The road to building muscle is a long and arduous one, but
luckily some shortcuts have been discovered by the emerging science of sports
physiology. These shortcuts can help you build muscle at a significantly faster
rate than normal.
The first secret is that you don’t have to work each muscle
for hours every day. In the (very) old school of bodybuilding, there was no way
to build muscle fast. You hit the gym for three to four hours every day and worked
your entire body every day. At night you
rested, and one day per week you stayed away from the gym.
In those early days, athletes in other sports were told to
stay away from weight training because it would make them “muscle-bound” and
inflexible.
But for whatever reason, more and more athletes began to
ignore that advice and discovered that weight training actually made them
stronger and actually more flexible.
This didn’t go past the notice of sports trainers who started
to evaluate weight training for muscle building. Their affirmation of the
advantages induced lots of sports trainers to add weight training to their
fitness routines, and soon, football, baseball and basketball players, even track
and field athletes, began to pump iron.
Sports physiology became a science and weight training began
to receive a more scientific approach as applied to muscle building for
athletes in all sports.
Bodybuilders took note and began to workout smarter, looking
for ways to build muscle fast. They still spent long hours in the gym, but now
it was about half the time they used to spend. Why were they able to do this?
Exercises and routines were evaluated for the best approach
to building muscle faster, and bigger. Researchers found that it was important
to rest muscles after they were worked strenuously; otherwise they become exhausted
and cannot develop any further.
These days bodybuilders are advised to work each muscle group
to total exhaustion only one day a week. Sure they get some exercise when you
focus on other muscle groups, but that’s unavoidable. It is only on their
“focus day” that they are exhausted. Using this strategy fast tracks your
muscle growth and makes your body stronger overall.
You don’t need to put up with constant all-over muscle soreness
every day of the week either, since muscle groups are allowed to rest, recover
and rebuild themselves.
Another leap forward in bodybuilding was the discovery that
working the muscle to total exhaustion for each exercise was sufficient to tear
it down. The protein ingested by the bodybuilder would be mainly used to rebuild
the tissue, rather than developing it even further.
The other side of the building-muscle-fast equation is good
nutrition. It has been claimed that bodybuilding is 80% diet, and while this
might not be entirely accurate, it certainly accounts for more than half.
To build muscle and build it fast, a bodybuilder’s diet must
have at least 25% of its calories coming from both animal and vegetable
protein. You should only eat of complex carbohydrates, particularly those
vegetables that contain protein as well. Fats and fibers should also constitute
about 25% of your diet. Avoid refined sugars, refined starches and minimal
caffeine and alcohol. The diet should be supplemented with protein powders
mixed with raw milk or water, protein boosters like desiccated liver, kelp
tablets and eggs. A soluble oil like wheat germ oil helps the body metabolize
protein and it will provide added endurance.
In sum, the path to fast muscle growth is about exercising
each muscle group smarter, not harder. Rest is just as important as strength
training, and eating a careful diet is most important of all.
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