For beginner’s, building big muscles may seem as simple as buying a gym membership and pumping up each body-part once a week while slamming back protein shakes and eating as much chicken and tuna as possible. On a superficial level this just barely covers the basics of a good workout plan. Unfortunately the fact of the matter is, your monthly gym membership, regular weight training workouts and casual eating habits aren’t going to cut it if you want to build massive muscles and surpass the average gym rat physique!
Here are three simple, but essential steps that any beginner can implement for quick and quality muscle gains:
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Live and Breath the Squat and the Deadlift
Squatting and Deadlifting are two compound exercises that should be the staple of your workout regiment. Known as two of the Big Three exercises that are responsible for power and mass muscle building (the third being bench press), no other two exercises stimulate as many muscle fibers as these two. The deadlift and squat both activate approximately 75% of our entire musculature. Your traps, shoulders, arms, forearms, back, gluts, hams, quads, calves and abs are all used. Without them, you do not have a chance of becoming the bodybuilder you one day envision yourself to be. This step also applies to %100 to females, squatting and deadlifting will only help accentuate your curves giving you awesome legs and a nice firm rear end!
On top of almost full muscle stimulation, the level of intensity required to perform squats and deadlifts forces your body to release greater volumes of growth hormone, which results in bigger muscles all over your body. This spillover effect results in strength and size gains in all you other lifts! Squatting and deadlifting are especially critical for hard gainers and ectomorphs who need a spike in natural growth hormone levels to jump start muscle growth.
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Focus On Compound Exercises
Although the first step is about the two most important compound exercises it is necessary to emphasize again that compound or multi-joint exercises and movements should be your main focus, especially at first when your primary goal is to add slabs of muscle to your physique. What is going to utilize more muscle fibers? A heavy bench press or cable cross overs? A standing military press or front raises? A chin up or bicep curl? The answer should be clear even if you are new to weightlifting. If your goal is get big muscles than compound lifts are not optional, they are mandatory. Exercises like squats, leg presses, deadlifts, bench presses, barbell rows, pull ups, chin ups, over head presses, and dips should be the staples of your workouts. They stimulate the most muscle fibers and force your body to release greater volumes of growth hormone.
That being said, isolation exercises are still very useful and should be incorporated as well, but not at the expense of compound exercises.
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Monitor Your Rest Periods
Keeping track of rest periods between sets is an often neglected aspect of working out. Next time you are in the gym, take a gander at others training and see if they ever monitor their recovery time. You will find that almost nobody does! This is a mistake! Stop watches are not just for endurance athletes, they should be used by every person who is serious about building big muscles and gaining strength.
Training for muscle size typically requires shorter resting periods of 30-90 seconds, whereas maximal strength training requires longer rest periods of 3-5 minutes in between sets. These are template rest periods and may differ from person to person, but they exist for a reason. If you take too long you won’t be giving your metabolic system an honest workout and your muscles won’t be stimulated in an optimal fashion for muscle growth. Likewise if your goal is strength, taking too short of a break doesn’t allow your nervous system, cardiovascular system and muscle fibers enough time to recover from the previous set.
Monitoring your rest time is also a good way to measure progress. How would you know if you are truly stronger if you do not monitor your rest period? For example, let’s say last week you bench pressed 135 pounds for three sets of ten and this week you bench pressed 145 pounds for three sets of ten. Assuming the rest period was identical for both workouts, this is a tremendous improvement and a measurable sign of improvement! However, if you took an extra minute or two between each set on the recent workout this means that you did not actually become stronger. You just had a longer rest period!
Conclusion
Building big muscles for a better physique is not as easy as showing up at the gym, throwing around some weights and chugging back a few protein shakes. If it was easy every other guy in the gym would be a bodybuilder. Applying these three simple steps to your beginner training program will guarantee that you get the most out of your gym sessions.
