CHEATING:

Another often-misused principle is the Cheating method. You've been told time and time again to always use proper form. Never cheat on your exercise just for the sake of using a heavy weight. Yet, if you walk in any gym you'll see lifters with their butts in the air performing bench presses and others swinging the weights up in some semblance of a curl then dropping the weight back down as fast or faster than it was lifted. To get the most out of your training you have to learn the rules to cheat by. Or, at least cheat fair!

If you do an exercise using a heavier weight than you can use in proper form, then marginally use a bit of body momentum in sticking points to help raise the weight.

Lower the weight slowly; never let it dead drop down. This may be the most important part of the exercise anyway (negative phase). Always follow the cheat exercise with a strict exercise for the same muscle group. For illustration here's how to perform the cheat curl. Use just a bit of body swing to bring the bar to your chest, but use MOSTLY biceps muscle. Hold for a split second, then lower slowly to a count of 3. The advantage of the cheat exercise is that you're handling heavier weights and putting (theoretically) more of a load on muscle. In lowering the weight slowly, you work that muscle through its entire range with that heavy weight. This builds tendon strength and may works underlying muscle fiber. With the cheat curl, maximum attention is placed on the extension of the arm, so follow with an exercise that will focus on the contraction like slow concentration curls or overhead curls with lat machine bar.

HEAVY-LIGHT COMPOUND DROP SETS

This is a compound set comprised of two movements for the same muscle group done in a single series. You can use the same exercise or two similar exercises 

  For example: 

  Seated dB Press (Heavy) 
  6 - 8 reps with 70's 

  Seated DB Press (Light) 
  8 - 10 reps with 35's

  Rest just long enough to put the heavy dumbbells down and pick up the lighter pair. Rest two minutes and repeat for the desired number of sets. Do not make the mistake that more is better. To continue to do drop sets can be counterproductive. Remember a muscle will undergo just so much stimulus and then you begin training on nerve force only. This will eventually overtrain the muscle and halt progress.

Advantages of the heavy light compound drops: Two of the key exercise related requirements for maximum muscular growth are basic exercises and positive progression. Whereas with forced reps you never know how much of the weight you're lifting and how much your spotter is lifting, the heavy / light system provides all kinds of possibilities for structured progression. You can increase reps or weight on the heavy set, on the light set or both.

You'll find that it's often impossible to keep increasing weight on the primary (heavy) set but you can increase weight and reps on the light set. Then as you become stronger on the light set, you'll find you can start to increase on the heavy sets again.

GOING BEYOND THE BURN
ONE AND ONE HALF's

One and one half's or a form of partials allow you to work a selected muscle more thoroughly than traditional reps. Why? Well, with 1 ½'s you'll emphasize your weakest point of the exercise during the ½ portion and the full range of the movement during the full rep portion.

Here's how (with the hack squat exercise): Descend to the bottom position, come up just half way so tension is still on the muscles, then lower slowly, and come up for a full rep. (Generally, with all pressing, dipping and squatting movements the half-rep is the bottom half of the exercise). For pulling and curling exercises the half rep is at the top. If you are doing DB concentration curls start with a full rep, lower half way, then curl the weight back to the contracted position and squeeze. Count the full rep + a half rep as one rep.