Big loads are important. In fact, they are more than important. If you want to grow, they are fundamental. However, despite their importance, they have a secondary roll in muscular participation. Oh! The muscular participation. It seems one of those terms (like sensation) bodybuilders often use, that make you scratch your head wondering if you are doing things right. Well, this is a very simple word to understand (it must be if I get it). Muscular participation means that the desired muscle is given the highest load in an exercise. It comprises the ability of concentrating the effects of the training on the muscle being trained. In simple words, when making pulls, it would be to make dorsals be the ones pulling the bar down. Now, nobody’s saying it should be a book’s technique, a movement so strict and controlled which wouldn’t tolerate slight variations.
There is a huge difference between a good movement, which make the desired muscle workout and the one that allows a slight variation in order to use more weight, and the relaxed technique most bodybuilders show (the ones that show any development) with the purpose of loading the bar with more and more discs.
You can load the bar all the way up, but if you don’t workout your muscles properly, they won’t develop. Put it his way, the aim of each exercise consist on transferring the bar resistance (or the pulley, or the machine, etc) to the muscle and doing it by moving the intensity of moving that load to a certain zone of the body. When you finish a heavy rowing set, squats or pulls, in addition to being breathless, you should feel pain and trembling in the muscle involved. It should scream at you: ‘I don’t want to do it again. I will grow if that’s what you want, but stop it, ok?’ But always providing the intensity has been put in the muscle.
Many bodybuilders don’t feel the load which is applied on the muscle. They do feel it in the lightest sets, but they loose connection in the heaviest ones. However, they’ve got the feeling of general tiredness and they found hard to breath, but no pain or muscular trembling (and without muscles begging for mercy).
Sounds familiar? If it does, it’s about time to go back and check your current training method and development degree and ask yourself one question: what are you looking for, bigger and harder muscles or lifting more weight every time? If the answer is bigger and harder muscles, keep reading.
It’s the essence of what we may describe as productive resting periods among the ability of creating a higher level of intensity in the heaviest sets. This means keeping that muscular participation at the time you increase the load, which represents more intensity. It’s an specific ability that only a few possesses, but fortunately, it can be learnt.
Each one of us adopts an angle, an arch or position (whatever you may call it) in the exercises in order to get the higher benefits out of them. Being bench press, squat or curl, if you adopt the proper position, the muscle will be under constant pressure during al the movement and in the higher point we’ll find the peak contraction. But this is not all. In addition, you have to keep the muscle fully contracted and tense along the negative face of repetitions. Using this technique in all movements (specially, in the basic ones) should be your main goal. It’s a technique that changes considerably from one bodybuilder to another. The lateral elevations Dorian Yates performs could be completely different than the ones Lou Ferrigno does (or yours). This doesn’t mean one of them is wrong, but each on of them raises the dumbbells in the best way according to their structure, which allows them to keep the lateral head of deltoids under pressure and experiment the peak contraction in the higher part. It is not a passive or magic result when you come up with the proper technique, it is the discovery you make when you give your bets contracting the muscle in each centimetre of the movement. You will know when you are doing it right because finding the correct position shows the difference between progress and not progress. And once you find it, be careful.
‘That’s ok but, how can I find that position? What does it feel?’
Good question. Suppose you are doing concentration curls with dumbbells. You grab the dumbbell (so far, so good) extend your arm and bend your biceps in order that all tension goes to this muscle. You start the curl, assuring yourself to completely bend the biceps. As you raise the dumbbell, you tighten it strongly.  You lift the weight but softly and controlled. It’s not a clumsy movement, but vigorous. At the end of the high point, the elbow softly moves front, in an almost imperceptible way for the others. You know it’s said shoulders should remain still, but if you let them go ahead a little bit, you will meet some cramps in the biceps you never felt. You could even cry. Incredible. That’s waht you should do. Now, from that full contraction position full of cramps, star the descendant faze, struggling to keep the muscle contracted. Doing a big effort. You will discover that if you slightly move the dumbbell front –instead of down- a higher tension is pun in the biceps. That tension must be constant –the muscle can’t relax- and increase with each repetition, until the tenth, when it seems the bicep is about to rip. Lower the dumbbell and you try to recover your breath. You heart pumps so hard at the same time blood reaches your arm, which starts to grow. The pain is so hard that the last thing you want is to finish the set. You need several minutes to recover (and we are only doing concentration curls; imagine what could happen with rowing).
