There are a lot of people who want to build muscle and get lean, but do not have all day to read about this. You will generally want to know what you have to do and get on with it. That is why you should look at these muscle building tips that will set you on the path to the physique that you want. The best news about this is the fact that you do not have to get fancy equipment or buy supplements for this.
3 Tough Strength Training Workouts Per Week
There are some people who will train more than this, but the average person has a lot on their plate. If you have a stressful life, 3 sessions per week will do the job. This is particularly true when you are doing other activities such as jump rope, playing a sport or hill sprints on a regular basis.
These activities are also something that you should be doing. It is recommended that you do at least 1 20-minute HIIT or high- intensity interval training session every week. However, most people will see a difference if they do 2 per week. You should also be spending some time every week on your soft tissue health and mobility. To do this, you should look at an exercise such as yoga which comes with a range of other benefits.
When you do all of this, you will be getting the full benefit of the strength training. Of course, you need to keep in mind that the goal is to build muscle. This means that your recovery time is just as important as the training time. When your muscles are recovering, they will be growing.
Keep Your Workouts To 45 Minutes
You have to keep in mind the hormonal response to training. If you want to keep your anabolic or muscle building hormones high while keeping the catabolic or muscle destroying ones low, you have to time your workouts correctly. Keeping them to around the 45-minute mark is the best solution.
If you are unable to get the job of building muscles done in this amount of time, you are not trying hard enough. You are going to get the best results when your mental focus and energy are at their peak. This will generally be during the initial 30 minutes of your workout. This means that you need to start, warm up, go hard and then get out.
Use Big Compound Exercises
The bread and butter of your exercise routine should include presses, heavy sled pushes, squats, chin-ups, deadlift variations, presses, loaded carries, and rows. You should not waste a lot of time on small isolation exercises. The only time you should look at this is when you want to prevent injuries or are in rehab. If you are looking to build your muscle mass, you should go for the exercises that provide you with more bang for your buck.
Your exercise routine should consist of at least 75 to 80% big compound movements. The remaining 20 to 25% can be filled with other exercises such as grip work, delt rises, abdominal work and neck work.
Keep To The Progressive Overload Principle
Over time, you need to continually force your body to adapt. When you complete the same workouts many times, they will stop giving you the results that you want. This is why you need to challenge yourself to do more.
This could be anything from adding more weight or doing more reps of an exercise with the same weight. These are actually 2 of the most effective ways to overload your muscles which will force them to grow. If you have been doing the same training for a long time, you should look at some more advanced overload methods such as:
- Doing more work during the same amount of time
- Doing more work in less time
- Doing the same amount of work in less time
While this is important, you need to remember that getting stronger is the most important thing.
Use Smart Exercise Rotation
While progressive overload is important, it is not the only factor that you need to look at. After the first year of training, you will not be able to continuously increase the same exercise. This is when you need to start looking at exercise variation rotations.
A great muscle building exercise is based on the amount of loading and the progression that you can make on it. This is why bench presses, chin up, military presses, deadlifts, rows, and squats are the staple exercises. You can use a lot of weight with them and there is a lot of room to progress.
However, you are going to stop being able to make linear progression. If this did not happen, everyone would be able to bench 1,000 pounds in a few years. To overcome this, you could start a new training cycle with lighter weight and over 8 to 12 weeks work up to your previous best. A better option is to have 5 to 6 great exercises that you can rotate.