Muscle Building, Success Or Failure Is A Matter Of Seconds
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In the same way a small fraction of a second is crucial in a sprinter’s race during a 100 metre dash, fractions of seconds can mean success or failure in a bodyduilding process. That seconds will make or break your body’s muscle growth response in the gym.
There’s more…although each entire workout will last for about an hour, only about 60 seconds will determine what kind of gains you achieve. That’s right, how you choose to handle that 60 second time period could means great, mediocre or poor muscle building effects.
How does it works? Well, the first reps in your set means just a little bit than nothing in terms of muscular growth. However, they play an important role.
Then, reps 1-4 are only performed in order to get to reps 5 and 6, the ones that really matter in the bodybuilding process. The first ones, do very little in terms of stimulating muscular growth.
The important thing is to overload your muscles in the last reps. Muscles respond to stress, and there is no more stressful moment for your muscles than the moment at the end of your set.
The best way to trigger your body’s adaptive responses is training until your muscles cannot move the weight another inch. Drop the weight some seconds before the guy next to you and you will see the difference between his and your muscles after some weeks.
Let’s do some math. If you perform 10 sets per workout, and have a margin of 6 seconds between success/failure per set, then it means that the way you handle that 60 seconds could mean a significant muscular growth…or a total waste of time.
Then, your succes in the bodybuilding process is measured by the short moments at the end of every single set you perform in the gym.
The closer and closer that you can come to muscular failure, the more dramatically your body will respond. Two seconds, five seconds, maybe another one rep, or two, would actually mean a great difference.
If you can force yourself to train to all out muscular failure, you’ll achieve the best results possible. If you drop the weight 3 seconds before muscular failure, your growth will be compromised. If you drop the weight 8 seconds before muscular failure, your growth will be compromised even further.
If you can’t move the weight another inch, if your muscles ache and you feel them burning, you are going in the right direction to true muscular failure.
That’s the right moment to give your maximum effort. If you give up then, if you take a rest, then you are compromising gains. If you dont, you’ll achieve the best possible results.
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Hi Ricardo! I’ve been training for 30 years now, and I can tell you that you’re right. A trip to the gym can go up in flames in a second if you don’t push to the growth response.
A great way to make sure that you get the most out of every rep of every set is visualization. During my 10 years of powerlifting, I used visualization to build on my personal best. Eventually, I found myself nationally ranked.
Here is an article called “Want to Increase Your Weight or Reps Today? Try Visualization..” that explains how to use visualization for weight training. It’s easy to follow and you can use it immediately.
Phil Harris is the author of the free muscle building resource: Muscle Building Revealed, which can be found at http://www.muscle-building-revealed.com.
He specializes in empowering people to build muscle fast with the right training, nutrition, supplements, and motivation.