Adding muscle seems to be a mystery to most, yet if you pick up a copy of any fitness or bodybuilding magazine and you ‘ll almost always see a headline like this: ” Gain 15 Pounds of Muscle in 6 Weeks.”
If it were so easy you ‘d have millions of muscle-heads running around. Even though building muscle tissue can be a challenge, I ‘m going to outline some very specific principles that can pack on the muscle faster than you can throw away that copy of ” Muscle and Fiction” !
Before we get started though I want to clarify a few points.
# The ridiculous claims made by most fitness and bodybuilding magazines are only there to get you to buy that issue ? absolutely nothing far more!
# When you are critical about strength training you have to be reading books and NOT cheesy fitness magazines
Ok? here we go.
As a way to add muscle tissue you have to force the physique to add it. Your physique won ‘t just add a pound of muscle just since you followed a 3-set workout that you just read about in Muscle + Fitness. You have to give the physique a cause to create improvements ? in this case add muscle tissue.
You might have to present what I call a ” stimulus” . This might be performed in a lot of approaches and I ‘ll address some in just a second. Essentially, you have to force the physique to add muscle by subjecting it to levels of anxiety it isn’t utilised to. Some approaches are far more apparent than other people but all can work. Here are some examples of how this might be performed successfully.
Very first, the simple and prevalent approaches:
# Enhance weight or resistance
# Carry out far more repetitions
# Carry out far more sets
# Move the resistance slower
# Rest much less in between sets and workouts
Now for the far more advanced approaches:
# Pre-exhaust (carry out an isolation physical exercise very first and quickly continue with no rest on a compound movement. ex. chest flye and then chest press)
# Static holds (hold the resistance inside the hardest position of the range of motion. ex. the top position in the course of a leg extension)
# Partial reps in weak range (carry out a portion of the rep exactly where that you are weakest. ex. the top half of a rep of leg extensions)
# Strip-set (right after a warm-up set, perform 3 sets back to back with no rest although starting with the heaviest weight feasible and every time strip off some weight to allow you to continue)
# 1 reps (perform one full rep and then on the second rep only perform half the regular range of motion and then return to starting position to begin the next rep. ex. one full rep of lat pulldowns, pull second rep all the way down, resist weight back up but only half way and then pull back down)
These are just a couple of examples of techniques of increasing intensity to ensure progress. The key point to remember is that whatever you do it should be progressive in order for it to elicit a physical change. This is even more important for those looking to add muscle size.
Even though this article is geared towards individuals who are interested in gaining muscle size, the principles can also be utilized for individuals who want to build strength, increase metabolism, or tighten and tone muscles.
Here are some general recommendations for different goals?
If your goal is to tighten and tone muscles:
* Focus on increasing reps, decreasing rest, and changing exercises frequently
* Train each muscle group twice per week
* Perform fewer sets of many different exercises (1-2 sets per exercise)
If your goal is to increase strength and power:
* Focus on increasing weight
* Train each muscle group once every 7-10 days
* Perform multiple sets of each exercise (2-5 sets per exercise)
If your goal is to increase muscle size:
* Focus on shocking muscles by changing variables frequently (exercises, set and rep schemes, rest time, etc)
* Train each muscle group on a variable schedule (experiment by training a muscle group 3 times a week and then once every ten days)
* Perform multiple sets for a while and the perform single sets for a week or two
Some final reminders:
The recommendations above are general and of course would need to be adapted and adjusted for your personal goals and experience. For those of you who are advanced and may be thinking there ‘s no way you can build strength by training once every 10 days I challenge you to try it for at least 4 weeks, or those of you who think that you need to stick to the same basic movements like bench to build size I challenge you to try shocking the muscles by changing the exercises you perform every week for 4 weeks, and those of you with little expertise I hope that you simply ‘ll throw away the fitness magazines and discover what truly functions.
