Muscles grow in response to the overload you place on them. When you first begin strength training, even working against your own body weight is enough to boost muscle strength and sizes. However, after a few months of training, you need to stimulate your muscles differently to continue to make gains. You can do that by increasing the resistance that you use, the volume, or other parameters that you can change to work the muscles harder. But sometimes you need more advanced training techniques and fresh approaches to break out of a plateau and jumpstart your gains. One way of doing this is with breakdown training.
What is Breakdown Training?
Breakdown training is a more advanced training approach that can help you break through a stubborn strength plateau. The purpose of this twist on training is to recruit more muscle fibers than you can when doing standard sets. How do you do breakdown training?
Start by doing a set using a weight you can lift 8 to 10 times. By the final rep, the muscle should be in momentary muscle failure. Then reduce the weight by around 15-20% and do another set to momentary failure. Once you’ve completed that set, reduce the weight again, and do a third set to momentary failure. It’s easy to see how this can lead to strength gains and boost muscle hypertrophy. By reducing the weight, you’re able to do two additional sets without resting. Doing this increases the muscle fibers you’re able to target and fatigue.
Does science support the benefits of breakdown training? In one study, 45 adults used Nautilus machines to do standard strength-training, completing 8 to 12 repetitions of each exercise for 4 weeks. After the first 4 weeks of training, some subjects did breakdown training on two of the machines rather than standard training. When researchers looked at strength gains, the subjects who did breakdown training gained 30% more strength relative to those who did only standard training. The extra stimulus your muscles get from two additional sets to fatigue can pay off!
It’s easy to get into a “comfort zone” with your training. When you first started, you made strength and hypertrophy gains, but over time, the gains slowed. That’s often the sign that you’ve reached a plateau and your current training strategy needs to be modified. Strategies like breakdown training can help you restart your gains. It’s a way to thoroughly exhaust your muscles.
Other Plateau Busters
Breakdown training is one method to ramp up your training and break out of a plateau, but there are other ways to boost your gains when you’re stuck in a strength or hypertrophy rut. Even slight changes to your routine can help you make new gains. The most common ways are to increases the intensity or volume of training. That means using heavier weights or increasing the number of reps and sets that you do.
You can also vary the tempo of your training. Eccentric training where you overload the eccentric portion of the movement recruits more high-threshold muscle fibers and also causes more muscle damage. The combination can aid muscle hypertrophy. In contrast, lifting explosively, where you move the weight as quickly as you can, attacks your muscles in a different way and is ideal for building explosive power. Adding isometric pauses is another way to increase the tension on a muscle in a way it’s not accustomed to.
Even changing the order of your exercises can help you break out of a plateau. Another way to shake up your training is to add new exercises or change the timing of your training. If you’re training your entire body during one session, switch to a split routine where you work your upper body and lower body on separate days. You don’t always need to do a major routine overhaul to jump-start your results.
Advanced Training Techniques
Breakdown training is a more advanced plateau buster, but it’s not the only one to include in your training. Other advanced approaches include drop sets, supersets, pre-exhaust and post-exhaust training, negative reps, and eccentric training are other techniques for challenging your muscles differently. You have lots of options, so don’t get into a rut!
Even switching the form of resistance will challenge your muscles in a novel way. If you use dumbbells, switch to a barbell, kettlebells or even resistance bands. Change the grip and hand placement on the barbell to alter the path through which a muscle has to work. For some exercises, like bench press and biceps curls, you can even use a reverse grip. Be careful if you do this as it’s harder to hold a weight securely with a reverse grip and your risk of injury may be higher.
The Bottom Line
Breakdown training is another advanced training technique that will help you break through plateaus, but you’ll get the most benefits by varying the advanced training methods you use. Switch it up so you’re doing a different advanced technique each week to force your muscles to work harder. Combine your training with good nutrition to maximize muscle growth. What you eat counts too! Keep a record of your workout by writing in a fitness journal. Doing this will allow you to keep track of the advanced training techniques you’re using.
References:
- Building Strength and Stamina – 2nd Edition 2nd Edition. by Wayne Westcott.
- The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research: May 2016 – Volume 30 – Issue 5 – p 1425-1432. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000001222.
- Exercise Physiology. Fifth Edition. McArdle, Katch, and Katch. 2001.
- American Council on Exercise. “How to Use Drop Sets to Improve Muscle Definition”
- Sports (Basel). 2019 Jan; 7(1): 14. Published online 2019 Jan 6. doi: 10.3390/sports7010014.
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