Your muscles are controlled by the central nervous system which controls the motor units which pull on the limited bunches of muscle fibers they’re hooked up to in certain patterns, which creates movement. Muscle building is a very taxing business for the body, and the central nervous system doesn’t like it, as it seeks to impose a constant state of homeostasis (no change).

Movement patterns certainly are engrained and recognized by the central nervous system. How else would a person be able to learn coordination to walk, lift a cup to their mouths or play the piano – and become ‘rusty’ (i.e. lose some of their effectiveness) at some activities in which they haven’t performed in a long time? Or, how is it the central nervous system fails to adapt quickly when you overdo something/over-train? That’s homeostasis.

Once the central nervous system identifies a frequent movement pattern and an outcome it sees as a threat to homeostasis (i.e. muscle building) it clamps down on positive adaptation by limiting your ability to progress on this movement. You will see your strength and speed slow or stop, and even your coordination deteriorate and become far more injury prone.

This is a temporary situation – the exercise isn’t useless forever, it’s just not going to be as beneficial to you as others will be for a while.

And the methods which tax the CNS the most cause the body to fight for homeostasis quicker, which is why the heavier you lift, the more quickly the exercise becomes ineffective and the more regularly you need to change in order to continue making progress – you’ve hit the CNS hard and it’s fighting back hard.

For the heaviest lifts of 1-3 reps, changing exercises every 2-3 weeks maximum will ensure you don’t get stuck as often. The best thing you can do is to learn about all of the different muscles and the positions in which they are best activated, and create a list of many different exercises for each body part and rotate them in a formulaic manner. The idea is to circumvent homeostasis, and the most effective way of doing this is to change the exercise/movement entirely on a regular basis.

Although it is possible to see injuries like this from weight training, they more often than not are caused by the techniques in which one performs the exercises, and over-use exercises due to a lack of correct exercise form.

You can easily avoid injury by using a knowledgeable approach when it comes to weight lifting. The amount of weight you lift, the technique you use for the exercise, and the amount of repetitions are all factors you can control. These controlled factors are variables that can stop repetitive injuries.

One  of the most important things that gets over-looked by many who wish to bulk up, or weight train to gain strength for a sport is sleep and rest. Without adequate sleep and rest the body cannot sufficiently repair torn or tired muscle tissue. Training with a tired body that has not fully recovered from the last workout you have done, is a sure fire way to get injured.

As boring as it is, safety must be one your biggest considerations when you exercise. Over the term of exercising the body will build size, flexibility, muscles, and even the ligaments and tendons will increase their strength capacity. Over training, not paying attention the form of your lifts, or the load can easily over stress all of these body tissues. The longer the stress occurs the more likely-hood of a serious, or repetitive stress injury to occur. Many individuals who go to a gym wind up with a  list of injuries that stop them from performing certain movements, and almost all of these were completely avoidable.

With weight training it is best to leave your ego at the door, even if you have a sound knowledge of what you are doing. Using the assistance of a qualified personal trainer, or the services of  physical therapy, such as a Physical Therapy Assistant can help you develop a workout plan that is both effective, safe, and minimizes risks of repetitive injuries. After all, repetitive stress injuries will keep you out of the gym, and unable to obtain the goals you intend to reach. Even if you are on a Budget, it is wise to find even the guidance of a qualified professional even if it be for only a single training session, as this may save you from missing countless time from training in the future.

Whether you are a beginner or as experienced weight trainer, performing exercises properly will depend on the structure of your existing muscle and bone. The amount of flexibility you currently have also will effect how exercises can be performed.

The best advice is that less is sometimes more, do not push weights heavier than what you can keep good form doing. Once you lose your form, you are getting closer to developing tendinitis, or often times a worse type of injury. Do full range of motion, good form exercises, challenge yourself, but use common sense when doing heavier lifts.

