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2 Muscle building fundamentals If you are new to building muscle, or you have not built as much muscle as you would like to yet, then this material is for you.... As you read through this material I will coach you on the most important and fundamental principles that you absolutely must adhere to, if you are to succeed in building muscle. To begin with, I want you to understand that; building muscle can be simple and straight forward. For example, hundreds of thousands of people each year enjoy the benefits of a more muscular physique. So, it is not a case of whether you can build muscle or not.... You can build muscle... You just need to learn, and apply yourself to the muscle building process. Building muscle is a matter of understanding the; muscle building process and applying yourself to that process.

3 The muscle building process can be split into 3 main areas. They are; 1. Training 2. Nutrition 3. Rest and recovery In this material I will guide you through the most important fundamentals in each one of these three main areas. Once we have gone through each area the whole muscle building process will make a lot more sense to you, when you have this understanding your actions inside and outside the gym will be more focused on gaining muscle. Training Nutrition Muscle Growth Rest and recovery The first area of the muscle building process is training. This is the spark that sets muscle growth in motion. If you do not create the right spark, then there will simply be NO impetus for muscle growth. It is imperative that you get your training right, otherwise the muscle growth process won t even get going The second area of the muscle building process is nutrition. This is the raw building materials used by your body to build new muscle tissue. If you don t eat the right foods, at the right times, then you are not supplying your body with the building blocks that it needs to grow new muscle tissue. It is imperative that you get your nutrition right, otherwise your body will not build any new muscle tissue

4 The third area of the muscle building process is rest and recovery. This is when and where the muscle building process actually takes place and is finished off. If you don t give your body enough rest, it simply won t recover or rebuild any new muscle tissue. It is imperative that you get your rest and recovery right, otherwise your body will not be able to finish off the muscle growth process I want you to remember that these 3 areas are all equally important as each other. In other words, if you are lacking in any one of these 3 areas, then the whole muscle growth process will slow right down or even stop! You absolutely must keep each one of these 3 areas in balance. For example, if your training (area 1) improves, you absolutely must improve your nutrition (area 2) and be more strategic with your rest and recovery time (area 3). It is no good just improving in one area and be lagging behind in another. You must keep each one of these 3 areas of the muscle building process in balance So now you know the 3 areas of the muscle building process, we will now go into the fundamentals of each area..... Welcome to the fundamentals of the muscle building process..... Muscle building area 1, TRAINING fundamentals; TRAINING fundamental 1: It all starts with overload The first fundamental of training is overload. This is what sets the muscle growth process in motion. You must cause overload for the muscle to grow back bigger..... Overloading a muscle is what starts off the muscle growth process

5 Overload can be defined as; the point at which a muscle has been made to work up to and just beyond its absolute maximal capacity. In other words, overloading a muscle means taking your muscle to its working limit. Muscular overload = the point at which a muscle has been made to work up to its absolute maximal capacity Your body is an organism that adapts to its environment. So when you do overload a muscle you are putting so much stress on the muscle system, that it has no choice but to adapt by growing back bigger and stronger. The problem is most people seriously underestimate the amount of overload that is needed to make the muscle adapt! It is very important to understand, that just because you are training with weights that does NOT necessarily mean that you are overloading your muscles. You can go to the gym and lift weights all year long and still not have caused any overload, and not cause any muscle growth. Remember, training with weights is one thing, but training with weights so that you are actually causing overload, is another. Let me make this very plain and clear.... If you are not overloading your muscles then they will have no reason to grow back bigger, without overload, new muscle growth will simply not occur! To start off the muscle growth process you must first overload the muscle. Next you need to understand a little bit more about what actually causes overload..... TRAINING fundamental 2: To overload a muscle you need to develop intensity In order for you to be able to overload your muscles effectively you must first understand intensity.... In its most basic of terms, intensity is like the amount of effort that you are putting into overloading a muscle. In other words, the amount or level of intensity that you are putting into training a muscle is related to how much that muscle will be overloaded.

