Practice Consistency As A Skill

Of all the areas you can focus on in your training, the single one that yields the biggest results is consistency. Whatever your training goals, consistency is important across the board in achieving them. This article focuses specifically on the most common goals of building muscle and burning fat, but the principle applies to all aspects of training. 

To train consistently, you will have to train when you don’t want to, when you’re injured, and when you’re tired. But working around these obstacles with a balanced approach will keep you motivated and moving forward. Too often we all put the brakes on training due to injury or tiredness. Yes, you must take time to rest, and should follow proper injury rehab protocol, but don’t use it as an excuse to opt out of training altogether. Ask yourself, is that voice in your head protecting you, or are you just making excuses?

We are the “Intsa” generation. We want everything now. Our movies, music, news, and even our fitness goals. We’re told to do weights and cardio at the same time, that HIIT workouts will solve everything, and CrossFit is the way. Take the blue pill and you’ll lose 10 pounds! Eat no carbs, eat loads of protein, eat fat, don’t eat fat. 

So much of the advice we get is extreme and only sustainable in the short term, but true gains in fitness take time and consistency. Whether it’s muscle gain, fat loss, or learning a new skill, be prepared to put the work. It will be rewarding, and if you can learn to enjoy the process, there is a much better chance of achieving your goals and maintaining at that level for longer. 

What Does Consistency Do for You?

When you train consistently, you give your body a more gradual curve to adapt to the stress of training, easing its way to higher levels of fitness. The longer period of time you develop a base of fitness, the less effect an interruption of training has. There is a common trend of doing something different all the time, going for the latest training method or exercise. But this hinders building the vital consistent base. Too much variety and variability can result in a reverse of adaptations, rather than greater gains. 

Consistency occurs in the small areas. Focus on the day by day, session by session, and meal by meal. It’s a skill that needs to be worked on and applied daily. Working on it on a daily basis also makes it easier to manage when you mess up. Make a bad food choice? Make a good one the next meal, and you’re back on track. Bad training session? No problem, you have another session tomorrow to do better.

The more infrequently you train, the greater the importance is placed on each session. Your inconsistency leads to too much stress, as you try to make up for the missed sessions by doing extra hard training. These hard sessions will not make up for the missed training, and could potentially lead to overstressing the body, resulting in a decrease in performance, injury, illness, and further missed sessions. 

By contrast, when you train consistently, you don’t need to go all out each session. There is more room and flexibility for variation in intensity. There is even room for outright bad sessions. You have more opportunity to try different set and rep schemes, and different exercises. Your sessions can be shorter, which is less stressful and gives you more time outside the gym to live life. Consistency enables increases in skill and technical proficiency, as you spend more time working on these areas.

Obstacles to Consistency, and Some Solutions

Your kids’ birthdays, work, holidays, and the rest of life will always try to throw you off track. You need to accept that there will always be something that life throws up that will get in the way of your training. Don’t use these as excuses. Have backup workouts to go to if your energy is low or you’re short on time. Go shorter, or just do bodyweight, or a little skill work, but don’t skip the workout. Consistent short, targeted, and intense workouts are far better than irregular 1-2 hour workouts. 

Do your best to get ahead of the curve by planning ahead. Have some pre-made meals in the freezer. Always have a few key ingredients in your cupboard, so you can rustle up a quick meal, and have a few go-to meals you can make with your eyes closed. Cook for two nights instead of one. It’s the same prep, cooking and cleaning time. 

Keep spare workout gear in your place of work or in your car so you don’t get to the gym and realize you forgot it. Get up earlier and train in the morning before your day starts, and you won’t be frazzled from a full day in the office. If you leave the session till the end of the day, all your willpower will have been used up and you won’t train. 

Allow yourself to be human in your training. The perfection mindset breeds failure. When real life happens and things aren’t so perfect, people who think this way throw in the towel fast. Don’t strive for perfection all the time. Stop waiting for the perfect time to train, to start a new program. Focus on the now, start now. You can change in the now. You haven’t got control over achieving perfection, but you do have control of what you do now.

