Muscle Mass Construction

The best kept secrets are those you never tell. I love that line from the Joker in the Dark Knight where he says something like 'If you are good at something, you never do it for free.' However, when it comes to training there is really no rock left unturned. All the secrets are out. You can Google until your hearts content and with a little common sense and reasoning you can find proven methods to lose fat and gain muscle.

While many will claim you can do both is most often best to pick a path. Either you are focusing on gaining muscle or losing fat. Keep in mind that if your goal is gaining muscle you can actually lower body fat percentage with out losing an ounce of fat. As the muscle percentage goes up that means a lower body fat percentage.

So, now I want to talk about muscle gain! Briefly, here are my top 5 tips for gaining muscle. Not that I made them up, but these are the top 5 things on my mind when putting my program together.

1 - Training Intensity: I believe in pushing my muscles as far as they will allow me too. What is the point of being able to bench 315 for 15 if you are capable of pushing it for 23? I only really count reps on warm up sets. Then it is all out failure. I push until I can no longer physically move the weight. Often at that point I will rack it, take 10 deep breaths, and then go right back at it to failure again. I love rest pause and statics and whatever I can do to push that muscle beyond failure. If I am not gasping for air, unable to lift the weight, and sweating my butt off then I am not training at the intensity I need to be. Additionally I am constantly looking to improve my strength and move the weights up even if only for the 2.5 lb plates. Progress is paramount!

2 - Rest and Recovery: With such high intensity workouts I only train three times a week and allow my body plenty of time to recover. This is when the magic really happens. Muscle does not grow when you lift weights. It grows when you recover from lifting the weights. So if you never take time to recover then the muscles will not grow. Some try to isolate muscle groups and design a split in such a way that they train everyday. Even if the same muscle is not worked consecutive days I feel this is still counter productive in most cases. Every work out you tax your Central Nervous System and, like your muscles, the CNS needs to recover. If you work Bis today and tris tomorrow, your bis may be able to recover, but your CNS will not. I find much more progress with adequate rest and recovery.

3 - Nutrition: Eat to grow! Most people seem to know this, but living it is certainly a challenge, especially with a busy schedule. To gain muscle I will look to get at minimum 400 grams of protein per day. Just before my current contest prep I was as heavy as 248 lbs. So at 2 grams per lb of bodyweight... yeah alot of protein! And carbs are equally important. So I will match those quantities in carbs as well. The issue is, if I am not prepared it is too easy to eat out or grab fast food and now those nutrients are all accompanied by excesses of FAT! So my general rule is prepare my meals through out the week and I weigh all my food. Then the weekends I allow myself to be a little free with my nutrition. Again, contest prep is a very different ball game.

4 - Supplementation: Since most of my training budget is spent on actual food I am fortunate enough to have The Fit Factory sponsoring most of my supplement needs. The supps I focus on are mainly for post workout recovery. I will generally use a protein and volugro. Pre-contest I change out the Volugro for regular Creatine monohydrate.

5 - Cardio: Many really only consider cardio when it comes to a fat loss protocol. However, cardio also benefits the body by helping it to become more efficient at clearing metabolic waste. In short this translates to more strength during training. This is what may allow you to get that one last rep or hold that static a little longer. High Intensity Interval Training benefits to lung capacity may be most greatly noticed on leg day!