Optimize Your Weight Routine Results
by Vince DelMonte (reposted with permission)
Do you grasp what it really takes to build big muscles? Do you think it’s as simple as buying a gym membership , training each muscle once a week, slamming back some protein shakes and trying to eat as much chicken and fish as possible and then voila! you are big enough to enter a bodybuilding contest? Wouldn’t it be awesome if it were that easy to build big muscles? Unfortunately, your monthly gym membership, regular weight training workouts and normal eating habits aren’t going to cut it. Whether you’re trying to get back in shape or take your physique to the next level, here are a few elements to incorporate to get big muscles fast:
Do Squats and Deadlifts
Squatting and Deadlifting are known as two of the best exercises you must do for power and mass muscle building. These two exercises alone hit most of your entire musculature , including your traps, shoulders, biceps/triceps/forearms, lats, quadriceps, glutes, hams, calves and core muscles.
Besides ratcheting up the intensity, squats and deadlifts trigger the release of greater volumes of your own growth hormone. All your muscles benefit. This spillover effect results in strength gains in all your other lifts which translates into a more muscular you! Squatting and deadlifting are, therefore, especially important for hard gainers who want to build muscle because of this hormonal impact.
Do Compound Exercises
What do you think would isolate muscles: flat bench or flye machine; overhead military press or lateral raise machine; a pull up or dumbbell curl; a dip or tricep kickback? If you’ve been lifting with no real results, you’re wasting your energy on exercises that isolate any muscle. If you ever hope to get big muscles then compound lifts are not optional, they are absolutely required. The best compound lifting exercises are the tried-and-true bench press, squat, deadlift, bent rows, pull up, chin up, dip and military press.
If all you do is concentrate on building your puny muscles like arms and calves, then you will end up with exactly what you focus on – puny muscles!
Time Your Rest Periods
When was the last time you were in the gym and you watched the average guy time his recovery with a stop watch? Stop watches or interval timers should be used by everyone who is serious about building big muscles.
Creating the desired response to your weight lifting requires shorter rest periods between sets of higher numbers of reps, and longer rest periods as you approach lifting your one rep max weight.
For example, when training for maximum strength you need to take a 3-5 minute break between sets. If you only take two minutes, your body will not respond as you want. Similarly, optimizing muscle size requires you keep recovery periods shorter, in the 30-90 second range. If you let the rest period go long because you’re staring at a beautiful girl on an elliptical trainer across the gym, you’re going to be shortchanging yourself.
Lastly, how do you know if you really have gotten stronger if you do not keep track of the time between sets? For example, let’s say last week you bench pressed 135 pounds for four sets of ten, and this week you used 145 pounds for four sets of ten for the same exercise. This would be a tremendous, measurable improvement if your rest times were the same. However, if you rested longer between each set on your most recent workout, you didn’t become stronger. You just recovered more during a longer rest period!
Conclusion
You can’t build big muscles by simply doing the same old weightlifting routine and throwing back protein shakes. Change your training routine to incorporate compound exercises, including squats and deadlifts, and use consistent rest periods between sets to break through any training plateau and begin building muscle mass all over your body!