I’ve been working out since my mid teens, so well over 15 years.. What worked for me? I still maintain a lot of it is individual. Like exercise selection. There are some exercises that I find are excellent, but you might not get anything out of them. I suppose there are some basic generic things I can suggest. . Umm, where to start.. I’ve sorta touched on constant tension, I find that really important. Good form is essential for this, especially with free weights. Some machines are also good because they’re designed to keep the tension on the muscle throughout the entire range of motion.
Looking after your joints and tendons is huge. Strong joints/tendons= bigger lifting. Avoiding imbalances I thus pretty important. For example, you hardly see people doing wrist curls or reserve barbell curls, I don’t know why. Just doing regular barbell curls isn’t a good idea without doing wrist curls and or reserves curls can help avoid muscle and joint imbalances . When I started doing reserve curls I found them very difficult, but I quickly got stronger. Now I can also lift as much with reserve curls as regular curls. I believe this has helped my overall arm development.
If you’re having trouble improving your strength, I found heavy partials helped me. Although obviously low reps are good for strength, I find them too hard on my aging joints! ;o) You might already do partials, I’m not sure.. If not, and you want to try them, read up on them first. Learn what you can form people that know more than me! But generally speaking, make sure your really warm when you do them, or you’ll wreak havoc on your joints no matter how young or old you are! You can do partials at any point, personally I do them at different times depending on the exercise and the body part. For some reason I always tend to do partials with machines or cables, but don’t know why. I just like the feel I machines with partials I guess. You can do with free weights though. Just a few examples to illustrate what im talking about... With chest, I might do them with the pec flies towards the end of my workout once I can’t do anymore more full reps. I increase the weight and do them at different points on the exercise range to improve my overall strength.. You can also use partials for a good pump and burn too. With biceps, I’ll generally do them every set when I‘m using cables curls. I’ll do 6-8 full reps, really squeezing at the top, then four partials for a real burn. Generally at the top and bottom of the curl. It hurts like hell! I know someone that only does partials, personally I like to use them to complement full range reps, but everyone is different.
I also really focused on and slowed down of the eccentric part of reps. Especially with exercises that give me a good stretch. I often do negative reps on preacher curls for example. Again it depends on the exercises.
As for diet, everyone is right, diet is huge.. After your workout don’t forget good quality carbohydrates in addition to good quality protein and fats! One of my mates that is a hard gainer would eat half a chicken after a workout and no carbs at all.. I’m surprised he didn’t lose muscle!