6 In very simple terms, intensity = The amount of effort you are putting into training a muscle Learning how to train at high intensity levels is so important that without out it you simply won t reach muscular overload. In fact, if you look around your local gym, will notice that the guy that trains at higher intensity levels is the guy that grows the most! Learning to develop high levels of intensity is a must if you want to pack on decent amounts of muscle. Do not be mistaken, learning how to train at high intensity levels is a key component of building a muscular physique! Without high levels of intensity you will not be able to overload a muscle It is extremely important to understand that everyone has developed intensity to different levels. In other words your idea of what HIGH intensity means is very different from someone else s. So just using the term high intensity is not good enough when explaining it to someone. Unless you have learned to train at high intensity levels and you have experienced it for yourself, then the term high intensity is just a relative idea. In other words if someone was to say that they have put a lot of effort into a lift, that could mean anything! Training intensity is a relative term and means different things to different people This is such an important point to understand. For example, I have seen clients really believing that they are putting maximum effort (intensity) into a set. Then after that set has finished and I have spent 10 minutes reprogramming their mind, re-focusing them and getting them into a very powerfully determined state of mind. They then go back and do the exact same exercise.... except this time they end up lifting an extra 10-20kg, and for more repetitions! So what had changed in those ten minutes? Did their muscles suddenly grow stronger? NO, they just increased their intensity, which caused their muscles to work a lot harder. Although you may be thinking that you are training at high intensity levels, there is a good chance that your current level of training intensity is not high enough When you do learn to train at higher intensity levels, you will notice that you automatically become stronger. This is because it is intensity that causes your muscle to work much

7 harder than normal. This is why training at high intensity levels is crucial to cause muscular overload. Without it your muscles simply won t work hard enough. So hopefully you are now just starting to get an idea of how important it is to learn how to develop intensity. Without sufficient levels of intensity, you will NOT be able to overload your muscles, it is that simple.... TRAINING fundamental 3: To continue growing you must pay attention to progression Once you have learned how to train at high intensities and you can cause muscular overload, you need to pay attention to your progression. If you are not progressively overloading your muscles then you will not experience continued growth. This may seem incredibly simple, but it is very often the simple things that are forgotten about and overlooked. Progressive overload means that over time you are continually increasing the amount of overload coming into the muscle Now comes one of the most important things you need to do.... keep a track of your progress. You need to keep some kind of record of where you are with your training. Just going to the gym each week, blindly lifting weights without any real understanding of what you did the previous week, will leave you without focus, drive and most importantly, a clear idea of your progress. Trust me, as simple as this may seem, in order to make progress you absolutely must keep a record of what you are lifting. To progressively overload your muscles you need keep a record of what you are currently lifting Building a great body is all about paying attention to the tiny little things that all add up. It takes huge amounts of patience and discipline to be as meticulous as to write down what weight you lifted, how you lifted that weight and how many repetitions you did etc. But trust me, if you don t keep a record of how you are performing, then the chances are your progression will begin to slow right down or even stop. This is because progression can be

8 very gradual... so gradual that if you don t keep a record, you may in fact NOT notice that you have stopped progressing altogether. For example you may increase your main bench press by one repetition, and the following time you may increase it by just one more repetition, and after that you may increase the weight slightly by 5kg. And just adding two extra reps and 5g to your bench press has taken you a whole month of training to accomplish, yet if you did this every month you would add an extra 60kg to your bench press by the end of the year! Progression can be a gradual process, so track it! One of the other great things about tracking your progress is the fact that it gets you using the most important and most powerful tool you have for transforming your physique, your mind. By tracking your progress you automatically get your mind set on what to aim for next time. When you set your mind on something with such attention to detail, a whole host of subconscious processes start to move in your favour. For example if you look at your progress records before you train, you can set yourself a new target to go for. Your brain will now automatically start to produce more testosterone and adrenalin in response to your self-competitive attitude to training.... Without these small targets you can easily lose your focus and drive for progression. Setting small goals or targets each time you train will make a massive difference to your progression over time TRAINING fundamental 4: You must grow your muscle in both directions to create maximum muscle size Muscle growth is also called muscular hypertrophy. When your muscles do hypertrophy (grow), they can grow in two different ways. Your muscles can grow in two different ways To fully understand both ways in which a muscle can hypertrophy, you need to learn some basic muscle anatomy first..... Don t worry this will be kept very simple and straight to the point, it is very important that you learn this.... Each main skeletal muscle contains thousands of muscle fibres. Each muscle fibre runs the whole length of the muscle. So as you can imagine, they are very long and very thin.

