Three ‘Little-Known’ Muscle Building Tips Part 1
1. Body Weight Training
This was once a popular muscle building technique but is very commonly ignored. Why? Perhaps because most body weight training is simply hard and can put a dent in your precious ego! As far as I am concerned, if you can not work with your own body weight than you have no freaken business using external loading such as barbells and dumbbells.
It’s incredible how many attempt to use heavy weights with a microscopic range of motion but can’t do a set of pushups, a squat to the floor or even one chin up. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a place for external loading with heavy weights but not until you have the ability to master the following bench marks:
Males should aim for 1 set of 80 pushups, 1 set of 20 chin ups, 1 set of 20 1-leg squats, 1 set of 40 dips and 1 set of 20 pull ups.
Females should aim for 1 set of 40 push ups, 1 set of 5-10 chin ups, 1 set of 10 1-leg squats, 1 set of 10-15 dips and 1 set of 3-5 pull ups.
These standards will ensure a solid foundation of general fitness and muscular endurance and lead to building muscle mass more easily in the following stages of your weight training program.
2. Flip Your Program Upside Down Every 3 Weeks
This is an extremely powerful tip to building muscle mass, not to mention one of the easiest tricks to ensure your body side-steps plateaus forever. Consider that you have been training your chest shoulders and triceps every Monday. In you next phase, three weeks later, you should do the complete opposite. You will train your triceps, shoulders than chest on Friday. This will prevent plateaus because each muscle group will have an opportunity to train completely fresh. Let’s say you are training your back, biceps, forearms and abs on Friday. Than you will train your abs, forearms, biceps, and back on Monday (in the opposite sequence). You will literally switch everything upside down. Again, this will ensure that these muscles receive an opportunity to train first in the week when your body is the most fresh.
You will curse my name when you blow the heck out of the smaller muscles first and than train the larger muscle groups last. Yes, I know this months issue of Bodybuilders Digest said to never train the smaller muscle groups before your larger muscle groups. I have heard it before so stop analyzing, trust me and give it a try. You be the judge and don’t be surprised if you see new levels of muscle mass and strength after this one technique.
3. Spend More Time At The Grocery Store
If you are serious about building muscle, accept the fact that you will need to spend more time than you do right now in the grocery store. Have you ever opened the fridge for something to eat and all you found was Aunt Wilma’s Thanksgiving turkey leftovers with mold on it? Ever gone into the cub boards and discover only a few leftover bags of potato chips from last weeks Super Bowl party?
To ensure a optimal environment for building muscle and fat loss you must ensure your cub boards and fridge are constantly stocked. This will mean more frequent trips to the grocery store. Chuck the crap that is in your kitchen right now and replace it with good stuff and keep on replacing it. Don’t ever let that supply of good food run low.
1. Body Weight Training
This was once a popular muscle building technique but is very commonly ignored. Why? Perhaps because most body weight training is simply hard and can put a dent in your precious ego! As far as I am concerned, if you can not work with your own body weight than you have no freaken business using external loading such as barbells and dumbbells.
It’s incredible how many attempt to use heavy weights with a microscopic range of motion but can’t do a set of pushups, a squat to the floor or even one chin up. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a place for external loading with heavy weights but not until you have the ability to master the following bench marks:
Males should aim for 1 set of 80 pushups, 1 set of 20 chin ups, 1 set of 20 1-leg squats, 1 set of 40 dips and 1 set of 20 pull ups.
Females should aim for 1 set of 40 push ups, 1 set of 5-10 chin ups, 1 set of 10 1-leg squats, 1 set of 10-15 dips and 1 set of 3-5 pull ups.
These standards will ensure a solid foundation of general fitness and muscular endurance and lead to building muscle mass more easily in the following stages of your weight training program.
2. Flip Your Program Upside Down Every 3 Weeks
This is an extremely powerful tip to building muscle mass, not to mention one of the easiest tricks to ensure your body side-steps plateaus forever. Consider that you have been training your chest shoulders and triceps every Monday. In you next phase, three weeks later, you should do the complete opposite. You will train your triceps, shoulders than chest on Friday. This will prevent plateaus because each muscle group will have an opportunity to train completely fresh. Let’s say you are training your back, biceps, forearms and abs on Friday. Than you will train your abs, forearms, biceps, and back on Monday (in the opposite sequence). You will literally switch everything upside down. Again, this will ensure that these muscles receive an opportunity to train first in the week when your body is the most fresh.
You will curse my name when you blow the heck out of the smaller muscles first and than train the larger muscle groups last. Yes, I know this months issue of Bodybuilders Digest said to never train the smaller muscle groups before your larger muscle groups. I have heard it before so stop analyzing, trust me and give it a try. You be the judge and don’t be surprised if you see new levels of muscle mass and strength after this one technique.
3. Spend More Time At The Grocery Store
If you are serious about building muscle, accept the fact that you will need to spend more time than you do right now in the grocery store. Have you ever opened the fridge for something to eat and all you found was Aunt Wilma’s Thanksgiving turkey leftovers with mold on it? Ever gone into the cub boards and discover only a few leftover bags of potato chips from last weeks Super Bowl party?
To ensure a optimal environment for building muscle and fat loss you must ensure your cub boards and fridge are constantly stocked. This will mean more frequent trips to the grocery store. Chuck the crap that is in your kitchen right now and replace it with good stuff and keep on replacing it. Don’t ever let that supply of good food run low.
NEXT ARTICLE
How To Get Huge Muscular Arms? Build Big Triceps Exercises
So you want to get big huge muscular arms. Do not ignore your triceps exercises.
In gyms everywhere, you will see people doing bicep curls after bicep curls. If someone were to ask them to show their muscles, they will most likely flex their biceps. How about you? Well, since you are reading this article, then you must have known that to own huge muscular arms, you must build huge triceps.
Do you know why? It is because your tricep is 2/3 the size of your arm. Just imagine, your bicep is only 30% while your tricep takes up 60%. So if you are neglecting your triceps, you are neglecting 60% of your arms while working on the miniscule 30% called the biceps. Of course you still need to work on your biceps for that well rounded balanced muscular look.
Furthermore, since your triceps are involved in many other body building exercises such as military presses, bench presses and many other exercises, having strong triceps will help you to lift heavier in those other exercises and thus will be encouraging further muscular growth in other body parts.
Your triceps consist of three main muscle whereas your biceps has only 2, the their respective names begins with “tri” and “bi”. That is another reason why your triceps should be bigger.
Tricep Excercise Form
So you have been training your triceps but do not see good results. It could possibly be due to your movement during your reps where the exercises are not performed to its full range of motion. You see, the mass concentration of tricep muscles is at the top of the arm and therefore you have to stretch your arms beyond what you feel that is natural in order to reach the deep fibers of your tricep muscles.
On top of that your form must be strict with minimum elbow movements when performing tricep exercises like skull crushes and tricep extensions. These exercises reach deep into your triceps muscles when you do it with full range of movement.
Tricep exercises like close grip bench press, diamond pushups and cable pushdowns do not give you that range of movement as the range of these exercises are limited. This is not to say that you don’t do these exercises, just concentrate on them less.
So in order to build big huge triceps, you must feel the pull of your tricep muscles when the weight is at its lowest position before pulling them back.
Want those big muscular arms? Then do not forget to work on your triceps hard and do it in good form.