So you think you have heard everything there is to know about muscle building? If
you have read everything, tried everything and heard everything about muscle building
but still resemble the silouette of a Calvin Klien model instead of a buff fitness
model than I promise these next three 'little-known' muscle building tips will accelerate
your muscle gains immediately!
4. Never Train More Than 2 Days Consecqutively
But the bodybuilding magazines say to split up my program into 5 seperate days...
Yes, I am more than familiar. I call these 5 day splits 'drug programs.' They treat
your body simply as a 'muscular system' and neglect the other systems such as your
central nervous system, hormonal system and immune system. Each of these systems
have a unique part in muscle growth. Not to mention that these 'drug programs' only
work if coupled with a few thousand dollars a month on drugs.
Just because you trained your chest on Monday does not mean your immune system,
or hormonal system or central nervous system has FULLY recovered. What happens when
you return to the gyn NOT FULLY recovered? Will you be able to lift more weight?
If you are not able to lift more weight than guess what happens to your level of
fitness? It certainly will not go up because you will be depleting your energy reserves
further into a deep, dark hole called 'over-training.' If you can not lift more
weight or 'out-do' yourself from your previous workout than how do you expect to
create any NEW muscle? It is literally impossible. Taking a full rest day every
two days will minimize the chance of overtraining and ensure your energy reserves
are replenished.
5. Go Home If You Are Not Stronger Than Last Workout
Multiple choice question:
Q. You train your chest on Monday and you averaged 4 sets of 8 with 225 pounds on
bench press. This workout would be considered a
personal best. Your following
chest workout, let's say five days later, you come to the gym with great anticipation
to
out-do your last workout. To your disappointment you discover that you
can barely do 4 sets of 8 with 185 pounds this week. What happened?
A. Your body had not fully compensated from the previous workout and required a
longer recovery period.
B. Who cares! You toughed it out and made the most of the workout.
C . Complain to the gym owner that his weight plates are messed up and you want
a refund on your gym membership.
If you picked A than say hurray and pat yourself on the back. The rational decision
would be to admit the recovery error, assess the factors that could of resulted
from not fully recovering (did you take all your supplements, did you sleep enought,
did you follow your nutrition plan etc) and plan for success next time. This is
the 'trial and error' process.
The emotional and irrational trainee would take option B and
slug it out.
Consider what is actually happening when you take this approach to your workouts:
1. You will be using weights within your threshold so your muscles
will simply laugh back at you because there is no new unaccumstomed stress on your
muscles. Remember, your muscles only grow if you give them a reason to.
2. You will be training in the
hole and prolong the period
of time that it takes to come out of the
hole and supercompensate.
3. You will have no
new muscle to work with because you
have not fully recovered or grown bigger so it will be literally impossible to lift
more weight or more reps.
4. You will be using your precious energy reserves, that could
be going towards building muscle, instead to fueling an useless workout.