There are many essential elements that must be included in your training program if you want to know how to grow muscles progressing.
The key point does not refer to just knowing how to train in the gym, having the motivation and perseverance to follow a diet or rest as the manuals say. The question of how to grow muscles ? It goes beyond connecting these ends, which are central points such as training, diet and rest.
Inside the gym, regardless of your selection of exercises or how you periodize your routines based on synergistic or antagonistic muscles, it is essential to have a progression plan.
It is very difficult to make substantial progress unless you know how to force your body to do what it is not used to doing.
How to grow muscles by understanding
A training program is only as good as a progression program, which is often not included within your goals and is not always taken into account by your personal trainer, for some of these reasons:
- Individuality: In a perfect world, your coach would know exactly how your body will adapt to training parameters, but he doesn’t really know, and even if he did, that progression plan could be too much or too much. little for someone else.
- Lack of experience: there are many coaches who write programs, but they don’t really know how many clients actually train; Apparently many tables have nothing to do with how to grow muscles specifically, but show you a part of the solution.
- Laziness: It is not easy to prescribe various progression plans, as the coach must have a good understanding of how a person will generally adapt to each phase. It is much easier for a trainer to simply tell you to do an “X” number of sets and reps in the hope that the rest will come by itself.
The simplest and most common progression recommendation is to add more weight to the bar, this works well for beginners and for the first few weeks.
The critical point is that eventually this process will stop working.
Our purpose is to help you understand that you need some more variables to know how to grow muscles .
How to grow muscles with load
Increasing the load with each training session is one of the most effective types of progression, albeit one of the demanding ones, because it takes a greater toll on your joints and nervous system.
The key is to increase the load in small increments, which forces your muscles to do more work, but does not overwhelm your brain, muscles and joints.
- Let’s say you performed 5 sets of 5 reps (5×5) in the triceps extension with 20kg weights on Monday.
- The following Monday you pull out a calculator and realize that you need to increase the load by 500 ge immediately you are faced with a formidable challenge, because your gym has a set of dumbbells that only jumps in five increments therefore you are relegated at a charge progression of 12% instead of 2%.
Here’s one of the many reasons compound movements are preferable – if you’d chosen a 100kg close grip bench press to train your triceps, that 2% progression becomes 2kg.
Being modest, you can assume that a 2 kg load is a precise and effective progression, which gives you one of the first answers around how to grow muscles .
When working with the 2% progression, if you ever face a 3kg load increase, always round down instead of up (increase load by 2kg instead of 5kg) and, always do that … Always…
The 2% progression is ideal according to a study published in the journal Research Gate in 2009, but its applicability is limited to compound movements when the load is measured in tens of kg, leading to the next progression.
How to grow muscles with repetitions
Repetition progression is efficient for single-joint exercises with lighter loads, and even though you’re not forced to work with small load progressions, you can still overload your muscles.
There are two ways to make the most of repetition progression and this has to do with how to grow muscles .
The first way to use rep progression is that if you follow traditional set / rep parameters, like 5 × 5, you can simply add one rep to each set when you repeat a next training session.
Depending on how close the first session was to muscle failure, you may not be able to add a rep to each set:
- For example, if on Monday you did 5 × 5, the following Monday you could only do 6 reps in the first three sets; the 5th set could be only 4 reps.
- This is also fine, actually the only thing that matters is that the total number of repetitions is greater: 5 × 5, of course, equals 25 total repetitions; now the sequence 6, 6, 6, 5, 4 equals 27 total repetitions.
In this first form, continue with the repetition progression until you can complete 2 more repetitions with each set (5 × 7). At that point, increase the load to the next available increment and begin the process. with a heavier load.
The second way to use rep progression is based on a target number of reps: let’s say you want to do 25 total reps with a load that you could lift 4-6 times while cool, for example up to 35 total reps, until you increase the load and start over.
What you should really focus on is the total number of repetitions per lift per training session.
How to grow muscles frequently
Increasing the number of training sessions for a specific movement is the most effective progression for hypertrophy, but frequency progression isn’t for everyone because first, you have to allow yourself the luxury of training more often and second, you have to understand the planes of motion.
