THE MUSCLE EVO MUSCLE BUILDING CHEAT SHEET

Transcription

1 THE MUSCLE EVO MUSCLE BUILDING CHEAT SHEET TODAY, I am going to show you exactly how to go about building muscle. If what you re doing at the moment isn t working, please pay attention. What I have to say might be just what you need to get better, faster results. STEP 1: GET REAL The first step is to make sure you have realistic expectations about how much muscle can be built and how fast you can build it. In your first year of serious training you can realistically expect to build somewhere between 10 and 25 pounds of muscle. Under the right conditions, guys with a large bone structure and good genetics may see gains of up to 25 pounds, while smaller men with less favorable genetics will find that 10 pounds is about the limit. In year two, we can cut those numbers in half, giving you a gain of 5-12 pounds. In year three, the gains will be halved again, giving you 3-6 pounds of muscle.

2 Claims that you can gain 18 pounds of muscle in two weeks, 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, or whatever else, are total BS. Eat enough food, and it s possible to gain a large amount of weight in a relatively short period of time. But most of that weight is going to be in the form of fat rather than muscle. STEP 2: TRAINING FREQUENCY One of the most important decisions you can make when you re setting up your training program is how often each muscle group should be trained. Training a muscle once a week can and will make that muscle bigger. However, for most people at least, it s probably the least effective way to train. Most of the research out there shows that the major muscle groups should be trained at least twice a week to maximize growth. Of all the training splits I ve used over the years, the upper/lower split is one of my favorites. Monday: Upper Body Tuesday: Lower Body Wednesday: Off Thursday: Upper Body Friday: Lower Body

3 Saturday: Off Sunday: Off You hit the upper body on Monday, lower body on Tuesday, then take Wednesday off. Thursday is upper body, Friday is lower body and you have the weekend off. Each muscle group is trained twice a week. STEP 3: PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD According to popular legend, Milo of Crotona began carrying a young calf on his shoulders each day. The story goes that he would pick the calf up and walk around a large stadium. As the animal grew, Milo also grew stronger. Eventually, he was able to carry a fully-grown bull. And so, the concept of gradual progressive overload was born. It refers to the idea that you need to increase the demands you impose on your body if you want your muscles to grow. Do the same exercises, for the same number of sets and reps, while lifting the same amount of weight, for the next five years. Nothing much is going to happen. That s because the training you're doing is below the threshold required to stimulate growth. It's a challenge your body has already adapted to. As a result, no new muscle will be gained.

4 Within certain limits, a muscle will grow in direct proportion to the amount of work it's required to do. And while there are many ways to increase muscular work over time, these are the three that I recommend to most people, most of the time. The most common method of progressive overload involves adding weight while keeping the number of repetitions per set the same. Example: Workout 1: 8 repetitions with 100 pounds Workout 2: 8 repetitions with pounds Workout 3: 8 repetitions with 105 pounds Option two involves doing more repetitions with the same weight. Example: Workout 1: 6 repetitions with 100 pounds Workout 2: 7 repetitions with 100 pounds Workout 3: 8 repetitions with 100 pounds Let s say that your current routine involves 3 sets of 8-12 repetitions of a particular exercise. You start out doing 3 sets of 8 reps. Over time, you keep on adding reps until you re able to do 3 sets of 12. Then, you add weight, drop back to 3 sets of 8, and start the whole process all over again.

5 Doing 12 reps in all three sets serves as the trigger for adding weight. When you hit 12 reps, the weight goes up. If you can t, carry on using the same weight until you do. The third option is to increase your training volume. The most popular way to do so is to perform more sets for each muscle group. Example: Week 1: 8 sets per muscle group per week Week 2: 10 sets per muscle group per week Week 3: 12 sets per muscle group per week For reasons I ll explain in a moment, you can t keep adding sets indefinitely and expect to keep growing. If your training volume is too high, you ll end up hurting your gains. As time goes by, and you close in on the upper limit of muscle mass your body can add, the speed at which you improve will slow down. Progress will come not from workout to workout, but from week to week, and then from month to month. That doesn t mean your days of gaining muscle have come to an end. You just need to go about things a little differently (which is exactly what I show you how to do in my MX4 training program ). You re not going to make progress in every single workout. To do so indefinitely would be impossible, and there ll be times when you end up lifting the same amount of

6 weight, for the same number of sets and reps you did in the previous workout. What s more, an effective training program will also involve a planned and deliberate reduction in sets, reps and weight. Think of it like taking one step back to take two steps forward. However, your focus should always be on improving your workout performance over time. You need to give your muscles a reason to get bigger, or you ll remain stuck at the same size you are right now. STEP 4: EXERCISE SELECTION Some say that certain exercises, such as the squat, deadlift, bench press and so on, are essential for building muscle. These exercises work large numbers of muscles, making them a very efficient use of your training time. I like them a lot. However, they re not always the most joint friendly options out there. The last thing you want is to feel constantly nagged by various aches and pains in your knees, elbows, shoulders or back. If you find that a particular exercise makes your joints flare up, don t be afraid to ditch it and find a similar one that doesn t. There is no single must do exercise that can t be replaced with something else.

