Weight Training Tips and Articles

Top Muscle Building Tips

November 22, 2009 on 5:03 am | In Build Muscle, High Intensity Weight Training, Proper Lifting Form, Weight Training Routines | No Comments

A lot of guys who work out regularly are trying to find the top muscle building tips. Most newbies to weight training need some sort of guidance and advice on what exercises are the best to do and how to properly perform them. If you can afford it, you can always hire a personal trainer to set up a routine for you and show you how to perform all of the major weight training exercises. A more affordable option is to find great muscle building tips on the internet or in books and magazines on the subject.

One of the best muscle building tips when you start lifting weights is to set up a routine that you will stick with. At first you may want to do a few exercises for each muscle group since you are trying to learn proper form and the how much training you can handle at this time. When you do this you should start your workouts with bigger muscle groups and do the smaller muscles later. You should also focus the majority of your training on major compound exercises.

Learning proper form on all of the major weight training exercises is another one of the top muscle building tips. Performing your exercises properly is essential to targeting the muscles you are working out. Improper form won’t target them as well and may lead to an injury. Take the time to learn proper exercise form and you will reap the benefits.

If you’ve been training all of your muscles during each workout for a while and have learned proper exercises form you’ll likely get to the point where you want to do more work for each muscle. The top muscle building tip for this situation is to split up your weight training routine. The best way to do this is to follow a 3 way push-pull routine. This is how one looks:
Workout 1 - chest, shoulders, and triceps
Workout 2 - back and biceps
Workout 3 - legs.

When you follow a 3 way push pull routine one of the top muscle building tips is to take a day off in between each workout or after every 2 workouts. The abs recover faster than most muscle groups so you can train them during every other workout in this routine.

Another great muscle building tip is to train with high intensity. This means that you shouldn’t stop your working sets before you get to failure. Doing this will require a spotter to watch you on some exercises such as the bench press. A spotter can also assist you in getting some forced reps to boost the intensity of your training even further. Every time you weight train, you should be trying to do a little more weight or an extra rep or 2 on every set of every exercise.

Another one of the best muscle building tips is to avoid overtraining. It’s during the recovery time between workouts that your muscles actually grow. If you do too much during each workout or weight train too often you won’t give your muscles a chance to fully recover. It’s best to keep the duration of your weight training workouts at an hour or less and to lift 3 or 4 days per week.

Every weight trainer will hit a plateau in their strength and size gains at some point. The top muscle building tip for avoiding a plateau is to make regular changes to your routine. This will keep your muscles from getting too used to always doing the same things. The best ways to do this are to change the amount of reps you do per set and switch the exercises you perform.

Once you start following these top muscle building tips, you’ll be on the way to greater muscle size and strength gains.

Building Muscle With 20 Rep Squats

November 13, 2009 on 3:47 am | In Boosting Testosterone, Build Muscle, High Intensity Weight Training, Legs, Quadriceps | No Comments

One of the biggest keys to building muscle mass is to boost your natural levels of testosterone. To do this you need to push your body to the limit. This means that you should perform compound exercises that will work multiple muscle groups during your weight training workouts. For the most you’ll want to do these compound exercises for sets of 8-10 to build both size and strength. However, if you really want to challenge yourself and give your testosterone levels a kick start you should try 20 rep squats.

The squat may be the best overall muscle building exercise there is. It not only works the major leg muscles of the quadriceps and hamstrings, it will also work your core muscles. In fact, intense sets of squats can even help you build your upper body because performing it will give your testosterone a nice boost.

20 rep squat sets are an excellent thing to try to help build your entire body. This doesn’t mean that you should use a light weight for an easy set of 20 rep squats. It doesn’t even mean that you should use a weight that you can just barely get 20 reps on when you squat. The secret is to use a weight that will have you going almost to failure after 10 reps. when you get to 10 reps, you’ll be breathing hard and your legs could be burning. At this point you need to rest at the standing position until you feel you can try another rep. After this 11th rep you continue doing this until you hit 20 reps. The last few reps of 20 rep squats may take a while and will be painful but you’ll get those muscle building hormones going. This will take a lot out of you so a few minutes of rest may be required before you continue with your workout. 20 rep squats are an excellent addition to any high intensity weight training workouts.