Want to build more muscle the way champion bodybuilders do it? Then read on. In this post, I’ll answer the biggest questions about training volume: “How many sets, how many sets for big vs small muscles, how do you track/count the sets, and how many days in a row should you train on a 4-day split.
I started lifting in the early 1980's and right from day one, I was engrossed with the bodybuilding style of training and eating. I think it's always valuable to take time for reflection, and realizing this year that I had accumulated 30 years of training experience (including 28 competitions as a natural bodybuilder), I thought you would enjoy a post on my “lessons learned” that might help you in your own fitness endeavors, and hopefully help you shave a few years off your learning curve.
Superset training is scientifically proven to build muscle and strength while helping you get your workouts finished faster. It's one of the best techniques for time efficiency without compromising effectiveness. In fact, superset training raises your [...]
Arnold Schwarzenegger was famous for training twice a day on a system known as a double split routine and he went on to become one of the most muscular men of all time. Could splitting your workouts in two and doing half in the AM and half in the PM increase your muscle growth too, or is this technique only for the pros with superior genetics and unlimited time? Read on to see the pros and cons - you may be surprised at the answer!
There is no single best muscle building workout for everyone. Each person has different goals, time availability, experience level and personal preferences. All these factors play into your decision about which routine is best for you. However... what if... gun to the head, I was forced to pick the muscle building program I thought was the best, based on more than 40 years of lifting, including for bodybuilding competition training? Read this post to see my #1 choice...
It's possible to build a lot of muscle with no split routine at all. Full body workouts have their place, especially for beginners, for time efficiency and for "back to basics" strength training. But suppose you have a physique and visual aesthetics goal and decided to go with a body part split. What is the best split routine for building muscle?
One of the biggest debates in bodybuilding in the past decade has been about whether a higher or lower training frequency is better. Early studies that compared training only once a week to twice a week seemed to suggest twice a week builds more muscle and that's what most trainers heavily promoted. But more recent studies that were better designed have increased our understanding of this subject.
How often should you train each muscle per week? Over the last decade, a number of studies suggested that hitting each muscle twice a week is ideal and that a low frequency like working each muscle only once a week is not optimal. Recently a group of researchers carefully designed a study to help us answer this question that is still fiercely debated to this day...
For the last decade or so, one of the most researched and talked about subjects in resistance training has been volume. Specifically, how much volume optimizes muscle growth? We know that initially, when you add training volume, you gain more muscle, but then the amount of gains tapers off. But ultimately, if volume exceeds a certain level, gains flatten out and reverse direction, which indicates the point of overtraining and under-recovery. The million dollar questions are, "how much volume is enough" and could counting sets be the best way to track it?
How much protein you should eat per day to build muscle at the optimum rate? This question has been debated for years. It still is to this day, though good science points to 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of bodyweight per day as a pretty good guideline. But one question that probably causes even more controversy and confusion is this one: “How much protein you should eat at each meal?” Differently stated, “How much protein can your body absorb or digest in one sitting?”
