Article

How To Build Muscle

Topic: Fitness and ExerciseBy Jimmy SmithPublished February 13, 2008

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How to build muscle? Is the question that I am often askednabout. While most people want the magic pill, what theynreally need are a few simple tweaks to their trainingnprograms that I am about to outline.

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

A) People can focus on both full body training and bodynpart splits. We've knocked training "arms" for too long butnthe only thing that will make us grow is training a musclenwith a big amount of volume. At that same time, we can alsonuse an upper body day to get stronger. It is the best ofnboth worlds B) People can sleep more. It sounds simple butngoing to bed by 10:30 and not getting up before 6 am willngo a long way in helping us build muscle.

2) Train your legs more. Leg training is so essential forngrowing muscle everywhere. By training your legs hard younraise the anabolic signals in your body that tell you tongrow. Nothing stimulates more muscle heavy squats orndeadlifts. They raise your natural muscle buildingnhormones, which cause you to grow

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

4) Use this secret trick. First, if everyone isn't doingnpull-ups or squats then they need to do it right now. Mynbest piece of advice is to tell everyone to do a back offnset per exercise. For example, if you are training on thenbench 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 whichnwill 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 repsndogma. While that will work for a certain period of time,nit won't work forever. In my opinion, the best way tondesign your training for growth is to use 4-6 week spurtsnof volume phases where you train with sets of 3-4 and repsnof 8-15. For the next 4-6 weeks, you should go with morensets of 4-6 and lower reps of 5-8. Both of these methodsnwill lay you to have both muscle and strength gains. nn nn

Article author

About the Author

Jimmy Smith,CSCS, is the author of the Muscle Bible and isna training advisor for Men's Fitness and Maximum Fitnessnmagazines.His Muscle Bible program has helped thousands of people gain muscle. His muscle building course guarantees that younwill add 10 pounds of lean muscle onto your frame without drugs, expensive supplements or by spending all day in the gym or you money back plus some. His muscle building secrets can be found atn …www.ineedmuscle.comnnn n

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