In the world of million types of training, the one you must trust is the one that is based on research and science. In this blog you will discover a program for strength training, bodybuilding and complete fitness. And all you will need is the 12 minutes per week to reach your goal of gaining muscle mass and lean muscle greatness.
What equipment should I use to gain muscles?
Great gym to choose is one equipped with machines that considers the major 5 muscle groups in your body. Especially if your goal is muscle gain. Nowadays, most gyms have multistation resistance training machines with free weights, barbells and dumbbells.
Your muscles have different strengths through a different range of movements. This is because their function has a specific relation to the bone as they move and rotate. Muscle strength can be measured at each point range of motion. Thanks to this you can see your strength curve.
Example of the barbell curl and the biceps strength curve:
- biceps measures 10 pounds of force when the arm is perfectly straight
- 25 pounds when the arm is bent 45 degrees
- 39 pounds when is bent 90 degrees
- 21 pounds of force when another 45 degrees of movement occurred
- 12 pounds of force when the hand is at the shoulder
You can conclude that the strength curve for the biceps shows that it produces more or less force as it travels throughout the ark of the motion range.
As you train you will experience a heavy start and a light finish. This effect is ok for training for example hamstrings. But this doesn’t work in the same way for muscles like biceps.
Therefore, your muscle strength changes during contraction. And a tailored system to you training must take this factor into account if you want to gain muscle.
Muscle gain and muscle resistance
If you were to move a 35 pound barbell it’s likely that you would strugle. But if you choose a 10 pound barbell you will be able to move it easily. However, the 10 pounds doesn’t provide effective overload at 45 degrees or 90 degrees and compromises the effectiveness of the training. Your strength doesn’t increase.
You need to adapt the resistance to those changing strength curves in a way that perfectly tracks it. Thanks to this approach your muscle will train more efficiently. Your muscular wear and tear will be grately reduced.
Don’t be afraid and allow your muscles to be exposed to a full range of resistance in light of balance with their actual force output.
Good equipment is one that has been designed considering biochemical, alignment functions and dimensions of strength curve. When you are in the gym look for machines that will allow a workout consisting of pull down, leg press, seated row, chest press, overhead press.
Positive muscular failure
When exercising, your goal is always to reach a state of positive muscular failure. What does this mean? That you can prioritise your fatigue more tha a number of sets or reps.
The golden secret to your lean muscles is to employ Time Under Load (TUL) and do as many reps as you can perform until you tire your muscles.
The Big 5
This program consists exclusively of compound exercises that involve rotation around several joint axes. Hence involves several muscle groups per exercise for your dream of muscle gain.
The foundation of 3 exercises will work on all of the major muscular structures of the body. Those are:
- leg press
- pull down
- chest press
added to this core:
- overhead press
- seated or compound row
form The Big 5.
These exercises are big due to the purpose they serve and are at the same time simple movements. They involve multiple muscle groups and are also easy for people at any age (young or older) to coordinate and perform.
To succeed you must focus on your intensity and to perform hard work in a short time rather than ticking off from your to-do list a gym visit.
Details of The Big 5 exercises
The first exercise is a seated row, also called an upper body pulling exercise.
This exercise targets the torso muscular cheer on the posterior aspect of the torso, the back and involves the muscles that flex the upper extremity muscle. When you are performing this exercise the position of your arms must be on the position of the hand grips and proportional to your shoulder width. Make sure you hold a natural position and don’t tuck your elbows.
After the seated row your next exercise will be chest press.
This exercise is also called as an upper body pushing exercise. It involves muscles on the anterior aspect (front of the torso). When engaged, it serves to move resistance away from your body.
When performing chest press you will push the handles of the machine away from your body while pulling your upper arm toward the midline of your body when your arms extend and start the movement. Don’t drive your arms back behind you because that will overstretch the shoulder capsule and place needless tension on the biceps. Best way is to keep you arms at a 45 degree angle if you’re holding the handles appropriately.
Now press your arms forward smoothly and stop just short of lockout. To gain muscle you must ensure that your muscles stay loaded. Otherwise you will transfer the load on a bone on bone tower with your elbows locked and that’s what you must avoid.
When you are lowering the weight, bring your elbows back just slightly farther than they would be if you were doing the exercise while lying on the floor.
