Thursday, January 1, 2009

Reasons for Failed Muscle Building Programs

By Caleb Lee

Many muscle building programs are found by weight lifters performing experiments, which the program may have worked for that person.

Why don't these muscle building programs work for everyone?

Here are 4 downfalls in many muscle building programs.

#1: Not Using Free Weights

To build muscle, it is true you need to work on building the muscle you want to grow. This will only get you so far in your training and won't get you the results you want. You need to be working every muscle around the major muscle, which will in turn give you the most build up. Only working the muscle you want to build is like using a machine to train with. It limits your stability and all around strength. This will turn into having "fake" muscles, the ones with all show and no go. Using free weights will give you stability and the all around muscle building you need. Exercises including squats and deadlifts are the best for any muscle building.

#2: The Program is Not Efficient for the Every Day Person's Time Constraints

If your workout came from someone who lived in a gym, you researched and found the wrong program. You want to keep it as short as possible, while still getting a full workout in. Like I said before, compound exercises will do the trick. Make sure to use fewer reps and sets while adding more weight. This will ensure a good amount of resistance to tear the muscle down in a short amount of time.

#3: Lift a Significant Amount

Like mentioned before, you need to be using heavy enough weights to work out with. This is the reason why many of the work outs out there don't work, because they are using 50% of your "1 Rep Max" (1RM). You should be using about 80-85% of your 1RM. Anything below and you are never going to see improvements as your body will eventually become use to the work out and somewhat immune to it. This also calls for adding weight every work out in order to keep improving when you are performing your muscle building programs.

#4: You Need to Rest and Relax More

Your workout should give you a short time between exercises to refresh and cool yourself down. It should not be going rapidly from one exercise to the next, and it also should not be too long, more than 5 minutes.

When you are done at the gym, you should try to plan a nap in to let your body rest. At night, try to sleep as long as you can, obtaining 8 hours or more of sleep. Having this large amount of sleep will better your body for the next day. Make sure to relax during the day to prevent stress from disrupting your muscle growth.

If you want to hear more tips to having a good muscle building program, check out: DoubleYourGains' 3-5 Beginners Strength Program. - 16003

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