INCREASING THE INTENSITY

There are actually two ways to do this:

1. FIXED NUMBER OF REPS, LOW WEIGHT INCREASES                                                                   By Increasing the weight that you do (This involves a very low weight increase) while keeping the number of reps constant.  This is in fact the basis of the TRUE Hardgainer Philosophy.  The goal is to determine what number of reps each bodypart is reactive to.  For instance, I have found that my legs grow, and my strength increases when I keep the reps at 20.  My Chest and Back however respond to the 8 rep range.  My abs respond to 10, my Forearms to 15.  As you can see, you do not have to keep the same rep range for each bodypart.
2. HIGH WEIGHT INCREASES, MINIMUM AND MAXIMUM REP RANGE                                          By increasing the weight significantly (5-10 lbs.), and dropping to the lower range of your rep range.  For example, let's say that you want to have a rep range from 10-15 reps.  The previous week, you were able to do 15 reps on your bench press for two sets using a weight of 160lbs.  So you increase the weight to 165 or 170lbs, and drop the reps down to 10.  With each week that goes by, you strive to reach your target of 15 reps for two sets, before increasing the weight again.

Personally, I use the first method, as it allows me to more accurately guage my progress.  With this method, you find a rep target, (like 8 for my Chest), and strive to reach that target with every workout.  Rather than increasing the number of reps however, you increase the weight.  Now here is the key point:  You only increase the weight by miniscule amounts at a time!  I increase my weight by only 1lbs. a week! 

The trouble with the way most people train, is that they are doing fine with 170 lbs. for 10 reps with the Bench Press, so the next week they increase it by 10 lbs., and barely eke out the required 10 reps.  The week after they increase by 5 lbs. and do only 8 reps(They are still kind of happy because they increased the weight).  The week after that, they remain at 8 reps with no weight increase, or worse, injure themselves b y using sloppy form to complete the sets.  Since they suddenly are not progressing, they get discouraged, and either make an excuse not to go back to the gym, or try to find another exercise (like Incline Presses) that they can respond to. 

What I am trying to say, is that everybody needs to experience some progress to stay fired up about working out.  EVERYBODY!   People make the mistake of biting off more than they can chew, and end up failing sooner or later...  But..if you only add 1lb. a week, I'm sure that you will be able to complete the required reps!  It may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but think of it this way, in one year, that's a 52 lbs. increase in the amount you can Bench.  When was the last time that you had that kind of increase (besides when you first started out, as your muscles were getting used to it), after a year of doing it the old way? 

To summarize, the key points for this type of working out are as follows:

• Determine what rep ranges your various bodyparts respond to.
• Strive to reach that target number of reps at each workout
• Do not sacrifice form to reach that target,.  If you can't do it, you can't do it, log it, and try to do it next time
• Increase the lbs. used by miniscule amounts each week..0.5 to 1.0 lbs. max!
• Keep an accurate log of what you did, how you did it, and how tough it was to do.
• Do NOT work out a bodypart more than once in one week (except for abs and forearms).

On a personal note, when I first started doing Squats, I used 160 lbs. for two sets of twenty reps.  In the second set, I was exhausted, and it took a lot of bullet biting (and inward cursing) to finish out those last 5 reps.  I wrote down in my log book "Second set of Squats, last five reps were killer, felt like passing out, almost vomited"  The next week however, I was able to do that second set easily.  Though I didn't increase the reps, or the weight, I knew by reading my log book that I had improved, and I was raring to go !!