Are you working to get more muscle? You can do a lot of things to maximize your efforts of increasing your muscle mass so that you aren’t wasting precious workout time. If you want to be bigger and stronger, then this article can help you to attain those goals. These tips will help you get the most from each workout.
Read up on the subject, so that you are performing the right kind of exercises to achieve the muscles you desire. Different exercises achieve different results; some are better for toning while others are better for bulk. Make sure you are using muscle development techniques and have a wide variety of exercises to work on the different muscle groups.
When trying to bulk up and build muscle mass, you should increase the total number of calories that you eat. You would want to consume the required food in order to gain an average of one pound per week. Research different methods to increase you caloric intake. If you don’t see any changes in your weight within two weeks, you may want to think about ingesting even more calories.
Proper warm-up exercises are essential when you are trying to increase your muscle mass. The stronger your muscles become, the more stress you place on them and the more important it is to warm up to avoid strains and tears. You can avoid this injury by warming up properly. Exercise lightly for about 5 to 10 minutes and do about 3 or 4 warm-up sets of light to intermediate intensity before starting serious lifting.
If you are currently training to do a marathon, or doing any type of extreme cardio work, now is not a good time to try to build up your muscles. Cardio exercises are excellent for overall fitness, but intense cardio workouts will interfere with efforts to bulk up your muscles through strength training. If you want to build muscle, focus the bulk of your efforts of your strength-training regimen.
Your diet is especially important on your lifting days. You want to add calories about sixty minutes before you plan to lift to give them time to be absorbed and available for your body to use. A sufficient calorie intake does not mean eating to excess. You just need to consume enough additional calories on the days you exercise to provide your muscles with nutrition.
Don’t bother lifting for more than an hour at a time. Once a workout goes beyond the hour mark, the body will produce excess cortisol, which is the human stress hormone. Cortisol blocks testosterone–a hormone that promotes muscle growth–and undermines all of the work you are putting into building muscle. For the best results, only spend 60 minutes or less working out.
Create the illusion that your body is larger than it really is. You can do this by focusing your training on your upper chest, your upper back and your shoulders. This causes your waist to look smaller and makes you look bigger.
There are a lot of ways to effectively build muscle, as you have seen. The tips you have learned here can give you great results. Stop letting your efforts go to waste with results that are less than satisfactory for you; try the tips in this article for great end results!