July 25, 2007

Building Muscle Mass Fast?

Although you may be tempted to get rid of your rest day to "make up" time, this is not a good idea. There are two types of fatigue: bodypart fatigue and systemic fatigue. A bodypart is fatigued when it has not fully recovered from your last workout. Soreness and reduced muscle strength are signs of bodypart fatigue. Systemic fatigue occurs when the entire body is stressed and overworked from the rigors of training. Your body can be systemically fatigued even if the individual bodypart you are scheduled to train is ready for another run with the weights, so building muscle mass fast is not so simple as it looks like. Since your body is still partially drained of its physical and mental energy, systemic fatigue keeps you from achieving your maximum intensity at the gym and should be avoided at all costs. Prolonged systemic fatigue can also result in illness. While it may seem counterintuitive at first glance, keeping a rest day in between training cycles can actually speed up your progress!

A Huge Myth About Building Muscle Mass Fast…

You may have heard that you must train a bodypart twice a week to make it grow. However, this is simply not true. Muscle growth is caused by an increase in the thickness of the muscle fibers. New muscle fibers can also be created in certain instances. These adaptations to weight training occur when the muscle is forced to respond to a resistance that it has not experienced before. Intensity is the key variable for building muscle mass fast. You grow from that one set you did at a higher intensity level than ever before, not from volumes of submaximal training or too frequent workouts.

Many beginning fitness enthusiasts don't understand the dangers of overtraining, so they plunge into their workouts in a gung-ho manner that overwhelms their body's ability to recuperate and grow. Remember that weight training is a peak-intensity sport, not an endurance sport.

Frequency Of Training When Building Lean Muscle Mass Fast…

The frequency of your training should be dictated by your recuperative abilities, not the day of the week. Your body doesn't know whether it's Tuesday or Friday. The body functions on much longer cycles, and athletes need to respect these fluctuations and work with them. You should never train a bodypart unless it has not been sore for at least a day. In time, you will actually be able to flex a muscle and determine whether it is sufficiently recuperated. If it doesn't feel that way, take another day off. If this means that you only train a bodypart three times in two weeks or even once a week, so be it.

Scientific research has shown that in healthy athletes the detraining process (where your muscles start to lose their strength through lack of use) doesn't start for two weeks, with significant losses taking up to a month. So don't worry about losing muscle if you don't train twice a week. In fact, for a committed athlete the chances of losing muscle through overtraining are greater if you do train twice a week. Train with total intensity, but train intelligently and in harmony with your body's abilities. In the long run, the muscle gains will be much greater.

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