There comes a time in every bodybuilder’s life when one can consider the basic training period complete. The basic muscle bulk is in place and the same old practices that used to make it grow fail to yield any more results. The reason is - as we stated before on other pages of this site and never miss a chance to iterate - the human body is not a robot-like system.
Something that worked wonders a few months ago might not really have a noticeable effect on the physique anymore. This is because of the human body’s natural ability to adapt. Once it gets used to a certain type of exercise and a certain succession of exercises, the time to move on, comes. One way one can maintain growth and continuously boost development is by increasing the intensity of the workout. In the beginning this is easy to achieve, however as one progresses more and more intricate techniques are required to keep the muscles shocked. In the beginning, as part of moving on to the advanced level, an important factor one can make use of, is time. You can cram more exercises (sets/exercise) into your regular workout-time, or you can just do your regular amount of exercises and reps in a shorter period of time. There is a limit however, to how short a workout you may have, while still being able to properly execute all your moves. When that limit is reaches there are other small time-factors you can juggle around with, like the resting period between sets, which you can cut shorter. When all time-related options are exhausted one can always add more weight, however this as well as pretty much everything else is only a temporary solution to the continuous needs of your body’s fast-adapting muscle mass.
Thankfully, due to the scientific approach past generation bodybuilders adopted towards their sport, there’s an almost unlimited number of combinations of techniques one can use past the point where all time and weight-related issues are irrelevant. These are called ‘intensity techniques’ and there’s quite a few of them around.
One such method - probably the most popular in gyms world over - is the ‘forced reps’ method. The method consists in the partner helping out the one doing the exercise when the point of failure is reached. Its downside is that the helping-partner doesn’t really have a sure way of knowing exactly how much to help, and thus may end up spoiling the exercise. One way to deal with this is not to have anyone help you, but instead put the weight down for a sec when reaching failure and then attempt another couple of reps, after only a few secs of rest.
Partial reps are also an efficient intensity -method. When you’ve reached failure stop sticking to full range extensions and squeeze in a few more reps with partial extensions.
Another way to increase intensity and - in a word - give the body another shock, is extreme isolation training. Dumbbell flys are a good isolation exercise for the pecs but taking it even further, by doing incline dumbbell flys, is going to deliver the upper pecs one hell of a punch.
Shocking is generally what it takes to make muscles grow in their attempt to compensate for the lack of strength in exercises one is not used to. Doing different, unusual exercises every now and then is a really good shocker, also, doing exercises that one usually does with an unusually heavy set of weights can cut it just as well. Overloading the usual exercises can have other benefits too.

Putting more strain on the muscles slowly, by using the above described techniques is not enough. You need tendon strength along with muscles, and the supportive structures also need a good shakeup.
When one lifts a weight by means of muscular contraction he/she does what is known as a “positive rep”. When lowering the weight to achieve full extension - and keeping it under control in the process - negative reps are executed. It is a well-known fact that negative reps are responsible for tendon and supportive structure strength. To do full power negatives you can apply the cheating method as well - do the positive rep cheating, with a weight you wouldn’t be able to lift otherwise, and then concentrate on the negative - or the forced reps, when the training partner helps with the positive side of the lift and actually pushes down on the negative to hit the tendons more effectively.
The heavy-duty method is what they call ‘skipping the pyramid’ Being an unusual exercise it also shocks the muscles. If one - during the course of an exercise - instead of beginning light with more reps and gradually going heavy with fewer reps/set, then coming back again to a couple of light ones to mop it all up, goes for maximum weight directly after the warm-up set, it means he/she skips the pyramid.
Besides playing around with intensity, another way to assure continuous growth is by going for power. This can be achieved by employing an impressive array of power-training methods out of which only a few will be mentioned in the present article, the rest will be taken up on other pages of this website.
Staggered sets are a method that implies the squeezing-in of sets from a certain exercise among the sets of a completely different exercise that is usually done. (going for a set of biceps between two sets of bench presses is a good example)
The platoon, or 21, or triple seven, is again a hell of a shocker. Though it’s quite a simple method it is not widely applied in gyms, despite the fact that the intensity at which it hits a muscle-group is quite unmatchable. One has to do seven reps of a set up to mid-contraction point -in the lower motion range, then seven reps in the upper-range of motion followed by seven full reps. The method known as ‘one and a half’ is a related one to the platoon, and it implies one doing full and half reps alternatively during a set.
The last method I’d like to bring up here, is that of the ‘Supersets’. This is basically doing one set after the other without stopping, and combining two exercises in the same time. The two exercises, sets of which one does alternatively - can be done for the same body-part or for two opposing muscle-groups. It provides for a great pump, and thus it can also be psychologically useful.
The bottom line is that one needs to understand muscular growth, for the body, is not more than reacting to adverse conditions. As long as one succeeds in maintaining these conditions truly adverse, muscular growth is practically guaranteed.