Bodybuilding TrainingThis page will explain bodybuilding training for maximum muscle mass. These free tips will help you see how lifting weights properly will increase your muscle mass and strength! Who doesn't want to look like Ronnie Coleman or Jay Cutler, right! This information will save you time and money in designing a weight lifting program for yourself. Some of you may be asking yourselves, "What's the difference between training for bodybuilding and training for anything else?" The answer to that is pretty simple, but very few people can put their finger on it.
When you are lifting weights to increase muscle mass as your main goal, the difference is in how you lift the weight. More specifically, it is not enough to just move the weight through the range of motion, rather, you must flex the muscle throughout the movement. Additionally, it is important to maintain that tension for around 45 seconds.
Let's use the bench press to illustrate my point. Most people lower the weight under control, and simply push the weight back up. To stimulate your muscles to grow as quickly as possible, you need to keep tension on them by flexing through the entire movement. Momentum is your enemy in bodybuilding! It is not good enough to do one repetition like this, you need to do it for 8 to 12 repetitions, or 45 seconds per set. While it is true that lifting heavy weights explosively will increase your muscle mass, and lifting with constant tension as I have described above will increase your strength, if you want to maximize the bodybuilding training effect, you need to train specifically for your goal. That is to say that if you want maximum muscle mass, like Ronnie Coleman, you should train with constant tension.
There is nothing wrong with strength, but if that is your main goal, you will want to maximize that by lifting weights specifically for it. You can learn all about training for strength on my Powerlifting and Strongman pages.
Now, back to training for maximum muscle mass. We want to maximize the volume of work that your muscles are doing in a set period of time. Generally speaking, your workout should last no more than 45 minutes for weight training. This is because your natural testosterone levels will drop after about 45 minutes of intense training. You definitely do not want your testosterone levels to drop if you want your muscles to grow. Now that we have discussed length of bodybuilding training, let's look and rest between sets.
We want to keep our rest between sets no shorter than 60 seconds and no longer than 3 minutes. Spend the majority of your workouts with rest periods of about 2 minutes between sets and you will be on the right track. The reasons for this are that you can squeeze more work into that 45 minute workout, and that using the lactic acid energy system (which is how your body handles intense work with rest periods like this) encourages more muscle growth than if you rested longer between sets.
Probably most importantly, you must focus your time and energy on basic, multi-joint exercises that work the most muscle at one time. By doing this, you will stimulate your entire body to grow, which is a necessary part of the process to build a body like Jay Cutler. When doing bodybuilding training like this, you also need to limit the exercises that do not work large muscle groups (isolation exercises). If you work as hard as you should be on the basic exercises, you will need all the recovery ability you have, and isolation exercises will only detract from that with no added benefit.
Another thing to remember is that getting plenty of sleep is one of the most important things you can do to accelerate your progress. One way to maximize your recovery is to learn how to get focused on powerful sleep. Those are the basics of bodybuilding training for maximum muscle mass. For more detailed training information click through to the pages on bodybuilding training split How to improve your Bench Press These pages will cover basic training for each of these bodyparts, and a breakdown of the workout schedule. If you need any information on nutrition you should check this out. Enjoy the information, and if you haven’t already, sign up for our free newsletter, the No Limits Physique News! I have written a 40-page e-book called, "50 Tips for Bodybuilding Success" that gives you all kinds of tips and secrets to maximize your bodybuilding results. This information can be the difference between racing to the top of the bodybuilding world, or wasting years training with little or no results. Check it out and download your copy by clicking here! Strength Training for Bodybuilding
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