Muscle Building Basics to Help You Transform Your Physique

The muscle building basics are the few core elements you need to use to build an outstanding physique.  However, the fitness industry has become littered with countless websites that pitch and sell worthless supplements and weekend certified “fitness experts” pushing their workout programs and pyramid schemes.  With such an array of varying and conflicting information, how do you know what to believe?

So, this brings us to the tried-and-true muscle building basics.  By following the facts about building muscle you can avoid the devastating pitfalls.  In this short article you’ll find out exactly how to do that.

What that, let’s get started with a few basic questions:

1.)  Are you making progress in the gym?

2.)  Has your strength stalled?

3.)  Have your muscle gains hit a plateau?

4.)  Are you tired of putting forth 100% effort in your training program, only to be stuck at a complete standstill?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions then you could be missing some of the muscle building basics required to transform your physique.  Keep in mind that these aren’t “NEW” or ground-breaking revelations.  They are just the real muscle building basics that you either haven’t been told or you moved away from.  It’s okay, we’ll get you back on track.

Now, what you need to do is just take a step back and rebuild your program so it can give you the results you want.

Ditch the Overtraining

The number one muscle building basics rule is avoid overtraining.  I know, you heard all about this one before.  Chances are, you heard it so much that you are just numb to it.  The word means nothing to you anymore.  Nevertheless, let me make it clear that overtraining IS a real thing and it happens to nearly every lifter.

Even good ole’ Wikipedia recognizes it, “Overtraining can be described as a point where a person may have a decrease in performance and plateauing as a result from failure to consistently perform at a certain level or training load exceeds their recovery capacity.[1] They cease making progress, and can even begin to lose strength and fitness.”

So, it’s a constant overload at a very high level to the point the body is severely taxed.  Your body can’t push beyond each set point unless it’s provided balance and rest.  Rest is when your muscles repair and recover.  If you don’t get ample rest between workouts, you just won’t build the muscle you want.

Keep it Basic

Muscle development is a product of force against weight. Simply put, heavy weight with low reps target the type 2B muscle fibers, those responsible for muscle growth and light weights with higher reps create more muscle endurance.  To build muscle you have to employ the most power at the greatest resistance.  The bottom line, maximum training overload for each workout results in muscle development and growth.

Add Variety for Muscle Building

Granted, heavy lifting using compound exercises build extreme muscle mass.  However, you can make use of the Weider training principles and give your training a boost at times.  When you feel your training hitting a rut, you can avoid the dreaded plateau simply by changing up the exercises, sets, reps, poundage, temp, etc.

Most lifters break training plateaus by including:

• German volume training
• Super sets
• Giant sets
• Tri-sets
• Drop sets
• Negatives

… And so on.  Use these shock techniques every 8-12 weeks, when you feel your muscle gains are slowing down.

Perfect Your Form

Muscle building is the result of anaerobic training intensity, force against resistance.  However, poor form using heavy weight takes the stress off the desired muscle group and brings other muscle into play, resulting in injury.   If you find that you have to swing or jerk the weight just to perform the exercise, you are doing it wrong and using too much weight.  A true lifter stays in control of every rep.

A proper lift is employed by using textbook form.  During each rep you need to concentrate on the concentric and the eccentric motion, as well as the point of contraction.  When you reach the point where you cannot execute a rep with proper form, the set is complete.