MTV's popular show, Pimp Your Ride, takes a crappy, beaten-up car that sputters along and turns it into a shiny, rockin', less crappy car. I like the premise of the show, even though I'm not sure why they don't just give the person a new car. I mean, why drop $25,000 on an ear-splitting audio system, four headrest monitors, gigantic spinning rims, and an 18-shade neon paint job when they could've just given the contestant something with four wheels and a warranty?

I think I know why: people are partial to their car.

People are partial to their workouts, too. Regardless of what they read about other higher-powered training systems, they're pretty darn happy with what they have. Or maybe they're just afraid of change? Regardless, I'll bet that almost everyone agrees their workouts could use a little more horsepower.

So I took the pimpin' concept and I'm applying it to your workouts.  No matter how much you dig your current workout structure, there's always a way to make it work better.

Let me grab the keys to your locker and go to work.

1. Throw Away Your Sets and Reps

It's Monday. You walk into the gym with laser-like focus. You've got your workout written down and you know how many sets and reps you're supposed to do for each exercise.

What you probably don't know is how much weight you need for each set of the workout you're there to do, even if you kept a training log. 

Let's say your workout calls for four sets of 12 reps (4x12). Your first set will probably be easy because you're fresh. You might even be able to knock out an extra few reps, but you stop at 12 because that's what the workout calls for.

The second set for that exercise rolls around and you hit exactly 12 reps — you couldn't have done another one with perfect form, so you stick with that weight. But you can only manage 11 reps with set three. By the time set four rolls around you know you can't get all 12 reps so you lower the weight by 10%. However, you only get 10 reps because set three caused more fatigue than you thought.

In other words, you were supposed to do 12 reps for all four sets, but you only got 12 reps for the first two sets — and the first set was easy.

Is this ideal? I doan' tink so, Lucy.

This is just one of a million different possible scenarios. Most of the time you use the first set as your measuring stick, and it partially serves as a warm-up. In other words, it wasn't a true work set. The second set is usually pretty close to ideal. But everything can go to hell from that point on. From there, it's just a guessing game for most people. The weight is too light, or they fail before they reach the target number of reps for that set.

The reason? Your strength constantly vacillates. It can go down due to a lack of sleep, or too much stress, or a crappy diet, just to name a few. Your strength can also go up, sometimes without notice.

After a few weeks, you're usually pretty close to figuring out the correct loads for your workouts. But as soon as you switch up your parameters, you're relegated to the guessing game all over again. Not only is this vicious cycle frustrating, but it's also limiting your size and strength gains.

Well, there's a way around all of these problems. I'll use the 4x12 exercise as an example. Here's what you should do:

Step #1: Choose a weight you could lift 12 times for your first set. This, of course, is the trickiest part of the process. With a new exercise, or a different number of reps, you might not know what weight is ideal. Just do your best. The cool thing is that you don't have to get the first set exactly right. You can overshoot or undershoot by a rep. 

Step #2: Rest for the recommended time.

Step #3: Do as many reps as you can with your starting weight (assuming it was relatively close).

Step #4: Continue alternating between steps #2 and #3 until you reach the target number of total reps for that exercise (48 in this case).

When you stop focusing on reaching a specific number of reps for each set it benefits you two ways. First, you'll build more size and strength because you're using the heaviest possible weight for all sets. Second, you'll never have to worry about missing a rep.

Same exercise. Same number of total reps. More size and strength. 

2. Shave Off Your Rest Periods

Not long ago, virtually every program I read prescribed three minutes of rest between sets. It didn't matter if the exercise was the squat or the calf raise; three minutes somehow came to be the magical rest period. This always befuddled me. I'm not sure whether the genesis of that rest period came from Thomas DeLorme's research in the mid 20^th Century, or some other person, but it doesn't matter. What matters is three minutes somehow stuck.

Three minutes of rest between sets of calf raises? Are you kidding me? I see no value in ever resting for three full minutes unless you're attempting a max lift with a big, compound exercise such as the squat, deadlift, clean, or snatch.

Too much time to kill between sets.

Furthermore, there's not an inverse relationship between reps and rest. You don't need more time to recover between low rep sets; you need less. Why? Because low rep sets don't crank up your cardiovascular system like a 20-rep set of squats does. High rep sets with compound exercises require the longest rest periods in order to let your heart rate return to a manageable level before you crank out the next set. Low rep sets, or exercises that work only a few muscle groups, don't require much recovery time because there's no cardiovascular demand.

Some have postulated that heavy sets mandate longer rest periods because of nervous system fatigue. Trouble is, there's no reputable research to support this notion.

In fact, research by Jacques Duchateau suggests that a short burst of maximal stimulation (such as a heavy set with just a few reps) can potentiate the nervous system. This mechanism is known as post-activation potentiation, and it's the reason why holding a supramaximal load at lockout makes you immediately stronger for that lift.   

Even if you're hellbent on using longer rest periods between sets for maximal strength training, there's no reason to sit and read the paper between sets.

I'm a big fan of alternating between two or more exercises. This allows you to do the more work in the same amount of time. For example, let's say your current program calls for three minutes of rest between sets of your first exercise. Just put the second exercise at the halfway point of each rest period for your first exercise (90 seconds in this case) and you'll do twice as much work in the same amount of time.

And if you need three minutes of rest to recover, that's another problem. Resting too long between sets kills your overall conditioning. A big part of losing fat and getting in shape depends on forcing your body to do as much work as possible in as little time as possible.

So, the second way to pimp your workouts is to cut down those long, drawn-out times of rest. As a rule of thumb, decrease all of your rest periods to one minute or keep alternating between exercises. By doing so you'll build your overall conditioning, you'll lose more fat, and you'll get out of the gym in less time.

3. Ignite Your Nervous System

Your nervous system has direct control over your muscles. Problem is, many of us walk into the gym in a daze, either straight from work or right out of bed. Well, if you're half asleep, so is your nervous system. This severely impedes your ability to generate maximum force with each exercise. In other words, a lazy nervous system keeps you from recruiting more muscle fibers.

The good news is there's an easy fix to this problem. Here's what you should do to fire up your nervous system:

Jump rope for 1 minute
Rest for 15 seconds
*Run at top speed for 10 seconds
Rest 15 seconds
Hang from a pull-up bar for 15 seconds

*If there's no room to run, perform maximal bodyweight jump squats for 10 seconds.

These three simple exercises take only two minutes, but they do wonders for your workout performance. The rope jumping and sprint "wake up" your nervous system; the hang opens the intervertebral space in your spinal column to free up nerve transmissions to your muscles. (This is akin to taking the kinks out of a garden hose.)

4. Supercharge Your Surge

Biotest's Surge® Recovery is the best recovery drink on the market. It contains all of the fast-acting carbs and protein your body needs to squash catabolism and promote recovery. I could count the number of workouts on one hand that weren't followed up with Surge since it first came out. It's proven itself as an industry leader for performance nutrition.

However, I've found a way to make it better.

Just add one serving of Superfood and L-leucine to it. There are two ways to make it work. First, if you split up your Surge dose into pre- and post-workout feedings, put one scoop of Superfood and one-half scoop of L-leucine into each serving. Or, if you take the full serving of Surge after a workout, add two scoops of Superfood and one scoop of L-leucine to it. My clients have pimped out their Surge and they've all seen and felt the difference. I bet you will, too.

Conclusion

The coolest part of this advice is that it applies to any workout structure. It doesn't matter if you're doing a body part split, a full-body workout, or anything in between. Just follow these four simple steps to pimp out your workouts and you'll get results.

Xzibit not required.