When on a muscle building program, its basic practice to eat many smaller protein-based meals throughout the day to keep a positive nitrogen balance and remain in a state of anabolism (growth), but on a more advanced level is the issue of different proteins having different amino acid release rates. This brings up the question of suitability of different protein sources for different times of the day and different situations. What’s this about, and what effect can this really have?

 
What’s this talk of different amino acid release rates?

When you consume protein, it first has to be digested (broken down) before the body shuttles the amino acids to various parts of your body to carry out repair work on your muscles. Some sources of protein, for various reasons, are much quicker to digest and ‘release’ their amino acids (the building blocks of protein) than other sources of protein. In other words, they ‘get to work’ quickly. Others are slower to release and get to work.

 
It might seem like common sense to always choose the fastest, but the fact is, there are certain times of the day or certain situations when you could benefit from a slower, more sustained amino acid release. If you aren’t going to be able to eat anything for a certain period of time, for instance, a slower releasing protein to keep your muscles drip-fed would be best. This could be a situation which arises during your waking hours but certainly arises during your sleeping hours.

 
Other times, when your muscles are crying out for immediate protein – such as during breakfast or especially after a workout – then it’d make sense to choose the fastest releasing proteins to restart the rebuilding process as quickly as possible, en masse.

 
Two polar opposite proteins in terms of release speed are whey protein and casein, with whey protein being the fastest releasing, and casein being the slowest.

Muscle Building Protein

Casein can be bought as a powder supplement, but most commonly it’s gotten from milk. This also means you can consume cheese pre-bedtime if you prefer not to consume a lot of fluids before bed.

 
You don’t have to eat whey if you don’t wish to supplement; other outstanding muscle building proteins are eggs, fish, beef and chicken.

 
Of course, some argue that too much is made of the release-rate of proteins, and think the difference in results would be too small to concern oneself with. However – the same could be said about lots of different aspects of bodybuilding. When looked at on their own, the small things can often seem not worth bothering with, but when you put them together they can – and will – add up to something much more substantial.

A tape measure and bodyweight scales, once able to reliably tell you on a weekly basis whether or not you were making progress will no longer be able to give you decisive proof, and over time it’ll only become less obvious and require more faith. At this point, how do you know whether you’re really making progress or your muscle building efforts are in vain? Here’s 2 pretty reliable ways to tell…

1: You ache in the days that follow

A muscle which aches in the days which follow a workout is a muscle which has been worked beyond its previous capacity. Anyone can make a muscle ache if they hammer out endless repetitions and sets, however. I’m talking about the muscles aching by performing reps-sets within the common muscle building range (i.e. the accepted range for hypertrophy, and nothing excessive compared to your normal routine).
Such muscle aches are often mistakenly thought to be due to lactic acid build up which normally accompanies high volume training. However, even with low volume and no lactic acid burns we can experience muscle soreness, because the soreness isn’t from lactic acid but from micro-tears in the muscle fibers, indicating sufficient workout stress and that desirable changes (increases in strength and mass) are likely to follow.
You will also notice that your muscles start aching more upon changes of exercise and stop aching so much after you’ve performed the exercise several times consecutively. That’s because the muscles are adapting to the movement and the effectiveness of the movement is waning and change should be forthcoming.

2: You get stronger

As with muscle size gains, getting stronger will become a slower process with time, but the fact is, over the long term it’s likely to provide a much more microscopic view of what’s going on with your muscles than a tape measure or bodyweight scales. What I’m saying is, generally, strength gains will be much more noticeable to you than muscle gains, and although the connection between muscle size and strength isn’t as close as many think, it can be used as an approximate measure in the right context. The right context would be getting stronger within accepted muscle building rep-set protocols (i.e. bench pressing heavier this week with 7 reps 5 sets compared to the 7 reps 5 sets you did last week). If you get stronger in this context, chances are your muscles have gotten a bit bigger, too.

Conclusion…

Muscle building takes a lot of time so hang in there, be patient, take comfort from the above indicators and pretty soon the tape, scales and even mirror will confirm your progress, too.

