Muscle building or hypertrophy is a goal that most men aspire to. Whether you are looking to lose body fat or get stronger, building muscle is the best way to sustain both.
There are a few reasons why people don’t see the results they are looking for including:
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– inconsistency with training
– lack of sleep
… and many others but we won’t get into today, but the one we are going to take care of today is what needs to happens in the gym.
Workout to achieve results
There are multiple factors that must be accounted for in a training session in order to get the results you want. Try the following points to complete in a 3 Day workout split.
1. Building a strong base
In order to build muscle, you must be able to create adaptation.
In order to create adaptation, you must either increase the intensity (the number of pounds you are lifting in that set) or in the volume (the number of reps or sets you use for a particular exercise, superset, tri-set etc.)
This is also known as progressive overload.
You must progress and overload the muscle in order to create the adaptation.
2. Exercise selection
In my experience, when people want to build muscle, especially men, they think isolation exercises like bicep curls and tricep extensions. While there is nothing wrong with those exercises, they will not get you the gains or the body you want by themselves.
You must incorporate full body, compound lifts like the deadlift, the squat and the bench press.
We can’t just chase the mirror muscles. We also have to make sure we pick the exercises in the right order.
Big lifts for big muscles first and work our way down to the smaller muscles.
3. Time under tension
The amount of time the muscle is under tension or load the better chance you have of create the muscle damage necessary for growth.
The higher the frequency of the contraction signals sent to the motor units the better chance we have to maximize gains.
The amount of time necessary is anywhere between 20 to 60 seconds or 60 to 85% of your 1 rep max according to research.
4. Tempo
Tempo relates to the time spent in the concentric, eccentric and isometric phases of each rep.
The concentric portion of the exercise is the lifting portion, the eccentric is the lowering portion and the isometric portion is the middle of both, the concentric and eccentric portion or the point at which the weight makes its way back to the original position.
To build muscle you can tinker with the tempo especially the eccentric and isometric portion of the lift.
5. Rest time
If you are the person that sits texting in between sets, you will never build that body you want.
If you are working on building strength at the beginning of your session then rest time is really important, but when looking to build mass, too much rest can kill you gains.
Keep the rest time less than a minute between supersets or trisets.
Look out for part 2 of the article for more information on how to gain maximum muscle and strength.
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Lost 13 Kg in Total
Mel, 32y Location: London, United Kingdom Working with Pollyanna changed everything. I lost 13kg, got toned and have more energy than ever! Get same results!
