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Real
Muscle Real Fast!
by
Jesse Cannone
Adding muscle seems
to be a mystery to most, yet if you pick up a copy of any fitness or
bodybuilding magazine and you’ll almost always see a headline like
this: “Gain 15 Pounds of Muscle in 6 Weeks.”
If it were so easy
you’d have millions of muscle-heads running around. Even though
building muscle tissue can be a challenge, I’m going to outline some
very specific principles that can pack on the muscle faster than you can
throw away that copy of “Muscle and Fiction”!
Before we get started
though I want to clarify a few points.
-
The
ridiculous claims made by most fitness and bodybuilding magazines
are only there to get you to buy that issue – nothing more!
-
If
you are serious about strength training you need to be reading books
and NOT cheesy fitness magazines
Ok… here we go.
In order to add
muscle tissue you must force the body to add it. Your body won’t just
add a pound of muscle just because you followed a 3-set workout that you
read about in Muscle + Fitness. You need to give the body a reason to
make improvements – in this case add muscle tissue.
You have to provide
what I call a “stimulus”. This can be done in many ways and I’ll
address a few in just a moment. Basically, you need to force the body to
add muscle by subjecting it to levels of stress it is not used to. Some
methods are more obvious than others but all can work.
Here are a few examples of how this can be done effectively.
First, the basic and
common methods:
-
Increase
weight or resistance
-
Perform
more repetitions
-
Perform
more sets
-
Move
the resistance slower
-
Rest
less between sets and exercises
Now for the more
advanced methods:
-
Pre-exhaust
(perform an isolation exercise first and immediately continue with
no rest on a compound movement. ex. chest flye and then chest press)
-
Static
holds (hold the resistance in the hardest position of the range of
motion. ex. the top position during a leg extension)
-
Partial
reps in weak range (perform a portion of the rep where you are
weakest. ex. the top half of a rep of leg extensions)
-
Strip-set
(after a warm-up set, perform 3 sets back to back with no rest while
starting with the heaviest weight possible and each time strip off
some weight to allow you to continue)
-
1
½ reps (perform one full rep and then on the second rep only
perform half the normal range of motion and then return to starting
position to begin the next rep. ex. one full rep of lat pulldowns,
pull second rep all the way down, resist weight back up but only
half way and then pull back down)
These are just a few
examples of methods of increasing intensity to ensure progress. The key
point to remember is that whatever you do it must be progressive in
order for it to elicit a physical change. This is even more critical for
those looking to add muscle size.
Although this article
is geared towards individuals who are interested in gaining muscle size,
the principles can also be used for individuals who want to build
strength, increase metabolism, or tighten and tone muscles.
Here are some general
recommendations for different goals…
If your goal is to
tighten and tone muscles:
·
Focus on increasing reps, decreasing rest, and changing
exercises frequently
·
Train each muscle group twice per week
·
Perform fewer sets of many different exercises (1-2 sets
per exercise)
If your goal is to
increase strength and power:
-
Focus
on increasing weight
-
Train
each muscle group once every 7-10 days
-
Perform
multiple sets of each exercise (2-5 sets per exercise)
If your goal is to
increase muscle size:
-
Focus
on shocking muscles by changing variables frequently (exercises, set
and rep schemes, rest time, etc)
-
Train
each muscle group on a variable schedule (experiment by training a
muscle group 3 times a week and then once every ten days)
-
Perform
multiple sets for a while and the perform single sets for a week or
two
Some final reminders:
The recommendations
above are general and of course would need to be adapted and adjusted
for your personal goals and experience. For those of you who are
advanced and may be thinking there’s no way you can build strength by
training once every 10 days I challenge you to try it for at least 4
weeks, or those of you who think that you need to stick to the same
basic movements like bench to build size I challenge you to try shocking
the muscles by changing the exercises you perform each week for 4 weeks,
and those of you with little experience I hope that you’ll throw away
the fitness magazines and learn what really works.
For more great muscle
building information visit http://www.seriousstrengthtraining.com
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