9 Inside each muscle fibre are strands of contractile units called myofibrils. These contractile units are surrounded by the energy supply unit called the sarcoplasmic reticulum. This is a basic cross sectional view of a single muscle fibre. Sarcoplasmic reticulum Myofibrils The first way in which a muscle can grow is called myofibril hypertrophy (it is also sometimes called sarcomere hypertrophy). Myofibril hypertrophy is an increase in the size and number of the myofibrils inside each muscle fibre. Myofibril hypertrophy is an increase in the size and number of the myofibrils inside each muscle fibre It is the myofibrils inside the muscle fibre that contract. So after myofibril hypertrophy has occurred you will notice an increase in contractile strength. There will also be some increase in size after myofibril hypertrophy has occurred too, but not a massive amount. This is the type of hypertrophy that mainly occurs in strength and power lifting athletes, and it is sometimes called functional muscle. This kind of muscle growth is achieved through heavy, low set and rep strength training with long rests between sets. Myofibril hypertrophy will give you an increase in strength and a some increase in size

10 This is a cross section of a muscle fibre before and after myofibril hypertrophy has occurred. As you can see the myofibrils have increased in size and number. This means that this muscle fibre can now contract with more force. You can also see that the overall muscle fibre diameter is wider too, but mot massively. The second way in which a muscle can hypertrophy is called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is an increase in the size of the sarcoplasmic reticulum. This is the yellow area surrounding the myofibrils. The sarcoplasmic reticulum contains the raw fuel used by the myofibrils to contract. In other words it is like the fuel storage and injection system. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is an increase in the size of the sarcoplasmic reticulum surrounding the myofibrils Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is what contributes to a lot of the size increase in bodybuilders. This type of growth is achieved through high rep and set bodybuilding style training, with short rests between sets. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy will give you a large increase in size but no strength increase

11 This is a cross section of a muscle fibre before and after sarcoplasmic hypertrophy has occurred. As you can see the sarcoplasmic reticulum has increased in size but the contractile units (myofibrils) have not. After sarcoplasmic hypertrophy has occurred there will be a noticeable increase in muscle size, but no increase in strength. And last but not least, if you create both types of muscular hypertrophy you then create maximum muscle size. In this diagram you can see a muscle fibre before and after both myofibril and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy has occurred. Both myofibril and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy will give you the largest increase in size Now that you have a good understanding of the two types of muscular hypertrophy, you are now ready to fully understand the next training fundamental.... TRAINING fundamental 5: Strength is your foundation to muscle size If you are new to bodybuilding or you have just not managed to build much size yet, then it is imperative that you concentrate on building a foundation of strength. It is called a foundation because your potential for overall muscle size will stem from your ability to get stronger first.

12 Your potential for overall muscle size will stem from your ability to get stronger first Remember, there is NOT a direct or exact relationship between muscle strength and muscle size. This is because you may have one person who has predominantly caused a lot of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy who actually looks quite big, stood next to someone who has predominantly caused a lot of myofibril hypertrophy who looks smaller, yet the smaller person will have much more strength due to the type of muscle he has mainly built. You now understand this because you understand the differences between the two types of hypertrophy.... Remember, there is NOT a direct or exact relationship between muscle strength and muscle size But, with all that said, strength is still your foundation to muscle size, let me explain.... When you learn how to train for strength increase, you will become stronger. This increase in strength will become accompanied by some increase in muscle size, but not a massive amount. As you now know, this is a result of myofibril hypertrophy, an increase in the contractile proteins inside the muscle. Once some myofibril hypertrophy has occurred and you have become stronger, you are now in a good position to start to cause a much larger amount of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Let me explain why... To begin with you need to understand that in very simple terms, sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is caused by repeatedly contracting your muscle fibres until the sarcoplasmic reticulum runs out of energy. It only takes a few minutes for the sarcoplasmic reticulum to refuel again, this is why the rest time between sets is kept short during this kind of training (so that the sarcoplasmic reticulum doesn t get time to fully recharge or refill). In turn this creates a constant energy deficit in the muscle. You will know when this is happening because you will start to get a massive muscle pump accompanied by a slightly painful burn. When you do high rep and set training (10-15 reps and sets etc) you are firing your muscle fibres at such a rate that the energy demand inside the muscle gets so overworked that it becomes overloaded. And in very basic terms that is how you cause sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is caused when you repeatedly drain the muscle of its raw energy

