A lot of the reason that so many people who are trying to gain muscle don't see the kind of results they should be is because of their workout routine. Too many people just go to the gym do a bunch of different exercises and then call it a day. The truth of the matter is that in order to see the gains you want and that you are working so hard for, you need to have a solid well built workout plan in place. So what should a solid workout plan include?
There are a number of different factors that go into building a good all around muscle building workout and I will go through the 5 main things you need in order to design a solid muscle building workout.
Types of Exercises
If you're goal is mass then you need to focus on exercises that are going to hit more than one muscle group at a time. These types of exercises are called "Compound Exercises". The benefit to using these types of exercises is that it not only allows for the use of a lot more weight but also allows more muscle fibers to be used which means more growth potential.
Some examples of the common compound exercises include bench press, squats, deadlifts, military press,back rows,skull crushers etc.
Style of Workout
There are basically two types of workouts there is the full body workout and the split body workout. There are a lot of mixed opinions about which of these work better for building more muscle, and when it boils down to it, it really depends on your body and is different for everybody.
Benefits to Full Body:
- Work all muscle groups 3 times per week instead of 1
- Greater muscle fiber stimulation which means more muscle building potential, and testosterone release
-Increased rest time in between workout days
Benefits of Split Body:
- Less calories burned
- Increased attention to individual muscle groups
- Shorter workout sessions
Reps/Sets
This is another controversial matter where many different studies have shown many different results with different people. Some tend to believe that 6-8 reps per set will build more mass and others say between 10-12. What I have personally found that using a combination of different reps tend to help keep muscle growth constant.
Normally I do a split workout and do 4 exercises per muscle group at 2 sets per exercises. That is a total of 8 sets per muscle group and I will usually do 3 weeks of 6-8 reps, then 2 weeks of 10-12 reps, and then 1 week of 4-6 reps. The benefit to this is that you are working on both your slow and fast twitch muscle fibers and therefore stimulating a greater variety of muscle fibers to grow.
Rest
Rest is absolutely crucial in any type of workout, what people always fail to realize is that muscle is never built while lifting weights in the gym. This serves only to stimulate the muscles to want to grow, it is outside the gym post workout while we're resting and sleeping that our muscles work to repair and build more muscle.
Your workout should never go beyond the 45 min mark, after this time your body begins to produce an increased amount of cortisol which is catabolic or in easier terms destroys muscle growth.
It is also important to note that many people go to the gym 6 times per week this is simply too much and will usually cause you to overtrain which means that your muscles are broken down further than what they can repair and this means of course muscle and strength loss.
Time Under Tension
Very few people trying to build muscle ever keep track of the time under tension. This is basically the time that your muscles are under tension or lifting weights. Studies have shown that when muscles are placed under a total of 60-80 seconds of tension it will produce a maximal anabolic effect.
This is important when designing a workout because you should strive to accomplish this by using a tempo that will allow your muscles to receive a total of 60-80 seconds under tension. The most common tempo used is 3 seconds down 1 second up and 0 rest.
However you may find that doing a 5 second down, 2 second up and 0 second rest will help you to build more muscle or help you to reach your target total time under tension.
These are just a few of the most common aspects to look at when designing an effective muscle building workout. I hope this article has helped you out, and that you are able to build a workout that will have you maximizing your gains in no time.
If you are serious about building muscle and maximizing your gains I would encourage you to download my FREE ebook - No hype, No B.S Muscle Building.
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Contributor's Note
If you want more information on building muscle naturally then visit my website at http://www.buildmassivemusclenow.com
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