evilcyber.com
  • Home
  • Workouts
    • Home Workout Plans
    • How To Build Muscle
    • How To Get Toned
    • Home Workout Equipment
    • Advanced Workout Topics
    • Other Workout Programs
    • Important Workout Lingo
    • Recommendable Books
  • Cardio
    • What Is Cardio?
    • How To Start Cardio
    • Home Cardio Exercises
    • Cardio Or Weights First?
    • Best Time For Cardio
    • Does Cardio Burn Muscle?
    • Cardio On Empty Stomach?
    • HIIT – Doing It Right
    • Cross-Training
  • Weight Loss
    • The Secret To Weight Loss
    • Gain Muscle And Lose Fat?
    • Exercise And Weight Loss
    • Diet Reviews
    • Weight Loss Myths
    • Weight Loss Supplements
  • Nutrition
    • Healthy Nutrition Explained
    • Bodybuilding Nutrition
    • What Are Carbohydrates?
    • What Is Fat?
    • What Is Protein?
    • Nutrition For Cardio
    • Marathon Nutrition
    • Exercise On Low Carb
  • Supplements
    • 3 Supplements That Work
    • BCAA Supplements
    • Beta-Alanine
    • Creatine
    • Dextrose Supplements
    • Energy Shots
    • Make Your Own Weight Gainer
    • Multivitamins
    • NAC
    • Testosterone-Boosters
  • The Rest

Fitness, Videos, Workout

Plateau Breakers: Forced Negatives

When you want or have to stick with one specific exercise but can’t make progress with it anymore, you have to budge your muscles by doing something different. Here is to plateau breakers and forced negatives.

The Dreaded Workout Plateau

It happens to the best of us: you do exercise x for a while and have good progress with it, but one day that comes to a grinding halt and you find yourself stuck on the same number of reps forever and ever and ever. Put simply, you have “plateaued.”

There are a number of reasons why this happens and how to handle it, among which simply switching to a different exercise training the same muscle group is usually the easiest option. But for some exercises you can’t do this or, for whatever reason, you don’t want to.

This is where “plateau breakers” come in, what Wolf in the article linked above calls “shock techniques.” That sounds a bit drastic and personally I think of a plateau breaker as simply a way of doing an exercise that is different from what you did before.

Forced Negatives

There are several types of plateau breakers and I’m going to examine them in a series over the next weeks, but we start out with the “forced negative”:

Forced Negatives After The Regular Sets And Reps

You can of course also use these once you are through with your normal sets and reps, but I like to devote the exercise I have problems with entirely to it. In my experience, pre-exhausting the muscle with the normal routine and then doing forced negatives just doesn’t work that well. But try it and gauge your personal mileage with that.

These Are Not To Be Done Regularly!

I really want to make this clear: forced negatives, and plateau breakers in general, shouldn’t be a regular staple of your workouts.

First of all, when you do them often their positive effect wears off. Second, and very important, if you frequently stop making workout progress, your problem is elsewhere: overtraining, bad nutrition or a workout plan that doesn’t fit your level of experience.

Help me spread knowledge and share this:

  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)

Search

Subscribe to EC

Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Latest Comments

  • No comments

2 Comments

  1. Dr. J says:
    August 8, 2013 at 1:54 am

    We have one of the only two sets of these negative accentuated machines at my fitness center! Darden lives in Gainesville. They are based on exactly what you are recommending!

    http://www.drdarden.com/readTopic.do?id=502686

    He recommends using them no more than once a week.

    Reply
  2. HappinessSavouredHot says:
    August 8, 2013 at 4:54 pm

    That’s fascinating! I had never heard of it. I’ll try for sure.

    I couldn’t help but wonder how that would apply to running. Does it mean I should run downhill at the speed of light, then be carried back up? hahaha!

    Reply

    What do you think?

    Click here to cancel reply.


    • About
    • Contact
    • Copyright
    • Disclaimer
    • Privacy Policy
    © Copyright 2025 — evilcyber.com. All Rights Reserved.

    Evilcyber.com uses cookies

    More info about these little buggers in the Privacy Policy.

    Close
    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.