FORCED REPS!

By: Duke Nukem

Take the target muscle past capacity: John Parrillo was his usual matter-of-fact self when asked at a seminar a few years back about his strategy for muscle building. “First and foremost – you have to push yourself past your current limits in training. Keep in mind that “limits” can take many different forms. Nothing of any particular muscular significance is going to happen if you never push past your limits in training. The adaptive response is only triggered if and when a muscle is pushed past capacity. In response to stress, the body reacts and makes a muscle stronger and larger to cope with the repeated muscular stress of regular weight training sessions. If the human body favorably reacted to mild or light workouts, everyone would look like a professional bodybuilder.

Comfortable workouts cannot create dramatic results. Intense workouts are needed to trigger the adaptive response, the necessary prerequisite for muscle growth.” Obviously Parrillo’s contentions are dead-on and totally accurate: the question then becomes, what constitutes stress sufficient enough to trip the switch and build muscle?  There are many different ways to create the required stress. Stress-inducing techniques include: forced reps, rest-pause reps, short rest durations, drop sets, “down the rack” style dumbbell training, ultra-high rep Parrillo Extended sets, negatives, partials, slow-motion rep speed sets and long giant sets. All of these stress-inducing techniques can and should be used at various times to create the stress required to force the body to construct new muscle.

When you train, be it weights or aerobics, you want to equal or exceed capacity in some manner or fashion for that particular day! This is an important point and often misunderstood; let’s say your all time best bench press is 315 pounds for a single rep. You can do 275 for 5 reps and 245 for 10 reps on a good day. Just because you cannot match or exceed these marks in every single workout does not mean that you cannot have productive muscle-building training sessions. Maybe you come in to train and on this particular day if you were to accurately self-access you would only be capable of 300 pounds for a single bench press rep, 265 for 5 reps and 225 for ten reps. Yet even being “off,” you can grow muscle by equaling or exceeding your capacity on this particular day. One way to train when you are a bit off might be to work up to 255 for a set of 5 to 6 reps then have your training partner step in and administer another forced rep or two. Then you could drop the poundage down to 225 and ride that poundage to failure, hitting 8 to 10 reps before again performing a few more forced reps. Regardless of your capacity on a particular day, you grow muscle by exceeding capacity – even if it’s diminished capacity. Another way to know that you have trained hard enough to grow muscle is if you feel the unmistakable glow associated with the release of endorphin hormones. Endorphins are only released into the bloodstream in response to intense physical effort; endorphin secretions are pure hormonal bliss and hardcore weight trainers routinely trigger endorphin release; long distance runners also experience endorphin release and call it “Runner’s High.”

The King of all Stress-inducers – a properly applied forced rep: Most novice and intermediate bodybuilders do not know how to administer a proper forced rep. Like Goldilocks, the temperature of the porridge needs to be not too hot (too much help) not too cold (not enough help) but just right (barely enough help to keep a poundage moving.) Elite bodybuilders do not administer endless forced reps to one another. The Big Boys rarely go past three forced reps and more often, forced reps are kept to one or two. When a man is forcing reps with 400+ pounds in the bench press or 1,300 in the leg press, safety becomes paramount. When a pro bodybuilder digs into the forced reps at the end of a set already taken to failure, massive poundage exponentially multiplies the risk of complete collapse. Making a man push or pull on gargantuan poundage past one or two forced reps is risking disaster. Spotters must be on continual alert and ready to grab the bar or the dumbbells in a split second should the lifter falter. As a forced-rep administrator and spotter, training partners have certain responsibilities: first and foremost is to keep the lifter safe! Be prepared to haul the weight off the lifter if he collapses. Be alert and be ready to prevent a 1,000 pound leg press from falling on a lifter when he suffers a complete leg blowout two inches shy of lockout on the 9^th rep. The perfectly administered forced rep is a thing of beauty. A really experienced pro bodybuilder can push himself to do much higher numbers of forced reps using resistance machines. Murphy’s Law says the instant the spotter loses concentration is the instant the lifter collapses and experiences a career-ending injury. Great spotters allow the good bodybuilder to become a great bodybuilder: there is a level of physical development that is only attainable through the expert use of expertly applied forced reps.

Forced rep perfection: Your training partner is preparing for his top set in the bench press: he wants to push 405 for 4-5 reps then have you, his training partner, step in and administer one or (at most) two forced reps. He has already dispatched 135 for 15 reps using the Parrillo Intensity Set protocol that “makes the weight feel heavy.” He then hits 225 for 5 reps, 275 for 3 reps and 365 for a single explosive rep as his final warm-up. Now it’s time for the heaviest bench press set of the day: 405 for 4-5 reps. Up until this set, your partner, who is preparing for the NPC Junior Nationals in eleven weeks, has handled every bench press without any assistance. His procedure has been identical on every set: lift the poundage for the proscribed number of reps then immediately perform a targeted Parrillo Fascial stretch.  He finishes the Parrillo Three Phase set by performing a most muscular pose; he flexes his pec muscles to the point of cramping. He has performed four Three Phase sets and now it’s time to push some serious iron in his top bench press set of the day. He sits down on the end of the bench and carefully positions his feet. He rolls back and underneath the barbell; you step to your lift-off position behind the bench at barbell center. He places his hands 28 inches apart and simultaneously you grab the center knurling with a double overhand grip: you are about to do an upright row with 405.

