When adding more weight is no longer a challenging option, there's another method for making your next chest workout a sufferfest. I call it the "rest, pause, drop" method—RPD, for short—and no, it isn't a new dance routine.

I combined two intensity-raising techniques: rest-pause and dropsets. The former breaks up one set into several subsets with brief rest worked into the whole set. The latter is a technique that allows you to continue an exercise with a lighter weight after your muscles have tapped out at a heavier weight. My rest, pause, drop methodology applied to a chest workout makes for absolute muscle-building brutality and is designed to train all your muscle fiber varieties at once.

REST
Start with a weight you can do for 6-8 reps and go to failure (use a spotter). Rest for 5 seconds and then try for a couple of more.

PAUSE
Reduce the weight by 20-25 percent. Repeat what you just did, including the rest-pause, for 5 seconds.

DROP
Reduce the weight again—by the same amount you did last time—and repeat the rest-pause set one more time.

The final result is a 25-30 rep set. Beginners can do one set of this at the end of their chest workout, but I don't recommend any more than that. Advanced lifters can include this RPD set with each exercise next Monday. (Everyone still does chest on Monday, right?)