Great Advice for Adding Lean Muscle Mass to Your Physique

Great Advice for Adding Lean Muscle Weight to your Physique

1. Free Weights vs. Machines

 While I have nothing against machines and cables, there is no doubt that the greatest muscle builders are free-weight compound exercises, like Squats, dead-lifts, bench press and military overhead press There is nothing wrong with using machines or cables, but if you want to see positive gains faster, make free-weights the cornerstone of your program.

2. Use Proper Form

Using proper form on all of your exercises will assure that you are stimulating the muscle that you wish to target. Those that “throw” the weights up when doing side laterals or barbell curls, for example, are only cheating themselves out of growth. Once you reach failure using strict form, THEN it is ok to use momentum (to a reasonable degree) to try and extend your set a bit further.

3. Don't Over-train

Our bodies have limited amounts of recovery ability, as well as a limited amount of “energy” to put toward building new muscle tissue. So, here a few sub-guidelines to follow to keep you from overdoing it.
A. Train no more than 4 days per week.

B. Do not train more than 2 days in a row without taking a full day off from the gym.

C. Workouts should last no more than 45-60 minutes.

4. Eat Adequate Amounts Protein

This is perhaps the most important of all the advice. Muscle is protein. Protein is required to build and repair muscle tissue. Not eating enough can hinder your gains no matter how well thought out your training and supplementation programs are. How much protein is enough?

For most serious trainees, at least .8 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body-weight should be consumed daily.

5. Use the Right Supplements

While it is not 100% necessary to use supplements in order to make progress, they certainly can hasten results. Things such as Magnesium Citrate, Kre-Alkalyn, BCAA’s, L-Glutamine, (NO Nitrous Oxide), L-Carnitine. may aid you in training, minimize recovery time and increase ability to train harder.

6. Rest is as Important as the Training and Diet get your Sleep.

Fact: The only time the body can rebuild itself is when you sleep. There are many hormonal functions that only occur when you body is in total rest. For those of you that are really looking to make changes in your physique sleep is the most crucial element in repairing the damage you've done while training. The body disposes of waste in the muscle cells and rebuilds the muscle that you tore apart in the gym. Not getting ample amounts of sleep will impede your recover time and can lead into an over-trained state and progress will come to a halt.