What is the best time of day to work out? I wouldn’t blame you if you were confused about this because everyone seems to have an opinion: Conventional wisdom says train in the morning to start your day right. But some coaches argue that it's better to train later in the day due to circadian rhythms. New research has shed some light on the "best time to train," including the best time to lift if you want to gain muscle...
You may have heard of drop sets before because they've been around a long time and drop sets are one of the most popular high intensity muscle building methods. Drop sets were invented in 1947 by Henry Atkins. Arnold Schwarzenegger helped make drop sets more popular in the 1970s. The terminator famously used drop sets on barbell curls to build some of the best biceps of all time. Today you see recreational lifters doing drop sets every day in every gym. Maybe you already do them too. But if so, are you sure you're doing them right? If you're doing them wrong, or not doing them at all, you're missing out on major gains...
More people, especially as they get older, are finding that 5 or 6 days a week of lifting feels excessive, leading to so much fatigue and soreness, it's no longer fun. Sometimes they just give up. Others simply don't have time to train almost daily. If they are all or none thinkers, they might figure, "If I can't follow the ideal schedule to maximize results, why bother at all?" They don't realize how many time efficient training methods are out there. Training only 3 days a week is one of them. They also don't realize you can make excellent gains with only 3 workouts a week. And there are more options for 3 day schedules than you might imagine...
It's possible that everything you thought you knew about how much weight you should lift and how many reps you should do to build muscle might be wrong. But if it is, it's nothing to be upset about. For many people, the recent discovery that you can build as much muscle lifting light weights for high reps as you can lifting moderate weights or heavy weights is great news. Read on to learn why and how you can gain muscle with light weights.
Many experienced lifters and physique athletes who want to build muscle train 5 days a week, and a handful even train 6 days a week. But for many people, these higher frequency training schedules are not realistic. As a result, they want workouts that are still effective but only require 4 days a week, or in some cases minimalist programs that take even less time. If you want to spend only 4 days a week in the gym, you may be wondering what are the best 4 day training schedules. In this extensive special report, you'll see many options, some which you may have never thought of before.
Will your muscles shrivel up and your strength plummet if you take a week of light or easy lifting, or even take a week of total rest, or could an intentional training break actually improve your long-term gains and reduce risk of injury and burnout? If the latter is true, then how often should you back off, what should you back off of (weight, reps, volume, intensity) and how long should you do it?
When you’re feeling burned out from a long stretch of hard training and you suspect you have over-training syndrome, there are many strategies and tactics you can apply to stimulate recovery and start making progress again, and to prevent over-training in the future.
You've probably heard that you have to lift weights with intensity to make muscle gains. You may have also heard in recent years that you have to do a fairly high volume (more exercises [...]
Time-efficient training is a vitally important topic because lack of time is one of the most commonly reported barriers to exercising consistently. For many people, "no time to train" is their number one problem, or at least it's their biggest perceived problem. I say "perceived" because if they knew about the time-saving training strategies you're about to learn in this blog post, they wouldn't see "no time" as a problem anymore.
I'd like to introduce a new type of "hybrid" split routine designed for building both muscle and strength at the same time. You'll get a lot stronger on this schedule, but because you don't train heavy every day of the week, it's fairly easy on your joints. It also rotates some of the exercises through the week so you don't get bored, and it uses triple progression so you can keep making gains on the same routine for 12 weeks straight.
