Ensure your muscle gains with innovative and new exercises!

We challenged our editors to come up with some new exercises or training methods. These won't be things that leave you breathless, but rather technical tweaks that make your muscles and mind work a little differently.

Try one of these six methods or exercise variations each week. It will broaden your horizons a little. Some may not be for you, but you may find some hidden treasure here.

New Exercise 1: EZ-axis Mechanical Crash Series - Christian Thibaudeau

• A1. EZ-axis overhand lifts, no breaks
• A2. EZ axis wide underhand raises, no break
• A3. EZ-axis lifts with narrow underhand, no break

Biceps are best trained using metabolic loading. And the mechanical dumbbell series is ideal for this. Here you'll combine 3 variations of the same exercise in a superset. You'll leave the same weight on all three.

Start with the weakest exercise and finish with the strongest. Once you fail on the first exercise, squeeze out a few more reps on the second. Then do a few more on the third.

It's similar to a crash set. Only you'll choose a lighter variation instead of dropping the weight.

New exercise 2: Bench press perpendicular to the bench - Tom Sheppard

Place only your upper back on the bench and hold an isometric bridge position on your glutes as you press. This will give your upper back more work to stabilize. This is a great exercise for those who bench with a huge arch in their back or have no butt. The overhead barbell is optional.

New Exercise 3: Overhead Shoulder Shrugs in Seated Position - Merrick Lincoln

The overhead shoulder shrug is a pretty unique exercise because it rotates the shoulder blades upwards. The upper trapezius is still heavily engaged, but the exercise also exercises the serratus anterior and lower trapezius, and it does so harder than other variations of the overhead shoulder shrug.

As a bonus, this exercise will improve your positional strength for other overhead axial exercises. It can be practiced standing, but kneeling eliminates the assistance of the legs and engages mid-body stabilization more strongly.

• Set the stops in the rack at a height that requires some elbow flexion to lift the axle off the rack. Kneel on a foam pad to get some comfort. Choose a wide grip (market grip).
• Flex your elbows to get into the starting position.
• Raise the axle as high as you can through the shoulder blades.
• Keep your elbows extended and allow the blades to lower in a controlled manner.

New exercise 4: Deadlift with trap axis and raised heels - Gareth Sapstead

A deadlift that will improve your quadriceps? Yes! This variation will force you to hold tension and reduce the load on your lower back. It's more like squats, which means it's a decent quadriceps exercise.

Raising your heels will automatically give you a more upright stance and more bend in your knees. If you measured the angle at the knees and hips, you'd get pretty darn close to a squat with the axis high on your back.

New Exercise 5: Jackknife Shift - Eric Bach

Shrugs are great if you have healthy elbows and shoulders, plenty of relative strength, and great overhead mobility. However, only about 5% of exercisers meet these criteria.

Without optimal technique, this vertical pulling exercise turns into a fancy arm exercise. Enough people whizz through a series to get to the required number of reps without once feeling a contraction in their back. This is useless for muscle growth.

The jackknife hunch solves these problems. It's a vertical deadlift with leg support. This design reduces the resistance of the exercise and increases control over the execution. If your shoulders or elbows are sore, or you can't do 10-12 controlled performances of the snatch, this variation will be better for volume.

Incorporate this into your workout like any other deadlift exercise. Here's the execution.:

• Use a secured axle in a rack, multipress, or circles.
• Lift your legs up onto a bench or box.
• Bend your knees to 90%.
• Engage your shoulders by squeezing them together. This will make you pull more with your back.
• Pull yourself up and push your elbows down.

This variation has a variety of technique modifications for optimal back engagement. You can vary the pace and body angle to make the exercise most comfortable for you.

New exercise 6: 6-12-25 method for the chest - Christian Thibaudeau

The pectoral muscles have quite a lot of fast twitch muscle fibers - around 60% - and stretch easily under load. Thus, both the mechanical load method and the muscle damage method are very effective for them.

In addition, with many chest exercises (push-ups, counter pulleys, lunges, pec deck, push-ups on bars) you keep the muscles under a lot of tension for the entire time you perform the exercise.

You also have the option of a peak contraction. Therefore, the pecs are one of the most rewarding areas to train because they respond to almost any training method.

Both mechanical and metabolic loading will work well. This is why Charles Poliquin's 6-12-25 method is one of my favorites. This is because it uses both approaches.

It is a triple series (three exercises in a row with minimal rest) on the same muscle group. You start heavy at 6 reps, then mid-range (12) and finish high with 25 reps.

It would look something like this:

• A1. Single arm presses: lower slowly (about 3 seconds). Overdo the overhead stretch (lift your chest and pull the dumbbells down). Do 6 reps.
• A2. One-arm extensions: don't finish the movement all the way up because there is no tension. Go from full extension at the bottom and about 3/4 of the way up. Exaggerate the bottom stretch and hold the bottom position for 1-2 seconds on each rep. Do 12 reps.
• A3. Reverse pulldowns: Practice using the isokinetic method. Controlled up and down, then squeeze the top contraction for 1-2 seconds. Practice 25 repetitions.

Source: www.t-nation.com - The New Exercise Workout Challenge
Author: the T-Nation editorial team
Translated by Jaromír Uhlíř