Get out of the mindset that if you don’t have access to a gym, you can’t train. The world is your gym. Do a set of push ups at work. Get a pull up bar at home. You don’t need to be in gym gear and in the gym to train. Train at home first thing in the morning. You can get a lot done in a few minutes. 

Add new movements and challenges to keep things fun. Variety also prevents injury from over-trained muscles. You still need to build that solid base, but once that is in place you can add in some variety. For example, choose handstand push ups instead of military presses. Both are vertical pressing exercises, but handstand push ups are way more fun! 

Consistency creates momentum, and vice versa. Pick a number of training sessions per training block to help build momentum. It’s much easier to build on 10 sessions than 2 sessions. By just adding one more you’ve hit 11 sessions. Keep building! 

Nobody Said It Would Be Easy

Consistency results in adaptability, which you can fall back on physically and mentally during challenging periods or as a result of interruption. If there is no consistency in your training, there will be little or no foundation for an adaptive response. To produce a given training goal or objective, training needs to be consistent and regular. Not being consistent in your training will lead to losses, not gains. 

Life is going to get in the way. Some days, you’re going to be tired, the session will seem too hard, and you’re not going to want to train. Accept these obstacles as a fact of life and training, but don’t use them as an excuse. Consistency matched with quality workouts, good recovery, and a balanced diet equals results.

https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/practice-consistency-as-a-skill

The Truth About What Makes a Good Personal Trainer Part 1: Debunking the Myths About How to Spot a Bad Trainer

Qualities of a good personal trainer and how to identify a bad trainer are two topics often addressed in industry articles and discussions. However, I think many of the qualities these articles and discussions commonly identify generally lack perspective, are unrealistic, and major in the minor while missing the bigger picture issues that are far more relevant. That’s why I’m writing my own three-part series on these topics; to share my perspectives on what does and what does not make for a great fitness professional.

To kick things off, in this article (part one in the series) I’m covering common myths about spotting a bad personal trainer. In part two, I’ll cover common myths about what makes for a good personal trainer; and in part three, I’ll discuss the qualities I feel specifically are attributes of a strong personal trainer.

Before we get down to business, I wanted to let you know that you can now get access to the Brolando Experience videos. You’ll get over 10 hours of education from both myself and Alan Aragon packed into 4 videos that you can watch conveniently from your computer or tablet.

Myths About How to Spot a Bad Trainer

Most, if not all, of the articles I’ve read typically identify eating, texting and excessive talking during sessions among the signs of a bad trainer. As someone who has achieved long-term success at every level of the personal training game, including being awarded the 2016 NSCA Personal Trainer of the Year, I have no problem telling you that I have done, and continue to do, all of these things with clients. The following three sections explain why.

Eating During Sessions

These days, I only train clients part-time, but for the 15 years when I did train full-time (10 of those years as co-owner of a private gym), both the gym’s co-owner and I were booked solid, training clients back-to-back for 8 to10 hours a day. We told clients, “Either we eat during your sessions or we take your timeslot off our schedule.” Of course, none of the clients cared that we were eating because that might have been the only available timeslot we had that worked with both our schedules. Plus, as small business owners, we’re not leaving money on the table, even if it means wolfing down some food and taking bites in between a client’s sets that doesn’t interfere with the flow of their session. Many of our clients actually liked the fact that they got to see what we were eating; that we made it a point to get in our meals and were eating healthy meals in the way we were advising them to do. They saw that it is possible to eat healthy on-the-go.

Don’t get me wrong, we would always ask our clients if they minded that we eat during their session, as long as we were considerate and strategic about it. Not one single client ever complained.

