3 Ways to Manipulate and Elicit Fatigue for Bodybuilding Success
WARNING - I am not a bodybuilder, but I know how to train for size. So, shall we dance?
About six months ago I had a client ask me “hey, is there anyway we can speed up the workouts? I feel I am in the gym for 2-3 hours at a time”. Now for some of us, that doesn’t seem to be the worst case scenario, but once you are married and have kids to be responsible for, it seems almost every minute of every day is accounted for. He was concerned his workouts were taking too long, so I took his workout, broke it down and simply asked him one question…
“Are you abiding by the rest intervals on your workout sheet”?
I will tell you, there have been many impactful moments in my life that have shaped my mindset on strength training. As weird as it sounds, one of the most impactful moments includes me at a local YMCA and a stop watch. I was training in an ordinary fashion, nothing special. I was doing sets of bench press, dumbbell incline press and I am sure some other accessories that go along with the pressing motion. At one point I noticed another lifter in my proximity and he seemed to look very very familiar. I had noticed him lifting routinely each week, and he had an impressive physique. He was not only “swole”, but also had great body composition that indicated he wasn’t just lifting for strength, but for size as well. Anyways, as I was lifting I noticed this individual constantly staring at their stop watch. It seemed as though the only focus of his workout was between him, the iron, and that damn stop watch he was wearing. Eventually I built the courage to ask this individual “hey, what’s the deal with the stop watch”? He sort of smirked at me, looked down and without hesitation proclaimed to me “it’s to pace my workout and rest intervals”.
I guess in hindsight that seems to be the only reason to use a stop watch during a workout, right? But I think that in the big scheme of things, how you operate your workout is a HUGE indicator of how your body will respond to the stimulus. Let’s imagine two individuals doing the same exact workout but in two different ways:
Person A is performing bench press, incline press and cable pushdowns within thirty minutes of training.
Person B is performing bench press, incline press and cable pushdowns within sixty minutes of training.
Remember, both people are doing the same exact workout including volume and percentages as well. For person A, they are performing the same intensities of the workout but with HALF the rest! How do you feel this person will respond to this pacing? I imagine they will be tired, exhausted, and perhaps dripping in sweat. But as science indicates to us, working to “exhaustion” and “fatigue” is the biggest indicator for evoking spikes in the body’s secretion of growth hormone. That’s a big factor in performance, especially for those who do bodybuilding. So, with all that being said, I want to discuss with you three ways to manipulate fatigue during exercise for bodybuilding success.
One of the first ways to manipulate fatigue for bodybuilding success is to abide to rest intervals. Imagine this, image that you are doing bench press for five sets of eight reps with three minute rest periods. Mathematically, this means you are going to be doing bench press for at least fifteen minutes or more! That’s a long ass time. I mean, for a powerlifter this should be no problem right? But what if we changed the rest interval to two minutes, or even a minute and a half? That means the workout would last around eight to ten minutes, which gives you more time back to invest into other movements if you are under a specific training window. Regardless, if you are typically training with certain rest rates and decrease them by a significant amount, this means you are not allowing yourself to return to a full state of rest which will increase the rigor of the workout and the fatigue of the muscle. Remember, that’s a big part of activating the natural secretion of growth hormone, performing and evoking a higher level of fatigue. If you are a powerlifter and looking to hit a PR, maybe you don’t decrease the rest rates of your major sets, but as the workout continues perhaps you consider lowering the rest rates for better implementation of fatigue. Is there a standard to achieve? Not necessarily, but also understand as time goes on your conditioning will improve so perhaps take your current routine and reduce it by 20% or so and continue to chip away at the rest intervals to continue to maintain a rigorous session of training.
A second way to manipulate fatigue for bodybuilding success is to use proper exercise selection and exercise order. Think about the traditional rep scheme of “3x10”, but think about it for bicep curls and squats. If you do bicep curls for 3x10, it can get exhausting but if you do squats 3x10 you might either be a psychopath or asking for a death sentence! Squatting this volume is insanely hard, but why? It’s because the squat is a multijoint movement and utilizes massive amounts of muscle tissue. The squat using the hip muscles, knee extensor and flexor muscles, the list includes several muscle groups and means you are massively engaged in the workout with your musculature which in return makes it a very metabolically exhausting exercise. Doing bicep curls just uses your biceps, so you do the math archimedes! Anyways, it’s very pivotal that you script out a workout that includes a series of multijoint and single joint exercises and to follow that order as well! Do not do leg extensions before barbell squats, you want to go from multijoint to single joint as this allows your body to again evoke a spike in exhaustion which in return triggers the body to grow more and more from its fatigued state. Also, don’t forget about the planes of movement being a big part of this too. Don’t do movements that are constantly the same physiologically, try to do exercises in motion, in place, with machines and with dumbbells, etc.
A final way to manipulate fatigue for bodybuilding success is to utilize different types of training modalities. So far we have talked about using unique rest rates and specific types of exercise selection, but now it’s also important to exercise using different styles of training. To me, that means doing things such as mega sets, drop sets, or even biomechanical drop sets. Mega sets would mean to train to a certain goal of volume, such as 1x80,100,120, or even 200! You would pick a weight that you can train for 20 reps or more, and use this intensity until you hit fatigue. You will rest for ten seconds at most, then go back into exercise until you hit your goal of reps for that set. How I do this with clients is I have them aim for their first week to hit a total of 60 or 80 reps. Then the next week I drop the load and ask them to go for 100 reps, and I keep doing this build in intensity throughout a block of training and then we try another type of fatiguing modality to aim for the next block. Drop sets would be a similar concept but as they continue to hit fatigue, they drop the load by a small percentage and continue to lift until they meet the conditions of the exercise. I could ask a client to drop set for 100 reps, or I could ask them to drop set for five intervals and ask them how many reps they accumulated to track their progress each week. The final suggestion of exercise for this would be doing a biomechanical drop set, meaning doing a rigorous form of exercise and as they hit fatigue, modify the movement to make it easier and easier each time they commence in exercise. It could mean doing incline press, then flat bench press, then decline press at the end so you hit fatigue from different angles and starting from a harder angle to an easier angle. This can also depend on the exercise you choose and if it makes sense and can be achieved