How to Lift Weights to Build the Most Muscle

How to Lift Weights to Build the Most Muscle

Weight training uses tools that let you change the amount of resistance. You can use "free weights" like dumbbells and barbells, machines that use cables or pulleys to help you raise the weight, or bodyweight exercises like dips or pull-ups to build strength.

Free weights, machines, and bodyweight exercises

Free weight exercises should be the main focus of your workouts if you want to build muscle. Not devices or exercises that use your own body weight. You shouldn't focus your training on machines or bodyweight exercises, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use them. Machines don't accomplish this, therefore to obtain a good, muscle-blasting workout, you need to work as many muscle fibers as possible.

The primary reason for this is insufficient development of stabilizer and synergist muscles. Stabilizer and synergist muscles are muscles that help the main muscle do a complicated lift. The more stabilizers and synergists worked, the more muscle fibers were activated. To do the lift, you need a lot of stabilizer and synergistic muscle help for multi-joint free weight workouts like the bench press. If you use a machine to complete a bench press, on the other hand, you won't need much help from stabilizers.

Machines are limited in how they can move and help maintain the weight along that path. This means they don't work the muscles that surround the area you're exercising (stabilizers). This is wrong. Your major muscle group will never grow if your stabilizer muscles are weak!

For instance, free weight workouts like the dumbbell press or squat place a lot of stress on the muscle groups that support them. That's why you'll get tired faster and not be able to lift as much weight as you did on the machine. But you'll get stronger and build more muscle quickly, and you'll really know how strong you are.

If you employ machines in your program, you should only use them to work on specific areas after you've done all of the multi-joint exercises.

Beginners should start with a small number of machine exercises, bodyweight activities, and free weight movements that work more than one joint. Before adding more weight, students should practice the right way to do each one until they are comfortable with it. Bodyweight activities will soon stop helping them grow, thus they will need to do more free weight workouts.

Exercises for Multiple Joints

Compound (or multi-joint) movements are exercises that train more than one muscle group at a time. The best way to build muscle is to do these complex exercises, which work the most muscles in the least period of time.

These are the basic moves:

* Bench Presses (chest, shoulders, triceps) * Overhead Presses (shoulders, triceps)
* Pull-ups and barbell rows work the back and biceps. * Squats work the legs and lower back.
* Deadlifts (shoulders, back, and legs)
* Bar Dips (chest, shoulders, and arms)

I can't stress enough how important these exercises are. Don't start an advanced weight training program without these!

They will put more stress on your bones and muscles than any machine could, providing you a great exercise in a short amount of time. If you can only do a few exercises, do these. They have been shown (and not just by me) to help build muscle and strength better than any other workouts.

Lift Heavy Weight

You need to lift large weights to gain muscle. When I say heavy, I mean a weight that is hard for you, not for me or anyone else. You should only be able to accomplish 8 to 12 reps before your muscles give out if you think a weight is heavy. If you can do more than 15 reps before your muscles get tired, the weight is "light."

Lifting heavier weights works more muscle fibers than lifting lighter weights. That's all there is to it. More muscular activation leads to more muscle growth.

Don't Train Too Much

If you lift heavy weights, your body will be under a lot of stress, therefore it's important to have enough rest and recovery after your exercises. If you tend to train too much, a few things happen:

You don't give your muscles adequate time to rest between sessions. You won't be at your strongest for your next workout if your muscles haven't healed yet. You need to rest. This should be your major concern, besides eating.

You are putting yourself at risk of getting hurt or burned out. I know you're thrilled and motivated to work out, but don't be careless. You need to pace yourself so you don't get burned out before you attain your goals. That's all I do for weight training: three times a week. If I did much more than that, my body wouldn't have enough time to heal and grow new muscle.

Contrary to what most people think, you don't get bigger when you work out; you get bigger when you rest.

Here is an example of a mass workout. I did four heavy sets of four to eight reps each.

Wednesday (abs and legs)

* Heavy squats and leg extensions in a superset * Seated calf raises in four sets * Crunches in four sets of 20

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Friday (abs, chest, shoulders, and triceps)

* Superset of flat bench press and incline dumbbell flyes * Superset of shoulder press and side raises * Tricep pushdowns * Reverse incline leg raises (3 sets of 20)

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Sunday (back, biceps, and abs)

* Superset of wide grip pull-ups and latbar pulldown * Superset of EZ bar bicep curl and incline dumbbell curls
* 20 crunches in 4 sets

Not fancy, but it works.

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