Texting During Sessions

Just like eating, I’ve often thrown out a text or two during the client’s rest break or in between sets. Of course, I’m not talking about sitting there and having full-on personal text conversations. One reason this may happen, especially as a busy trainer, is because it’s my next client texting me to ask if they can come in early or late, or possibly bring another person to workout with them who could be a potential client. In fact, in those situations, I’ve had several clients get mad at me for playing the, “I-don’t-answer-texts-during-sessions” card. They’re upset because they are trying to make plans and they know it only takes a few seconds for me to reply to a text. Doing so really doesn’t take away from the other client’s session if it’s done quickly and during a rest break. And, they’re absolutely right!

Additionally, many articles about the qualities of a good trainer usually state that they write things down during the session (i.e., take notes, record sets/reps/weights, etc.). I certainly agree with this! I often take notes about the session on my phone, which could appear to an outsider as if I’m texting. That said, if one acknowledges that a trainer can take the time to write things down throughout a session without delivering a lesser value to the client, then one certainly can’t think that a trainer taking a few seconds to text, in a scenario like I described above, takes away from the value of the session.

Again, I’ve always asked the client(s) I’m training if they mind that I quickly text another client about something that is time-sensitive. Not a single client has ever even remotely had an issue; in fact, when I’ve asked they look at me as if to say, “Why are you even asking, of course you can!”

Talking Often During Sessions

An important part of personal training is relationship-building. The only way to do this is through communication that goes beyond the technical aspects of exercise programming and coaching. Now, this certainly doesn’t mean that you just talk for most of the session while not dedicating much time and effort to exercise. Creating a good relationship with clients and continuing to cultivate that relationship involves talking and bullshitting during the session. For example, I might even continue to talk to them during the first few reps of a set about something we were talking about during our rest break as long as they are demonstrating good control. Then, as they begin to fatigue, I’ll go right into coach-mode until the end of the set. This provides the human-side we all crave and the trainer-side they need without allowing the two to interfere in order to give an effective training session.

Another problem with simply watching a trainer and judging them based on what you see, is that you have no idea if they’re doing what they’re doing because of specific client needs. For example, I have a long-term client who loses his breath easily, so we must take extra-long rest breaks between sets. During those rest breaks we talk and bullshit until they’re ready to go again. So, if you were watching us train and saw the time we spent just talking, you might label me a “bad” trainer, when in the case of this client, a truly bad trainer wouldn’t allow this client adequate rest and risk a severe medical incident.

How Their Clients Look is NOT a Sign of a Bad Trainer!

Another thing that is often discussed to identify a “bad” trainer is if a trainer’s clients don’t look that much different from when they started. This idea is so detached from the reality that I don’t know whether to call it laughable or delusional.

Here is the reality, the majority of clients most trainers will work with are recreational exercisers. Although many of these folks may say that they’re looking to lose some fat, they’re really after weight-management; most aren’t genuinely interested in becoming gym rats who organize their entire lives around gyms, kitchens, and bathrooms. Others will openly state that they’re not at all interested in changing their eating habits and are exercising for defense to offset all the foods they love to eat.

Generally speaking, most clients are exercising for general health and fitness purposes and will often say things like, “I don’t want to think when I’m working out.” These folks just want a great workout experience that challenges them but doesn’t hurt them. They often gauge their training success by how much they’ve enjoyed each workout, how they feel at the end of the workout, and by the fact that they’ve completed a certain number of workouts per week. Though these clients become fitter, feel better, and are more confident, these general fitness expectations explain why so many competent fitness professionals (including yours truly) have long-term clients who don’t look much different or don’t have impressive increases in their lifting numbers than when they started.

As you can see, the common myths around what makes for a bad personal trainer can certainly be debunked as long as the trainer uses discretion and stays focused on the experience of the client. Stay-tuned for my part two of this series where I’ll be debunking the myths around what many believe makes for a good personal trainer.

http://nicktumminello.com/2017/04/the-truth-about-what-makes-a-good-personal-trainer-part-1-debunking-the-myths-about-how-to-spot-a-bad-trainer/

5 Tips to Stay on Track When Life Gets Busy

25 Ways You Could Get Back on Track Today

Don't Give Up on Your Goals!

