Day in and day out, you do exercises such as pulldowns, bench press, deadlifts, squats. But are you getting everything you can Air Jordan 1s out of every single rep you do to achieve maximum muscle growth and strength? Work out smarter, not harder, to achive maximum results!

The following tips and tricks are going to take the exercises you know and love and show you how to make them even MORE effective! Some you may be familiar with but many will be completely new.

What is deceleration inhibition? When you do an exercise, your body (without your conscious thought) will slow down your limbs as they get closer to the end of their ranges of motion. In the bench press, this happens as you get closer to the top of the movement.

Your body has this reaction in order to prevent injury but it also limits the amount of power you can apply to an exercise. Your body does this by firing the back muscles.

When you’re lifting around 80% of your maximum weight, when you get to the halfway point of the movement, your body starts to fire the back muscles to try to slow your limbs down. This means during half of the bench press movement, your body is actually trying to slow down the bar!

When you’re using near maximum weights, since the weights are heavier and push down on you more, your body now starts to slow the bar down at about the 3/4 point in the rep, leaving you with a quarter of the movement where your body is trying to slow the bar down.

This is still a very significant portion of the rep where your body is working against you!

This slowing can be a cause of sticking points. Quite often, people have trouble locking out the top few inches of the movement when using heavier weight. This can be because their body is actively slowly the bar down as they come to the top.

It can also contribute to sticking points about halfway through the movement when using more moderate weight. Naturally, there are many more factors involved with where sticking points happen, but the nervous system can certainly contribute.

Overcoming this deceleration inhibition can help you overcome sticking points.

You can overcome nervous system holdback with plyometric (explosive or rebound) training like medicine ball throws (they aren’t heavy enough, though).

However, a good option is to do pop up push ups on the bench press itself, done right before you start your bench workout as a warm up. Start by kneeling on the end of the bench, facing the bar.

Fall forward, catching yourself on the bar in the bench press position then explosively pushing yourself right back up to the start position (letting your hands leave the bar), as though you’re popping back up.

Another technique for overcoming deceleration inhibition is to attach large chains to the bar. When you start Air Jordan 10s the rep, most of the length of chain is on the floor.

As you lift up and pull more and more links off the floor, the increasing weight of the chains helps to decelerate the weight without requiring muscular involvement. You can push as hard and explosively as you want without your body having to slow the bar down.

You see, what your body doesn’t realize is that you don’t generally need your limbs to be slowed down in the heavy bench press Jordan 2 Retro if the resistance is heavy enough, that’ll slow your limbs down for you!

All the inhibition does is make it harder to lift the weight. Doing a set or two of 6 to 8 reps of this pop up warm up detailed above (where you explode up and away from the bar) sends your body the signal that it doesn’t Air Jordan CDP need to decelerate the limbs Air Jordan 16s in this movement.

The result: you’ll be able to lift more weight.

2. Pulldowns and Chin ups Puff Out and Lean Back

When doing both pulldowns and chin ups, it’s important to puff out the chest and lean slightly back. straight up and down, the way most people do pulldowns and chins. This results in the biceps getting more work.

Leaning back and puffing the chest out to meet the bar as you do the exercise forces the arch into your lower back and dramatically increases lat activation.

3. Barbell Bicep Curls Take a Narrow Grip

Taking a narrow grip on the bar (shoulder width or a little inside of that) will more strongly activate the biceps during the movement. This happens because the narrow grip forces the biceps into a more supinated position than wider grips (supination is the movement where the hands rotate to a palms up/forward position).

Supination is the other primary function of the biceps and forcing maximal supination increases tension and muscle activation in the biceps.

4. Dumbell Shoulder Press Pour Water on Your Head

When doing dumbell shoulders presses, tilt the dumbells in towards your head throughout the movement as though you’re pouring water on your head with a pitcher. This dramatically increases the tension on the delts throughout the entire exercise they’ll get no break at all!