Muscle Workouts
Muscle workouts like other workouts for example aerobic workouts have a specific purpose in mind i.e. aerobic workouts burn as much energy as possible and to aim to build stamina for the body. Muscle workouts sole aim in life is to build good solid muscle, hopefully as fast as possible.
Before we examine some of the approaches to workouts lets firstly let’s have a look at the science of muscle building.
When you use your muscles to do any work for example picking up weights or picking up heavy objects etc we create micro (hopefully not bigger) tears in our muscle fibre. The body being a sophisticated machine repairs these micro-tears for us.
In anticipation of us doing something silly again such as picking up heavy weights or heavy objects the body repairs the micro tears providing a stronger muscle.
It is this muscle science that the various muscle workouts are trying to make the most of it.
There are different views on what basis should be used for the beast muscle gains. Lets have a look at each of these views separately.
The More is better Workout
With this approach the idea is to do a high-volume of sets and reps during each work out. So using a 10 x 10 or 10 x 12 approach means 10 repetitions repeated 10 times or 12 times. The problem with this approach is that there is quite a lot of strain on the body and it is not possible to maintain or operate with a maximum way possible
With this approach to your workout it quite possible to impact muscle growth, simply because overdoing the amount of repetitions basically demands energy. The best source for this energy is the protein in your muscles, thus the body turns to eating the muscle for energy to sustain the number of repetitions.
As Little as possible Workout
In the little as possible approach to muscle workouts the idea is to pick up the heaviest possible weight once or twice. The idea behind us is that by straining the muscle intensely produces the largest muscle growth.
Whilst this approach definitely avoids the body eating its own muscle for energy, it has not generally proven to be a success for everybody. It appears to be effective only for a small group of people.
The Moderation Workout
As all things in life, moderation is probably the most effective muscle workout you can do. The approach of this workout is to strain the muscle sufficiently, to produce muscle gain without impacting muscle growth. Picking up a weight sufficiently heavy enough to only allow between five and seven repetitions to be done is effective for most people.
This approach works well with the science of muscle building, maximum stress to the muscle, doesn’t require the body to crave protein to support the workout.
Now of course what we have mentioned here is merely high level approach. Bodybuilding diet, rest periods between workouts and many other factors play a part in muscle gain.
So which of the muscle workouts approaches is best? I prefer the moderation approach. The best thing to do is try the approach you like and keep records of your progress. If you feel things aren’t going as expected then change approach and compare notes.
Good luck!
