Today we’re talking about the good stuff. Back to basics with this article and I’m going through my top 3 tips for muscle building in beginners. Basically, this is all the stuff I wish I’d gotten right from day 1 (if I did, I’d be a lot bigger than I am by now, but alas, I f*cked about for too many years when I was a teenager). So pay attention and apply these lessons. If you master these basics and run a good diet alongside it (article on that coming soon), you will grow. Let’s get into it.

 

Muscle Building Tip #1: Execution Of Movement

From a training standpoint, you can’t look any further than execution of movement if you’re interested in actually progressing. Muscle doesn’t respond to reps and sets, it doesn’t even respond to weight, it responds to the lengthening and contraction of each muscle and continued tension through the muscle. Poor execution of exercise will disperse tension away from the area you’re trying to load, and as a result you won’t see any results from that area of your body.

 

Learn how to properly move. If you have a stubborn body part, learn how to actually train it. Go online and research how to properly perform movements. If you have a shit chest, find out how to actually press to stimulate your pecs. Hire a coach if you have to, but master your movements before you load them, and before you think about anything else.

 

Muscle Building Tip #2: Programming

Your programming is the next area you need to turn your attention to. Now, for beginners, I recommend training in a full body fashion – so training your whole body each workout. I find that this is much better for practising movements often and improving point #1, but also not smashing one particular muscle group and not being able to recover from the workout. Training your whole body with a little bit of work on each area allows each area to recover without not being able to walk for a week because you’ve smashed your legs, for example.

 

My ‘Go-To’ method of training for people that have never trained before is a method popularised by Charles Poliquin – German Body Composition Training (GBC). GBC is a full body training method that involves upper and lower body supersets, bouncing between the upper and lower body so the full body gets trained as a whole. I find that this method allows me to effectively teach execution (as the loading isn’t massive), while also providing some level of intensity (see point #3). Obviously I adapt each workout to whoever I’m working with but as a general recommendation you can give the sample workout a bash.

 

Find out more about GBC training here:

https://upfitness.com/en/article_posts/working/workout-plans/best-workout-body-recomposition

 

Muscle Building Tip #3: Intensity

The 3rd and final tip for today’s article is intensity. Now, I must stress the importance of this factor. If you do not take your balls out of your purse and train HARD, you will not give your body a reason to change. Let’s not forget, that muscle building in itself is an adaptive response to a stimulus that’s placed upon it. If that stimulus is not powerful enough, the body won’t have any reason to create the adaptive response.

 

In simpler terms, if you don’t challenge your muscles enough, they won’t grow. That goes for every single muscle you ever train in the gym.

 

Train to failure. Learn what true failure is and learn how to get there without being a bitch. Sorry to be crude there but that’s the reality. The more you bitch out on a set, whether you admit to it or not, the poorer your results will be. Each and every working set you do in that gym must be of such quality and intensity that you turn heads in the gym. I am continually amazed that people can’t believe how hard I train. I train with intensity, but I’m nothing special. I just have some balls when I go into my working sets – and that should be the most basic requirement for those trying to develop their physique. No intensity? No gains. You figure it out.

 

Wrapping Up

Hope this article was useful and gave you an insight into what you need to work on when you first start. These are the basics. Try to do anything more complex than this before you’ve mastered what’s in this article and you’ll get nowhere fast. Master these, then move on to the next thing. But I can guarantee if you do these properly alongside a good regimen outside of the gym, the muscle building progress you’ll make will be insane.

 

Any questions as always please ask

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Cheers

 

Andy

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