Muscle Building Tips

Make time to exercise. Decide which exercises you’ll do on which days. Some exercises focus on a specific muscle (e.g. bicep curl) while other exercises call upon several muscles at once (e.g. squat). The important thing is to make sure each muscle gets a chance to rest for at least a full day before using it again. For example, you can do a full-body weight training routine every other day (with cardio in between, if you want) or you can alternate muscle groups (arms on Monday, legs on Tuesday, upper back and chest on Wednesday, etc.)

Practice good form. Learn how to do each exercise properly (full extension of movement, proper stance and posture, etc.) or else you’ll not only reduce the effectiveness of the movement, but you’ll also be increasing the risk of injury. To master each exercise, learn to do it slowly with light weight. Your form will improve with practice. Even though you might feel more accomplished when you move quickly, you’re depending on momentum to do some of the work for you, instead of your muscles. Do each rep slowly, in a controlled and steady fashion. More advanced lifters are able to benefit to a significant extent through explosive repetitions, but since this also compounds the risk of injury in novice athletes, it is solely recommended for more advanced athletes.

Lift to fatigue. In order to trigger the muscle building process, you need to stress the muscle. By the final rep of your final set, your muscle should be exhausted. That should be the last rep you can do with perfect form. If you start losing form before then because your muscles are too tired, you’re using too much weight. If you find that you can add in one or more reps in good form, you need to add on some weight.

Change your eating habits. You can’t build muscle unless you give your body the proper building blocks to do so (and stop giving it junk). There are also plenty of supplements which can give you energy and aid in muscle recovery and repair, but remember, they are supplements, which means they only work in conjunction with a good, consistently followed exercise regimen and a proper diet.

Look for products that pair creatine with carbs, as this combination increases the rate at which the creatine is absorbed by your muscles. Consuming creatine with a glass of juice will have the same effect

Change your routine every four to six weeks. As your body adapts to stress, you’ll hit a plateau where the benefits of weight training will begin to diminish. The only way to prevent this from happening is to change things up, such as by increasing weight and changing exercises.

Focus more on the lowering part of the lift. So many people are so concerned with trying to get the weight where they want it to go, that they seem to completely forget why they’re actually lifting: To get bigger muscles!! The more you use momentum to help you get the weight up, the less muscle you are using. Furthermore, lifting heavier weights with bad form is not nearly as good as lifting lighter weights, the weights you should be using, with proper form. Also, the eccentric (lowering) portion of the exercise is actually more important than the concentric (contracting) portion. For example, the eccentric movement in benching is when the weight is being lowered and in lat pull downs it is when the bar is moving up. It is during the lowering part that your muscle fibers actually rip, thereby allowing them to be healed and grow even more. When you lift you want to make sure that you can feel the targeted muscle(s) burning; if you can’t, then you might need to adjust your form a bit. Common examples of this are abdominal exercises. Many people tend to bend their waist instead of their midsection and end up working their hip flexors more than their abs.