Muscular Development Basics: Training, Eating and Resting
Posted in: Muscle Building Workouts
I always wanted a great body, long before I knew how to get one, and long before I even had the inclination to start getting one. In developing muscle there are some fundamental principles which should be followed, which if I’d have learned much earlier in the game, could’ve saved me tons of time, effort, and disappointment.
The principles fall under 3 categories:
Training
Talk about stating the obvious, you’ve got to train to get muscle. But… training the right way isn’t a no-brainer. You’ve got to train the ‘right’ way to maximise your muscle building potential.
The fundamental rule of training is to increase the intensity of your training. This can mean taking shorter breaks between sets, lifting for more reps, or the biggest and best intensity factor of them all – persistently lift heavier weights than the time before.
By increasing the intensity with each session, you give your muscles no option but to grow to adapt to the demands they feel they are now going to face on a regular basis. It’s a survival mechanism.
Ideally, your regime should consist first and foremost of compound exercises such as the bench press, squats, dead lifts, and rows. Isolation exercises have their place in enhancing your physique, but compound movements are far more efficient mass builders.
Eating
When I first begun training, I had absolutely no idea whatsoever that I had to eat more – and more of the right foods – in order to grow. It didn’t even enter my head – and I know that it doesn’t other people, too. In a nutshell (no food pun intended), your body simply cannot grow unless it has adequate nutrients to do so.
The most basic thing you should do is ensure you are eating enough calories every day to permit muscle growth. Start with around 12 calories per pound of bodyweight a day, and see if after a week the scales move. If they do, you’ve put on size. Once the scales stop moving, make it 13 calories per pound of bodyweight, and so on.
Don’t think you can eat any old junk, though. Eating for muscle is a specialist business, and you’ve got to make up your overall calorie count with the correct nutrients – being protein, complex carbohydrates and fats.
The best protein’s to eat are: eggs, milk, fish, beef, chicken, cheese.
The best complex carbohydrates to eat are: potato, rice, pasta.
The best fats to eat are: dietary fats (from good whole foods, above), olive oil, and maybe supplementation with fish or flax seed oils.
Eating the aforementioned nutrients in the right ratios is also important. You could try eating 50% protein, 25% carbohydrates and 25% fats. The most important thing is to get a high dose of protein, usually 1 - 2g per pound of bodyweight.
Resting
Along with diet, rest is another of the forgotten elements of bodybuilding. It’s simple really, and that’s probably why it’s so overlooked: how can your body repair and grow if you are burning calories through not resting, leaving it with too few to repair – and also, breaking down muscles again, which are already struggling to repair?
In short, you can’t be too lazy when resting.
Conclusion
Of course – with the exception of resting – there are much more detailed theories, ideas, and practices out there for the above elements for you to learn and play with, but in brief, never follow any advice out there which doesn’t adhere to these 3 basic principles – it simply won’t work.
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