This month I'd like to go into some training methods which can annihilate the muscle ease the boredom and give you muscle ache like you've never had before. I still believe that the majority of your training time should be spent doing basic progressive training, and if you click here you will get my thoughts on this. But we are not thinking about normal stuff today. Time to die....

Try these methods at your own peril

1. 10 sets of ten
Sounds simple and sounds easy, but it all depends on the exercise you choose. Anyone managed 10 sets of 10 on chins? or squats, or deadlifts, or Bench press? I'd recommend you try it on an isolation exercise first, such as fly's, or leg extensions, but there is no limit to what exercise you can do this with. The key is to make every set to failure or close to failure, and if your reps get too low, just drop the weight. Give yourself equal rest periods between sets of around a minute, and keep consistent with style but make sure that every set counts. No point in rattling off 10 sets of sub intensity warm up sets. Go for it with a zest and attack each set. Try it with flat fly's, and you'll get the sorest pecs you've ever had.

2. 2 sets of 100!
Once again, choose an isolation exercise. Leg extensions work really well with this method. Choose a weight you can just about struggle 15 reps with, get to fifteen, and count to 10. Then you must complete a few more reps. Let's say you manage to get to 25 reps (you must keep this number in your head as you go along) Rest another ten seconds, and drop the weight a little, and complete a few more reps. Drop the weight again, and complete a few more. Sometimes you can keep the weights steady, and other times you must drop them every time. By the time you have reached 60 your legs will hate you, but you must persevere just to get up to the magic 100!. Rest a couple of minutes and do the whole damned thing again. At the end of this you will experience a pump in your legs like never before. This is the ultimate.

3. Up and down the stack
Choose an exercise which uses a machine weight stack, such as lat pulldowns. Set it on a very light weight (around one third of your normal weight) and get 5 reps.. Rest 10 seconds, increase the weight by one plate and get another 5 reps, rest ten seconds, increase by one plate again, and get another 5 reps. Slowly but surely each attempt at 5 reps will get harder and harder. You must keep doing this until you fail to reach the 5 rep target. This may take around eight increases in weight. You then start dropping the weight by one plate at a time, rest 10 seconds, get 5 reps, then drop the weight again until you are back to where you stared. Nice!

4. Twenty Ones...
Many of you will have done this nightmare creation with barbell curls. Where you do seven half reps at the top, seven half reps at the bottom, then finally seven full reps. But why limit this to barbell curls. This can be used with most exercises, and works well with leg press, leg curl, pushdowns, side laterals, bench press, and even squats!