Truth About Muscle Growth

Most people think that muscles are made in the gym. Well the truth is they are not. Let me explain, in the gym when we are lifting we are actually tearing muscle down. The muscles do not start to build (repair themselves) until we are at rest. Also they need the right nutrition to start this process.

We have to remember that muscles have a memory, and our body does not like to have the muscles any bigger than they need to be. When I say that muscles have memory I mean that they figure out the strength they need to get us through our day. For example I was a cabinet builder many years ago and I lifted material all day long most of it very heavy. The first few weeks I was doing this job I was sore every night and my arms started getting bigger. After some time had passed I stopped getting bigger, why you ask. The reason why I was not getting bigger is that my muscles figured out that I had all the mass I needed to do my job. Now the reason they do not continue to grow is easy, the body has to use more energy to maintain bigger muscles. Which explains why people tell you to lose fat not lean muscle mass. So in essence the bigger the muscles the more fat we burn in a day. This is also why it is easier in most cases for males to lose weight than females. This is also why it is easier to lose muscle mass, but so hard to gain it.

Let's start with what happens when we go to the gym. Once we start lifting heavy weights the muscle group you are working gets small tears in it which is called micro trauma. What the body does now is it not only repairs the damage that the gym did, but also adds a layer of muscle fiber to try to keep this from happening again. So as the extra layers build up we see the muscles getting bigger. You have to remember that our bodies have a survival mode they adapt and over come to stay alive. This process of adding extra layers of muscle to existing layers of muscle is one of those situations that the survival mode kicks in to prevent injury.

Nutrition is a big part in the repair of the muscles. One reason is if we do not feed the body atrophy will set in. Most of us think of atrophy being caused by not moving for long periods of time. For example being bed ridden, but there is another kind atrophy and that is from malnutrition. In this instance if we starve the body and there is no food or fat for the body to consume, than the body has to consume muscle to survive. An example of this is a person that suffers from anorexia; they have little muscle lift do to lack of food to feed the muscles. The key macro nutrient to feed the muscle here is protein. How protein works is that it is broke down in our system to amino acids which is what the muscles need for repair. The essential amino acids or branch chain amino acids or BCAA's are the ones that we are interested in, there are two other forms of amino acids that have different functions in the body. The BCAA help to build and repair our muscles. So it only makes sense that if we have micro trauma to the muscles, than the more protein we consume the faster and stronger the muscle repairs. As with anything, there are limits to how much protein to take in per meal. There is not an exact number of grams of protein is too much at this time. I usually figure that if you stay between 30 and 40 grams per meal you will be fine.

The second most important part of muscle growth is rest. If you are moving around and using your muscles how can they repair themselves? The other thing to remember here is that when we are at rest (mainly during sleeping periods) this is when our hormone levels are elevated, such as growth hormone. So of course this is when we are going to have the best chance for muscle gain. It is usually when the protein has a chance to do its best work. Also the longer you sleep the faster the repair. So as you have always heard try to get at least 6 to 8 hours of sleep each night for the best results.

So this is why I say that muscles are not built in the gym. Yes, we need the gym to tear them down to build them back up, but they are made after the gym when we eat and sleep. As always train smarter not harder.

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2 Telltale Signs That Your Muscle Building Workout Worked

When we first embark on a muscle building regime, everything comes so easy. We gain a lot of strength and muscle size quickly and it seems as if we have developed a touch which would make even Midas jealous. Then, before we know it, it all seems to grind to a halt: Our beginner gains are over, and this is where the winners continue and the losers quit.

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.

If you're struggling to build muscle then I urge you to get my free hardgainer course where you will discover my former skinny-guy secrets to fast muscle growth and learn how to overcome your hardgainer genetics: Get My Free Hardgainer Course Now >> Read similar posts:

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Build Muscle Power Without Bulk

Not every person lifting weights in the gym are doing so to achieve a powerful looking masculine physique. While there are many guys (and girls) pumping iron and taking all manner of supplements to primarily increase the size of their most prominent and visible muscle groups, others are lifting and eating in order to build pure muscle power, and these people don’t like nor want “bulk”.

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.

If you're struggling to build muscle then I urge you to get my free hardgainer course where you will discover my former skinny-guy secrets to fast muscle growth and learn how to overcome your hardgainer genetics: Get My Free Hardgainer Course Now >> Read similar posts:

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The 2 Most Vital Muscle Building Exercise Categories

The task of selecting the best muscle building exercises is simply summed up by many as ‘choose the exercises which allow you to lift the heaviest weights’. This may make sense, and it is true in part, but there’s a massive piece of the puzzle missing here which will be explained in this article to hopefully talk you out of taking an inferior path in your training. It’s important you understand the importance of the 2 main categories of exercise and how and when to exploit them – or you won’t get anywhere near as big and strong as you could.

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.

If you're struggling to build muscle then I urge you to get my free hardgainer course where you will discover my former skinny-guy secrets to fast muscle growth and learn how to overcome your hardgainer genetics: Get My Free Hardgainer Course Now >> Read similar posts:

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Why Regularly Changing Muscle Building Exercises Is Critical

It’s incredible to think that even today some people still scoff at the idea of changing exercises regularly in order to continue building muscle. “Why would you need to, do the muscles have little brains which know what you did over the last few weeks?” they ask sarcastically. Others say it’s merely psychological – that on some level you become bored of what you’re doing and begin to put less and less effort into it and sabotage yourself because you desire change. What really happens when you don’t change exercises, if anything?

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.

If you're struggling to build muscle then I urge you to get my free hardgainer course where you will discover my former skinny-guy secrets to fast muscle growth and learn how to overcome your hardgainer genetics: Get My Free Hardgainer Course Now >> Read similar posts:

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Teen Muscle Building - 3 Tips to Gain 20 Pounds of Muscle Now

There are a lot of teen muscle building tips online, but like all other bodybuilding tips, most are garbage. Here are 3 guideline to help you get ripped NOW:

#1) Eat more often

There's a popular myth floating around that the way to get ripped is to restrict you're the amount of food you eat. This supposedly reduces your body fat and therefore improves your physique.

Sounds logical--but NOT true

Eating less is not the answer-it might even give you MORE body fat. Eating MORE FREQUENTLY-but not necessarily more in quantity-is the way to go.

Eating 5-7 times a day is ideal because it keeps the metabolism flowing more smoothly. If you can't reach this amount than just try eating at least 4 times.

#2) Restrict protein intake

Sure some is necessary-but you don't need 100 grams a day... or whatever ridiculous number most teen muscle building tips recommend.

Too much protein creates MORE body fat

This is why many people have the frustrating experience of eating red meat, eggs, fish, and protein shakes all day long--and getting fatter.

Also MAKE SURE you get it from whole food sources-this is mandatory. This protein is far superior in quality to anything you get from processed foods or supplements.

#3) Get plenty of rest

A lot of people don't realize the impact of sleep-but it's IMPERATIVE you get 8 hours a night. The more time you sleep, the more energy you have-and the better your workout performance will be.

Decide how much muscle you want to gain in pounds-and write it down. Knowing it in your head is NOT enough.

Why not?

Because writing it down-preferably with a pencil and paper-ingrains it in your subconscious, and you almost can't help but get closer to your goals as a result. Implement these teen muscle building tips and you will get results soon.

Tired of exercises that don't work? Discover the scientific way to gain 20 pounds of rock hard muscle WITHOUT drugs or supplements by visiting http://www.gethugemusclesnow.info.