Real Muscle Real Fast!
by: nhu7
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Word Count: 498
Adding muscle seems to be a mystery to most, yet if you pick up a copy of any fitness or bodybuilding magazine and you'll almost always see a headline like this: "Gain 15 Pounds of Muscle in 6 Weeks."
If it were so easy you'd have millions of muscle-heads running around. Even though building muscle tissue can be a challenge, I'm going to outline some very specific principles that can pack on the muscle faster than you can throw away that copy of "Muscle and Fiction"!
Before we get started though I want to clarify a few points.
The ridiculous claims made by most fitness and bodybuilding magazines are only there to get you to buy that issue - nothing more!
If you are serious about strength training you need to be reading books and NOT cheesy fitness magazines
Ok? here we go.
In order to add muscle tissue you must force the body to add it. Your body won't just add a pound of muscle just because you followed a 3-set workout that you read about in Muscle + Fitness. You need to give the body a reason to make improvements - in this case add muscle tissue.
You have to provide what I call a "stimulus". This can be done in many ways and I'll address a few in just a moment. Basically, you need to force the body to add muscle by subjecting it to levels of stress it is not used to. Some methods are more obvious than others but all can work. Here are a few examples of how this can be done effectively.
First, the basic and common methods:
Increase weight or resistance
Perform more repetitions
Perform more sets
Move the resistance slower
Rest less between sets and exercises
Now for the more advanced methods:
Pre-exhaust (perform an isolation exercise first and immediately continue with no rest on a compound movement. ex. chest flye and then chest press)
Static holds (hold the resistance in the hardest position of the range of motion. ex. the top position during a leg extension)
Partial reps in weak range (perform a portion of the rep where you are weakest. ex. the top half of a rep of leg extensions)
Strip-set (after a warm-up set, perform 3 sets back to back with no rest while starting with the heaviest weight possible and each time strip off some weight to allow you to continue)
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About the Author
Jesse Cannone is a certified personal trainer, nutritionist, and best-selling fitness author. Sign up to receive his free email course, Muscle Building Tips which is full of powerful tips and techniques for maximizing strength and size. http://www.seriousstrengthtraining.com
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