The Most Effective Lever You Can Pull To Influence Muscle Growth At Any Given Time?

There will come a time when your progress flatlines and you won’t know why. 

You’ll feel like you’re doing everything right but you’re feeling flat and not seeing the results you desire, and your body hasn’t changed in weeks.

It’s frustrating.

But it’s not the end of the road, and if you know what to do, you can break through it fast.

No matter if you're a man or a woman, there are only so many levers you can pull to influence your results, and when you understand what they are it makes understanding what to do much easier. 

These levers include: training volume, frequency, exercise selection, training intensity, rest periods, training density, recovery, and mental focus. 

The reality is most people in the gym do ‘enough’, they’re just focused on the wrong lever. And that one simple mistake can be the difference between growth or stagnation, frustration, and struggle.

But there is one lever you can pull in any scenario that will always lead to positive results. It’s not your music, it’s not even the weight on the bar. 

What is it?

Increasing your training intensity.

Why is training intensity such a powerful lever? 

Because it amplifies all the others.

How do you do it?

First, you've got to stop treating the gym like it’s a club. Stop talking, start focusing. 

How important is your focus? 

A study from UC Irvine determined that it takes 23 minutes to regain focus on a task after an interruption⁽¹⁾.

23 minutes!

Now, if you’re in the gym constantly being interrupted with conversations and b.s, how can you ever say you’re putting in the full focused effort required to achieve your goals? You can't.

Ok, now that you understand just how important complete focus is and you’re able to tune the distractions out, what else can you do?

Shorten your rest periods between sets.

This is an easy way to instantly increase the intensity of your workouts. It will force you to focus on recovering fully so that you can put all your effort into the next set. 

If your workout is taking 2.5 hours but you’re feeling like you’re spinning your wheels, drop a set from each exercise for the day and put more effort into less sets.

You don’t have to go full Dorian Yates, but you can do more by doing less if your focus and effort is on point.

This seems counterintuitive, but doing ‘more’ isn’t the same as being effective. 

You can be consistent, show up every day, and still get nowhere if your effort is weak.

Increasing intensity doesn’t mean you have to load the bar so heavy you hurt yourself, it simply means you need to put more effort into the bar you are lifting, and there is an easy way to do it.

Dr. Fred Hatfield aka ‘Dr. Squat’ was a power lifting pioneer who popularized the concept of ‘compensatory acceleration training’ (CAT).

This lifting philosophy dictated that every rep was performed with maximum intent through the full range of motion, no matter how much weight is on the bar. Instead of letting the weight control the pace, you actively drive it up fast and explosively to boost force output, power, and muscle recruitment. 

Hatfield believed it could add up to 100 lbs to your squat in 3 months.

Is it true? 

Well, he achieved a competition squat of 1,014 pounds in at the age 45 years old⁽²⁾, so he must have been doing something right. The fact that many powerlifters use this method today is a testament to the theory.

Why is this relevant? 

Because this philosophy is all about increasing intensity and it’s simple to remember: Control the weight on the way down, explode on the way up, on very exercise, all the time.

Does this mean you never grind out some of your lifts? Of course not. There is value there too. 

But when you’re focused on lifting with maximum intensity and attack every rep like it’s your first, you’ll get stronger, faster, and the reps you do grind out will be with more weight on the bar than ever before.

If you want to see real growth you need to flip the switch, and increasing your training intensity is the most effective lever you can pull to do it.

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References:
(1) https://ics.uci.edu/~gmark/chi08-mark.pdf
(2) https://www.issaonline.com/blog/post/celebrating-the-life-and-legacy-of-frederick-dr-squat-hatfield