44 Muscle Building Workout Tips
1) Before you even get to the gym make sure you have a muscle building workout plan. You can’t get there and just wing it if you want to see serious results.
2) Psyche yourself up on the way to the gym by visualizing the workout in your head. See yourself going through each of your exercises and dominating the weights.
3) If you train at a public gym, where it’s more thank likely that they will be playing Usher and similar R&B tunes that will make you wanna clean out your ears with a gun, make sure you have some good training songs loaded on your iPod.
4) Train 3-4 days per week. Which one is optimal? Three always works best for beginners. For everyone else you need to determine what your schedule and recovery ability will allow. If you play a pick up sport regularly throughout the year or participate in kickboxing or surf a few days per week, three days is probably your best bet. If you do no other physical activity outside of the gym (no sprints, no walking, biking, nothing) than four days might be a better idea for you.
5) Whichever option you choose, always limit your workouts to an hour, tops. Excluding the warm up, the main strength training portion of the workout should never take more than 45 minutes. Use a stopwatch or GymBoss Interval Timer to keep yourself in check.
6) Stick with a muscle building workout plan for 12 weeks, minimum. The best way to see zero results is by jumping from one routine to the next from week to week.
7) Start each workout with a full body dynamic warm up to fire up the CNS, lubricate the joints and activate the muscles; especially those that might not always fire properly or in the right order.
8] If you have nagging injuries stay covered up and dress warm for your workouts. I always wear a few layers unless it’s over 80 degrees in the gym.
9) Knee and elbow sleeves can also be a great friend to the older beat up lifter.
squat rack21 44 Muscle Building Workout Tips
Spend most of your time inside this box.
10) The bird dog is an underrated but awesome exercise to include in a pre workout warm up. Give it a try.
11) Foam rolling before a big squat or deadlift workout can be a great thing.
12) Don’t over use the foam roller, however.
13) The less experienced you are the fewer exercises you should use.
14) The more advanced you are the more exercises you can use. But you don’t have to.
15) Spend a large portion of your gym time in the power rack. This is your temple, where the greatest amounts of size and strength are built.
16) Don’t skimp on your warm ups. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make. Do a good number of warm up sets, always being sure to explode each and every rep. If 405 is your starting weight on deadlifts, doing 135×5, 225×3, 315×1 and then starting is not an effective warm up. Multiple sets of low reps will better prepare you for the task at hand.
17) Beginners should use “straight weight” or “sets across.” That means that you pick a weight you could do comfortably for whatever the set and rep scheme calls for (3×10, 4×8, 5×5, etc.) and stick with that same weight throughout.
18) Advanced lifters are usually better off “working up.” That means you do a bunch of warm up sets and “work up sets” until you get to one or two heavy sets and maybe some back off sets.
19) Rarely will I have advanced guys do more than one hard work set at the same weight in the same rep range.
20) If you want to develop explosive speed and power, begin your workouts with some type of throw, jump or Olympic lift for 3-10 sets of 1-6 reps. Even if your goal is just size and strength, doing this is a good way to fire up your CNS and make the rest of your workout more effective.
21) Speed work should usually precede maximal strength work but not always. There are situations when the rules can be broken.
158340 44 Muscle Building Workout Tips
Captain Kirk used linear periodization with great success.
22) To develop maximal strength, use a big compound barbell lift and work up to 3-5 heavy sets across of 5 reps (beginners) or a top end set of 1-5 reps (advanced lifters). Advanced guys can even go as high as eight reps for maximal strength work at the beginning of a long cycle a la Ed Coan or Kirk Karwoski. I have used this system with many clients and have had great success- starting with eights and working down to singles.
23) Linear periodization still works. But you have to know how to do it properly. A lot of people screw it up.
24) One way to make linear periodization more effective is to make sure the cycle doesn’t last more than 12 weeks and don’t have too drastic of a reduction in reps from week 1 to week 12. Rep range for assistance exercises doesn’t necessarily have to be periodized the same way the main lifts do.