Bench Press

Category 1: Compound exercises

Usually praised as the ‘best’ type of muscle building exercise, ‘compounds’ incorporate more than one muscle group into the lift. Therefore, a compound movement such as the bench press which heavily involves the triceps, deltoids and pectorals (and many more muscle groups) allows you to handle far more weight than would triceps extensions, deltoid raises or chest flys. This is because you are getting the benefits of the combined strength output of all these muscle groups.

 Compound exercises work the body as a system which tends to make compound exercises more effective for overall strength and muscle gains. However, one has to remember that the load is effectively being shared between each of these muscle groups to varying degrees – a fact many people overlook entirely.

 And therein is the big problem with compound exercises… you really don’t know how much of the current potential of each muscle group you’re truly using because you’re always limited by the weakest muscle group involved in the lift. Some muscle groups may be capable of far more weight but are in fact being held back due to a weak muscle group – a runt in the litter!

 In fact, one simple slogan which you absolutely must subscribe to (because it’s absolutely true) is ‘you’re only as strong as your weakest link’.
With compound exercises, you have limited ways of targeting the weaker muscle groups holding your overall lift back, so you have to think beyond compound exercises and break your training up into more precisely targeted exercises, which brings us to…

 Category 2: Isolation exercises

The antithesis of compound exercises is isolation (not to be confused with isometric!), which involve one primary muscle group to effect movement. Isolation exercises are best used to fill in the gaps the compound exercises can’t. You can use them to directly target weak muscle groups for strength purposes, to improve your compound lifts, or purely for aesthetic purposes. They really are invaluable and don’t let anybody kid you otherwise.

 An ideal bodybuilding/strength program will make the very best use of both of these exercise categories. It is an absolute fact that the very strongest and biggest people in the world did not get where they are by either banging away strictly with compound or isolation exercises but by smartly using a mixture of both. I strongly suggest you do the same.

Jack Lalanne

I was not born during the time when his shows “The Jack LaLanne Show” was popular back in the 60’s & 70’s. But I’ve heard a lot about him and have watched his many motivational and inspirational videos. Until today, many of his words of wisdom still remains in my heart and I will forever remember this great fitness legend.

Jack is the guy who can inspire you just from the way he talks. His charisma and his passion in fitness has change the lives of many who have watch and hear him speaks. Below is just one of his many videos you can find on YouTube:

RIP Jack. Your legacy and your impact on the fitness world will always be remembered.

Athletes that require speed and agility above brute strength look toward endurance training to suit their needs while football players, wrestlers, UFC fighters etc should all be looking to train purely for strength in regard to training their muscles.

Endurance training requires a low set range with high repetitions - for example 3 sets of 10 repetitions, perhaps even more repetitions per set depending on the individuals’ requirements. Strength training requires more sets and lower rep ranges, such as 5 sets of 5 reps.

The body is well equipped to add muscle to your frame without necessarily adding too much size or bulk. This is why often you will see slender guys in the gym lifting what seems like far too much for their frame, but then they handle the weight well and it’s a shock. It’s important to understand that muscle size does not always translate to performance and increased strength.

Adding size to your frame requires lifting weight and eating excess calories, where as adding strength only requires eating enough calories to supply energy for your workout but not so many that you put on additional body fat. Eating at maintenance will limit the amount of muscle you can build but you can still add substantial muscle mass to your frame without adding unnecessary bulk.

Another thing to note is that water and liquids make up the majority of your muscle mass and there’s a lot of guys walking around that look really pumped up from various supplements they’re taking such as the popular PUMP supplements used normally by the younger generations. Just because a muscle is full of water and liquid it doesn’t mean it’s more able than someone who trains hard and doesn’t fill their body with additional junk.

I have many articles on this site in regard to training for endurance and adding muscle without the bulk therefore I advice you to look at some below and learn some more about the topic.