Not long ago, you were energetic and determined to start your healthy lifestyle. Starting with enthusiasm and hope, you watched your food intake diligently, exercised like it was going out of style, and even avoided the temptation that seemed to lurk around every corner. You were confident that you were going to reach your goals once and for all!

Then certain tragedy struck! You ate an extra piece of birthday cake. Realizing you had “blown” your diet, you ate another and another and couldn’t get it together the next day either. Or worse, you missed one workout, and that turned into a whole week away from the gym. After that, your momentum to start over again was gone, and your gym bag hasn’t left the closet since.

Every time you misstep on your healthy journey, you have two choices: to keep walking backwards, which will surely take you even further away from your goals; or to accept your lack of perfection as normal and forgivable, and take not one, but two positive steps down the path that brings your closer to the future you want.

If you’re reading this, you might have been walking backwards for a while. But instead of waiting for the next day, week, month or even year to overhaul your habits, start TODAY. And start small. You can’t go from the recliner to running or from burgers to Brussels sprouts in an afternoon. But you can do one, two or even a handful of small things that will help you regain your momentum for healthy living.

When you feel like getting back on track is overwhelming, try one (or more) of these small steps each day.

1. Try a short workout. Even five minutes is better than nothing. For ideas browse our video library or workout generator.

2. Try a new recipe. Cooking healthy foods can be fun and it never has to be bland.

3. Eat a healthy breakfast. Your morning meal sets the stage for the rest of your day, so start if off right! Get lots of breakfast ideas here.

4. Drink your water. Try to aim for 8 cups each day and you’ll feel the difference!

5. Look at Motivational SparkPages. Seeing how others overcome similar struggles and obstacles can be a great source of motivation.

6. Track your food today. No matter how it adds up, you’ll learn from it.

7. Update your SparkPage. It’s a visual way to track your ups and downs, but also your progress.

8. Share your goals. Whether you post them on the Message Boards or share them with a friend, you’ll be more accountable.

9. Exercise for 10 minutes. Jump rope, march in place, or do some crunches. Small amounts do add up to something big!

10. Find a buddy. Get support from friends, whether you need someone to listen or a mentor to give you ideas and encouragement.

11. Take a walk. Don’t worry about how long or far you go—just get out there!

12. Create a motivational collage. Include pictures of your goal and reasons why you want to get there.

13. Go shopping for some healthy foods. Use this shopping list for ideas.

14. Check the nutrition facts before you go out to eat. That way, you can make an informed choice.

15. Ride your bike. Even a leisurely ride has benefits for your body and mind.

16. Work in the yard. Gardening and yard work is a great way to add activity to your day.

17. Take the stairs. Even if this is the only thing you do all day, you’ll feel stronger for it.

18. Rack up those SparkPoints! You earn them for every healthy task you do on the site—talk about motivating! Aim for a certain milestone, such as 100 points, and then reward yourself with a SparkGoodie!

19. Listen to an inspirational song. Better yet, make a playlist of them so you can turn to it whenever you need a boost.

20. Re-start your SparkPeople program. Sometimes it’s easier to get back on track when you have a clean slate.

21. Measure your portions. It’s a simple way to learn how much you’re eating.

22. Eat a piece of fruit. Even if 5-9 servings of fruit and vegetables sounds impossible to you, one is doable.

23. Slow down during meals. You’ll be less likely to overeat and more likely to enjoy your meal.

24. Play! What kids call “play,” we often call “exercise.” Play a sport, a game, or use the playground equipment to bring the fun back into fitness.

25. Learn something new. Sometimes simply taking a quiz or reading an article about nutrition, fitness, or health can change your mindset and get you back on track.

In tennis, losing one point isn’t the end of the world. It happens to the best of them. In fact, if you can consistently win a few more points that you lose, you may end up in the hall of fame. With healthy eating and exercising, as long as you’re consistently out-stepping your steps back, you’re ahead of the game. If you expect perfection (and many of us do), you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and guilt.

