How To Actually Gain Lean Muscle
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010When stimulating muscle growth there is a ton of material written about how crucial the rest period is. Despite common theory, muscle to not grow muscle during gym sessions. In fact the only time your muscle can grow and repair tissue damage is when you are resting or sleeping.
As such, it is best to avoid working out the same muscles too frequently. This rule is applicable to about 85 % of the muscles in your body. This 15% of muscle can be worked out every day, in fact if you want to see results you will need to exercises them at least 4-5 times per week to gain lean muscle.
Such muscle groups include the forearms, calves and abdominals. You might be thinking, what makes these muscles so special that I can work them every day and not damage them?. The answer is simple, under normal everyday use these muscles a under constant stress are a “designed” to be very resilient and can therefore withstand normal weight training quite easily. For example everytime you walk you put your calves under strain, yet not everyone has goliath looking muscles. Many people have found calves to be a pain in the backside in the growth department, no matter how much weight they press, the results are dismal. Similarly, the forearms will respond in the same manner since they are engaged every time you use your hands. Everytime you move your abdominals which are located at the center of your body are engaged.
So, what can you do to boost them into muscle growth? Basically, you can start prioritizing them in your bodybuilding workouts. You would spend a portion of every workout on these muscle groups during 4 of your workout days and, possible, you could add a special fifth workout day where you would spend the hour on these muscle groups alone.
What happens if you do this and they still seem resistant to growth? You could employ a tactic known as “shock bombing”. This tactic involves a high intensity workout session at the beginning of all workout sessions. Using the forearms as an example, you could load up a lot of weight on a barbell and perform a superset of forearm extensions, reverse barbell curls, and reverse forearm extensions for 15 reps, do this three times. This will almost certainly shock you muscles into growth.
It is also advisable to know when to stop such excess training on these difficult muscle groups. Once you have noticed that they have responded well to your exercise plans, you would then opt to just perform moderate exercises to help maintain their shape and size. Knowing when to stop your specialization training will certainly help reduce the risk for overtraining them.
So yes, even highly resistant muscle groups can be boosted into growth if you know how to go about it. As such, you never need to feel that any of your muscles will ever be lagging again.
