By Jason Ferruggia
Author
of Muscle Gaining Secrets
|
If you’re serious about
building muscle and getting stronger there are three very
critical mistakes that you absolutely can’t afford to
make. I can’t tell you how many times I see guys in the
gym committing these cardinal sins and how badly I wish I
could help them all. Unfortunately I can’t save everyone
but I’ll always do my best to give my loyal readers an
unfair advantage over everyone else.
|
 |
One critical mistake all skinny
guys and girls make is they follow traditional bodybuilding advice
and only train each muscle group once per week. If someone just
arrived here from Mars and I told them the best way to improve something
was to do it only once per week they would think I was absolutely
insane.
To elicit a growth response you must
provide the muscles with a certain level of volume, which should
be absolutely no higher than the bare minimum. Research and empirical
evidence has shown this to be roughly 50-100 reps per muscle group,
per week. Anymore than this will lead to overtraining and less than
this will usually not be enough for anyone but the inexperienced
newbie who is just starting to train for the very first time.
How you reach that magical number
of total reps is very important, however. If you do them all in
one workout you’ll make far slower gains than if you broke
them up into two sessions of 25-50 reps or three sessions of 17-33
reps. Doing that will allow you to get two or three times as many
growth stimulating workouts per year, per body part. I think anyone
can do the math on that one and see which option would be more productive.
The next critical mistake is
allowing your workouts to last more than 45 minutes (not including
warm up time). After your first heavy set of any workout your body
will start pumping out growth hormone and testosterone at much higher
levels than normal. Blood tests have shown this increased anabolic
hormone release to peak at approximately 27 minutes. By 45 minutes
you are back to baseline. At 46 minutes and beyond your levels actually
start plummeting and the evil, muscle destroying, fat storing hormone,
cortisol starts pumping like crazy. That is why you have to get
in and out of the gym as fast as possible. I have always had my
high paying clients track their total workout time with a stop watch
and cut it off at exactly 45 minutes even if they had a set or two
left to complete. That’s how important it is for you to finish
your workouts quickly.
|
|
The third critical
mistake I see on a regular basis is people constantly
using the same weights. I’ve said this a million times
but it bears repeating, the most important thing you can do
if you want to build muscle faster than everyone else in your
gym is to constantly add weight to the bar.
Consistent strength
gains in a hypertrophy rep range will build muscle faster
than anything else you do in the gym. This may go against
a lot of what you have read but think about it logically.
If you took two twins and had one do supersets, drop sets,
forced reps and steadily increase his training volume over
the course of six months, then had the other simply double
the weight he could do for ten reps on a squat, deadlift,
military press and chin up, which twin do you think would
be bigger at the end of the experiment?
The answer should
be obvious.
Eliminate these
mistakes today and start growing tomorrow.
Train hard,
Jason Ferruggia
|
CLICK HERE to learn more about Jason's
powerful muscle-building book "Muscle Gaining Secrets"
About
The Author
|
Jason Ferruggia is a highly
sought after, world renowned strength and conditioning specialist.
Over the last 15 years he has trained more than 700 high
school, college and professional athletes from nearly 20
different sports. He is known for his ability to rapidly
increase muscular size, strength, speed and endurance in
all of his clients.
Jason is currently the chief
training advisor for Men’s Fitness magazine where he
also has his own monthly column called The Hard-Gainer.
He has authored over 200 training articles for various other
fitness related websites and magazines such as Men’s
Health, Maximum Fitness, MMA SportsMag, Today’s Man,
Muscle and Fitness Hers and Shape.
|
|
