Muscle Build

Turn For The Better

Sometimes the best way to build strength fast is to tear up your workout script and approach the weights from a new angle. This workout turns your usual routine upside down so that you do as many sets as you used to do reps and vice versa.

Backwards training makes your body work in a different way, forcing your muscles to adapt and become stronger. But the key advantage of this training method is that because you’re doing fewer reps per set you can choose a heavier weight, increasing the tension that you place on the muscle and encouraging greater strength gains. And by choosing a weight you can lift six times rather than three, you can keep the number of sets high, which will make sure that your muscles are properly exhausted by the end of the workout.

As long as you eat a high-protein meal within two hours of working out, your body will respond by repairing your muscles and in the process they’ll grow. As your workout programme progresses you will slowly increase the number of reps per set, actively increasing your strength week by week. By the end of the three-week cycle your muscles will be ready to tackle heavier weights and move on to the next stage of development.

How to do this workout

Do workout A on Monday and workout B on Tuesday, then rest on Wednesday. Do workout C on Thursday and workout D on Friday. For each workout you will be doing ten sets of three reps in the first week. Every week you will add one rep for a total of five reps by week three. Rest for 90 seconds between each set and two minutes between each exercise. Choose a weight that you can lift six times (although you will actually lift it only three, four or five times). After three weeks you should be able to increase the amount of weight you can lift.