Stepping away from trying to lose weight, let us divert some attention to those who want to put on a few pounds. Insofar as pure technique, calorie for calorie, nobody knows how to eat healthier than a bodybuilder. With carbs and protein measured to precise grams, bodybuilders have perfected not only weight training but eating to an art. Limiting the amount of food intake requires immense discipline so surely eating 5000 calories must surely be. . . well, a piece of cake.
Not necessarily so. What may ultimately be as hard as losing weight is correctly gaining it.
Many forms of training exist to add mass to your body. Many of these forms happen with weights and some sort of resistance-focused exercise inducing strenuous muscle contraction. One important notion to remember is that bodybuilding, strength improvement, and mass addition is not about lifting weights. It is about training muscles.
Consistently training at seven or fewer reps with heavier weights may feed your pride in the gym, but it won't build as much muscle as moderate reps with moderate weights. Your goal is to achieve the highest quality of contraction on every rep of any given set. Keeping that in mind, there is no rule that says you must use the same oversized dumbbells every time. What you should try to do every time is pick a weight and work a muscle until failure with while employing strict form.
There is a reason to push yourself the overwhelming burning sensation during the last few forced reps of weight training. As your muscle begins to fail, more blood is pumped to that area with nutrients to fuel those cells. As blood rushes in, those cells become enlarged and expand in volume. This is called Hypertrophy. Without it, your progress will simply be too slow to show visible results and in due time your motivation may give out quicker than your arms.
In this light, we must remember that no exercise is worth it if it never reaches a certain intensity. Most types of training will work provided you do it with intensity. This train of thought includes German volume training of picking one set of moderate weights and performing the same exercise over and over or Dropsets that change the weight every set to introduce maximum variety and muscle confusion. One technique to introduce maximum hypertrophy is to warm up, max out first, and then continue with moderate weights.
What this doesn't mean that you need to jerk a barbell above your head. In fact, if you have any experience with weight lifting, the more slowly you do an exercise, the more difficult it is. The bottom line is that everything must be done deliberately.
Just as lifting must be done in a completely controlled fashion, much more so is eating to gain weight. Most common is the misinterpretation that one can eat anything during a bulking phase. In other words, if you eat chicken tenders and fries many times a week, although you might be adding muscle on top of your bones, it will be hidden under a layer of fat, giving the appearance of no net results. What must be done is carefully construct and tailor a diet that dumps calories into rebuilding muscle fibers that have been destroyed by exercise, balancing nutrition levels and minimizing the deposit of food as unused energy.
Eat lean, eat frequently and eat small. Don't ever put yourself into a state of sleepiness after binging. That simply works against you in every way. A standard that many trainers advise is consuming one gram of protein per pound that you weigh. Similarly, consume two grams of carbs per pound of your weight. If after time, things are plateauing, try one and a half grams of protein and three grams of carbs per pound of your weight. It differs with each person but most people can and will benefit from this ratio.
So what would a typical high-intensity routine look like? As an example, the chest is one of the easiest muscle to imagine a contraction. The more you squeeze and bring your shoulders inward, the tighter the contraction.
A proper chest workout requires you to feel and force that squeezing at the peak contraction phase of your exercise for one to two seconds before beginning another rep. Feeling a contraction in the back is sometimes harder but the following exercises should easily target the area. It is no mistake that all of the following exercises involve free weights or cables as they allow maximum range of motion and stretch.
Sample Chest Routine
(all with 1:30min rest in between sets)
3x10 pushups warm up
4x11-13 Flat Barbell Bench
4x11-13 Incline Barbell Bench
4x11-13 Flat Dumbbell Bench
4x11-13 Incline Dumbbell Bench
3x12 Flat Dumbbell Fly
3x12 Decline Dumbbell Fly
Cable Fly 6x10 at different angles
Sample Back Routine
3x8 pullups
4x10 Barbell Bent over Row
2 Dropsets of Dumbbell Rows using 4 sets of incrementally decreasing weights
4x10 T-Bar rows with arched back (brace is preferable to prevent injury)
3x15 Cable Rows (Using a triangle handle)
Remember: repeated deliberation in thought eventually gives way to action; repeated
deliberation in action gives way to excellence.
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