Nobody wants to be overly skinny or overweight. If you find yourself in one of these categories, you may want to consider developing a muscle building routine. If you can develop a productive routine, you can say goodbye to your old body and hello to the new and improved you.
Warming up and stretching is essential to developing your muscles. As you build muscle and get stronger, you can actually be vulnerable to injury. If you warm up, injuries can be prevented. Before you do any serious lifting, lightly exercise for five to ten minutes, and then do three or four light and intermediate warm-up sets.
You should completely exert yourself when performing weight lifting exercises in order to maximize your muscle gain results. Do this by forcing yourself to keep doing one more repetition until you absolutely cannot. This sends a clear signal to your body that you need more muscle. Remember to get help from a spotter so that you do not suddenly drop the weight when you are finished.
Eat plenty of carbs. If your body runs short on glucose after hard workouts, your body will use muscle tissue for protein and carbohydrates, undoing your hard work. Stay away from low-carb diets, and eat an appropriate amount of carbs given the intensity of your workouts–possibly a couple of grams of carbs per pound of body weight each day.
When your exercise workout is complete, be sure to engage in a series of stretches to ensure the best environment for your muscles to build and repair themselves. If you are under 40, hold your stretches for a minimum of 30 seconds. However, if you are older than forty, you should try to maintain a stretch for about sixty seconds. This will work to prevent any injuries from happening after you have worked your muscles.
Try varying your grips. Once you become experienced in working out, your muscles will start to resist any growth on exercises that are familiar to them. Different grips can help to make these familiar exercises different, which can cause additional muscle growth. Examples of exercise where you can change the grip are barbell rows, barbell curls, pull-ups, and bench presses. Try using wide grips, close hand grips, reverse grips, and even mixed grips that include having one hand up and one hand down.
Always use your own intuition when working out. Although planning out your workouts ahead is good for making sure that you stay accountable, sometimes you can’t always stick to this schedule. For example, you might not be ready for another quad session after your last session left you exhausted. On the other hand, your arms could be well rested after a good workout just a few days ago. Listen to what your body tells you, and follow it.
Remember to go to the gym with a friend when you are working on building up your muscles. If you try to do so alone, it is possible that you put yourself into a difficult situation, especially when using free weights. This can lead to serious injuries or lesions.
Pay attention to your body fat and measure it on a regular basis. Try not to be discouraged if there is not significant weight loss when building muscle, because your weight might not change much using a weight and muscle building routine. Your body fat is a better measure of your overall health as opposed to weight.
Any time you are lifting a heavy free weight, it is very important that you have a spotter. This is someone who knows the routine that you are doing and also understands when you are requiring help. Many times this person can become a type of gym buddy as well.
Always keep in mind that muscle building happens in the kitchen and the gym. If you really want to see your muscles become strong, you must make sure that your diet is a nutritionally sound one. Your muscles need lean proteins, healthy carbohydrates, and other essential vitamins and minerals so make sure that your diet is varied and providing all of these things.
Utilize supersets in your workout regimen. By doing two exercises back to back without resting, the working muscles are placed on a much higher demand. Supersets typically include opposing muscle groups, which include biceps and triceps. By doing an isolation move after a large compound exercise, additional growth can occur.
Try out partial reps in order to grow muscles. This technique involves doing reps with a decreased range of motion. On occasion, these are called pulse reps, and they are done at the end of a set as soon as you hit failure. Although you might not have enough strength to perform a complete rep, you can try out some partial reps until you reach failure a second time in order to put more demand on your muscles.
When attempting to grow muscle mass, utilize the buddy system method. This involves you and your partner pushing each other in a different manner. One person competes a set, and then he or she passes the dumbbells or bar to the other person. Except for the amount of time that you are waiting on your partner to finish a set, you do not rest.
A great technique for going around muscles that limit you during certain exercises is the pre-exhaust process. Biceps can tire out before your lats when you’re performing rows, for example. You can correct this by doing isolation-type exercises, like straight arm pull-downs that won’t overly-stress the biceps. The result is that your lats are exhausted ahead of time and then when you row, your bicep won’t limit you.
If you desire to build muscle, one of the most important things to consider is a pre-workout meal. This meal should be filled with protein and carbohydrates, which will give you the energy that you need for your workout. Also, foods that contain these nutrients can help to convert fat to muscle as you lift weights.
You are now ready to start the development of a muscle building routine. By making good use of the provided information and dedicating yourself to your new routine, you could be greeting the new you in the mirror sooner than you think. Keep positive thoughts and stay consistent and you will succeed.
