MASS APPEAL
Add muscle bulk the smart way.
Many fitness enthusiasts, particularly men, pursue weight training with the sole goal of building muscle mass. While the attractive outward appearance is nice, those guns can actually help increase your metabolism and even your mood. This article will give you a few key principles necessary for building muscle mass. It's the information you need to make the most of your current workouts.
Stimulating a muscle, or even multiple muscle groups, to grow in size is a relatively simple objective to meet. Muscles grow when they are given a stimulus (resistive exercise) that is of sufficient intensity. However, the intensity of the workout is not the only important factor. Recovery is just as key.
The first contributor to recovery is nutrition. Getting a snack that is a 60:40 mix of carbohydrate to protein within 40 minutes of finishing your workout is crucial. After the 40-minute mark, you body will start to pull nutrients from storage to help with recovery. The catch is, the same amount of nutrient storage is necessary to maximize recovery and size development. Essentially, if you work out hard but don’t have enough recovery nutrition, the body will use muscle mass to feed itself. It will break down the same muscles you're trying to build.
Snack on a turkey or peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread, plain yogurt with fresh fruit, a protein bar or a nutritional protein drink.
The other major component of mass building is the workout itself. The primary factor in the workout design is intensity. This does not mean that every repetition has to be a maximum effort. It simply means the muscles being worked have to be placed under a significant amount of loading and fatigue. One of the best ways to achieve this goal safely is to do single, multijoint exercises to fatigue (being unable to do even one more repetition) after a specific muscle group lift. This exercise should be something of low resistance.
Here are some suggestions:
• After working the biceps or back, do as many pull-ups as you can.
• After working the triceps or chest, do as many push-ups as you can.
• After working the legs, do as many alternating lunges or step-ups to a 12-16-inch step while holding about 10-15 percent of your body weight, as you possibly can. Dumbbells are the best tool for this exercise.
You would do best to change your exercises slightly. For instance, when doing bicep curls with a barbell for 2-3 sets with moderate weight, go immediately to alternating hammer curls with dumbbells for as many repetitions as you can handle.
Keep the rest periods very short between your last set and your max set exercise to insure fatigue. At least 3 minutes rest should be placed between your max set exercise and your next series of exercises and area of concentration.
Since your intensity will likely be a lot higher than what you are used to, you should allow your muscles to rest for at least 2-3 days before working them again. This means that you will not work any given muscle more than twice a week. The true secret to increasing muscle size is as simple as allowing for proper rest and recovery. Your muscles will gain the added size as they recover during your rest days. The workout simply gives them the message that they need to grow stronger to handle the repeated loading from your workout.
Remember, it will take 6-8 weeks of working out with the changes suggested above for the muscles to start getting bigger. Growth takes time, consistency and persistence. Give your muscles the nutrition they need after the workout (when they need it the most) and time to recover and you will see your efforts pay off with bigger, stronger muscles.
Other Trusted Sources:
Mayo Clinic
