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The bodybuilding debates will never end. The endless arguments over how an
effective muscle-building program should be structured will most likely continue
until the end of time. Just scour the Internet message boards, flip through any
muscle magazine or talk to the sales rep at your local supplement store. No
matter who you talk to or what you read, it seems that everyone is an expert
these days.
If everyone is an expert, confident in their own ideas and beliefs, how can
the average beginner possibly know who to listen to? He or she is instantly
confronted with endless questions that seem to have no clear-cut answer.
How many days should I train per week? How many sets should I perform for
each muscle group? What type of rep range should I be using? What are the most
effective exercises for stimulating muscle growth? How long should my workouts
last?
These questions go on and on until he or she is eventually led to believe
that building muscle is an infinitely complex process involving rocket-science
precision and an intimate understanding of human physiology. I mean, that’s what
takes to build muscle, right? Wrong! Believe me, there are answers to these
important questions, and if you are willing to put in the time and effort you
will most definitely find them. But that’s not what this article is about.
You see, amidst all of the confusion and endless debating, the majority of
lifters end up losing sight of the big picture. Beyond all of the specific
workout principles, such as rep range and exercise selection, remains one
crucial principle, a principle that lies at the very heart of the muscle growth
process. If this principle is not given full attention, or even worse,
completely ignored, building muscle becomes next to impossible.
The bottom line is that muscles grow as they adapt to stress. When you go to
the gym and lift weights, you create “micro-tears” within the muscle tissue.
Your body perceives this as a potential threat to its survival and reacts
accordingly by increasing the size and strength of the muscle fibers in order to
protect against a possible future “attack”. Therefore, in order to continually
increase the size and strength of the muscles, you must focus on progressing
each week by either lifting slightly more weight or performing an extra rep or
two. In doing this, your body will continue to adapt and grow to the
ever-increasing stress.
Building muscle is all about building strength!
So what is the most powerful muscle-building tool available? Quite simply, it
is a pen and a piece of paper!
Every time you go to the gym you must write down exactly what you
accomplished and then strive to improve upon it the following week. If you
aren’t always getting better, then you’re either staying the same or getting
worse. Every week you should have an exact plan of attack ready to be executed.
You absolutely cannot afford to start throwing weights around aimlessly without
a clear-cut goal in mind.
The specifics of building muscle are important to understand and implement,
but regardless of what style of training you’re currently using the ultimate
deciding factor between success and failure is progression. You can sit around
all day obsessing over specific principles, but the bottom line is that if you
aren’t getting stronger every week, you absolutely will not be getting any
bigger. Examine your training approach closely. If you haven’t been paying
laser-like attention to the amount of weight you’ve been using, the number of
reps you’ve been performing, and then striving with every ounce of your energy
to improve upon those numbers each week, you are completely ignoring the very
foundation of the muscle growth process. If you want to see the best gains in
muscle mass and strength that you possibly can, a pen and a piece of paper is
the most important tool you could possibly have in your arsenal.
Sean Nalewanyj is a bodybuilding expert, fitness author and writer of
top-selling Internet Bodybuilding E-Book: The Truth About Building Muscle. You
can learn more by visiting his website: http://www.MuscleGainTruth.com/
Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com
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