When it comes to the muscle building There are some classic tips that are common to every strength athlete, like the Amen in the church. Apart from the conventional muscle-building tips, however, there are also other not to be underestimated advice that rather a shadowy existence. In the context of this article, we would like to introduce you to 10 of these tips that will help you to optimize your muscle growth.
Tip 1 - Every hard workout is preceded by a thorough warm-up
When you go to the gym and you have a hard workout on the plan, you are already on your way to the locker room in a kind of mental tunnel. In this condition, of course, you would do nothing better than to go straight to the heavy weights and activate the beast mode. Unfortunately, it does not work that easy in practice, because your inner beast can not come to the fore without a corresponding warm-up, which means that you sometimes have to put up with considerable performance losses. In order for you to be able to develop your full potential and, moreover, to reduce the risk of injury, an appropriate warm-up program is part of every workout. Your muscles should be brought to temperature by a light cardio workout and a few light warm-up sets, just like a car engine does. By warming up, the muscle fibers are activated in large numbers and get their elasticity, which makes them more powerful and work together better in the context of intramuscular coordination. In order to prepare your musculature gradually for the work weight, the training weight of the 3-4 short warm-up sets should be successively increased.
Tip 2 - Basic exercises are part of the beginning of the training
As you are almost certain to become stronger in the context of your workout and to optimize your muscle growth, you should be aware that basic exercises should always be done at the beginning of a workout. The main reason for this is the fact that at the beginning of your workout you still have sufficient power reserves that allow you to perform basic exercises with maximum intensity without the form suffering. In addition, the supportive auxiliary muscles are not yet fatigued by other exercises, so the probability of injury occurring decreases greatly.
Tip 3 - Train like an Egyptian
This simple motto is not so much about how to train in the land of the pharaohs, but rather symbolizes the pyramids that can be found there. In practice, you should build your training like a reverse pyramid and put the heaviest set of your entire workout to the beginning. This is followed by all other exercises and phrases that are becoming increasingly easier with regard to training weight. Similar to Tip 2, you benefit from having enough power reserves at the beginning to allow you to get the most out of your body before you push your muscles to their limits with successive weight loss.
Tip 4 - Make more sentences with fewer repetitions
If you are out to improve your strength, in the medium term, the basis for the muscle building It is advisable to reduce the number of repetitions per set and to increase the number of sets. On the one hand, the big advantage of this method is that you can do more reps focused on maximum strength without changing your training volume. For example, it may be better to do 10 times 3 reps per exercise instead of 3 times 10 reps.
Tip 5 - Pay attention to the correct shape every time you repeat
A question at the beginning: How did you learn to ride a bicycle? Right - exercise, exercise and exercise again. It is also different in weight training, because only those who perform a sequence of movements over and over again correctly, will eventually master it, which has a lasting positive effect on the muscle. According to some neuroscientists involved in learning movement patterns, up to 10,000 passes are needed until a person masters a movement perfectly. In the face of this number, you may easily be able to figure out how long it will take you to master squats, deadlifts, and bench presses in perfect perfection. Accordingly, it is even more important that you pay attention to a clean technique every single repetition, so that this pattern of movement as quickly as possible. In the long run, you will benefit from the fact that your organism is no longer busy executing the movement correctly, so that more energy is available for performance.
Tip 6 - Work on your explosiveness
One way to improve muscle growth is to make the repetitions of a set more explosive. The benefit that results from this results from the physical constraint that the force exerted by the training weight on the muscle tissue increases with increasing speed with which the weight is moved. So it may well be worthwhile if you include some phrases in your exercise plan that will allow you to move your workout weight as fast as possible. This works very well for example during squats or pressure exercises such as bench presses or military presses.
Tip 7 - Start every repetition from the dead stop
Have you ever noticed that the first repetition of bench press with dumbbells is by far the heaviest? The cause is the fact that you start from the so-called dead stop, which means that the elastic energy from the eccentric movement phase, which makes lifting the dumbbells easier, is missing. The additionally generated muscle tension leads to a stronger growth stimulus and thus to more muscle. You should use this principle to make all your pressure exercises a bit more challenging. However, you can also use the dead stop in classic train exercises such as rowing by holding the weight for 1-2 seconds at the end of each repetition rather than immediately continuing with another repetition.
Tip 8 - Avoid consuming things that reduce your performance
If you want to keep your performance in the gym at a consistently high level, you should avoid consuming substances that sabotage your performance. Above all, these substances include alcohol, which in our latitudes belongs to the social life, in return, but also reduces your performance. Accordingly, you should be advised to be sparing with alcohol and, if possible, avoid it altogether.
Tip 9 - Do not try to reach all goals at the same time
The advertising in various fitness magazines may seem to us to be able to achieve everything at the same time, but in reality this looks completely different, since our organism is a highly complex entity and the respective metabolic processes mutually limit each other. So in order to build muscle, reduce fat and at the same time become even more enduring, you should divide your training year into individual periods, in which you each follow a single goal, before you focus on a different goal in the following period. On the other hand, if you try to accomplish everything at the same time, the results will seriously disappoint you.
Tip 10 - Visualize your training technique in front of your inner eye
Since the brain is responsible for the movement control, it is of particular importance that you confront it again and again with the movement sequences of the training. However, for such a movement pattern to burn into your brain, it is not always necessary to perform the movement directly. An experiment carried out at the University of Chicago now shows that the visualization of a movement process in front of the inner eye leads to an improvement of the execution in practice. To optimize the training technique and thus also the muscle building, it is helpful, according to the results of the US researchers, to retire for 5 to 10 minutes per day in the symbolic quiet room, close the eyes and the process of a squat or any other exercise figurative imagine.