You CAN get back on track today. Even if you’re moving slowly, you’ll be moving in the right direction! 

http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/motivation_articles.asp?id=1062&page=2

GYM MUSCLE GAIN BODY TRANSFORMATION

Morning Rituals of Tony Robbins, Oprah, Steve Jobs, Lady Gaga and the Most Successful People

Five Steps to Get Back into Your Fitness Routine

We've all failed to keep up our exercise routines at some point. Weeks without training, consecutive days of binging, terrified to step on the scale—it happens to the best of us, and it's always hard to get started again and get back on the horse. Here's exactly how to get back into your fitness routine.

Step 1: Realize That Falling off the Horse Is Normal

I've written a lot about self-compassion, so I won't beat that horse to death. (Otherwise you won't be able to get back on it, amirite?) But it's important to show yourself some self-compassion.

 

Look, falling off the horse is completely normal. Everyone does it, and it doesn't make you weak-willed or undisciplined. It makes you human. It's important to come from a place of self-compassion here so that you can try again.

We're going to go through an exercise that's used in the field of social work in order to improve self compassion around this situation. It may seem silly, but it will greatly increase your forgiveness for this misstep.

Split yourself up into three different personas:

• The criticizer – The person who is angry that you fell off the horse.
• The criticized – The person who is defensive about the potentially hurtful things that the criticizer is saying.
• A compassionate mediator – Someone who is going to look at things objectively and help figure out how to move forward. You can pretend that this is the most compassionate, understanding friend that you have.

Now, run through the dialogue that the criticizer would say. You know, the things that you're internally berating yourself about for stopping your regimen. Notice the charged words that are said and how they make you feel.

Secondly, run through the dialogue that the criticized person would say. Talk about how hurtful the criticizer's words are and how they don't make you feel like continuing.

Lastly, go through the compassionate mediator's role. You're going to show an extreme amount of compassion for the person being criticized. It's important to note that this does not mean making excuses, but rather, be empathetic and understanding of the situation at hand.

Mediate those two sides. Talk about how the criticizer's intentions are probably good, but the way that they are expressed hinder the ability to progress. (Remember, the mediator should be compassionate towards both parties.)

Go through a plan of action in which the criticizer will be happy that you're going to prevent this misstep in the future. This is a good place to run the "Time Machine" exercise in order to talk about what you could've objectively done to minimize the amount of derailing. The criticized person will feel supported in his endeavors and understand that he/she is not defined by his misstep.

You'll find that when you practice going through this exercise, you'll start to show yourself a lot more self-compassion for falling off the horse.

Step 2: Evaluate Your Losses Objectively, without Judgment

Once you show yourself some self-compassion, you can now evaluate your losses objectively, without judgment. Your losses can be broken down into two categories:

Muscle and Strength Loss

If your layoff was under three months, then chances are you did not lose very much muscle.

According to Sports-Specific Rehabilitation, "Strength trained athletes retain strength gains during short periods of inactivity (two weeks) and retain significant portions of strength gains (88% to 93%) during inactivity lasting up to 12 weeks."

If you've gone without training for longer then that, don't fret. Bodybuilders and strength athletes have long observed that even after a long period of inactivity outside the gym—sometimes lasting years—previous levels of strength came back relatively quickly. It's almost as if one's muscle retains a "memory" of how strong it once was. (Hence, the term for this is "muscle memory.")

Scientists were actually perplexed about this phenomenon until recently, when it was discovered that the nuclei of muscle (called myonuclei) actually stay in-tact even through atrophy.

In short, strength comes back quickly.

Fat Gain

If you have been feasting and binging for several days, or even weeks, the number on the scale may shock you. It's typical for clients to put on as much as 5% of their body weight (10 lbs for a 200-lb man). One female client put on 8% additional body weight (about 10 lbs for a 135-lb woman).

But most of this weight is probably from excess water retention, not fat.

Basically, the scale is lying to you. Realize that it takes a surplus of 3,500 calories to gain one pound of fat. Think objectively and without judging yourself: Do you think that you racked up that much of a surplus?

