Are you bored with your workouts or have you hit a plateau?

There are many reasons to change up your workout routine. If you’re not already, you should be making minor changes each week to keep your muscles in a state of shock. These changes could be anything from different exercises, using new machines, adding more weight, etc. For the purpose of this article, let’s focus on major changes and using new strategies to build leaner, stronger muscles. I recently completed a 6 week trial in which I went from using a 4 x 6 (4 sets x 6 rep) routine to a 20, 18, 16, 14 rep routine. So it would look like this:

Exercise 1:

• Set 1 = 20 reps
• Set 2 = 18 reps
• Set 3 = 16 reps
• Set 4 = 14 reps

Excersice 2:

• Repeat above

The results were incredible. Not only did I gain strength, but all those nagging joint pains (caused by heavy lifting) disappeared. Here’s a sample workout to use as a guide if you want to give it a shot:

Monday (Chest and Biceps):

• Incline press
• Flat dumbbell press
• Cable crossovers
• Straight bar curls
• Cable curls

Tuesday (Legs):

• Leg press
• Leg extensions
• Seated calf raises
• Cable calf machine
• 1 leg machine curls (hamstrings)
• Seated cable machine curls

Wednesday (Active Rest)

Thursday (Shoulders, Triceps):

• Seated shoulder press
• Lateral dumbbell raises
• Front cable raises
• Dumbbell kickbacks
• Skull crushers
• Cable pushdowns

Friday (Back and Traps):

• Straight leg dead lifts
• T-Bar rows
• Pull downs
• Seated cable rows
• Barbell shrugs
• Dumbbell shrugs

***Remember, each exercise is 4 sets (Reps of 20, 18, 16, 14). Also, because you’ve increased the frequency of reps you will undoubtedly feel more lactate buildup during your workouts. As such,you may want to consider a pre-workout such as VPX’s NO Shotgun or BSN’s N.O. Xplode to help you through your workout. You’ll also want to consider supplementing your diet with Glutamine to help reduce recovery time.