How To Build Muscle

Many of you have expressed concerns about gaining too much body fat while on such a high calorie diet, and wonder if you should do some aerobic exercise to offset the weight gain.

Absolutely not.

That will be detrimental to gaining muscle. For best results, you either have to train and diet to gain muscle or lose fat. One or the other. If you are a true hardgainer, you cannot do both. If you try, you will not make any substantial progress either way. So, now is the time to gain weight. You will worry about losing fat later.

The fact is that there are no magic pills, powders, foods or exercises that will allow you to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

It all is determined by your genetics and metabolism. Some people can do it, some can’t. If you are naturally thin and have a difficult time gaining weight of any kind, it would be silly of you to think that you will be able to gain muscle while trying to keep your body fat low.

Most skinny guys want to gain more muscle, but are afraid of gaining body fat. They see all the bodybuilder photos and read the stories about people gaining pounds of muscle while losing pounds of fat — They want to do the same. When looking at these photos, you have to remember that most of these people do not have your body type. The majority of them are overweight and want to lose fat, not gain muscle.

‘Well’, you say, ‘What about those people who transformed their bodies? They lost fat and gained muscle’. Yes, but almost all of these people were overweight, or had high levels of body fat. In other words, their metabolisms were, for the most part, slow. They simply dieted and trained for fat loss.

Weight training helped them to tone up and slightly increase their muscle mass by replacing some of the fat with muscle. However, you will never increase your body mass far above your original starting weight on that type of diet.

In other words, even though you gain some muscle, you will actually weight less!

For example, Big Joe weighs 189lbs with 18% body fat. This works out to be 34lbs of fat and 155lbs of muscle. He then goes on a fat loss diet and slowly diets down to a ripped 5% body fat at 168lbs, which is 8.4lbs of fat and 160lbs of muscle. He lost 26lbs of fat, and his weight only went down by 21lbs. So, looking that this we realize that he managed to also gain 5lbs of muscle. You can see that he has more muscle mass than when he started, and he looks totally ripped, but his weight decreased because his main goal was fat loss. He looks much better, and his measurements changed, but he only increased his total weight by five pounds.

If you are very thin, you cannot do this. Yes, your body fat will decrease, and this will also give you more muscle mass, but it will not increase your weight. You will just get much thinner. Big Joe was ‘big’ to begin with; we are not. To get the same results as Big Joe, you must first gain the weight, and then concentrate on losing the body fat later. Joe had the size; he just needed to trim down. We do not have the size to work with, so we have to force our bodies to grow beyond our body’s comfort range. This is the hard part.

This is why if you want to grow beyond your current size, you have to diet for it specifically.

Remember, most of you have extremely fast metabolisms. Gaining weight will be extremely difficult.

The only way you will get bigger is to shock your body.

You must shock your body by:

1. Training with heavy weights, and

2. Eating a lot of calories.

The first shock is with weight training. You must focus on compound free- weight exercises, and lift heavy weights, which will stimulate the largest amount of muscle fibers. Your body responds to this stimulus by increasing your muscle mass.

The second way we must shock our body is by eating more calories than your body is used to. This is the most important factor in gaining mass. When you overload your system with plenty of protein and fats, your body has no other choice but to gain weight.

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So you want to build big muscles? Simple isn’t it? Just join a gym and hit those weights regularly and viola, in a couple of months, you will gain so much muscle mass that you are ready to take on any bodybuilding contest. Is it really that simple to build big muscles? Well, to gain muscle mass, there is much more than just hitting the gym regularly. Here are some muscle mass gaining tips :-

a) Eat and Eat – To build muscles, you must eat. Your calorie consumption must be more than your calorie expenditure. If you expand all the calories you have eaten, then where are the calories to build muscles?
2) Protein – Make sure that you eat enough protein. You should eat at least one gram of protein per pound of your body weight everyday if you want to gain muscle mass fast. If you don’t get enough protein, your muscles won’t grow big.
3) Supplement – If you cannot have adequate protein from your normal meals, supplement with protein shakes. If you want more strength so that you can lift heavier weights to grow bigger muscles, take Creatine supplement.
4) Weight Training – You must lift with heavy weights and to add on more weight consistently to progressively build your muscles. But it is very important not to sacrifice correct lifting techniques and form for the sake of lifting heavier.
5) Lift Free Weights – Use free weights like dumbells and barbells to recruit more muscle fibers so that more muscle fibers can be worked on.
6) Compound Exercises – Work with compound exercises like bench presses, squats, barbell rows, chin ups and dead lifts to build big muscle mass. If you concentrate on working your puny muscles like your biceps, then you will only have puny muscle growth.
7) Get Enough Rest – Have rest days in between your workout days and do not work the same muscle group more than twice a week. Your muscles need to recover from your workouts in order to grow big.
8) Get Enough Sleep – Sleep at least 8 hours a day. More even better. Your muscles grow when you sleep.
If you practise the above 8 steps consistently, your muscles will grow fast and big. Of course there are many more things you can do to achieve a competitive bodybuilder’s physique of which I cannot cover in just an article here. So do research for more knowledge.

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Most people think that in order to get that V shaped upper body like comic book super heroes, they only have to develop big broad back muscles and lats. Well, by having broad back muscles and well developed lats is only part of the equation to get a V shape upper body. For complete V shape upper body development, you will also need to build a powerful chest, big strong shoulder muscles or commonly called deltoids or delts for short and a slim waist.

We shall discuss how to build big shoulder muscles in this article. You see, you may have a wonderful six pack abs or well defined chest muscles, but when you are in your street clothes, no one can see them. But if you have that massive V shape with bulging shoulder muscles, your body frame will tell the world that under those clothes is a well defined body of a gym warrior.

As with building any muscles in your body, intensity is the key to building big deltoids. Your shoulder muscles are made up primarily of the anterior deltoid (front delt), medial deltoid (middle delt) and posterior deltoid (back delt). All 3 parts of your shoulder muscles must be targeted to build well defined and big strong deltoids that threaten to burst through your shirt. The problem here is that most people do not know that they must work on all 3 shoulder muscles and do most shoulder workouts by just concentrating on the anterior delts with exercises such as military press. Furthermore, working only on anterior delts could lead to over training your shoulder muscles because many other exercises like the bench press, dips and push ups also recruit shoulder muscles for its movements.

Your should be careful when working on your shoulder muscle exercises as your shoulders joints are very susceptible to injuries and therefore proper form in executing the exercises is crucial. Don’t let bad exercise form cause you injuries that may be permanent and put you out of the gym forever. One common injury prone exercise is the narrow grip upright row. Although this is a great trapezius and shoulder muscle exercise, it should be avoided because this exercise invokes unnatural and awkward shoulder joint movement.

So what exercises are good for building big strong deltoids? Well, besides the military presses, try Arnold Press, Lateral Raise, Bent Over Lateral Raises, Shoulder Width Upright Row and Shoulder Cable exercises. Ask your personal trainer or read up on how to perform these exercises in excellent form for great shoulder muscle development.

Remember that you must also develop other aspects such as a big broad chest, wide back muscles and flared lats as well as a slim waistline to get that much coveted V shaped upper body.

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