A good muscle building program will take into consideration how often you train, how long you train, how you cycle your training and what exercises are best for training.

How Often Should You Train?
Training each body part only one or two times a week is advocated by some muscle building programs.  If your workouts are so intense that your muscles need more than 24 hours to recover, then your goal is to build giant muscles and two workouts a week is great.  But, if you want big muscles like an olympic swimmer or a male gymnast you must work like a swimmer or gymnast – more frequent workouts, more than once or twice a week.  Three to four times a week of the right exercises at the right level will give your muscles time to recover and grow.

How Long Should You Train?
Also, less than an hour is all the time you ought to take for each workout.  During your workout, testosterone levels are at their highest at about 27 minutes and cortisone – the stress hormone that promotes fat storage – levels rise significantly at 45 minutes.  So 40 – 45 minutes should be the most time you spend in the gym.

Cycling Your Training
Your shorter workout has to be more productive.  You should cycle your workout so you are always challenging the muscle – working it in different ways.    Muscles will become accustomed to any one routine after a while, so you should  change your routine before the muscles adapt and stop growing.  You don’t want to switch before you see major progress, though.  Most good programs will have you change your routine every four weeks.  This will also keep you from getting bored.

Cycling the Intensity
You should not only cycle your exercises, but your intensity, too.  Train as hard as you can without overtraining, then reduce the intensity for a while, then kick it back up again.  Working out in this way keeps the muscles taxed all the time.  An explanation of why interval training works to build muscle faster can be found here.

Your workout can also be more productive if you use bodyweight exercises.  Bodyweight exercises have the benefit of taxing several body parts at a time.  They are also beneficial because the body is moving in a more natural way instead of isolating only one body part.  Dips, push ups, lunges, chin-ups or squats and all the adaptations of these exercises are good examples of bodyweight exercises.  The intensity of a bodyweight exercise can be altered by changing the movement or adding weight.  A weight added at your belly will increase the intensity of a dip or a chin-up, a declined push up is harder than a level push up.

So, don’t spend hours in the gym.  Work out 30-45 minutes doing bodyweight exercises, varying the intensity and exercises performed. You will soon see major progress in your muscle shape and size.

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