Build More Muscle Mass with These Simple Tips
Dec 11, 2009 | Posted by bryan | 0 Comments
The Top Ten Things You Should Know to Build Muscle Mass
1. A Good Night’s Sleep
If you’re training to increase muscle mass, one of the most important considerations is giving your body time to repair muscle fibers and strengthen new ones. Also, your energy level is key to how effective and safe your workout will be. If you’re tired, you’re more prone to accidents and your form can suffer.
2. Extra Calories
You’re going to need extra calories, quite a few. It might seem counter-intuitive to seek extra calories when you’re trying to lose fat and get cut, but the calories you get are going to get are burned up in quick order due to the intensity of your muscle-building regime. Look to consume around 500 extra calories per day above your regular maintenance number of calories.
3. Beneficial Fat
There are good fats and bad fats, as everyone knows. Making sure you have the right kind of polyunsaturated and mono-unsaturated fats in your diet is essential to joint health and growth promotion for your muscles. The Omega 3’s in fats such as fish oil are essential for maintenance functions in your hard-training body.
4. Important Carbs/Proteins
A sincerely important part of your daily caloric intake is that of protein. Your body is getting energy from healthy carbohydrate sources, but it’s using protein to grow muscle mass. Consider lean sources with every meal, or supplement your healthy diet with protein shakes.
5. Planning and Plotting Progress
Well before embarking on any muscle building plan, you should have a plan laid out of your weekly training sessions, broken down by day. Keep track of exercises, reps and weights in order to plot your progression. It gives you important goals, lets you see what’s working and what isn’t, and gives you a sense of accomplishment to have your progress down on paper in black and white.
6. Progress
Once established, your muscles will adapt very rapidly to any training exercise. Your goal is to keep your muscles challenged and growing, so keeping your routine varied and progressive is important to quicker muscle growth.
7. Train Right: Proper Form and muscle/Progressive Resistance
The proper form is essential to creating mass and preventing injury. As important to building muscle as form however, is keeping in mind to keep increasing the weights. Your goal is to lift heavy, and lift fast. The heavier weight will create the bulk you’re seeking, and the fast lifting action of free weights will increase the rate at which your muscle fibers tear down and rebuild. Slow action, low weights…all go towards long and lean muscles, not mass.
9. Recovery
An important part of your workout is the time between workouts. You’re giving each muscle an essential period in which to repair the breaks you’re causing in muscle tissue, in the form of a larger muscle.
10: Give Yourself Time for Results
Don’t get discouraged if your goals are not met right away. Everyone is different, and with diligence, it’s practically a guarantee that you’ll see results in a relatively short period of time.
For more great tips to keep you fit please visit the Fitness and Health section.