Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - 8 Highly Effective Ways to Get Stronger on Your Isolation Exercises

Episode Date: January 6, 2020

If you’re serious about weightlifting, one of the worst things that can happen is getting stuck. Your workouts become robotic chores, you stop giving each exercise your all, and you begin to wonder if you’re simply at the end of your genetic rope for muscle and strength gain. This is particularly true of isolation exercises like the dumbbell side raise, barbell curl, calf raise, and the like. For one thing, you’re forced to lift what seem like relatively light weights compared to your heavy compound exercises. Every pound of progress is precious, and it can be maddening to show up to the gym every week and lift the same weight for months (or years) on end, with no idea how to pull yourself out of this rut. Moreover, you may find yourself plateaued on most of your isolation exercises despite making steady progress on your heavy compound exercises, which is even more puzzling. Why does this happen, and what can you do about it? Well, the short answer is there are several very simple explanations for why progressing on isolation exercises is more difficult than compound exercises. Once you understand what these are, you can use the eight strategies in this podcast to get stronger on all of your isolation exercises for years to come. A word of warning before you continue: Progress will always be painfully slow on isolation exercises once your newbie gains are gone. Anyone who seems to defy this rule is either new to lifting, returning to lifting after a long hiatus, or on drugs. Period. If you keep at it, though, and commit to the process, you can make consistent, predictable progress on even the most stubborn isolation exercises, without taking steroids. So, if you want to learn why isolation exercises are so damn difficult, and the eight best ways to get stronger despite this, venture forth once more unto the breach, dear friend, for this podcast will show you the way. --- Mentioned on the show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://legionathletics.com/shop/ --- Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.LegionAthletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will

save 10% on your entire order and it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. How do you make progress on your isolation exercises and particularly as an intermediate and advanced weightlifter? This is a question that I get asked fairly often, and it's a good one because it's easy to make progress as a beginner across the board, particularly on your primary compound exercises, but also on your isolation or your secondary or accessory exercises. Every week, you're adding weight to the bar, the dumbbells, and that goes for a couple months, and then you're adding weight every other week,

and then a couple months later, you're adding weight every other week and then a couple months later you're adding weight still every four weeks or so and in the interim weeks you are adding reps so there's always that forward sense of momentum you just got to keep pushing yourself hard in the gym really and the gains come eventually though things slow down the gains train loses steam and that's particularly true on the isolation and accessory exercises. So much so that before you get fully stuck in a rut, you usually stop making progress there before your primary compound exercises. And I understand I've been there myself. I know what it's like to be stuck with certain dumbbells on certain exercises in certain rep ranges and feeling like there's just no way to break through.

That there's just no way to get from, let's say, the 85-pound dumbbells on the overhead shoulder press to the 95 or 100-pound dumbbells. What to do? Many people just get sloppy with their form. That's their solution i understand i've been there too like for example on side raises you can get too much swing into your torso which helps you get the weight up but of course kind of defeats the purpose because you're not going to get stronger by using momentum and so what i want to share with you here are eight simple tips to help you make progress again on your isolation or your accessory exercises. The exercises that come

later in your workouts after your big, hard, heavy stuff. The first tip is to use double progression on your accessory or isolation exercises. And this is something that I talk about in Bigger Than or Stronger and Thinner Than or Stronger and recommend to people who are new to effective weightlifting across the board. Just use that progression model for all exercises. And then as an intermediate weightlifter, I recommend that you switch to a more deliberate, calculated form of periodization because that model has some periodization built into it. But eventually it becomes very hard to continue making progress on your primary, your compound exercises with just double progression.

And so at that point, I recommend a more linear type of progression where adding weight to the bar is prescribed at certain regular intervals in your programming. And I recommend that you also combine periodization into that. And these are things that I talk about in this new second edition of Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger I'm working on. This is the sequel to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which is intended for intermediate and advanced weightlifters. But as far as double progression goes, I still recommend that in BBLS 2.0, for example, and this is how I'm training right now. I still recommend double progression for your accessory exercises because it just works. And if you're not familiar with double progression, it's very simple. In double progression, you work in a given rep range with whatever weight you can handle in that

rep range. And you use that weight until you can hit the top of that rep range for a certain number of sets. So let's say you are squatting in the eight to 10 rep range, and you're just using double progression and you have 225 pounds on the bar. You would squat with 225 pounds until you can get 10 reps for one, two, or maybe even three sets, depending on the programming, at which point you would add weight to the bar. You would add usually 10 pounds to the bar. add weight to the bar. You would add usually 10 pounds to the bar. Then you would squat with that new weight, 235 pounds, and you would lose a couple reps. You'd probably get seven or eight reps in your first set. And then you'd work with that until you can squat that for one, two, or three sets of 10 reps and move up. And you just rinse and repeat that process. And it's called

double progression because you're first progressing in reps and then weight. And the reason it's so effective is that's progressive overload. You are getting stronger over time. The weight on the bar is going up over time. And that of course is producing higher levels of mechanical tension in the muscles over time. And so coming back to isolation and accessory exercises, I recommend the double progression model over any other for those exercises. Assuming that you're following workout programming somewhat similar to the type of stuff that I am always recommending and teaching, which is a lot of heavy compound weightlifting and starting your workouts with your hardest exercises, your biggest lifts, and then doing your lighter, less taxing stuff later in your workouts and so on. Okay, tip number two for progressing faster or better or just again on your isolation and

