PROGRESSION In order to gain strength and muscle, you must train your body in a progressive manner.

Let s assume you can perform a maximum of 8 repetitions of a given exercise with 100lbs, and not 1 rep more despite your greatest effort. Provided you give your body enough rest, the next time you perform this exercise to failu re, you should be able to perform 1 or more reps beyond the 8 with the same resistance or weight, as your body would have adapted to your failure set and gotten slightly stronger as a result. On subsequent workouts, you would strive for additional reps until you could get 10 or more reps with the same weight. Once that occurs, you would then increase the weight used by 5-10% for the next workout, thus forcing you back to the 8-10 repetition range. This is known as double progression. First you progress in the number of reps performed, then you progress in the weight used, and then repeat this process. This double progression principle, along with appropriate intensity, volume, and frequency, will allow you achieve your best body faster than any other method in existence.

Page 39 in a particular exercise. Most will be able to complete 8-10 reps with this percentage of 1 rep max. With our average rep time of 5-7 seconds per rep discussed earlier, this tells us is that most people will do well to perform a h igh intensity weight training exercise to failure for somewhere between 40 and 70 seconds, or 8 to 10 repetitions. This brings up another important point. Your muscles don t know how many reps you re doing, they know how long they are under load, or experiencing the resistance. This is known as time under load (TUL). So what we are looking for is a TUL of around 50 to 80 seconds for most people to experience maximum strength and muscle growth benefits. muscle recruitment takes place in a ramping up process. For the first few easier reps, more slow-twitch fibers are doing the w ork, with little fast twitch involvement. As the exercise gets harder, the fast twit ch fibers come into play more, and even more so toward muscular failure. To generate sufficient intensity without turning the exercise into an endurance movement, select a weight that is approximately 70-80% of your 1 rep maximum recommending the performance of only 1 set of each exercise, done to momentary muscular failure. A second set or multiple sets of the same exercise performed in the same fashion are not only unnecessary

in most cases, but can prove to be counterproductive to your efforts. You must understand that a properly conducted set of weight training exercise to muscular failure is extremely taxing to that particular muscle and your body s overall recuperative ability make sure to never, I mean never hold your breath while exerting yourself maximally. Page 46 This can cause all sorts of problems including increased blood pressure, risk of hernia, and fainting