Principals of Mass Building

Principles Of Mass Building

Putting a good amount of muscle mass on your frame is a relatively simple task when you follow proven techniques. However this doesn’t mean it’s easy; the task still requires lots of hard work and dedication.

Firstly your diet must be designed to build muscle mass. Diet is significantly more important than weight training when you want to change your physique. This is because a weight-training regime can be absolutely perfect, but without the correct nutrition you simply will not achieve results.

Please read out nutrition tips page for diet information.

Principles of mass building

Overload Training

The overload principle: Each muscle must be put under progressively more stress in each successive workout otherwise it will not grow beyond its current size.

Our muscles react to a stimulus by adapting and growing to meet that stimulus. Therefore if a bicep curl is performed one week, with a weight of 20kg our muscle will grow so that next time it can perform the exercise with greater ease. However if the same weight is used, for the same amount of reps the muscle has no need to grow any further.

Therefore in each successive workout we must place our specific muscles under greater stress.

Overload can be achieved in a few ways:
1. Set overload: The amount of sets per exercise is increased
2. Rep overload: the amount of reps per sets is increased
3. Weight overload: A greater amount of weight is used for the same exercise

Compound Movements

To stimulate muscle growth we must place them under the greatest amount of stress possible. This can only be achieved with simple compound movements.

Compound movements incorporate agonist, antagonist synergist and stabilising muscles when performed and put the whole body under stress; this in turn sparks new muscle growth.

Examples of compound movements include: bench press, squat, deadlift, pull-up, lunges and rows. However every exercise can be performed with more emphasis on compound movements for example a bicep curl with a barbell will incorporate more muscles than a bicep curl machine.

Machines and isolation movements can however be used sparingly as part of a well-rounded regime.

Over-training

Over-training is worse than not training at all. This is because workouts actually break down muscle tissue. Therefore if you are over-training your body will not see any gains, and may actually lose muscle tissue.

Signs of over-training include tiredness and sluggishness, loss of appetite, lack of motivation and even weight loss and loss of muscle definition.

As a general rule for natural athletes one muscle group should be trained once a week

Work the whole body

When undertaking a regime equal importance must be given to each body part.

Concentrating solely on biceps and pecs will lead to over-training and an unbalanced physique.

The BIG three

If you can only do three exercises for the rest of you life make them squats, pull-ups and bench press. These three exercises will take care of most muscles in the body and should be a staple part of any weight training regime.

Length of your workout

When building muscle the body must be kept in an anabolic (muscle building state) all day. Therefore keep your workouts to no more than one hour. Any more than this will be detrimental as muscle fibres will keep breaking down, but be unable to overload.

Making changes to your routine

As outlined before the body adapts very quickly to a stimulus so you must change your workouts on a regular basis, for example every 3 weeks, or even every week. The changes can be as simple as using a barbell for a bench press instead of a dumbbell or performing slightly different exercises but this is vitally important to stimulate new muscle growth.

This also applies to repetitions performed during you workouts. Make sure you change the amount of reps performed to incorporate all the different muscle fibres. This can be done on a week-to-week basis, every two or three weeks or even during each workout.

Post workout nutrition

This is vitally important when building muscle or losing fat. The body absorbs nutrients like a sponge directly after weight training, so when bulking eat plenty of carbohydrates and protein within half an hour of you last rep.

Points to remember

Remember to get at least 8 hours sleep as this is when your body recovers and builds muscle.

Remember to eat lots of quality, nutritious food in the right quantities.

Remember to keep consistent; this is the best way to achieve significant results.