Just because the legs are hidden under clothes most of the time and aren’t on show, doesn’t mean you should forget about them. A good heavy leg workout will increase the amount of testosterone your body is producing for a short period, and that can’t be a bad thing for any guy.

The 2 main exercises to develop your legs are the deadlift, which some regard as the king of all exercises, and of course the leg press. The deadlift is simple in that it’s just a matter of lifting up a barbell, standing up straight and then lowering it back down again in a controlled and safe manner. The leg press is usually performed on a leg press machine whereby you lay on your back and thrust your legs in to a weighted plate and push the weight up and away, and then lower back down bending your knees.

Comparing the deadlift versus leg press is relatively easy in so much as the deadlift works almost every muscle in your body while the leg press isolated mostly your legs and very little else. It is for this reason I would opt to perform the deadlift over the leg press when training your legs. Due to it involving numerous other muscles such as your biceps, triceps, shoulders, legs, glutes, forearms, traps and back, it is a far superior exercise and should be incorporated in to your workout program.

The leg press could be used once you’ve been training for some time simply to vary the exercises or further exhaust your legs after a deadlifting session to ensure maximum stimulus to the muscle fibres. Training with the leg press alone and not performing the deadlift is a route you do not want to consider, but many guys do for an easier but a far less effective and inferior workout.

There is no magic bullet or pill for building muscle. The pills you may see in the fitness magazines range from vitamins, to liver tablets, protein, caffeine and creatine pills plus over a hundred different combinations of various formula’s all in pill form which claim all manner of benefits to the average bodybuilder.

While I readily admit there are some benefits to taking in extra nutrients and vitamins, the price being charged for most of these pills are astronomical and the benefits (to which there are hardly none) are really not worth your money or time invested in consuming them daily or multiple times per day like most of the companies selling them advise.

It is simply about making money off the back of your dreams, and the more pills they can convince you to buy and keep on taking, the more money for their shareholders. The fitness industry is terrible for making large chunks of money off the blood and sweat of young men everywhere.

If your diet is good and consists mainly of whole foods which are rich in minerals, vitamins and nutrients then you have no real reason to invest in so-called pills for speeding up your gains. In my opinion these sorts of pills are perfect for OCD style personality types – those that enjoy routine and repetitive action. You may know guys at work or college who take various pills throughout the day, often these guys will be taking over 10 different pills under the mistaken belief that they’re doing them much good at all.

If your time is valuable then stay away from this stuff because it takes enough dedication to keep your diet and training in check every day. Busy people with busy lives don’t need the added hassle of taking over stuff on top of that. I simply do not agree with it.

A man with big shoulders is to be able to lift heavy objects above his head, and I believe this is why the shoulder, or deltoid muscle, is so important to demonstrating and showing off your strength. It shows that you’re a strong guy who can not only pick heavy stuff (or people up) but actually lift them above your head!

To build big shoulders is rather simple and you need only a few exercises in reality, the most important being the military press, or the overhead press as it’s also known. It’s performed with a barbell and it’s a simple case of resting it on the top of your chest near your neck with both hands palms faced upward in the starting position, and simply pushing it up above your head and then lowered back down to complete a full repetition.

The military press develops all sides of the deltoid muscle, the front, sides and rear, and as a beginner you shouldn’t need to add extra exercises like the lateral raise which targets only your side deltoid muscles. Once you have developed a good base using the overhead press then feel free to add other isolation exercises to hit each head to their maximum.

Isolation exercises to build your shoulders are as follows:

• The lateral raise (side deltoid)
• Front raise (front deltoid)
• Behind neck press (primarily the rear deltoid)

The important thing to remember is that having big shoulders contributes to the width of your physique which is crucial for the more slender or skinny guy out there. Creating the best illusion of width comes from having a small waist, big shoulders, developed lat muscles and a large chest. If you concentrate your training in to compound lifts which target all of your major muscle groups you will start to look wider in no time.