Weight training is a system of routine and repetition in Bodybuilding to gain muscle mass. Every bodybuilder has to go through the same problems when facing the task of building large amounts of muscle mass. We all have to follow the same steps. However, since everyones body is different in some way, there will be different variations you have to go through to find out which system works best for you. But, the basics of bodybuilding is unchanged.

The Basics Include…

• 60 to 90 second rest in between sets
• Do not go over one hour in weight training
• 1 - 2 day(s) of rest between workouts for same muscles
• Low reps & sets with heavy lbs = more muscle mass will be gained
• You must out due your last effort to see results
• Muscle confusion is key to growth
• Use good form on each exercise
• Long hours of cardio kills muscle growth
• The more lbs you lift, the bigger the muscles will get
• Basic exercises will gain more muscle mass then isolation exercises

Rest Between sets

No matter how hard you push yourself in the workout, you should never go over 90 seconds in between sets. The less time you have between sets, the more fat you will burn off. It promotes the growth hormone which not only helps the growth of your muscle but help fat burning as well.

Workout Time

Your entire workout should be less then an hour in length. After an hour, your body losses the testosterone and has less growth hormones. Plus, the carbohydrates stored in your body will be depleted and you will not have enough fuel to maintain that high level to promote muscle mass. Also, over training will cause muscle loss.

Rest Between Workouts

Your body needs time to heal and recover from the previous workout. During this recovery stage is when your muscles really start to grow. In the workout, your muscle cells are split in two different smaller cells. When you recover or rest, the cells will grow to the regular size because of the protein you will be eating. Failure to rest properly will have the cells remain small and your muscle mass will remain the same or shrink.

Lower Reps and Sets

When you lower the reps and sets, you will be able to lift heavier weights. Heavier weights will build more muscle then doing a lot of sets and reps with lighter weights. You will find that your muscles will get fatigue faster with the heavier weight then the lighter weight. The heavier the pounds you are lift, the bigger your muscles will become.

Progression

You must try to out due your effort from workout to workout. Even if it is an extra set or even one more rep. If you do the same reps and sets with the same weight every time, you will only maintain the same muscle mass. Increasing the reps or weight is the key to constantly gaining muscle mass. This will be more mentally challenging then physically. You must “Will” your body to continue when it doesn’t want to.

Muscle Confusion

The nature of the body is to adapt to the different stresses it undergoes. So, when doing the same routine for several weeks, you might feel like your body isn’t responding like it did when you first started. This is when you use muscle confusion to reignite your body. Changing the technique will confuse the body and build a new part of the muscle that was not worked before. Every body part can be attack from a different angle and this new approach will trick the muscle into muscle growth. Once you have done this new routine for a while you can always go back to the previous routine and you’ll feel like you are doing it for the first time again.

Good Form

This is hard for many people because we all want to lift that heavy weight right away and don’t want to focus on good form. You must leave your ego at the door if you want to gain muscle mass. Using bad form will engage other muscles that do not need to be worked while not getting the full benefits to the muscle(s) you are exercising at the time. End results, you will not be splitting those muscle cells. Also, injury is very possible when performing in bad form. Once you are injured, it will take a while before you can lift again, and all that hard work will be for nothing.

Cardio Exercises

When you run or do any type of cardio exercises for a long period of time, you will actually be stripping away all that muscle mass that you worked for. Once all the calories are burned off, your body will need to get energy form other places. One place is the stored fat, the other place is your muscles. Instead of long hours of cardio, do interval training. This will promote fat loss while still having your muscle mass intact.

Basic Exercises

Basic exercises will build more muscles mass then isolation exercises. The basic exercises targets the large muscle groups with many other muscles that come into play during the workout. More muscle mass is generated and more fat loss is created. Isolation exercises only works one muscle at a time and does not promote fat loss as much as the basic exercises.

All these things are universal and every major bodybuilder has gone through each of these steps to get where they are today. But, everybody’s body reacts differently, so you must determine how much pounds to start off with and which technique your body reacts to the best.

Three Tips to Getting Ripped…

• Weight Training
• Interval Training
• Low Calorie Diet

Weight Training: When you do weight training for getting ripped, you need to do different techniques then when you were weight training for building mass. Because you are not eating loads of carbohydrates and calories like you were when you were lifting for mass, you need to lift less pounds on the weight and do more reps. You do not want to lower the weight too much, because you will start losing muscle mass. For example, if you were doing 100lbs with 5 reps and 3 sets while building muscle mass then, for getting ripped, you will want to lower the weight to 75lbs with 10 reps and 5 sets. This is only an example to show what I’m talking about. For some people, this will be even harder of a workout because now you are changing your system and your body isn’t adjusted for it. So expect to be sore the first couple times you do it. And, if you feel pain at any time during the workout, stop right away and change the reps and/or sets to adjust for your body.

Interval Training: Doing interval training is way better then long hours of cardio exercise. Interval training is doing many short period of high intensity during the course of many moderation periods. This will melt the fat right off your body. You will lose more fat during a shorter period of time doing interval training compared to cardio training. The trick is to give it your all during those burst of high intensity and gather your wind during the moderation period. This is a must to get ripped.

Low Calorie Diet: Doing all the workouts in the world will fall short if you can not control your appetite. Eating right is the last tip to getting ripped. Eating many small meals throughout the course of the day will eliminate the hunger factor. Lower your calorie intake and eat plenty of protein so you won’t loss all that muscle that you built up. Water is essential and be sure to drink plenty of it because you will go through a lot of water with your interval training. Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables as well.

The combination of the three above mentioned tips will get you ripped before your know it. The biggest key to getting a ripped body is to follow these tips and do not cheat. Cheating implies eating fast food when you know you shouldn’t or skipping a few days of training when you should have been working out. There are no excuses, if you want it bad enough you will find a way to fulfill your goals.

Many people have different theories on the order of what comes first, Cardio Exercise or Weight Training. Well, it really depends on what your ultimate goal is. In this article we will explain which one comes first for what you are trying to do and why you should do that order.

Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, is how you should go about the order of your workout. Cardio exercise or weight training first. If you are trying to build muscle mass, then it is best to do your cardio exercise on a different day then your weight training. If you are trying to loss weight, then it is okay to do cardio exercise before your workout.

Doing cardio exercises on different days is the best way to get your cardio exercising in and still have enough energy to build your muscles to the max. You need all your energy to get a good pump and build muscle mass. If you do cardio exercise before your weight training, you will not have enough energy to give it your all. You will need all that energy to build up the muscle mass. If you do cardio exercise after your workout, you are using key energy that your body needs to repair the cells and recover the muscle. So in other words, you will be stopping the growing process of your muscles if you do cardio exercise after your weight training.

If your goal is to loss weight, then it is okay to do cardio exercise before your weight training. Your cardio exercise will give you a good warm up and a short rest between cardio exercise and weight training should give you enough energy to do a good workout with the weights. If you still needs some energy, there are plenty of different kinds of energy drinks and protein bars you can take during your short break to give enough energy to finish your workout.

Alternating the days will give you the best results. You will have the energy for the weight training one day and the next day you can recover those muscles and still go out and burn calories with the cardio exercises.

There are many different kinds of workouts for the forearms

Having a strong set of forearms will aid you in other workouts. This article will discuss the two best types of forearm workouts and will help explain how having a strong set of forearms will help you in your overall weight training endeavor.

Forearms are one of the most neglected body parts during training. More people would rather focus their energy on their biceps or chest because of the size those muscles can reach. However, it’ll looks pretty goofy if you have huge upper arms with tinny forearms. Without strong forearms, you will not be able to reach your full overall body potential. You need strong forearms to hold a heavy barbell up when you are doing a bench press or to grab heavy dumbbells to do curls. Forearms play a role in every upper body exercise and some lower exercises you perform.

Two of the best forearm exercises are:

• Wrist Curl (barbell or dumbbells)
• Reverse Wrist Curl (barbell or dumbbells)

These exercises will build your forearms in size and strength. Make sure you give your forearms plenty of rest after you do these exercises because you will be working out your forearms with other upper body exercises you do.

Other forearm exercises you can do to break up your routine are…

1. Grab a heavy dumbbell and hold onto it for as long as you can. This will increase the strength of your grip.

2. Weighted Rope Twist: Tie one end of a rope to a round bar and the other end to a weight. Hold your arms out in front of you, parallel to the ground with the weight just touching the floor. Now, start turning the round bar in a direction that will shorten the rope. With each turn of the round bar, the weight is getting closer to your hands. Once the weight reaches your hand, reverse the twisting motion and lower the weight back to the floor. Repeat until your forearms get fatigue. Increase the weight as the strength in your forearms increase.

Forearms can be a stubborn muscle in terms of growth. You use them everyday and even if you do exercises specifically for them, it may still take awhile for them to grow. In the beginning of training your forearms, you should start to see some results. But you will have to continuously change the types of exercises in order for your forearms to reach their full potential. As with all exercises, be careful not to over train the forearms.

There are different bodybuilding weight training methods to Building Muscle Mass and Getting Ripped. Depending on your goal of fitness you desire, choosing the proper training method will determine how quick you archive your goal. For example, if your want to increase your muscle mass and bulk up, you will weight train much differently then if you want to be slender and toned.

Building muscle mass and then getting ripped to show muscle definition will involve two different weight training methods of shaping your body, but they go hand in hand. You can not have muscle definition without having some muscle mass because that is just a means to get skinny. Being skinny is okay for those who desire to be however, being skinny doesn’t mean you are ripped. You need to have some amount of volume to show muscle definition. For this article, our use of the word getting ripped will mean reducing the fat between the muscle and skin to show muscle definition of those muscles.

Basically, the difference between the method of Building Muscle Mass and Getting Ripped is…

• During the Bodybuilding Muscle Mass Phase, you are building your muscles as much as you can and gaining muscle weight.

• During the Getting Ripped Phase, you are toning your muscles and losing fat.

You will have to change your workout technique as well as your diet between the two methods of training. To increase body muscle mass, you will consume more calories then you burn and lift heavier weights with fewer reps and sets. Check out my article on Building Natural Muscles Mass.

But for getting ripped, you will eat less calories then you burn and you will lift less weight while performing more reps and sets. In addition, you can attack those fat cell from a different angle by doing some form of cardio program which will help burn calories. For more information about combining both weight training and cardio workout, read Tips On Getting A Ripped Body.

In the next article, we will cover Building Muscle Mass, The Basics.