Training

Training & Supplements

Go to the gym three times a week - A three-step muscle building plan

Now that you have your nutrition plan and know how to build weight, it's time to maximize your training. Building muscle is easy. All it takes is:

• Consistency - No fancy workouts. Consistency plays a crucial role when it comes to building muscle mass.
• Progressive overload - You need to get a lot stronger than you are now. No exceptions. There is no "easier" way to build muscle.
• Good tools - Use the best possible exercises whenever possible. The better your tools (exercises) are, the better your results will be.
• Patience - Building muscle takes years - not weeks. Look two years into the future. You can make amazing progress within 2 years, which is why you should stick to your training plan with dedication.

The following three-step plan is just one of many ways to build muscle. It is a very effective approach. Combine this plan with adequate nutrition and you'll see some pretty impressive results.

Here is an overview of the training program:

• Step 1 - Preparation Stage. This is an introductory phase of one month in length. You start with one set per exercise and move on to 2 sets per exercise after a few weeks.
• Step2 - Improvement phase. This is a 5 month phase that will help you maximize your beginner gains.
• Step3 - Build phase. This is the final phase of the program that you will use for as long as your strength gains remain consistent.
• Sets: Perform as many repetitions as possible on each set and only finish the set when you feel that you will not be able to complete the next repetition or your form is starting to decline.
• Weight: Use the same weight for each set of a given exercise.
• Repetition minimum: There is a "repetition minimum" for each set. If you are able to achieve this minimum amount of reps on each of your 3 sets, then it's time to increase the weight the next time you perform that exercise. So if you see a repetition minimum of 8 reps, you will increase the weight if you are able to perform 8 reps or more on each set of this exercise.

Notes on the training

Stage 1 - Preparation

During the first 2 weeks, use only one set per exercise. Use two sets per exercise during weeks 3 and 4

Start with a very light weight for each exercise. It is important that you get a good feel for the form of performing each exercise. Increase the weight when you reach the repetition minimum for a given exercise.

You should not make big jumps in weight, but instead choose the smallest possible increases in weight - generally 2.5 kilos per exercise. Muscle building is a marathon, not a sprint. These small weight jumps will pay off very quickly.

You will train 3 days a week:

• Day 1 - Training session
• Day 2 - no training
• Day 3 - Training session
• Day 4 - Training free
• Day 5 - Training session
• Day 6 - Training free
• Day 7 - Training free

Stage 2 - Increasing phase

Continue using the same weights with which you finished the preparation phase. Start with a light and conservative weight for each exercise that you did not use during the preparation phase.

You will train 3 days per week and use the same training days as during your first 4 weeks of training:

• Day 1 - Training session A
• Day 2 - No training
• Day 3 - Training session B
• Day 4 - Training free
• Day 5 - Training session C
• Day 6 - No training
• Day7 - No training

Stage 3 - build-up phase

Stage 3 is a little more intense and introduces deadlifts and squats with 20 repetitions. For the 20 repetition squats, stop at 20 repetitions - do not increase the number of repetitions.

The training sessions are structured in a heavy, light, medium manner, with Monday being the heavy training day. Wednesday is a light day that focuses primarily on isolation exercises, while Friday is the medium-heavy day.

• Day 1 - Training session A - heavy
• Day 2 - No training
• Day 3 - Training session B - easy
• Day 4 - No training
• Day 5 - Training session C - medium
• Day 6 - No training
• Day7 - No training

Supplements for skinny guys

As with training, you should start slowly with supplements. During the first phase of this program, you might consider supporting your nutritional base with the following supplements:

• A multivitamin
• fish oil
• Whey protein
• Weight gainer (optional)

Weight gainers provide you with a lot of calories and are a convenient option for busy times of life when cooking is not an option.

By the start of the second phase of this program, you should have your diet pretty well under control. Your training will also be consistent and controlled. At this point, it's okay to start trying other popular supplements like the following:

• Creatine
• BCAAs
• Pre-workout products
• Post-workout products

Other supplements that may be helpful based on your personal needs (age, stress, sleep, low testosterone levels, poor recovery, etc.) include:

• Antioxidants
• Formulas to support joint health
• Recovery supplements
• Supplements to promote sexual health
• Supplements to support healthy sleep
• Supplements to reduce stress (adaptogens)
• Testosterone boosters
• Protein bars
• Meal replacement products

Source: https://www.muscleandstrength.com/expert-guides/weight-gain

Personal trainer Andrew Pardue and fitness model Anna McManamey have teamed up to put things into perspective when it comes to leg training. After reading this guide, you'll never skip leg day again.

As a competition prep coach and someone who is passionate about fitness, it's always great to see women who are willing to get off the treadmill and start putting in consistent work in the weight room. These women, who don't believe that old myth that training with weights will make women bulky and beefy, understand the vital importance of resistance training when it comes to achieving the ideal body.

Although many women want to develop their lower body, it's sad to see how few of them use the exercises that have been shown in scientific research to be the most effective for gains in strength and muscle mass.

Instead, women tend to perform endless sets on the hip adductor machine and spend endless hours on the stepper during each training session - leaving much to be desired in terms of muscle adaptations and body composition improvement.

While these exercises can be useful in their own way, below are some aspects of leg training that you should consider if you want to get the most out of your efforts and get closer to your goals.

Why women should train their legs

Muscle fiber recruitment

The biggest problem with the exercises listed above is that they stimulate significantly fewer muscle fibers than multi-joint exercises. By incorporating multi-joint exercises into your training program instead of some of the isolation exercises you currently perform, you can get more benefit from each exercise while reducing the amount of time you have to spend training your legs.

Let's take the adductor machine as an example. The majority of women perform this exercise with almost religious fervor, but it only stimulates the adductor muscles of the leg such as the adductor brevis, adductor longis and gracilis.

You've never heard of these muscles? This is because they are very small compared to other muscles of the legs such as rectus femoris, which is part of the quadriceps. Training smaller muscles such as the adductor group is helpful, but let's compare this exercise to classic barbell squats.

Squats will activate muscle fibers in the quadriceps, hamstrings, gluteus, adductors, abductors, abs, lower back and to a lesser extent the calves. So with just one set of squats, you can activate not only the muscles activated by the adductor machine, but also many more. Just by looking at this one point, it's easy to see why it can be helpful for a woman trying to improve the development of her lower body to focus on exercises like squats in her training program.

Progressive overload

Another very common mistake among exercisers in general - and women in particular - is not using sufficient resistance to force the muscle to adapt and grow. It can be easy to just go through the motions and stop a set as soon as it becomes a little uncomfortable or strenuous. However, our bodies are extremely adaptable to their environment.

In addition to this, muscle tissue is metabolically very costly to the body, meaning that it takes a lot of energy to build and maintain muscle tissue. For this reason, when it comes to more than the minimum required for daily activities, the body is very stubborn about building additional muscle tissue, which it then has to continuously supply and maintain with energy.

This is the point where you need to take action and give the body an extra incentive. To build new muscle tissue, an exerciser must provide enough resistance to force the body to adapt by building new muscle tissue to keep up with the new demands. For readers of this article, this means that being willing to push yourself to move more weight or perform more repetitions in each training session is imperative to building muscle tissue and improving the appearance of the legs over time.

A second point to consider is muscle fiber recruitment. Above we have already discussed the effects of exercise complexity on the recruitment of more muscle fibers. Another determining factor in muscle fiber recruitment is, as you've probably guessed correctly, sufficient overload.

Whether it is by moving a heavier weight with fewer repetitions or moving a lighter weight with more repetitions, the use of a range of repetitions has been shown to positively influence muscle growth when adequate intensity is used (1). A common trait of virtually all successful training programs is to perform each set to absolute muscle failure or near muscle failure.

When a muscle is performing near maximal effort, a greater percentage of muscle fibers will become active. And as a muscle or muscle group gets stronger, fewer fibers need to be recruited to move a given weight. In the gym, this means that if you typically perform 3 sets of squats at 50 kilos and 10 reps as part of your training program, your body will adapt during the first few weeks by getting stronger. However, after this initial adaptation, subsequent training sessions with 3 sets of squats of 50 kilos and 10 repetitions will only result in less overall muscle activation.

At this point, the trainee must either begin to increase the weight on the bar or increase the volume by performing more repetitions, more sets or both over time. If you started an exercise program and saw significant improvements initially, but after the first few weeks you look in the mirror and wonder why things aren't progressing any further, then this is very likely the reason for your plateau.