Possible, but not likely. In all likelihood, most of it is water weight. Take a week on a relatively moderate caloric deficit (20% or so) then step on the scale again so that you can come to an objective conclusion. Additional water weight should subside by this time.

Taking the scale at face value is particularly dangerous without doing the protocol above. I've seen clients who fell off the horse completely, because they assumed that they undid all of their progress. In reality it would have only taken a week or two to undo damage.

Often it's not the two-week vacation that someone takes that leads to their fitness doom, but the illusion that this doom had already occurred.

I have personal experience with creating this self-fulfilling prophecy. In 2006, I lost 40 pounds in four months and then competed in a bodybuilding contest. After gorging myself for two days straight post-competition, I stepped on the scale and saw that I had gained a whopping twenty five pounds. Rather than realize this caloric accounting is impossible, I felt defeated, allowed myself to continue gorging, and ended up weighing 200 pounds within six weeks. (And no, that was not water weight.)

The moral of the story is this: When you fall off the horse, whether you thinkyou're past the point of no return or not, you are probably alright.

So analyze objectively, without judgment. Better yet, talk to an experienced coach if you don't feel like you can be objective with yourself.

Step 3: Show Gratitude for How Far You've Come

Let's say you won the lottery tomorrow. You'd be pretty fucking happy, right? Of course you would.

But that happiness fades away quickly. As it turns out, research shows that you probably wouldn't be happier than the average person, and only marginally happier than someone who was paralyzed in an accident (if they were already a happy person).

When it comes to happiness, us human beings are equally incredibly resilient and stubborn. We are always establishing a new baseline of happiness, and I see this in my clients all the time.

One client went from dumbbell chest pressing 40lbs to 100lbs in a few short months. (Honestly, there were some amazing genetics at play here, since that took me a total of three years.) Yet, after a short break he was incredibly displeased that he could only do 80lbs.

When you focus on how much you "once could do," you idealize your past similar to the paralyzed individuals in the study above. (I really don't mean to equate losing 20lbs on your bench press to becoming paralyzed, rather than display what happens when you idealize your past.)

Idealizing the past will lead to preemptive feelings of defeat, hopelessness, and self-hate.

But this can be prevented by showing a sense of gratitude. Take a step back. Think about how far you've come and how much work you put in to get there.

If you show a sense of gratitude with your progress to-date, you no longer focus on the 100lbs that you used to do, but the 40lb increase that you've accomplished. When you do that, you can again focus on continued growth rather than previous glory.

Step 4: Create a To-Do List for "Reboot Week" and Establish a Baseline

The penultimate step is to designate a week to get back on your program—we'll call this "Reboot Week"—and create a detailed list of all the things you have to do.

For example, if you're struggling with going back to the gym because you're worried about how weak you'll feel, then your checklist will look like the following:

Monday

• Diet: Hit your calorie goals within +/- 3%
• Training: Put on workout attire
• Get in car
• Drive to gym
• Do three sets of dumbbell chest press
• Do two sets of incline dumbbell chest press

Wednesday

• Diet: Hit calorie goals within +/- 3%
• Training: Put on workout attire
• Get in car
• Drive to gym
• Do three sets of barbell squats

And so on. Now here's the important part: just get through your list without thinking about outcome whatsoever. It doesn't matter if you've completely lost all of your strength (which you likely didn't) or if you're still up 10lbs on the scale. Focus on getting through your checklist.

Whenever you feel that voice inside of your head reminding you of where you once were, gently refocus back to your checklist and remain in the present.

By the end of the week, you'll have your totals for your major lifts, as well asyour weight and waist measurements.

Step 5: Crush Your Previous Baseline

That's it. Once you beat all of reboot week's previous totals, you will have re-established a positive feedback loop and you'll be ready to keep kicking ass.

It's intimidating when you've been away from the gym for a while, but you'll thank yourself later for getting back on the horse.

http://lifehacker.com/five-steps-to-get-back-into-your-fitness-routine-1658435892

Stronger Stories | From black sheep to global fitness star

"WHY DON'T I HAVE LOOSE SKIN"?

