Gain Bigger muscles without steroids - the 7 golden rules of bulking up
Many people go straight into the weights section in a gym without really having a clear idea of what should be done there. For someone who is trying to gain lean muscle mass, there are a few things that need to be done in order to achieve this goal.
Compound exercises: this are core or compound exercises, which involve a large number of muscles been strained throughout the movement of the repetition. Compound exercises are proven muscle mass gainers. Try to avoid isolated exercises where you just use one or two muscles at a time. The more muscles you hit per movement, the better, and the more mass you'll gain. Examples: Bench presses, pull-ups, dead-lifts, squats, dips, etc.
Meal frequency: you must eat from 5-6 small meals with high protein and complex carbohydrates levels throughout the day. In my case go for 3 main meals and 3 snacks. Meals: 7am, 12noon, 6pm; while snacks: 9am, 3pm, 9pm.
Heavy weights: whenever you're doing an exercise, you should start feeling a "burning" sensation by the fourth time you do the movement. Repetitions on a specific exercise shouldn't exceed the 6-8 range; if you do, the weight is not enough. These reps should be performed 3-4 sets. The first set should always have 60% of your maximum weight as a warm up set!
Variety: every two weeks your routine has to change! Yes, you heard right. Our bodies lose their "muscle growing powers" really soon because they adapt themselves to the exercises. Remember, millions of years of human evolution are holding you back!
Sleep: after a good workout your body feels great and your brain becomes an endorphin factory, but at night, remember to go to bed early. Muscles don't grow in the gym, they grow on bed! Yes, you need to at least sleep from 8-10 hours in order to grow up lean muscle, if you don't sleep enough... well, it's like doing nothing.
Timing: Your weight workout session cannot exceed 60 minutes. After one hour, our testosterone levels go down to the ground! You go and do what you've got to do and then get out of there. No chit-chatting with the pretty girl nearby, NO.
Supervision: almost nobody has a super memory, and i'm not different. You must have a control of your workouts, you need to have a diary where you can right down the amount of weight and reps you did that specific day on every exercise you performed. So next time when you do it again, you can know where to start from.