7 Your muscles can be stimulated just as well with alternatives (many of which I show you in my MX4 training program ) that don t cause the same level of pain or discomfort. STEP 5: HOW MANY SETS? As far as sets go, there is a dose-response relationship between the number of sets you do for a muscle and the speed at which that muscle grows. In other words, the more sets you do up to a point at least the faster your muscles will grow. However, there is a point at which doing more sets becomes counterproductive. In other words, there s a theoretical optimal number of sets per muscle group, above and below which gains in size will be slower than they otherwise would be. As a rough guide, sets per muscle group per week is a good starting point. Then, you can adjust the number of sets upwards or downwards based on how your body responds. STEP 6: HOW MANY REPS? Conventional wisdom has it that training with light weights and high reps builds muscular endurance, but makes little contribution to gains in size.

8 Heavy weights and lower reps has long been the accepted best way to build muscle. That s because lifting heavy weights places tension on a large number of muscle fibers, which in turn sends the make me bigger signal to those fibers. However, lifting heavy weights isn t the only way to put a large number of muscle fibers under tension. Training with lighter weights and higher reps where you go for the burn and your muscles feel like they re pumped up and about to explode generates a large amount of metabolic stress, which has also been shown to increase the activation of muscle fibers. In fact, there s plenty of research out there to show that lighter weights and higher reps do a surprisingly good job at stimulating muscle growth. That gives you a lot more choice about the type of training you do. For example, joint issues or injuries may mean that lifting heavy weights causes pain in your shoulders, elbows, knees or wrists. The solution is very simple. If going heavy on certain exercises causes you pain, just go light instead.

9 You can make the switch from heavy weights and low reps to low weights and high reps without missing out on any gains. Maybe you just prefer using lighter weights on certain exercises, and heavier weights on others. Again, you can do so quite happily without worrying that you re putting the brakes on muscle growth. As long as you train hard and push yourself, high reps (15-20), medium reps (12-15) and low reps (5-8) can all be used successfully to build muscle. STEP 7: DIET What you do in the gym is only part of the story when it comes to building muscle. Without enough food, much of your efforts in the gym will go to waste. However, there s an upper limit on the amount of nutrients you can take in and use to fuel muscle growth. If you re currently eating below this upper limit, then you ll build muscle faster by increasing your nutrient intake. But once you ve maxed out your rate of muscle gain, simply adding more calories won t automatically lead to a faster rate of growth. Think of it like this. Imagine you own a factory that makes widgets. If you don t give the workers enough of the raw materials (i.e. food)

10 they need to make the widgets as fast as they could, the rate of widget production will drop. In that sense, an insufficient intake of nutrients will put the brakes on muscle growth. What happens if you start to send more raw materials to the workers? The rate of production will increase, but only up to a point. That s because there s a limit on the number of widgets the workers can crank out in a given amount of time. As soon as they re working as fast as they can, sending more and more raw materials just becomes a waste. In much the same way, you can t force your body to grow simply by eating more. Adding nutrients to your diet will have a positive effect on muscle growth only until you reach nutrient saturation point. Once you ve moved past the beginner stages of training, the size of the calorie surplus required to maximize your rate of muscle growth while minimizing fat gain is somewhere in the region of calories per day over and above your maintenance calorie requirements. I know that might not sound like much, especially when you compare it with some of the 5000 calorie bulking diets out there.

11 But you can t force your muscles to grow faster simply by stuffing yourself with food. All that ll happen is that you get fat. STEP 8: KEEP IT SIMPLE Once you have a decent training and nutrition program set up, the key to long-term success is to stick with it. Forget about the latest muscle-building bandwagon that everyone else is jumping on, no matter now tempting it might look. Don't worry about complicated training routines, exotic muscle-building supplements or fancy diets. Concentrate on training hard and eating right. Set challenging but realistic goals for yourself and work as hard as you can towards achieving them. Do that and the size will come. MORE: For a science-based training program that will give you more muscle than you have right now without beating up your joints, check out MX4 at the link below: