. Do not train flat-out all the time. Cycle your intensity to some degree. How
you interpret cycling depends on your age, recuperation abilities, motiva-
tion, tolerance to exercise, out-of-the-gym lifestyle factors, quality of diet,
poundage increment scheme, supervision (if any), and style and volume of
training, among other factors. A very few people can train full-bore most of
the time. Others can only do it in short, infrequent spurts. Most people are
somewhere in between. e bottom line is poundage progression. So long
as you keep getting stronger in good form, then what you are doing is work-
ing.. e value of increased training intensity is not the actual effort per se. What
counts is the progressive resistance that the high-intensity training can
produce. Just pushing yourself to your absolute limit in the gym will not in
itself make you bigger and stronger. e very hard work will only yield gains
if you fully satisfy your recovery needs, and avoid injury and overtraining.
When your poundages stagnate or regress, you are doing something wrong,
even if you are training full-bore.. Intensity heightening techniques such as forced reps, drop sets, and nega-
tives are likely to do more harm than good. Ordinary straight sets pushed
all the way to muscular failure, or near to it, are the way to go for nearly all
your training.. To achieve the progressive poundages that produce gains in strength and
muscular development, your body must recover fully from your training. As
boring, unexciting and mundane as rest and sleep are, they should be right
at the top of your priorities if you are to progress as quickly as possible.
Everyone knows that sleep and rest are important, but almost everyone
shortchanges themselves in this department. Unless you wake every morn-
ing feeling fully rested, and without having to be awoken, you are not getting
enough sleep. And even if you are making gains in the gym, more rest and
sleep could substantially increase your gains.. Only compare current attainment to the same stage of your previous cycle
that used the same style of training. You cannot, for example, compare bench
presses done rest-pause style from pins in the rack in one cycle, with those
done touch-and-go in the next cycle.