Finally, you have found the technique you needed to develop your biceps. Just adding some changes, as letting the elbow move front, feeling cramps in the biceps, you can make the difference about muscle development. I don’t mean to say this techniques are the best ones for you: maybe yes, maybe not. You have to discover it by yourself. Find the variations which better adapt to your structure just by experimenting until you hit the ideal angle in all moves.
All right, you have found it. Movements are perfect. Immaculated. They describe a bow that allows a higher muscular participation, and with it, the muscular incentive.
Pectorals scream in the higher point of the bank press, and regarding squats, you feel cramps, pain and trembling in quadriceps. And you have just started. You are focused. Muscles are harder, and the intensity level you use in each set has increased. And every time it’s more. However, it’s likely you should cut down the weight in order to discover the proper technique for you.  It’s ok, but now that you know that, you have to star increasing the weight systematically. It’s really important that, at this point, you don’t become a slave of the technique. It’s a common mistake. After being conscious that the old technique –pulling and cheating with the higher weight possible- does not stimulates the muscular development, many of us tend to be so strict with our movements that resistance it’s not enough to stimulate our muscles, therefore progress stops. We have done and excessive compensation in the opposite direction and so we make moves too slow or light. Remember: once you form appears –you discovered the accurate angle- intensity should increase to keep up the progress. For that, you have to add more discs.
If the first step was finding the proper angle for each exercise, the second is based on keeping that angle so intensity goes to the muscle as the load increases. It’s a bit difficult, since you’ll always be between too much or too little and you have to struggle to find the balance. Try to avoid the temptation of using such a heavy weight which won’t let you show off you good technique or use such a low weight for the muscular stimulation. Your primary goal should be that most of the sets are the middle point, in the development area.
Keep in that zone is what produces de highest muscular damage, the key of constant progress. The most important is no to increase the weight no matter what. In the same way many of us become technique slaves, there is a bigger tendency to be weight slaves. Now you have the technique: use it as a reference. When you experiment super intensity, you will know you are stimulating the muscular development.
Don’t spoil it. If you notice that muscular participation vanishes (you don’t feel pain in your muscles –it should be felt even in 6 repetition sets-), get back. Keep the technique and increase weight in a progressive way. I’ve said progressive. Do you know one and two kilos weights? Well, use them. The key lies in increasing load regularly and constantly. If you turn it up too fast, you will loose the angle, and with it, the muscular participation. The truth is when participation disappears, weight increasing involves less tension in the muscle and its size will be reduced instead.
If you keep the technique and increase resistance little by little, you should be able to add weight that you regularly handle. If not or it seems you can’t find the way of performing the heaviest sets naturally, it’s likely you haven’t recover from the previous session. Surely, you are over training. In that case, the solution is simple: reduce the number of sets or add more resting days (or both). The goal is to do the movements with the proper angle as you increase intensity by adding weight. Opposite to what most people think, it’s not a difficult goal to achieve. If you are doing everything right, the movements are good, the intensity striking the muscles is high and you can’t put up more weight, cut down the volume of work until you grow again. With time you will progress –and you should.
The line between too much weight or to little is thin and many bodybuilders unconscious of having go through it. Making the move goes through the right path, when tension remains in the trained muscle, is necessary to stimulate muscular development, but, in order to keep on moving on, you have to increase intensity gradually. It looks like a paradox. How much is excessive weight? When, due to additional weight, you loose muscular participation and you do the movements only to have the chance of adding more weight instead of working out the muscle in a higher intensity level, you will know that the weight it’s just too much.