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Mens Fitness: How to add muscle size
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In the land of men, size really does matter. Men have been pumping iron for decades with one goal in mind-adding size to the muscles-especially the biceps. The bigger the guns the better. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mike Tyson come to mind when thinking of men with muscles. Men head for the weights with the goal of building muscle mass like these muscle icons. So how does a man add size?
The key to muscle building is very basic. It doesn't come in a bottle and doesn't cost any money aside from the gym membership that is being paid. The key to increasing muscle size is simply consistently increasing the weight and lifting with a purpose. The general basics of adding size and definition are:
- Give the muscles a day of rest after a workout to allow the muscle to repair and rebuild
- When lifting for strength lift heavier weights with shorter repetitions
- When lifting for endurance lift lighter weights with higher repetitions
- Change the workouts to "confuse the muscles" every 4-6 weeks
- Work opposing muscle groups
1. A day of rest: It is ok to lift every day, but not the same muscle groups. When lifting weights, the strain of the weight is actually causing little tears to the muscle fibers and 24 hours is needed for the body to repair those tears to the tissue. It is actually this repair process that is building the muscle fibers and will result in greater size. An example weight lifting schedule might be: upper body on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and lower body on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday or a full body workout on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and cardio on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
2 . Strength equals heavy weight and decreased reps. When lifting for the purpose of increasing strength lift heavier weights and use lower repetitions (8-10 repetitions). The term "heavier weight" varies with the individual and the muscle group and should be able to be lifted 5-6 times without the risk of injury and bringing in the help of accessory muscles to lift the weight. For example, when doing a bicep curl if the back is being arched and the hips are being used to help bring up the weight -the weight is too heavy.
3. Endurance equals lighter weight and higher reps. When lifting for the purpose of increased endurance use a lighter weight and increase the number of repetitions to 12-15 or 20. Lighter weight and higher reps will also increase muscle size and it is useful to switch from endurance to strength workouts to provide a new kind of stimulus to the muscle fibers.
4. Muscle have memory. The human body is very smart and adapts quickly. The muscles will quickly adapt to a workout; therefore, if the same routine is used with no change or new stimulus results will be slower and progress will soon come to a halt. There are several ways to change a routine. Increase the weight, increase the repetitions or sets, increase or decrease the speed of the exercise, add power or ballistic training, find a new exercise for the same muscle group.
5. Work opposing muscle groups. The muscles work in pairs of agonist (the working muscle) and antagonist (the opposing muscle). A good example of this is the biceps and triceps. When the biceps are contracting the triceps are extending or relaxing. When lifting, if the opposing muscle is not worked, muscle imbalance can occur and this results in injury. Work front to back and inner and outer to cover opposing muscle groups to avoid injury.
Building muscle size requires consistently increasing the workload on the muscles. When the muscles are overloaded on a continual basis and given the proper time to recover the muscle will respond with hypertrophied muscle fibers. Work the muscles in several different ways to give constant overload for larger more defined muscles.
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