“On three.” Your training partner says as he sets his body, clears his mind and prepares to lift the weight out of the stanchions. “One…Two…THREE!” You tug upward with all your might as he pushes upward. The weight clears the supporting racks and with a practiced technique you help guide the barbell forward. At liftoff the barbell was behind his head and now it is over his eyes. “GOT IT!” he hisses. You let go as he unlocks his elbows and commences the first of four easy reps. He barely makes the 5^th rep. You instantaneously grab the barbell with each of your hands just inside his. He begins lowering for his 6^th rep, the first forced rep. You have stepped forward as far as the bench allows. You are feeling his power transmitted through the barbell; he is resisting the lowering and the barbell vibrates with his effort. At the turnaround, where descent becomes ascent, you imperceptibly begin pulling upward, slightly assisting your partner. You stare at the center of the barbell and nothing else. Your task is simple and requires 100% concentration; the bar must move upward in a sustained fashion. If you feel the bar slow down it is your job to pull upward with enough power to keep the barbell moving at the original pace. If he stalls and the bar ceases moving, you are failing in your responsibilities.

The perfect spot: Let us follow the 405 pound forced rep set to conclusion. As your training partner locks out the 6^th rep with 405, you keep your hands on the barbell. You listen intently for your partner to give you direction; he’ll either say, “Take it!” meaning “help me get this bar back into the safety supports” or “Another!” meaning, let’s do another forced rep. On this day he says, “Another!” You’re not surprised, the previous 6^th rep was 90% him. He begins to lower the weight to his chest and you grip the bar in anticipation of a complete physical collapse. If that happens and you are spaced out or distracted by the gym eye candy, catastrophic injury is a very real possibility. At the turnaround on the 2^nd forced rep you really have to step up and dramatically increase the amount of upward pull needed to keep the bar moving smoothly. The lockout is extremely tough and you know before he says “Take it!” that this set is definitely over. With a mighty tug, up and back, you guide the heavy poundage back into the safety supports. “Excellent spotting, that was absolutely
perfect!”

He slaps your shoulder as he bounds off the bench and heads over to a chin bar to perform another set of Parrillo Skin-the-Cat fascial stretching. After stretching for a full minute, (“I can’t explain it, but relaxing in an upside down pec-pulling skin-the-cat stretch position is therapeutic. I almost start meditating.”) He flexes in the mirror and his pectoral and front delt muscles look as if they will pop through the skin. Not done, he hits an eight rep bench set with 365 and you administer two forced reps. You later administer top set forced reps to your partner on heavy dumbbell incline presses; then onto more forced rep sets in the cable crossover and pec deck. By session’s end, and with your help, your partner has taken another step closer towards his ultimate goal of winning an IFBB pro card. The experienced training partner is indispensible for keeping the elite bodybuilder safe through alert spotting. The champion bodybuilder cannot administer his own forced reps, now can he? Forced reps are an integral part of every elite bodybuilder’s training regimen.

How many, how often: The first rule of forced reps is that you save them for the big stuff: no sense doing forced reps on dinky warm-up sets. Save the forced reps for the top sets of an exercise. There are two legitimate schools of thought regarding the sheer number of forced rep sets it is advisable to perform within a session: one school of thought reasonably contends that forced rep sets wreak havoc on the central nervous system and therefore a rookie trainee should use forced reps sparingly if not at all; the intermediate trainee can use them more often; the advanced man can use forced reps frequently. Another school of thought disagrees with this CNS hypothesis: why shouldn’t a sharp training partner step in and help the beginner or intermediate trainee complete a tough rep (or two) at the conclusion of every top set? Is it really that devastating? To NOT do so seems a wasted opportunity. Most card-carrying professional bodybuilders expect their attuned training partners to step in and help them perform an extra rep or two on every top set of every exercise in every single session. They know that is where the muscle growth lies. The surest way to know you’ve trained up to and past capacity is to do some serious forced rep training. Forced rep training ensures you train hard enough to trigger endorphin release. Forced rep training causes muscular hypertrophy. Take yourself past what you are capable of using forced reps. Just make sure you have a smart, savvy partner and make sure before each set that you both understand what you want to happen. Never start a forced rep set assuming your partner knows what to do.

Forced reps & nutrition: Intensity-enhancing training techniques are commonly used within the extended Parrillo community of competitive bodybuilders. The central nervous system’s ability to handle stress improves over time. Being subjected to the various intensity amplifiers, such as drop sets, negatives, forced reps and extended sets, requires the bodybuilder has their nutrition “squared up.” A big part of being able to thrive on a steady diet of forced reps, drop sets and extended rep sets is to make sure the bodybuilder’s nutrition is right. John Parrillo states that often nutrition seems to be the answer to just about any question or problem related to serious bodybuilding. There is an old Parrillo saying, “There is no such thing as over training – only under eating.” Nowhere is that maxim more accurate than when it comes to the use of forced reps: if you utilize forced reps, if you use them often, then you need to be firing down copious amounts of quality nutrients on a consistent basis. If you perform lots of forced rep sets and then under-eat, you will wear out the body in no time flat. Without quality nutrition, recovery from session to session becomes problematic.  Forced reps are an amazing tool if applied properly and used correctly. Use them to blow through all of your current physical sticking points – just heed John Parrillo’s words and “Make sure the nutrition is right!”