Countless people do bodybuilding, use gyms, go jogging and play sports, etc, but they still don’t seem to look very muscular. In order to be muscular, you must have… muscles, and as much of them as possible.
Most people believe the secret to building muscle is by spending every hour you can in the gym pumping iron, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, that’s how many poor misguided souls wind up going to gym year in year out without even looking like they’ve lifted a weight in their lives.
The secrets to building muscle and getting a muscular physique are: training, eating and rest and recuperation.
Training:
Training is relatively simple. To get you started, you should stick with compound exercises 3 times a week with a day in between each session for rest, giving you two whole days of recuperation (Friday / Saturday). Compound exercises are the main mass building exercises, and they include squats, dead lifts, bench presses, rows (upright and bent over), and presses (military, dumbbell shoulder presses, etc.)
Exercises should be split up so each body part is exercised without being hit the time after. That gives each muscle the maximum rest it needs to grow and recover.
Eating:
To grow muscle, you need to eat enough. Calories are the basic measurement you need to concern yourself with – you need to find out how many calories you need to eat on a daily basis to provide muscle growth. That’s something personal to you and every person, but as a rule of thumb, you could try 12 calories per lb of bodyweight and go from there. If you don’t grow – you haven’t eaten enough.
Rest and Recuperation:
On the days you don’t do weights, you need to rest. Don’t run. Don’t play tennis. Don’t chase around. Take it easy. And if you absolutely must do certain physical activities, ensure you eat enough calories to cover the deficit you’ve burned.
Rest is crucial because not only does it conserve the calories to help you grow muscle, but, the muscles themselves have become damaged and worn from the exercise, and you need to let them repair – by doing exercise on them again you break the fibres down before they’ve repaired. The result is a state of constant repair with no growth.