So you're looking to quickly gain muscle?
I want to not only tell you how to do it, but I want to save you the frustration of wasting your time and money doing the wrong things.
I'm going to tell you something the kings of the multi-multi-billion dollar health and fitness industry don't want you to know: You don't need any of their crap to get ripped fast and look better than you ever have before.
- You don't need to spend hundreds of dollars per month on the worthless supplements that steroid freaks shill in advertisements.
- You don't need to constantly change up your exercise routines to "confuse" your muscles. I'm pretty sure muscles lack cognitive abilities, but this approach is a good way to just confuse you instead.
- You don't need to burn through buckets of protein powder every month, stuffing down enough protein each day to feed a third world village.
- You don't need to toil away in the gym for a couple of hours per day, doing tons of sets, supersets, drop sets, giant sets, etc. (As a matter of fact, this is a great way to stunt gains and get nowhere.)
See, gaining muscle quickly is simply a matter of diligently applying the laws of muscle growth, which are as certain, observable, and irrefutable as those of physics.
When you throw a ball in the air, it comes down. When you take the correct actions inside and outside the gym, your muscles grow. It's really that simple, and these laws apply regardless of how much of a "hard gainer" you think you are.
These principles have been known and followed for decades by people who built some of the greatest physiques we've ever seen. Some of these laws will be in direct contradiction of things you've read or heard but fortunately, they require no leaps of faith or reflection: they are practical. You follow them and you get immediate results. And once they've worked for you, you will know they're true.
So, let's look them over.
THE FIRST LAW OF MUSCLE GROWTH:
Muscles Grow Only if They're Forced to
This law may seem obvious and not worth stating, but trust me, most people just don't get it. By lifting weights, you are actually causing tiny tears (known as "micro-tears") in the muscle fibers, which the body then repairs and adapts the muscles to better handle the stimulus that caused the damage. This is the process by which muscles grow (scientifically termed hypertrophy).
If a workout causes too few micro-tears in the fibers, then little muscle growth will occur as a result because the body figures it doesn't need to grow to deal again with such a minor stimulus. If a workout causes too many micro-tears, then the body will fail to fully repair the muscles, and muscle growth will be stunted. If a workout causes optimal micro-tearing but the body isn't supplied with sufficient nutrition or rest, muscle growth won't occur.
For optimal muscle growth, you must lift in such a way that causes optimal micro-tearing and then you must feed your body what it needs to grow and give it the proper amount of rest.
THE SECOND LAW OF MUSCLE GROWTH:
Muscles Grow from Overload, Not Fatigue or "Pump"
While many guys think a burning sensation in their muscles is indicative of an intense, "growth-inducing" workout, it's actually not an indicator of an optimum workout. The "burn" you feel is simply an infusion of lactic acid in the muscle, which is produced as a muscle burns its energy stores. Lactic acid, it turns out, impairs muscle growth and causes tissues to be broken down instead.
Muscle pump is equally worthless in terms of muscle growth. The pump you feel when training is a result of blood being "trapped" in the muscles, and while it's a good psychological boost and isn't a bad thing, it's just not an indicator of future growth.
High-repetition workouts not only fail to sufficiently stimulate muscles to trigger growth, they flood the muscles with lactic acid, furthering preventing gains.
What triggers muscle growth, then? Overload. Muscles must be given a clear reason to grow, and overload is the best reason. That means heavy weights, short, intense sets of low reps, and no more than nine heavy sets per muscle group. This type of training causes optimal micro-tearing for strength and growth gains.
Trust me on this one. Drop sets, giant sets, supersets, etc., are for the magazine-reading crowd. Such training techniques simply do NOT stimulate growth like simple, heavy sets do. And that's the only reason we're in the gym, right?
The same goes for the confused crowd of "muscle confusion" advocates that say you need to change your routine every week or two. This is pure nonsense. As you'll soon learn, you can make incredible muscle gains by doing the same proven, mass-building exercises every week, steadily increasing weight and reps (overload).
THE THIRD LAW OF MUSCLE GROWTH:
Muscles Grow Outside the Gym
Most training programs have you training way too often. They play into the common misconception that building muscle is simply a matter of lifting excessively. People who have fallen into this bad habit need to realize that if they did less of the right thing, they would get more. Yes, I said that right: do less, get more.
How does that work? Well, muscles grow during the recovery period-the period of time between workouts of the same muscle groups. When you overload your muscles, your body gets to work adapting them to overcome future overloads, and to do the job correctly, it needs sufficient rest and nutrition.
If, every week, you wait too few days before training a muscle group again, you can actually lose strength and muscle size. If you allow your muscles enough recuperation time (and eat correctly), however, you will experience maximum strength and size gains.
THE FOURTH LAW OF MUSCLE GROWTH:
Muscles Grow Only if They're Properly Fed
How important is nutrition? Answer is one word: everything. Nutrition is everything. Simply put, your diet determines about 70-80% of how you look (muscular or scrawny, ripped or flabby). You could do the perfect workouts and give your muscles the perfect amount of rest time, but if you don't eat correctly, you won't grow-period.
Almost everyone gets this wrong. They just don't give their body what it needs to rapidly build muscle. Sure, we all know to eat protein, but how much? How many times per day? What kinds? What about carbs-what kinds are best? How much? When should they be eaten to maximize gains? And fats... are they important? How much do you need and what are the best ways to get them? And last but not least, how many calories should you be eating every day? How large should your meals be as the day goes on?
SUMMARY
That's it. Quickly packing on slabs of rock-solid lean mass is, in essence, just a matter of following these four laws religiously: lift hard, lift heavy, get sufficient rest, and feed your body correctly. That's how you build a strong, health, ripped body. As you see, it's much simpler than the marketing departments of supplement companies and their magazines want you to think.
If you want to learn exactly how to train, eat, and rest to build muscle or lose fat on command-and I'm talking gaining or losing 1 - 2 pounds per week, every week-then I recommend you check out my book, Bigger Leaner Stronger.
Mike Matthews
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_S._Matthews
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