13 Now here comes the important point to all of this; the energy demand on the sarcoplasmic reticulum is caused by the constant firing of the myofibrils (contractile part of the muscle). So if you already have well developed myofibrils (through strength training) then you have the potential to cause a large amount of overload on the sarcoplasmic reticulum. But on the other had if you haven t got well developed myofibrils then you have a much smaller potential to cause overload on the sarcoplasmic reticulum. If you have already developed a reasonable amount of myofibril hypertrophy (strength), then you are in a good position overload your sarcoplasmic reticulum to a much larger degree You can use the analogy of a car engine being the myofibrils (the mechanical part of the muscle) and the fuel pump and fuel tank being the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Now if you get a car that has 2ltr engine and you upgrade it to a 3ltr engine, but leave the fuel pump and fuel tank the same, how easy is it going to be to overload the fuel supply with that bigger engine? Do you get the point? Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy causes a large amount of muscle size, but if you have not developed your myofibrils first then you will not be in a position to overload your sarcoplasmic reticulum to any significant degree. This is one of the biggest mistakes made by many beginners, they read the high rep and set workouts that professional bodybuilders are doing in the magazines, so they go and do the same workouts. Not realizing that those professional bodybuilders have already built huge amounts of strength (myofibril hypertrophy). If you don t already know how to train for strength increase, then this is an area that you must start to educate yourself on The truth is strength training is very different to standard bodybuilding training, although you may very slowly get stronger doing a bodybuilding routine, strength training will get you there a lot quicker. Remember, you will need perseverance and patience if you want to build some decent muscle size. You will first have to concentrate on getting stronger on the body parts that you want to get bigger. Once you do get stronger you will notice some increase in muscle size, but most of your muscle size will come when you switch to a bodybuilding routine after you have built a foundation of strength. For maximum muscle size, switch to a bodybuilding routine after you have developed a reasonable amount of strength

14 Summary Training for muscle growth is simple and straight forward once you know and apply the fundamentals The first fundamental to remember is that all muscle growth starts with overload. And overload occurs when the muscle has been made to work up to its absolute maximal capacity. 2. But, in order reach overload you will have to use a large amounts of intensity. Intensity in its most basic of definitions is the amount of effort that you are putting into training a muscle. The problem for many people is that intensity is a relative term and most people simply don t train with enough intensity to cause overload. Intensity then is something that you need to learn to develop if you are to start off the muscle growth process. 3. Once you do learn to train with enough intensity to cause overload, you then need to make sure that you are progressively increasing the amount of overload coming into the muscle. This is a matter of keeping a record of your training and tracking your progression. Progressively overloading the muscle will give you continued muscle growth. 4. To create maximum muscle growth you need to learn how to overload both parts of the muscle. The first way in which a muscle can grow is all about strength increase, and this is called myofibril hypertrophy. When you learn how to train for myofibril hypertrophy you will get stronger and notice some increase in muscle size. The second part of the muscle that can grow is all about energy supply, and this is called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. When you learn how to train for sarcoplasmic hypertrophy you won t really get any stronger, but you will notice a dramatic increase in size. 5. Before you can cause a large amount of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy you need to cause a reasonable amount of myofibril hypertrophy first. In other words, you need to build a reasonable amount of strength in the muscle before you can pump the muscle up in size. Therefore strength is your foundation to muscle size.

15 This introduction into the fundamentals gives you just the basic understanding of what is required. If you are interested in learning more and would like information about our courses running please contact us via telephone or on: 0r