Which Exercises Should You Include?
The best workouts for building muscle mass are the basic compound exercises. Some of these include but or not limited to squats, deadlifts, bench and shoulder presses, pullups, rows. These exercises should be included in your schedule. The following workouts will guarantee to build some serious muscle mass.
DEADLIFTS
Example: barbell deadlifts, and straight-leg lifts.
SQUATS
Example: barbell back and front squats, and dumbbell variations.
SINGLE LEGS
Example: lunges, and single-leg squats.
HORIZONTAL PUSH
Example: pushup, bench press with barbell or dumbbells, and dips.
HORIZONTAL PULL
Example: dumbbell row, seated (cable) row, inverted rows, and face pulls.
VERTICAL PUSH
Example: shoulder press.
VERTICAL PULL
Example: pullups, chinup and lat pull downs.
What Exercises Should You Do first?
Generally, the first exercise in your workout should be the one that requires the most work. For increasing muscle mass, and strength I recommend switching your routine every once in a while. For example, if on chest day you always start off with bench press try starting off with dumbbell flys, and then do bench press. Switching the order of your exercise you help make your gym experience less boring, causing you to have more effort, which leads to serious results.
How Many Sets/Reps Should I Do?
Generally, most people see great results with mix of heavy weight for strength, medium weight for muscle size, and light weights for muscular endurance.
Your set count should be related to your number of reps per set. For example, if you’re doing high reps 1 to 2 sets might be enough. For 10 to 12 reps, do 2 or 3 sets. For 8 reps, 4 sets are great.
How To Measure Progress For Strength?
This should be fairly obvious, but just in case it’s not, you measure progress for strength by the amount of weight your using on a day to day or weekly basis. So you want to increase the weight for your exercises every week. Many times when you use heavier weights, you have to reduce your number of repetitions.
How To Measure Progress For Size?
Muscles grow in size because you make them do more work. You can make them increase in size by adding a rep or two to each set or by adding a set to each exercise. You can also do drop sets and super sets to force your muscles for work harder. I regularly finish my final set with a drop set. Remember, the actual growth of your muscles occurs when you are sleeping/resting. Muscle growth and the pump you get when you are working out are definitely related but ultimately different.
That’ll do it for this one. Before I go, I want to share a quote that I recently read by Ernest Hemingway that can be applied to bodybuilding or anybody trying to reach a higher level of consciousness, it went something like this… “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” This is absolutely true and should be practiced and acknowledged by all of us. I hope you enjoyed this article, stay tuned for more training tips, recipes and videos!