EXERCISE TIPS & TRICKS
Your Ultimate Resource For Muscle Gain
SUPPLEMENTATION: WHAT'S WORTH YOUR TIME AND MONEY?
We see it all the time; companies promising this pill or that powder to give you the gains of your dreams. While some supplements will aid your fitness training, most are just a money sink.
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The best supplement overall for growth is free. That's right, I said FREE!
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To grow muscle, you must be getting enough quality sleep so that you can recover from your workouts. If you only sleep 4 to 6 hours a night you won't see much of a change from those grueling workouts you're putting in. You MUST get at least 7 to 9 hours to grow muscle. If you do not do this you simply won't get the results you're after. If you want to learn more about optimal sleep, then go pick up my Ultimate Phoenix Program.
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After this, you should focus on finding a protein powder you like and some amino acids (BCAAs) you enjoy. I discuss more about supplements, sleep, and recovery in my Ultimate Phoenix Program.
HOW TO PUT ON MUSCLE: VOLUME
Putting on muscle can be difficult for some people, and sometimes they will start to push too hard in the gym and hurt themselves or suffer from burnout. So, let's quickly discuss how to start improving how to gain more muscle today.
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The first thing you will need to ensure you have is enough volume of reps to stimulate growth. For this, it is recommended that you perform 10 to 20 sets per week per body part. If you are newer to lifting, you should stick closer to 10 sets, and if you have been lifting for a while and aren't getting the gains you want to see, I recommend getting closer to the 20-set range.
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For these sets, you will generally want to be in the rep range of 8 - 15. This promotes hypertrophy of the muscles while not overtaxing the nervous system and generating additional muscular fatigue, leading to longer recovery times without the added benefit of increased muscle gain. All my programs follow this methodology to help you gain muscle quickly and safely.
HOW TO PUT ON MUSCLE: FORM & SAFETY
To ensure that you don’t injure yourself and utilize your muscle groups correctly, you must keep proper form in each movement you perform. To grow muscle, you must never sacrifice form for additional weight. If you cannot perform a movement with proper form, you need to decrease the weight to keep form for your set. This will give you a much better chance of gaining muscle without injury.
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I see people use incorrect form all the time in the gym, leading to less productive workouts and a significant increase in the risk of injury.
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Utilizing the appropriate form for each exercise will build your confidence in the lifts and help you learn the proper movement patterns for each lift. Having confidence in your form and using proper form will increase your potential gains due to increased stress on the muscles you are targeting from moving in the proper pattern. Using form properly will also allow you to perform them with the proper intensity with a reduced risk of injury.
HOW TO PUT ON MUSCLE: CALORIES & NUTRITION
To grow muscle, you have to eat enough high-quality foods to optimize your opportunity for growth. Most people trying to put on muscle that are doing everything right in the gym just aren't getting enough calories & protein to get their muscle to recover and grow.
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I recommend getting an app that you can use to track your calories; MyFitnessPal is a great tool for this. Track your calories every day for a week to get a good picture of how much you are eating. I find that a good portion of people are simply not eating enough to grow, and once they start to track their calories, they see this, correct it, and gain more muscle. You must be in a caloric surplus to grow muscle most efficiently. You don't need to go crazy and eat 1500 calories over the base calories you spend daily, but you should start with 500 over what you tend to burn regularly through exercise and normal daily activities. If you are still not seeing an increase in your weight or muscle mass, then start to add 500 calories daily. Do this until you start to see muscle gain happen for you. And always remember to eat high-quality foods, no dirty bulking here. The goal is to gain weight the healthy way, with no shortcuts.
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To get an idea of how many calories you may be expending based on your lifestyle, I recommend checking out this calculator https://www.musclehacking.com/calorie-calculator/
HOW TO PUT ON MUSCLE: INTENSITY
We want to have as much intensity as possible with every movement we perform. This intensity will come from the effort you put into each movement. Suppose you’re doing squats and pushing hard to complete your eighth rep for your fourth set with impeccable form; once you complete that rep and your legs feel like jello, you know you’re putting out some good intensity.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re completing that same eighth rep for your fourth set, but it feels like it was not challenging, you know that you’re not putting much intensity out during your workout. Some ways that you can increase the intensity of your workouts are by; increasing the weight you’re using, increasing the reps you’re doing, or pausing the movement at the top of the contraction if you’re starting to feel confident in your skills with a particular movement at a specific weight. Remember that increasing the weight you use for any given movement by as little as five pounds each time you perform it is a phenomenal way to increase the intensity and provide progressive overload. You will need to do everything you can to keep the intensity high in your workouts. This intensity will help to give you a strong mindset in your workouts. It will motivate you to get in for your next workout, recover, and eat appropriately between training sessions.
HOW TO PUT ON MUSCLE: RESTING IN YOUR TRAINING
When resting between sets, you will want to rest for 1 ½ to 5 minutes. When performing a super-set, you will want to rest for 45 seconds to one minute between exercises. If you need to rest longer to get into a good mental space for a lift or if your muscles just aren't ready yet, take more time so that you get a good lift in.
This might seem like a long time and a bit uncomfortable in the gym to rest this long. Still, you want to make the most out of each set and put out as many good clean reps of each exercise with as clean of form as possible to help facilitate growth. Most programs will call for you to rest for 30-45 seconds, which is very helpful if you want to increase your cardiovascular system through weight lifting in a more advanced way. Still, when you are just starting out trying to grow muscle, this will be slightly counter-productive. Stick to the rest I recommend in this program of 1 ½ to 5 minutes. Then once you become more advanced with weight lifting and have improved your cardio system through running, swimming, HIIT, sprints, martial arts, biking, etc., you can move into that form of training.