HOW TO BUILD MUSCLE?

HOW TO BUILD MUSCLE: THE BASIC GUIDE FOR BEGINNERS

Want to know how to build real muscle quickly? That all depends on whether you want to get big or get strong. Both involve lifting weights and getting the right nutrition, but the ways of going about them are slightly different. Here, we’ll let you in on the right methods for you, whether you’re just looking to increase your overall size or strength.

LIFTING WEIGHTS TO MAKE GAINS

People often expect that they’ll have to spend all day and night at the gym in order to get big. That’s not really true. Experts recommend training just two or three times a week to make decent sized gains, but a lot of routines out there are based on a five-day program. Shorter bursts of more intense training are better than prolonged periods of light exercise when it comes to building muscle.

Intensity is key to getting bigger muscles quickly. The quantity or sets and reps you do is of paramount importance: the more intense and rapid the workout, the faster you’ll see results. Your muscles begin to grow whenever their cells are placed under “metabolic stress”- and if you’ve ever felt your arms bulging after a workout, that’s exactly what’s happening: your muscles are producing the extra chemical by-products needed to lift the weights. So, what does all this mean? Basically, you’ll need to do a whole lot of lifting. A good example of
a routine would be 3 to 5 sets of between 8 and 15, where you’ll be struggling to compete by the end but could maybe manage one or two more. You need to push yourself hard, but not to the point of failure. And getting rest between the sets if extremely important- though it shouldn’t be more than a couple of minutes- because muscle tiredness if what we’re looking for.

This brings us back to the question of: “how often should I be training?” The five-day routines mentioned above- where one day is for your chest, another for your legs, etc.- is still the preferred way of gaining muscle, but you can definitely get enough done in just three days if the workouts are intense enough.

Below I’ve included an example of a chest routine that I prefer when making gains:

Around 4×12 reps of:

Decline press

Incline press

Bench press

Remember not to break for more than two minutes between sets. This is vital to increasing muscle mass.

LIFTING WEIGHTS TO BUILD STRENGTH

The only way of getting your body to become stronger is to show it that it has no other choice. That means, unlike lifting to build muscle, you need to test your body to breaking point. You’ll be using much heavier weights with far fewer reps, and expecting to fail a few times as you push your body to the max. Of course, you’ll need to take longer rest periods between these exhausting exercises, but your body simply won’t be able to recover properly without them.

For this type of routine, you should be using rep ranges of around 3 to 6. Your weights should really push you hard, so that you can’t lift anymore after completing your set. Because the workload is so much more, you’ll need to give yourself at least four to six minutes between each set, giving your body enough time to get ready for the next challenge.

Because you’ll be lifting a lot more weight at about half the amount of reps required for building muscle, you should first use some lighter weights in order to get used to the movements involved. This practice could be used as part of a warm-up routine before you start increasing the loads. When it comes to reps in a set, you should start off with, for example, 3 reps, then move down to 2 and so on, as your body becomes more and more tired.

Resting periods are crucial if you’re looking to build strength. That’s because your muscle groups need to fully recover before you start training  them again. Typically, you’ll need one or two days for your muscles to get back to normal, but you definitely shouldn’t wait more than three days to start training again if you want to see real gains.

Strength training really requires you to use all your muscle groups in coordination rather than just isolating one or two at a time. For this we’d recommend doing upper/lower body groups on different days, either that or back/front groupings instead. We’d recommend doing this four times a week but you can definitely get away with just three.

Here’s a quick back workout that focuses on the whole body :

(All have a rest period of 2-3 minutes between sets)

5 deadlifts (5, 5, 3, 3, 1)

5 T-bar rows (4-6)

5 single-arm dumbbell rows (5, 5, 3, 3, 1)

5 seated cable rows (4-6)

5 Hammer Strength rows (4-6)

BY AMY ROBERTS http://clik6.com/how-to-build-muscle-the-basic-guide-for-beginners/