Before you start on your quest to add muscle to your body, it's vital to understand a few basic principles or you'll set yourself up for failure, and worst case give up this wonderful sport in sheer frustration due to lack of progress.
Here are seven key areas to consider as you plan your routines out; 1/ Muscles grow at rest - which means that you need more rest days than workout days.
You give the growth stimulus to the muscles, get out of the gym and rest.
If you're training more days than resting, stop now, because you'll get poor results if any.
Over time you may actually regress if you have too many training days.
2/ You must give the growth stimulus to the muscles when you do train, otherwise they have no reason to adapt and grow.
Better said, you need to work hard enough to force muscle growth.
A weird paradox - most folks train too often, but they don't train hard enough! It's not how long or often you train, it's what you do when you train.
3/ You must train hard, and then in your next workout you must train harder still.
You need to add weight to the bar each time you train if possible.
If you add weight in huge jumps then your body will be unable to adapt to the extra stress and you won't make your target sets and reps.
Progress will stall.
But if you add small amounts of weight the body gets a chance to build a momentum up.
Imagine adding one pound to your squat every workout.
If you train for a year you add 50lb to your squat - do you think your body will have added muscle? Of course it will - not only that, but you'll have added muscle without much perceived effort, because you were patient and added small amounts of weight that you could tolerate.
4/ You need to keep your workouts hard but brief - which means not going much over the hour when you train.
This is why you need to focus on compound movements like the dead lift and squat, because these exercises train much more muscle then the biceps curl or triceps kickback, for example.
If you train on small isolation exercises you need more frequent and longer workouts to cover all areas of the body.
Plus the small exercises don't produce the anabolic effect you need to add muscle which major compound exercises do produce.
Moral of the story - build all routines around the major compound exercises.
5/ You must train safely - training safely has two aspects to it; First - learning perfect exercise form - this protects the joints from injury.
Second - avoid unsafe exercises like the upright and bent over row, and any pressing exercise behind the neck.
6/ You must eat enough quality food to give the muscles the fuel they need to grow.
(If you have a proper diet you won't need supplements, by the way.
) 7/ You need enough rest and sleep - i.
e.
recovery time.
Aim for 8 hours sleep a night.
I promise you that if you set your routines out based on the above principles, you'll have a huge advantage on most folks who train in commercial gyms - good luck.
Here are seven key areas to consider as you plan your routines out; 1/ Muscles grow at rest - which means that you need more rest days than workout days.
You give the growth stimulus to the muscles, get out of the gym and rest.
If you're training more days than resting, stop now, because you'll get poor results if any.
Over time you may actually regress if you have too many training days.
2/ You must give the growth stimulus to the muscles when you do train, otherwise they have no reason to adapt and grow.
Better said, you need to work hard enough to force muscle growth.
A weird paradox - most folks train too often, but they don't train hard enough! It's not how long or often you train, it's what you do when you train.
3/ You must train hard, and then in your next workout you must train harder still.
You need to add weight to the bar each time you train if possible.
If you add weight in huge jumps then your body will be unable to adapt to the extra stress and you won't make your target sets and reps.
Progress will stall.
But if you add small amounts of weight the body gets a chance to build a momentum up.
Imagine adding one pound to your squat every workout.
If you train for a year you add 50lb to your squat - do you think your body will have added muscle? Of course it will - not only that, but you'll have added muscle without much perceived effort, because you were patient and added small amounts of weight that you could tolerate.
4/ You need to keep your workouts hard but brief - which means not going much over the hour when you train.
This is why you need to focus on compound movements like the dead lift and squat, because these exercises train much more muscle then the biceps curl or triceps kickback, for example.
If you train on small isolation exercises you need more frequent and longer workouts to cover all areas of the body.
Plus the small exercises don't produce the anabolic effect you need to add muscle which major compound exercises do produce.
Moral of the story - build all routines around the major compound exercises.
5/ You must train safely - training safely has two aspects to it; First - learning perfect exercise form - this protects the joints from injury.
Second - avoid unsafe exercises like the upright and bent over row, and any pressing exercise behind the neck.
6/ You must eat enough quality food to give the muscles the fuel they need to grow.
(If you have a proper diet you won't need supplements, by the way.
) 7/ You need enough rest and sleep - i.
e.
recovery time.
Aim for 8 hours sleep a night.
I promise you that if you set your routines out based on the above principles, you'll have a huge advantage on most folks who train in commercial gyms - good luck.
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