Friday, December 5, 2008

Five Easy Tips to Build Muscle Up Quickly

By Jared Conley

If your goal is to get twice as good at something, what would be the best way to approach it? I can think of two primary approaches. The approach you select will be somewhere along this continuum: doing one thing twice as good (or 100 percent better), or performing 100 activities 1 percent better. I think that most people gravitate towards the former approach, but the second is much easier to implement.

Taken a step further, to make each of these small building blocks more effective, you could also focus on things that occur outside of your workouts. So you concentrate on modifying your habits and making tiny improvements in many areas that will stack on top of one another to bring you massive benefits.

So here are five easy lifestyle changes you can make to help you build muscle up.

1) Replace Traditional Cardio with Interval Training

Traditional aerobic exercise has a negative impact on muscle gaining because it burns branched chain amino acids (BCAA) and glycogen. Rather, focus on interval training for fat burning, for example a 400-meter sprint followed by a 400-meter recovery jog, repeated 3 more times.

2) Increase Total Time Under Load

Instead of concentrating on the quantity of repetitions, focus on the total time your muscles are under load. Try spending 2 seconds on the negative contraction, 1 second at neutral (bottom of the exercise), and 1 second on the positive contraction. Emphasizing the negative is a simple way to overload muscles and promote muscle weight gain.

3) Eat More Fish

Not only is fish high in protein, it is also a natural source of essential fatty acids, which are vital for both your overall health and your muscular health. Essential fatty acids make your muscles more sensitive to insulin, so they aid glycogen storage and increase the absorption of amino acids into your muscles, while also preserving glutamine storage.

4) Recovery

Your body will only build muscle up by repairing it in response to your workouts. When your muscles are repaired, they are made stronger than before to respond to the higher stress levels put on them. If you don't allow your muscles time to recover, they can never rebuild.

5) Try Something New

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. Commit to yourself to read a new (as in current and scientifically backed) exercise book every six months. You'll pick up new approaches and new tips to add to your workouts. - 16003

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