Friday, May 18, 2007
4 Of 8 Things You Must Do To Build Maximum Muscle Mass
#4 - Keep a detailed record of every workout that you perform.
This muscle-building technique is absolutely critical to your success and forms the underlying basis for your entire workout plan. When it comes to structuring a proper approach in the gym, this is the most important overall factor, bar none.
Everyone is so obsessed with all of the specific principles in the gym (such as exercise selection, rep ranges, which days to spend in the gym, how many sets to perform etc.) that they fail to see the big picture.
Regardless of what type of approach you are taking in the gym, the underlying factor for success is progression.
You see, our bodies build muscle because of an adaptive response to the environment. When you go to the gym, you break down your muscle fibers by training with weights. Your body senses this as a potential threat to its survival and will react accordingly by rebuilding the damaged fibers larger and stronger in order to protect against any possible future threat.
Therefore, in order to make continual gains in muscle size and strength, you must focus on progressing in the gym from week to week.
Progression can take 2 main forms:
a) Increasing the amount of weight lifted on a specific exercise.
b) Increasing the number of reps performed with a given weight on a given exercise.
If you’re able to improve on at least one of the above factors each week in the gym, your body will be given continual incentive to grow larger and stronger.
If you neglect these factors and enter the gym without a concrete plan in mind, you’ll be ignoring the very foundation of the entire muscle growth process.
Your goal is to always be getting better from week to week!
Remove yourself from the typical crowd in the gym who aimlessly toss weights around and endlessly spin their wheels without any logic or rationale behind what they’re doing. If you’re continually using the same weights for the same number of reps, your physique will NOT improve.
I’d suggest using a workout log to track your progress in detail from week to week. You should write down the date, all of the exercises that you performed, the weight that you lifted and the number of reps you were able to execute. The next time you enter the gym, sit down for a minute before your workout and review those numbers. Your goal is to now improve upon all of those figures by either using slightly more weight or performing an additional rep or two.
Don't try to improve by leaps and bounds every single time you workout, but rather focus on making small, steady increases. Over the course of a few months, those small increases will add up a lot more than you think, and your body will continually adapt and grow to the ever-increasing stress.
When I first started training, I was able to squat 85 pounds for about 6 reps. A very small amount of weight, yes, but by simply focusing on adding slightly more weight and reps from week to week, my squat is now closer to 400 pounds for 6 reps.
Don’t worry about where you’re starting off, because as long as you place your entire focus in the gym on progression those numbers will shoot up faster than you could imagine.
MuscleGainTruth.com
Best regards,
Sean Nalewanyj
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