Gain Muscles

At the beginning I prefer a natural athletic body with an aesthetic appearance. How do muscles grow? There are many theories and definitions, but we must concentrate on the basic factors that influence the growth of a muscle. One important aspect is nutrition. A well balanced diet makes 80% of the success.

Nutrition

Proper nutrition is equally important as a proper training. To make the body generally respond well to training it needs enough nutrients to build muscles, for assuring energy and maintenance of the entire balance. To gain muscle you need a calorie surplus. See therefore a simple equation:

Put on weight = you must consume more calories than you are burning. Losing weight = burning more calories per day than you consume. Especially on training days and the day after your workout you should have a higher food intake. Generally it is recommended to eat smaller portions of food. Proteins and fats are pretty important and you should not miss them.

Protein is the building blocks for muscle mass and fat is essential. Without a proper dietary intake of fat you can destroy your body. Carbohydrates are especially important during the training session. Otherwise the importance of carbohydrates is overrated, because the body does not store large quantities of it. Out of the dietary fat is created glycogen storage. You should eat simple sugars within 2hrs after your workout in order to fill up the empty glycogen stores and also to ensure a rapid recovery. For example drink cocoa or some high-energy carbohydrate powder.

Over a period of time, increase your protein biosynthesis and accelerate intake of amino acids into muscle cells. Do not miss minerals, vitamins and supplements. A lack of those substances can have bad consequences.

Very important is also your fluid intake, because it supports the supply of nutritious substances to the muscle cells. If you don’t drink enough while eating, the nutrients will be stored in the fat depot and do not come into muscle. It would be a waste! Drink an average of 3-4 litres a day. The best is still water. Other liquids like coffee or tea, rob the body of water.

Regeneration

Muscles grow during the rest, not during training! This must be taken seriously!

The important process of regeneration takes place during the sleep. By lack of sleep thrives best healthy nutrition and not intense workout. The ideal length of sleep can not be accurately determined because it varies for different persons. Sleep is divided into repeating cycles. Waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle is bad for your health and your psyche. You feel out of balance and sleepy. This deteriorates hugely your regeneration. For example, 9 hours of sleep corresponds exactly to six cycles. If you can sleep 9 hours, try to sleep in cycles. Ie, 6 or 7.5 hours, but not 8h or otherwise. It is important to think of it! It is best to get up without a wake-up call or things like that.

Overtraining

…a horror for building muscles! Overtraining occurs when you don’t allow your body enough regeneration or by illness or huge stress. Over training will not give you the results you really want and training level drops at the same time.

Lactate

Lactate is the ester of lactic acid. During power exercises lactate is produced as a product of metabolism. A higher image of lactate (20 mmol / l) stimulates the growth hormones. Half-life in blood is approximately twenty minutes.

With lactate can arise legendary “pump – effect” when the muscles are elastic and leaves a high impression. Muscle pump is no direct indicator of proper and intensive training. Lactic acid in muscles prevents high performance. Muscles are mostly pumped up only for about twenty minutes. Many people think that a correct pump up is healthy and train to failure. This should not happen!

Nevertheless, on lactate focused training can be very productive, due to following increase of growth hormone.

Intensity

In bodybuilding the concept of strength or hardness is often misunderstood.

“The more the better.” – I certainly do not agree that more means more.

Performance is defined as work over time. The more work is done in a short time, the higher is the performance.

Training should also have also a psychological basis.

After 45 minutes of intense weight training comes catabolic phase. Testosterone is replaced by cortisol that prevents tissue growth. Training lasting longer than 45 minutes has the opposite effect than muscle growth.

For example: The training lasted more than 40 minutes, but high-intensity training lasts about 20 minutes and the intensity is nearly doubled. Such training stimulates muscle growth.

Intensity means that you continue until the body is psychologically completely exhausted. The closer you are to 100% intensity, the more you stimulate your muscle growth.

Single purpose training

This method is especially used in the HIT (High Intensity Training). The theory states that for the required incentive we stimulate some purpose necessary for muscle growth. But this purpose is at a maximum and requires training to total failure of muscle target. The practice does not contradict the theory.

Why should I attend another purpose when the incentive was specified in the first purpose? As the new incentive could not cause an increase of muscle mass.

Incentives are not cumulative, nor even multiplied. The increase of muscle mass tends to peak and defines a high incentive, which was the first and strongest one.

But why do we train for such a purpose – because we have more incentives.

Adaptation

Adaptation means basically adapting. The body is a machine that adapts to its circumstances. Training that leads to the common shares, requires the body to adapt. Your whole body reacts. Your strength increase, reserve rise or endurance performance. The increase of muscle mass comes on continuously out of these factors. Training elicits in the body an incentive, on which the body must appropriately respond. This initiative is but caught up quickly. We repeat the same initiative (for example the same training), the body is not aligned to any base, and therefore will still be ready to do the same, while a long time waiting for a new stimulus. From such a base grows best beginner. In advanced training completely different stimulus is required. Body can react quickly to changes. Divide everything periodically and get new intense stimuli that the body reacts better and muscle mass increase.

Volume

It’s about the extent of training. It’s practically the highest training without goals – to get the most muscle mass. Weightlifters or strongmen practice completely different volumes and for completely different utilisation.