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If you're really serious about learning how to get muscles, there are about 8 basic principles you must understand to build the most muscle mass your body can possibly achieve. Three key areas you need to master are Nutrition, Weight Training and Recovery, but here I'll focus on how to get muscles through proper weight training technique. Regardless of how you structure your muscle training routines, you must apply these 8 weight training principles if you really want to get maximum muscle growth. There are no shortcuts - fail in one area and you seriously impair your chances to get big muscles. How to Get Muscles Tip #1: Warm Up! Warming up gets your circulation going and increases your body temperature, making your muscles more flexible and thus less vulnerable to injury; so always warm up before your muscle training routines. Warm up by stretching, doing some cardio and/or doing light sets before you do your weight training program. I found that stretching in between sets and after my work out too really helps speed up my recovery time. How to Get Muscles Tip #2: Proper Form Lifting heavier weights doesn't equate to getting bigger muscles. What really counts is not the load per se, but the quality of muscle stimulation you get. It's a common mistake to lift "too much" weight. A weight is too heavy for you if you need to use momentum to finish a whole set. Using momentum doesn't target the muscles so you don't get any benefits. In other words, your muscles will never grow.. You might as well just go home. * Avoid extraneous body movement and momentum. * Be still and let the target muscles do ALL the work. * Let the target muscle move the weight - no momentum, swinging or bouncing. * Don't let the muscle relax or rest during the set - keep it stimulated by squeezing, contracting, breathing right - don't pause and no "resting" in between reps! How to Get Muscles Tip #3: Sets and Reps Repetition Maximum (RM) is the maximum reps you can do for a given load; Thus, your 8 RM is the weight you can lift for no more than 8 reps. Rep ranges affect the muscles in different ways. As a general guideline: * 1 to 7 RM is for strength training * 8 to 12 RM is for muscle growth * 13+ reps is for endurance To get maximum muscle growth, your weight training routine should focus on lifting 8-12 RM. But don't use this rep range exclusively for every body part, because some of your muscle fibers respond best to higher RMs, like the abs and the calves. How to Get Muscles Tip # 4: Do Whole Body Exercises Train by doing compound exercises because they recruit the optimal muscle fibers and because you can get more muscles trained in less time. Forget isolated exercises - Compound exercises will give you the best and fastest muscle gains. The best muscle producing whole body exercises are squats, bench press, chin ups, dips, deadlifts, clean and press, rows, military press, calf raises, and crunches. How to Get Muscles Tip #5: Intensity People who don't train with intensity look pretty much the same month after month, year after year. Don't be one of them. Remember that in the gym your objective is to challenge your muscle. You need to give your body a reason to think, "uh-oh I need to get bigger and stronger, otherwise I won't be able to keep up with all these demands!". That can only happen if you train with intensity. So work hard, and your efforts will pay off. As you improve your body will adapt and settle in its new comfort zone. Pretty soon you'll notice the law of dimishing returns kick in. Take this as a sign of progress. It means you've reached a higher level of development, and to break from this you just simply need to up the intensity of your weight training program. How to Get Muscles Tip #6: Tempo Believe it or not the tempo or rhythm of your movement as you do each rep impacts your results, too! Many people make the mistake of only working their muscle during the exertion phase of a rep (e.g., when you curl during a bicep curl) , and then they relax their muscles and let gravity do all the work when they put their arm back down. Do not make the same mistake. When you return to do yet another rep, do a controlled, slow movement, always maintaining the muscle tension and contraction. Never relax the muscle. This portion of the rep creates the most "damage" in the muscle fibers. As the muscles get damaged, your body adapts as it is forced to rebuild itself, and each time it does, it gets stronger and bigger so that it can withstand the challenges you are continuously placing on them. So remember: Proper Tempo = more tears to the muscle fibers = more repairs = bigger, stronger muscles! How to Get Muscles Tip #7: Progression I've mentioned before that your body will keep adapting and hit a plateau. The only way to get out of a plateau is Progressive Overload. It means that you have to keep raising the challenge. Each workout should be harder than the one before. Progressively challenging your muscle is the only way to force it to change and thus grow. If you keep doing the same thing your body will get used to it and ultimately stay just the way it is. Bad news if what you want is muscle growth. How to Get Muscles Tip #8: Variation Another way to keep you on your toes is changing every element of your workoout routine as often as possible. Change your exercises, rep and set range, weight, intensity, etc. Don't do the exact same routine for more than 6 weeks, and change as soon as you notice that your results are staring to decrease again. Conclusion If you're really serious about achieving muscle growth, you need to understand the process of how to get big muscles, and knowing the principles that will make your weight training effective is a good start. The weight training principles we covered are Warming Up, Proper Form or Technique, the importance of Compound Exercises, Sets and Reps, Intensity, Tempo, Progressive Overload, and Variation. But it's not easy to achieve maximum muscle growth all by yourself. Without proper guidance, you can easily develop bad habits like eating fast foods, working out inconsistently, or not pushing yourself hard enough. I myself had been working out ineffectively for years so I didn't see any significant gains - that is, until I found reputable bodybuilding mentors and applied their teachings. But don't just seek any bodybuilding teacher. Learn from those who have demonstrated the effectiveness of their knowledge for a body type like yours. If you're built as an ectomorph, have super fast metabolism and struggle to put on muscle or gain weight, the best teacher I found was Vince DelMonte, who wrote No Nonsense Muscle Building.
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You can read my No Nonsense Muscle Building Review here. Don't let your hard work go to waste. If you're going to spend time bodybuilding, you might as well get it right. If you're a hardgainer, visit my blog www.Muscle4Hardgainers.com to get more No B.S. tips about how to get muscles using only natural bodybuilding.
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