by Vince DelMonte (reposted with permission)

Do you grasp what it really takes to build large muscles? Is it as simple as going to a gym , training each muscle once each week, slamming back some protein shakes and eating as much chicken and fish as possible and then voila! you’re big enough to possibly win a bodybuilding contest? Wouldn’t it be awesome if that’s all you had to do to get big and ripped?  The reality is that your monthly gym membership, regular weight training workouts and normal eating habits aren’t going to cut it.  Whether you’re trying to get back in shape or take your body to the next level, here are a few elements to incorporate to obtain the best results from your workouts:

Do Squats and Deadlifts

Squatting and Deadlifting are known as two of the best exercises you must do for building power and muscle mass.  These two exercises alone hit about 75% of your entire musculature , including your trapezius, shoulders, biceps/triceps/forearms, lats, thighs, glutes, hams, calves and core muscles.

Besides kicking up the intensity, squats and deadlifts force your body to release greater volumes of your own growth hormone. This results in bigger muscles all over your body. This spillover effect results in strength gains in all your other lifts which leads to a more muscular you! Squats and deadlifts are, therefore, especially critical for hard gainers who want to get big and ripped because of this hormonal effect.

Do Compound Exercises

What is going to isolate muscles: flat bench or flye machine; overhead military press or side raise machine; a pull up or curling bar curl; a dip or tricep kickback? If you’ve been lifting with no real results, you’re wasting your energy on exercises that isolate any muscle. If you ever hope to get big muscles then compound exercises are not optional, they are absolutely required.  Your routine should consist of deadlifts, bench presses, squats, bent-over rows, pull ups, chin ups, military overhead presses and dips.

Focusing on the smallest muscles will limit the growth hormone release and continue to stifle your progress!

Keep Your Rest Periods Consistent

In the gym you don’t see average guys using a stop watch to time their recovery, do you?  Stop watches or interval timers are necessary equipment for who is serious about gaining muscle mass.  

Optimizing your body’s response to your training requires shorter rest periods between sets of higher numbers of reps, and longer rest periods as you approach lifting your one rep max weight.

For example, when training for maximum strength you must take a three to five minute break between sets.  If you only take two minutes, your body will not respond as you want.  Similarly, optimizing muscle size requires shorter recovery periods, in the 30-90 second range. If you let the recovery go long because you’re staring at a beautiful girl on a treadmill across the gym, you’re going to be shortchanging yourself.

Lastly, how can you tell if you have actually increased strength if you do not keep track of the time between sets?  For example, let’s say last week you dead lifted 135 pounds for four sets of ten, and this week you used 145 pounds for four sets of ten for the same exercise.  This would be a tremendous, measurable improvement if you rested the same time between sets.  However, if you took longer between each set on your most recent workout, you did not actually become stronger. You just recovered more during a longer rest period!

Conclusion

You can’t build big muscles by simply doing the same old weightlifting routine and throwing back protein shakes.  Change your weightlifting routine to incorporate compound exercises, including squats and deadlifts, and use consistent rest periods between sets to break through any training plateau and begin building muscle mass all over your body!