When you feel that you start to draw your arms into a tuck position and shrug shoulders up – it means that you’re doing it wrong. Adjust your position and go again. Wrongly performed exercise is a cause of some people developing pain in the centre of the back between the shoulder blades.
If you are performing chest press avoid doing incline or decline press. The chest press makes the pectoralis minor and the pectoralis major strongly activated during performance of this exercise.
Your third exercise is the pull down.
Hold your arms in front of you not out to the sides. Use an underhand grip with your hands narrower than shoulder width. This grip is ideal because it provides a greater range of motion.
When you have your arms in front of the body you load the musculature of the frontal torso a bit better including the abdominal muscles. This exercise, when performed correctly activates almost all of the front and back muscles, gripping muscles and forearm. Biceps is also largely involved.
To perform this exercise, extend your arms fully above your head. Pull the bar down to the top of your chest, lower your shoulders and hold for 5 seconds. Then relax and slowly let your arms return up to the straight position. Keep your torso straight when seating.
Immediately after the pull-down you must move on to the overhead press.
When you do this exercise, you engage all the muscles involved in an upper body pushing movement similar to those involved in the chest press.
When doing this exercise, make sure that you move your arms overhead with your hands in front of you and not out to the sides. Again, don’t rest the weight on your bones. Don’t arch your lower back. Rather push your pelvis into the belt as if you are trying to move your buttocks off the end of the seat.
Your final exercise in the workout is the leg press.
It covers virtually every muscle group in the lower body for your most effective muscle gain result.
Your seating position in the machine should be a flex store tucked position with your hips flexed slightly more than 90 degrees. Your knees must be bent to 90 degrees. You must slowly and smoothly push your legs out to a point just short of lockout. Don’t let your knees be lucked out as this creates a loss of muscle tension during the bone on bone tower. Next, reverse the direction slowly with your legs returning to the starting position.
Let the weight gently touch the weight stack and repeat again. This exercise should be performed smoothly. It is ok to hold the support handles. Don’t squeeze your hands as this can drive blood pressure levels unnecessarily high.
Rep speed
You must perform all exercises slowly. Information gathered from the scientific literature overwhelmingly indicates that moving faster diminishes strength goals. The reason being is that when you exercise fast the momentum contributes to the movement of the weight as opposed to muscle fibre involvement.
In a study conducted by physiologist Wayne Westcott (Director of The Strength Training for the YMCA), people age 25 – 82 years were put into two groups. One trained in a slow fashion and one in a faster manner. Over 10 weeks the slower group showed a 59% increase in overall strength and faster only 39%.
You must remember that your goal is not simply moving weight from point A to B but building more strength by weakening your muscle via reaching a positive muscular failure. The more effectively you can load a muscle with weights the more efficiently you will inroad it. Also, exercises with a more controlled cadence significantly reduces the risk of injury. Therefore, slower is better.
How slowly should I lift and lower weights?
As slowly as you possibly can but without the movement turning into a series of starts and stops.
How slow that will be depends on the strength curves of the equipment you’re using, friction is in the equipment and your natural neurological efficiency. You may find that you can move perfectly smoothly with 15 seconds up 15 seconds down and that is absolutely fine. Or you can find that you can’t move faster than 5 seconds up in 5 seconds down, again it’s ok too.
The rule is that your time is yours until it allows you to perform the exercise slowly and smoothly without turning into a stuttering stop and start. You’ll notice that your time changes as the set progresses.
Time Under Load (TUL)
Most people, who train, keep a record of how many repetitions they perform with a given weight. You must time the duration of the set from the moment it begins till the moment muscular failure is reached. This measure method is called Time Under Load, also known as time to concentric failure or time under tension. Adopt it and you’ll see the changes in your path to muscle gain and lean muscles.
I’ll explain the significant difference. If your time is 10 seconds up and 10 seconds down that’s 20 seconds during which your muscles are under load within the given repetition. Now let’s say you reached failure at 6 reps within exercise during one workout and the 6 reps in the next. But your time under load was a 1 minute and 30 seconds in the first workout and a 1 minute and 40 seconds in second, you would have missed that 10 second of increased strength because you counted repetitions. As mentioned earlier, your goal is not to move weight from point A to B. Time under load helps you to size smaller improvements that otherwise would have been missed. It also allows you to tune into progression a little more closely.