Simply divide the movements into:
- Upper body pulling and pushing in the horizontal plane,
- Upper body pulling and pushing in the vertical plane, and a squat or deadlift.
If you don’t know which muscles are emphasized in which movement, this information is probably too advanced for you.
But if you understand that a wide grip pull-up primarily trains your lats and upper back muscles, keep discussing how to grow muscles .
Frequency progression is not complicated, unless you do it like this:
If you have chin problems and want a bigger upper back, you should increase the frequency of chin-ups.
Now if you just added more volume, you should increase your recovery time, starting the first week with 3 chin-up sessions, the next week add a 4th and the third week add a 5th until you reach a 7th week where you would go increasing sessions (including morning and evening sessions 6 hours apart).
Although this is the concept, it could not be found with all muscle groups, since the breaks are different.
However, adding sessions in a pyramid and then reducing the sessions (weeks of less frequency with greater load) will serve you so efficiently and you will already be responding in some ways how to grow muscles? .
How to apply progress in your workouts
Good to apply to your training, try doing this:
- Use 2% charge progression for compound moves,
- Use a repeating progression for single-joint or light movements and,
- Progress around frequency for movements that train your lagging muscles.
While everyone talks about progression, this could be an effective way to learn how to grow muscles.
Although there is more to analyze such as volume, intensity, the variety of types of training or each exercise.
It includes the way in which you approach the series / rest, the time under tension, the grip or the angles, among other variables, which, although they are relevant to progress, will be discussed later.
Before continuing, enjoy a great workout that Mr Olympia 2019, Brandon Curry, had during the inauguration of MM Fit Granada last February.
The load controversy
The heavier the weight, the better, right ?; well not really and although this belief has been ingrained in the minds of amateur bodybuilders for decades, research indicates that weight and success are not directly proportional.
According to a study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, a certified journal on this sport we love, “training with heavy or light loads (mass per repetition) results in similar muscle hypertrophy and strength improvements in subjects who follow the unilateral training model.
In other words, beginner or intermediate stage fans could gain so much muscle by lifting small loads, however you need to lift heavy and slow as you progress.
The study, conducted by researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario in 2016 also revealed that there is no difference if subjects use different types of weights, such as discs, kettlebells, or dumbbells.
However, what made the difference was the number of repetitions; therefore, you can still achieve your goals if you start slowly, as long as you exercise your muscles until you are too tired to continue.
Spacing the workout also helps because specific, one-sided exercises that target a single muscle group promote muscle hypertrophy and are more effective than full-body workouts.
Rest and nutrients are crucial
Finally, when analyzing how to grow muscles we could not stop talking about this;
If you want to build muscle, you don’t need a fully equipped gym with ten different types of weights, nor do you need the heaviest loads.
And yet, many bodybuilders fail to achieve their goals despite spending the equivalent of a full-time job at the gym and adding more and more reps to their routine.
What’s happening in reality
Not resting and not consuming the nutrients they need are the suspects, but we analyze the situation or the realities.
After fatigued muscles to the point of failure and adding more repetitions, the body needs to recover and rebuild itself by consuming nutrients.
- On the one hand, you need enough calories and,
- On the other hand, you have to spend a lot of time planning meals because the nutritional requirements are so precise.
The human body needs fuel; If you have intense workouts without giving it the proper nutrients, you can not only lose your goals, but also risk your health in the process.
Of course, the diet you should follow depends on your goals, which is why it is crucial that you work with certified trainers.
And speaking of lifestyle, it is also essential that you get enough rest, otherwise, muscle fatigue will not give any result and, even if you know the ” how to grow muscles” you will not you will achieve.
According to one of the studies on sleep and its effects on the bodybuilder, conducted in 2011 and published in the journal Medical Hypotheses, sleep deprivation on muscle gains and muscle recovery varies markedly.
- People who slept only 5.5 hours had 60% less muscle mass, while those who slept 8.5 hours each night had 40% more muscle mass … end of study …
- What is interesting to note is that these results were obtained while the bodybuilders followed special diets regulated in calories, which demonstrates the real importance of sleep in the athlete.
Finally, we will make an outline of what Arnold Schwarzenegger exposes in his publications; start with repetitions and weights, add intensity and regulate rest.
Are you going through a plateau and don’t know it?