25) Don’t train for more than 4-8 weeks straight without taking a deload week.
26) There’s a difference between grip work and forearm work. Grip work is very stressful and can not be done all the time. Forearm work is not very stressful at all and can be done quite frequently. Of course, there is some overlap so you need to pick and choose the right methods and exercises.
27) Using Fat Gripz helps you get both grip and forearm work in without adding any extra training time.
28) Try to use as many bodyweight exercises as possible for assistance work. Instead of cable rows do inverted TRX rows. Instead of leg presses do split squats. Instead of pushdowns do dips.
29) Incorporate odd objects like anvils and sandbags, and strongman type exercises to build real world, functional strength and stability. If you could only pick one farmers walks would be the best.
30) Always strive for maximal muscle stimulation with minimal joint stress.
31) In theory you should be able to do full body workouts forever and make great gains. But there will come a time when the joint stress simply makes it impossible. At that point you have no choice but to reduce your frequency to twice per week instead of three times.
32) Having said that, some muscle groups or body parts will always be able to tolerate higher frequency, no matter how advanced you are. IMG 6489 44 Muscle Building Workout Tips
33) For example, if you are doing an upper/lower split four times per week it would be perfectly feasible to include some type of pulling/back exercise in there each day for 2-5 sets. The guys at Westside do this quite often.
34) Heavy pressing with big weights, three times per week for months on end, however, would set you up very nicely for shoulder surgery within the year.
35) If you were advanced and dead set on pressing three times per week you could do something like 30 degree incline barbell or dumbbell pressing on Monday, high rep pushup work on Wednesday for just a set or two, and a standing barbell or dumbell press on Friday. That could work. I wouldn’t do it year round, however. And I would probably be prepared for the joint stress to creep in somewhere around the four to five week mark. When that happens you have to cut back to twice weekly, immediately. Don’t try to battle through one more week because at that point it will be too late.
36) Speaking of joint stress, be careful to avoid elbow pain. When your elbows get screwed up you will most likely have to deal with it for years. And whenever you think they have healed you will find some exercise that causes excruciating pain.
37) Never go heavy on extensions and save them for after you have done some dips, close grip benches or pushdowns.
38) Focus on compound movements but don’t be afraid to use some isolation movements if you’re a more advanced lifter. Dips and close grip benches are great but if you need more triceps work you can’t rely only on compound exercises for the simple fact that your shoulders will get destroyed. For this reason you need to add in some pushdowns and extensions from time to time.
39) The main benefit of assistance exercises is they allow you to get in some volume and train the muscle without destroying your joints or your CNS. Sure, the deadlift is a better exercise for your posterior chain than the glute ham raise. But you can’t do more than a few sets of deadlifts per week. If you’re really strong you might not be able to do more than a couple of sets of deadlifts per month. With the glute ham you can hit it every day if need be and there is minimal joint or CNS stress.
roadwarrior hawk 44 Muscle Building Workout Tips40) If you want traps like the late, great Road Warrior Hawk you have to shrug heavy. Whatever you can deadlift for ten reps you should be able to shrug for ten reps; maybe more. I’ve never seen anyone with big traps do light perfect, extreme full range shrugs with a peak contraction. Load the bar up and heave plates.
41) Do high intensity conditioning either immediately after strength training or as a separate workout on the same day, 4-8 hours later. Low intensity conditioning methods can be used on off days. Too much high intensity training is never a good thing, so try to keep it all on the same day and give the body and CNS a chance to rest in between.
42) Before doing anything in the gym always ask yourself a couple questions. Will it help you? How? If you can’t come up with a good answer don’t do it.
43) Your goals and what you do during training should always coincide. If your number one goal is to gain 30 pounds of bodyweight and add 50 pounds each to your bench, squat and deadlift you have to ask yourself how a twenty minute circuit of battling ropes, sled and kettlebell work at the end of each workout will help you.
44) Have fun. At the end of the day most people will not continue to do something for the long haul if it’s not fun. So get a training partner or group, challenge each other, get strong and have fun.
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