work set, per exercise—and
focus all your usual efforts on the reduced training volume. en you should
see an increase in your training intensity. at can make the difference
between growth stimulation and muscle maintenance. You will also demand
less from your recuperative powers and better enable your body to respond
to the growth stimulus.. To ensure sustained progression on the biggest and most important exer-
cises during the final leg of a cycle, severely reduce, or temporarily eliminate,
all other exercises. You may even need to drop one or two of the biggest exer-
cises in order to keep progressing on the others. For example, your progress
may grind to a halt in the squat and deadlift, each trained once a week. But
drop one of them and then progress in the other may keep moving forward
and the cycle can continue for a while yet.RULE
Train each body part less often
. Following on the heels of training volume is training frequency. At the end
of a cycle you may need less of both (depending on what you were doing
earlier on). Arrange exercises so that overlapping ones—e.g., bench press