How To Build Muscle

By: Jimmy Smith, CSCS

How to build muscle? Is the question that I am often asked about. While most people want the magic pill, what they really need are a few simple tweaks to their training
programs that I am about to outline.

1) There are two things that people can do immediately to build muscle

A) People can focus on both full body training and body part splits. We've knocked training "arms" for too long but the only thing that will make us grow is training a muscle with a big amount of volume. At that same time, we can also use an upper body day to get stronger. It is the best of both worlds

B) People can sleep more. It sounds simple but going to bed by 10:30 and not getting up before 6 am will go a long way in helping us build muscle.

2) Train your legs more. Leg training is so essential for growing muscle everywhere. By training your legs hard you raise the anabolic signals in your body that tell you to
grow. Nothing stimulates more muscle heavy squats or deadlifts. They raise your natural muscle building hormones, which cause you to grow

3) Use the correct sets and reps. To build muscle we need to realize that, we have to perform enough volume so we breakdown muscle then build new muscle. So that being said I usually advise sets and reps like 4 sets of 8 reps or 6 sets of 4 reps. Remember, low reps can make us grow to simple because our body adapts to whatever we do for awhile so we need to change it up.

4) Use this secret trick. First, if everyone isn't doing pull-ups or squats then they need to do it right now. My best piece of advice is to tell everyone to do a back off set per exercise. For example, if you are training on the bench press and doing 4 sets of 8 reps then do a 5th set of 20-25 reps. This will push more blood into the muscle which will force more grow.

Building muscle is all about the quality of your workouts. Most people get caught up in the typical 3 sets of 10 reps dogma. While that will work for a certain period of time, it won't work forever. In my opinion, the best way to design your training for growth is to use 4-6 week spurts of volume phases where you train with sets of 3-4 and reps of 8-15. For the next 4-6 weeks, you should go with more sets of 4-6 and lower reps of 5-8. Both of these methods will lay you to have both muscle and strength gains.

Jimmy Smith,CSCS

Author, Muscle Bible

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Jimmy Smith,CSCS, is the author of the Muscle Bible and is a training advisor for Men's Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines.His Muscle Bible program has helped thousands of people gain muscle. His muscle building course guarantees that you will add 10 pounds of  lean muscle onto your frame without drugs, expensive supplements or by spending all day in the gym  or your money back plus some. His muscle building secrets can be found at http://ineedmuscle.rxsportz.com