Everybody who is visiting the gym has a goal in mind. This article is about one of the most common goals for every gym enthusiast – how to build muscle and size. Bodybuilding is a sport displays a level of aesthetics and muscle size. From aesthetic point of view, everybody have their own conception about how well toned body should look like. It is widely accepted that, for a body to be considered visually appealing and aesthetic, it must have visible muscle mass with very little body fat. The process of gaining muscle size goes thru 3 main phases, which if followed correctly can guarantee you good results. Those phases are: Developing and increasing will power, Workout plan, Meal plan. For the best results all 3 of them have to be applied together.
- Developing and increasing will power
It’s not a secret to anyone that in order to achieve every goal we need to put our best effort and consistency. To maintain a good speed and dynamic of what we started, keeping our motivation up, it is necessary to create a certain way of thinking. If we don’t pay enough attention to this phase of the process the chance of success is decreasing. Increasing our will power is long and complicated journey. It is not a temporary phenomenon that will accompany the fulfilment of our goal and then we will forget about it. Will power is not just a tool to achieve the task at hand. If we keep thinking of it like that, we will lose everything that is accomplished shortly after the goal is achieved. It is important that we start to consider that developing and increasing our volitional abilities is a part of our constant way of thinking and it is a part of our personality in general. An effective way in the long run to improve our volitional abilities is to take notes of what we are doing at the gym. For example – how many repetitions we are doing in a set, how much weight we are putting on the bar and etc. The efficiency of this activity is very often underestimated but in a long term it can guarantee results. At any time we can look at our notes and they can gives us information how close we are to the final goal. With this method we illustrate and arrange our ideas, which helps us to clarify our plans.
- Workout plan.
– High intensity workout – These type of workout includes exercises that are done in supersets. Another popular method that is included in this group is – increasing repetitions in one set with optimal weight. The idea behind high intensity training is to teach us to do our working sets under the conditions of so-called ‘”burn”. One of most effective way to increase our volitional abilities is to try to do more repetitions coincided with a “burn”.
– Heavy lifting – It is important to note that this type of workout requires high level of preparation. With this method we have to be very careful. If we underestimate it and didn’t pick up the right approach to it in the long term it may lead to injuries. This type of training strategy can be used just to „test our limits”, but it is not a method we can practice for a long period of time. The purpose of heavy load workouts is to reach maximum muscle hypertrophy. When muscle hypertrophy occurs we tear apart small muscle fibers, then the body repairs them and make them stronger than before. This process in fact makes muscles grow.
– Workout with negative reps – One extremely efficient way of stimulating muscle growth is to do our repetition very slowly and concentrated. This may be quite painful, which is why we need a high level of volitional culture, which we have already talk about. The purpose of this method is – by making slow repetitions we trigger the breaking of as many muscle fibers as possible, and activate as many muscle groups as possible.
– Meal plan – Success is an aggregation of many factors, so achieving it cannot be done without looking at the last piece of the puzzle – food. The proper caloric balance is fundamental for our physic. The reach of our goal depends on how and what we feed ourselves. If we want to gain muscle mass it is important to realize that we have to work consistently on that idea forward in time. To increase the size and volume of our muscles in the right way, it is extremely important to clear our menu from empty calories. Otherwise, the gained kilograms will be dead weight, which will make our body look not so toned and not very aesthetic. In addition to that, the dead weight can lead to health problems in time. The macronutrients that we are using as fuel is important to come from good quality food which are well absorbed by the body. To start gaining muscle mass our caloric balance should not be increase more that 300-350 calories per day. Anything rather that that would rather push us a step backwards, that‘s way it is important to be combinative, analytical and, above all, patient. Success goes to those of us who can wait!
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