Perfect Form To build muscle, you must feel it, if you do not feel the muscle contract and relax within each repetitions, you are not getting the required stimulation needed.
You must train with a strict form.
That is not to say that you can not build muscle with hard work and a sloppy form, and there are some great physiques that have been built with a great deal of sweat, hard work and a poor form.
But these people had very good genetics and their bodies could have been a lot better if they had paid more attention to their form.
There was one guy in my local gym, and he had the worse form anyone had ever seen.
He cheated on almost every exercise.
You had to walk well clear of his lat pull-down, just in case he might just knock you with his swing.
His bench press actually hurt to watch, feet on the ground, back arched and letting the barbell bounce of his chest.
Even so he managed to build a little bit of muscle every workout and actually had a reasonable and respectable build.
This could only be attributed to his hard work and intense training routine.
But he was missing a lot; he had no hamstrings or calves and thin arms.
Unfortunately he eventually suffered from injury and disappeared.
Throwing weight around and inviting momentum causes the weight to work you, instead of you working the weight.
Apart form working a lot less muscle fibre, a sloppy form also invites injury.
Almost invariably as long as you stick with strict form and always control the weight even to failure, you will never have a serious injury.
In pursuit of the perfect physique, ego shouldn't get in the way, a bounce here, a swing there, a little more weight does go up and it is a tough temptation to resist.
However you will soon find yourself caught up in the moment with your training partners and you will soon get stuck into throwing on that extra plate and loosening up your form for a few extra repetitions.
The trick is to make this craze a temporary exception and not let it become your routine.
Finding the intensity to throw on extra plates is good and exactly what we should be doing, but never at the expense of a good and proper form.
Keeping the Up Pace Often overlooked is the need of maintaining the proper pace within your repetitions.
People all too often regularly go to the gym and train hard, but do not make any gains simply because they take long pauses between repetitions.
The idea of pausing between repetitions results from a combination of wanting to preserve your strength for an extended workout and perhaps the fear of losing control of the weight.
The reason we go to the gym is to build muscle.
Preserving energy by taking long pauses does nothing more than unload the muscle and reduce the amount of intensity placed on the muscle.
The goal should be exactly the opposite by aiming to exert the muscle you are training as much as possible.
Muscular growth (hypertrophy) will not occur unless the muscle is subjected to stress beyond what it has become accustomed to.
Resting between repetitions goes completely against the logic of intensity.
Instead you should use smooth repetitions with a machine like motion.
Do not pause to take a few breaths and to gather more energy.
You must blast the muscle and you can not do that by unloading the muscle with a pause.
This will take some getting use to, but with practice it will become natural.
If you have always trained with pause and are now trying to get rid of it, you may experience a short-term drop in strength.
But therein proves the point that you are in fact weaker and smaller then you should be because of this pausing.
There is no need to worry about repartition motion interfering with the peak contraction of the muscle.
Slowing the movement down at the top in order to squeeze the muscle hard is an active process, so do not consider that poor repartition motion.
This is far from going to the top of a repartition and passively stalling for a rest.
As with many rules in life, there are always some exceptions.
During the heights of an intense set, you can compose yourself in mid-set and take a breath.
While this is does require a pause, this should only be allowed if the intensity is at its peak, and only on some large scale movement like leg squats and back bent over rows.
It is must be very short and never followed by a single repartition.
Your repartition pace is dependent on the idea of working through each exercise, building up a heavy weight for an ultra-intense set, and leaving it at that.
Regardless whether you do a straight pyramid of steady increasing weights or decreasing repetitions, or a plateau set for volume, training with one heavy set at the end.
Always maintain a good steady pace and go for broke on the very last set.