How to Build Muscle/Strength

The Problem that I have faced the most in the gym is how to build muscle quickly. This is a problem that I am still working through at the moment, but I wanted to share what I have found out so far for those mass gainers out there. What I have found can be summed down to one simple statement, “To gain muscle you need to get stronger”. I know kind of an oxy-moron isn’t it. But it has shown to work.

The main problem that men and women face with building strength is the body-part split routines, where you work out one specific muscle once a week. The body-split workouts are beneficial for men and women who are just beginning to exercise and need to condition themselves to the strenuous activity of the gym or for individuals looking too get more deified muscles. So I recommend doing body-part split routines for a period of 12 weeks to get the resistance needed but then work more on building muscle afterwards.

During the building muscle or strength building phase keep something in mind, if you are not lifting more weight today than you did one year ago, or even one month ago then you are not building muscle/strength.  How strength training works is that each workout you try to lift more weight. Then as the weight increases you build muscle. It is a simple, easy and fun.

Today I am going to give you some basic tips to gain that muscle and strength you desire.

1.       Do more Compound Exercises- That means don’t just do exercises that focus on a single muscle. Like doing a biceps exercise’s most people believe doing biceps curls will get them bigger biceps. This is false information, you don’t need to train a muscle directly to make it grow. Instead do Barbell Rows.

a.       Bicep growth means less curls and more barbell row

b.      Chest growth means less dumbbell flies and more bench press

c.       Shoulder growth means less front raises and more overhead press

d.      Back growth means less let pull downs and more dead lifts

e.      Leg growth means less leg extensions and more squats

2.       Don’t use machines as much, utilities the Free Weights. - Unlike with machine with the weight stabilized for you, you have to work on stabilizing the weights with free weights. For example I began squatting with the use of a smith machine that has the barbell set on tracks for you. So all I would do is load up the bar and focus on the “driving: action of a squat, meaning I just pushed hard. Then one day I went to the free weight section and found that I could barely squat half the weight and reps I did before with the smith machine. This is because I had to focus about half my strength on stabilizing the bar while squatting.

3.       Use Barbells more than Dumbbells – Dumbbells only work for certain work outs and all the workouts previously mentioned in point one all require a barbell. They are much more affective at hitting crucial muscle groups and getting the right amount of explosive pumps for building muscle. Dumbbells also don’t work for progressive loading, the addition of small weights at incremental times. There is also an increased emphasis on just trying to hold a weight properly for any exercise. Take squatting for an instance, I can quiet easily hold 125lb barbell across the back of my shoulders but to hold the same weight in dumbbells would be insanely hard to do.

4.       Train Your Muscles more frequently – Don’t just do one muscle group a day for each day of the week, but also don’t train every muscle every day. Instead focus on two main exercises, squatting and bench press. Do squats and bench press three times a week with additional work outs. When I talked with some people about this training method their instant worry was about overtraining. But look at it in the context of an athlete, they train several times a week and don’t consider it over training. The trick is to not focus on training until muscle failure because if you do squats until your legs give out then you won’t be able to train it again two days later.

5.       The Essential Days off – Rest days are necessary for building muscle because it allows the muscle to recover and be in top shape to go hard in the next workout which is where muscle growth really comes from. The guide most men take are three days at the gym and the rest being rest days. This will give the muscle enough time to recover from a heavy lifting session.

a.       Monday- Squat, Chest Press, Deadlifts

b.      Tuesday- Rest

c.       Wednesday- Squat, Overhead Press, Deadlift

d.      Thursday-Rest

e.      Friday- Squat, Bench Press, Barbell Row

f.        Saturday-Sunday Rest

6.       You need calories so eat like crazy – You are going to be doing a lot of activity and burning much needed calories. To be able to build muscle effectively you need to eat more calories than you burn. A basic foundations

a.       Unprocessed Food- Natural Chicken, Steak, Raw veggies, fruits, etc. Essential if you it is supposed to be microwave then don’t eat it. The natural the better.

b.      Get 200 grams of protein a day- This means eating a meat with every meal. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

c.       Drink a gallon of water a day – You will be expelling water as you work and your body needs to stay hydrated to metabolize food properly and build muscle effectively. A good sign that you’re dehydrated is a headache.

7.       No more “Confusion, tearing or pumping” – You don’t need to change your exercise every week, hit failure or bloat your muscles with supplements. The main thing you need to do to gain muscle and strength is to be consistent in your exercise, have a strong set workout plan of compound workouts, eat like it is your last meal and get in those rest days. 
http://stronglifts.com/5x5/ Here is a link that goes into more detail for 5x5 and strength building.
http://www.muscleandfitness.com/workouts/workout-routines/4-week-guide-starting-strength Another great website that lays out a 4-week guide too strength building. 

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