accessory exercises is to add weight in smaller increments. Now, most dumbbells move up in five pound increments and if you find that is just too much and on some exercises, it can be pretty annoying on side raises. For example, just using double progression. It is common for you to work up to the top of a rep range with your weight and then move up the weight and lose like four reps, which is more than you'd want to lose. So what you can do is instead of just using the dumbbells, the next set of dumbbells that are five pounds heavier, you can get micro plates, which are magnetic, they're magnetized, and you can attach them to the dumbbells. So you can get one and a quarter pound plates, put one either side of the dumbbell, and now you're moving up by two and a half pounds,

not five. Another simple tip for better progression on your isolation and your accessory exercises is just do more volume. Take what you're doing on those exercises and just do a bit more. And usually what that comes down to is adding one, maybe two sets per week to these exercises. You don't want to necessarily double the amount of volume that you're doing. So let's say you're doing six hard sets for your biceps every week. I wouldn't recommend going from that to 12. If it were me, I would go from six to nine and I would do that for a couple months and see how it goes. And the next tip is kind of an extension of the previous one of adding volume. And that is to use rest, pause training or blood flow restriction training to add that volume because it's going to

be easier on your joints, just less wear and tear on your body. And you might find that you can add even more than just a couple sets. you do rest pause or blood flow restriction training without running into any problems. You might be able to double the amount of volume that you're doing effectively if you go from six straight hard sets to adding blood flow restriction or rest pause without running into any issues related to overtraining that individual muscle group or overloading the joints too much. Hey, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives,

please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Every ingredient and every dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. To check everything out, just head over to legionathletics.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 20% on your entire order if it is your first purchase with us. And if it is not your first purchase with us, you will get double reward points on your entire order. That's essentially 10% cash back in rewards points. So again, the URL is legionathletics.com. And if you appreciate my work and want to see more of it,

please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. The next tip is to periodize your training that you are doing on these isolation and accessory exercises. And in case you don't know what that term means exactly, periodization is simply a method of focusing on a certain aspect of your fitness for a period of time before you go on to focus on some other aspect of it. Now, in the case of weightlifting, an easy way to do that is to work in different rep ranges. And how I am currently doing that with my isolation and accessory exercises and what you will find in BBLS 2.0 is you are changing your rep range of your isolation and your accessory exercises every four weeks. So what you're doing is you're starting a training block,

working in the 10 to 12 rep range on your isolation and your accessory exercises. And then four weeks later, the weights get a little bit heavier, volume comes down. So then you start working in the eight to 10 rep range. Four weeks later, the six to eight rep range, and then restart at the beginning. And by doing this, research shows that you can gain muscle faster and break through plateaus better. And that also applies to primary, to compound exercises as well. But the periodization programming in BBLS 2.0 for the compounds, for the big exercises is a bit different. You're going to be working off of percentages of one rep max there. All right, the next tip is to do different exercises every so often. So this is similar to the periodization concept, just applied to exercises. So what I like

to do is do the same exercises for eight to 12 weeks and then swap those exercises out for exercises that work the same muscle groups, but work them a bit differently. And that is generally just a good idea. Research suggests that by exposing our muscles to different types of stimuli and different exercises do stimulate muscles differently, we can gain strength faster and gain more muscle over time. All right, my next tip is to make sure that you are tracking your isolation and your accessory exercises as meticulously and as consistently as you are your primary big compound exercises. I've heard from many people over the years who pay a lot of attention to their squat and their deadlift and bench press and overhead press and could give you numbers going back years that they have in their logs, but couldn't tell you much about their isolation

or accessory exercises other than maybe some of the exercises they're doing and some of the rep ranges they're working in. And the problem with this is twofold. One, when you're in the gym, you don't quite know what you're trying to do with the exercises and the weights. You don't know what you did the week before or the month before. So you don't know really what you're shooting for. And the second problem is then you don't know if you're making progress or not. And again, speaking firsthand, I've experienced this myself. It's just very easy to become complacent in your workouts when you are not tracking things properly and reviewing your progress, not just weekly, but also monthly or maybe even over the course of several months, depending on how your program is laid out. And that complacency can be enough to make for no progress.

enough to make for no progress. I've experienced that myself just by not tracking my workouts as strictly as I normally would. I would tend to just fall into working with the same weights and the same rep ranges and not really pushing myself to, in the case of accessory and isolation exercises, to hit the top of my rep ranges and try to add weight. But then as soon as I started tracking everything again, it just changed. My workouts changed first and foremost, because I felt like I had a specific goal I was going for with every single set. And that made me more focused on my workouts and encouraged me to work harder in my workouts. And so that alone has been enough for me to break through plateaus in my progress over the years. elsewhere. And if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics,

which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. And it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over a hundred dollars. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider

supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from? Because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show, they also increase the search visibility and help more people find their way to me and to the podcast and learn how to build their best body ever as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and whatever app you're using to listen and you will not miss out on any of the new stuff that I have coming.

And last, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts. Let me know how you think I could do this better. I read every email myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. All right. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.