Muscle development isn’t just about pumping iron. There are many factors that contribute to the results you see when you spend time weight lifting. Use the information offered here to help you in your muscle-building endeavors.
Always look for new ways to exercise your body and build muscle. Different exercises target different things; some may work on bodybuilding or toning. You want to focus on bodybuilding exercises and also have a variety of techniques to target various muscle groups.
Building muscle will require you to eat more of a variety of foods. The amount you eat should be equivalent to you gaining around a pound of weight each week. Try different diet alterations to provide yourself with more calories. If you see no results within two weeks, try to pack in more calories.
If you want to increase muscle mass, you need to warm up the right way. When your muscles become stronger, they’ll experience lots of additional stress making them susceptible to injury. By warming them up, injury can be prevented. Warm up by completing a cardio exercise, such as running on a treadmill, for 10 minutes before you begin weight training, and then start off with some light reps to get into the groove.
Animal based products, such as beef and chicken, can help you increase your muscle mass. Eat 1 gram of meat per pound of body weight. The extra protein you consume will be stored and used to build muscle, giving you the results you are trying to achieve.
The “big three” should form the core of your exercise routine. Squats, dead lifts and bench presses are the main muscle development exercises. These exercises make you bulkier as well as helping to condition your body and increase strength. Do some variation of the “big three” exercises regularly.
Build Muscle
Recognize that the requirements of serious muscle building and intense cardiovascular exercise (such as marathon training) are not compatible. While a good cardio workout is key to staying fit, trying to build muscle while doing a lot of cardio is counterproductive. An intensive cardio workout essentially cancels out your attempts to build muscle. If building up muscle is your focus, spend most of your effort on a strength-training routine.
Limit your workouts to no more than 60 minutes. After you have worked out for sixty minutes, your body starts to produce a stress hormone called cortisol. Extra cortisol may block testosterone and your efforts at muscle building can be wasted. For best results, keep your workouts under sixty minutes so that you don’t produce excessive amounts of cortisol.
Keeping your body hydrated is an important component of a good muscle-building program. Dehydrated muscles will be extremely prone to injury, and also won’t recover as quickly after you exercise. Muscles which lack hydration will also appear smaller, will make it less likely to build mass, and keep you from your goals.
You should make sure that the number of calories you consume every day is high enough. All types of calculators are available online that can assist you in figuring out how many calories you need based on how much muscle you are hoping to gain. Chose the calculator that you like the best, and then change up your diet if you need to so that you are getting the right amount of carbohydrates, protein, and other nutrients that you need.
Adapt your diet to your training. It is important to consume plenty of protein and limit your fat intake when you are trying to build muscle. Do not assume that you should do this by simply eating more. Instead, you should make it a point to consume a balanced diet. Vitamins and protein supplements may also help you to boost your results.
Try using the technique of pre-exhaustion to prevent certain muscles from setting limits for you during a particular exercise. For instance, your biceps could fatigue before lats on rows. To solve this problem, first perform an exercise that isolates the lats but does not require much from the biceps, like straight-arm pulldowns. Your lats will already be exhausted, which means that when you perform the rowing exercise, your biceps will no longer be the limiting factor.
What you have learned here should help you start, or improve, your weight training efforts. With the information you have just learned, start your bodybuilding routine right away so you can see those results.
