10 Key Points for Packing on Muscle and Size
James White
Need muscle? me too. Here are 10 things to check for more muscle fast...
Eat Right or DON’T GROW
If you are not able to keep to a good diet then you are wasting your time when trying to put on muscle. You need to eat lots and lots of good healthy, whole and nutritious food for muscle to grow at a good rate. If you don’t eat enough, you won’t have the fuel or the raw materials needed to grow.
Use Compound Movements
Compound exercises are movements that use more than one joint and are by far the best exercises when trying to build muscle e.g. a squat, bench press, deadlift, pull up or overhead press.
An isolation movement is something like a lateral raise or a bicep curl where only one joint moves. These can be useful for bodybuilders looking to work on specifics and bring up certain areas of their physiques – but anyone looking to get big needs their primary focus to be on the big lifts.
The human body is designed to think in terms of movement – not individual muscle contractions. When we use compound exercises, we stimulate more muscle fibres in more muscles in every rep, therefore we can burn more calories and more importantly stimulate more growth than we can with an isolation exercise.
These still have their place, especially in more experienced and developed individuals – but compound exercises are the key to mass.
Complete whole body routines
We can learn a lot from pro bodybuilders. However we need to bear in mind that they are pro bodybuilders, and most of us are not. Therefore, what they do is not necessarily what we should do.
Typically bodybuilders train 5/6 days a week or more, often twice a day. They often employ split routines so that they can focus more intensely on one particular body part and also if you train this often, it’s probably a good idea to split things up a bit.
There are always exceptions and individual cases, but for the average gym goer, athlete or young guy out to develop an impressive physique, you will normally fair better on a full body programme, allowing you to stimulate more muscle, more often and therefore pack on more size.
Unlike the elite, the serious bodybuilders with years of experience who may train a body part once per week – the average guy, or even a lot of experienced guys have no chance of causing the sort of damage to a muscle that justifies a week off, so more often than not – you need a more frequent stimulus.
Perhaps many guys in the gym prefer to do a few lat raises and bicep curls while sitting down to actually challenging themselves and hitting their whole body hard – but this mag isn’t really for the lazy – so use a whole body routine or something closer to it instead of the usual chest, back, shoulders – week off drill that many a young guy kids themselves with.
Use free weights
Resistance machines have their place in a workout, for some people, some of the time.
Most of the time, they are an easy option, often poorly designed and are likely to cause injury by causing muscular imbalances or developing pattern overload through repeated stress of exactly the same muscle fibres due to the fact that they are on a fixed axis and require no stabilization. Every rep is exactly the same.
When training with a free weight, you need work from not just the prime mover – but also from all the synergistic or stabilising muscles in order to control the damn thing. They allow the body to work more naturally and to develop as it was designed to do.
Don’t neglect legs!!!
Training legs will burn a lot of calories, stimulate the release lots of growth hormone and testosterone which will help other body parts grow.
Legs are half of your body so not training them because they are exhausting and hard to train or because you have been on the treadmill or because you always wear trousers is crazy. Not only will any development you have in the upper body look ridiculous on a pair of skinny little legs, but you will miss out on many great exercises and benefits that training legs gives you when looking to develop your upper body.
If you don’t train legs, you don’t really train, you visit the gym socially.
Rest and recover
This is a fairly simple one which I'm sure you already know. You build muscle when you rest. A few things that happen when you don't get enough sleep - your testosterone levels go down, your cortisol levels raise, you are tired and won't be able to train to your potential. This will all really hold you back when trying to build muscle and strength.
Get Stronger
Whether your pursuit is pure size and muscle or simply to be strong as hell for whatever your sport may be, you need to focus on getting stronger.
Of course, nothing is black and white in this world, a lot of power lifters are stronger but smaller than a lot of bodybuilders, however, if you train consistently to get stronger, to be able to move more weight and do more reps in your style of training – your body is going to reflect it.
Mix up your stimulus
Without getting into the ins and outs of periodisation – we will just say this. If you train at the same tempo, for the same rep range all the time, then you will get used to it and will not get the benefits you could get from a more varied approach.
Training heavy but with lower reps stresses your nervous system more. When training with a rep range of 5-15 reps then we will stimulate sarcomere hypertrophy – growth in the physical structures of the muscle. If we train at a higher rep range, then we will stimulate sacoplasmic hypertrophy, an increase in the amount of fluid stored in our muscles. Lifting explosively means we primarily use our fast twitch fibres which are more likely to grow and are better at strength training, but higher reps or slower lifting has a place.
For optimum results – a variation of programme and stimulus are required.
Change Up Your Programme Often
If you do the same thing for too long, your body will adapt to what you are doing and you will start to plateau.
Changing or tweaking your routine around every 4 weeks is advised. A word of warning though, if you don't stick to a routine for long enough to get benefits from it then you won’t progress. If you never do the same workout long enough for your body to get the benefits, you will never get the results you are capable of. Be persistent!
OVERLOAD – lift better than your previous session – or at least try to!
The only way that you will pack on size and build muscle strength is by using the principle of 'overload'. This is the most important principle of any fitness pursuit.
Simplistically - this means that each and every session you are trying to add a rep, a set, a tiny amount of weight or a shorter rest period between sets. This asks a new question of the body and therefore we must adapt in order to cope with the new demand placed upon us.
Now, life isn’t always perfect, and we cannot always get stronger and fitter every workout. Sometimes we are tired, sometimes stressed and sometimes we just cannot get the damn weights to move as we want to – but you have to always strive to improve, to do more – or you will never stimulate serious muscle or strength.
If you keep doing the same workout, the same challenge – your body will become efficient, and will get rid of any excess muscle mass to conserve energy. If we continue to add new stimulus, our bodies will evolve and adapt – and thus we can become huge and strong with consistent progressive hard training - as long as it’s combined with the raw materials required - EAT RIGHT OR DON’T GROW!
About the Author
James is a young guy but my is he strong! – He started out as a Powerlifter and has competed for Great Britain on numerous occasions. He holds British and Commonwealth records and was 2007 British Junior Powerlifting Champion. Recently he has decided it is not enough to be able to simply shift huge weights, he wants to hurt people as well. He is now dedicated to learning the sport of mixed martial arts and intends to make his competitive debut in the near future. He is a highly knowledgeable personal trainer, and is also studying osteopathy. See his personal sites at Build-muscle-burn-fat.com and James Whites Personal Training
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