Calorie consumption

Focusing on multi-joint exercises will not only result in more muscle growth, but will also allow you to burn more calories during your training sessions.

Multi-joint exercises such as squats and leg presses, when performed correctly and with the right intensity, are certainly not easy. They require full body stabilization, increased cardiovascular output and a strong release of power through multiple muscle groups. In addition to helping you achieve consistent improvements in strength and muscle mass, you'll also burn a lot more calories.

By consistently performing heavy multi-joint exercises, you can build more muscle, burn more calories and see greater cardiovascular benefits than if you were to focus solely on isolation exercises. Now that you're burning more calories by regularly performing multi-joint exercises, you can more easily maintain a leaner and more athletic body all year long.

Hormonal differences

After reading the phrase "more muscular and stronger" several times in this article, you may be wondering how anyone could expect you to train this way without becoming bulky and beefy like most men who train this way. These concerns are understandable, but one key difference between male and female athletes can ease your worries.

It's not just that women are descended from Venus and men from Mars - they also have very different hormonal profiles. When it comes to gym performance and physical appearance, testosterone is one of the most important factors in determining muscle building capacity. Without adequate testosterone levels, human muscle-building potential can be quite limited.

For women, however, this can also be a great relief as they generally have much lower testosterone levels than men. To give you an idea of how big this difference is, the average 19 year old or older man has a testosterone concentration of 240 to 950 ng/dL. In contrast, testosterone levels in women of the same age are generally in the range of only 8-60 ng/dL. This corresponds to a meagre 3 to 6% of the testosterone concentration of their male counterparts. (2)

Of course, this is a range, as hormone concentrations can change with age - and to a lesser extent based on lifestyle. For the concerned woman, however, since testosterone levels are a primary factor in muscle building potential, this means that even if she trains as hard as she can week after week, her muscle building potential will be much lower than the average man.

The exception to this is women who have a genetic predisposition to build more muscle (which is quite rare) or women who use performance enhancing substances to alter their hormonal profile to make it more conducive to muscle building.

Knowing this, you can be sure that the old myth that training with weights makes you bulky is far from true. You should realize that the small gains in muscle will serve to improve your body. As long as your diet is in the green and you keep your body fat levels low enough, getting big and bulky is a fear you'll quickly forget about when you start pushing yourself harder in the gym.

Anna McManamey on strength training

It can be difficult to take advice like this, which goes against the common practice of most women in the gym, when it comes from a male author. That's why I asked Anna McManamey - competitive figure athlete, fitness model and trainer - to give her opinion on the subject.

As a trainer, I've definitely noticed a change in the way women train. Over the last few years, more women seem to have started incorporating at least some form of strength training into their program, which is great to see. However, it's the amount of weight they move and the exercise selection where you see the most mistakes.

Whenever a new client contacts me, their biggest concern is something along the lines of "I don't want to look manly" or "I don't want to get bulky, I just want to get lean and improve my muscle tone." I even had a client whose husband was so worried about her losing her femininity that she kept it a secret from him that she had contacted me! My answer to all these women is always the same: to build a shapely body and to have good definition, you need to build muscle. And to achieve this, you need to train with weights - heavy weights!

If the weight is only a few kilos to start with and it's hard for you, that's fine - but you still have to struggle to do those last few reps. Just moving from machine to machine and doing a relaxed 15 to 20 reps without breaking a sweat is not going to be enough.

The point at which my clients start to see significant improvements in their bodies is when they increase the intensity of their workouts. Their metabolic rate increases, they start to look leaner and they start to build muscle, giving them a more defined and shapely appearance without losing their curves.

The truth is that women have to work extremely hard for every ounce of muscle they want to build. You're not going to turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger overnight - it's just not going to happen. What's more, that dreaded beefy look is usually the result of building muscle without controlling your diet. To achieve some definition, you need to lose fat as well as build muscle, so it's important that you watch your nutritional intake too.

Another common mistake I see women make is in their exercise choices. Again, there seems to be this widespread fear that performing heavy multi-joint exercises such as squats and deadlifts is only for men and will rob a woman of any femininity.

I think a lot of this misperception is fueled by the misinformation in the media: "do 100 crunches a day to slim your waist," "do bicep curls to sculpt your arms," "glute kickbacks for a tighter butt," "tricep presses to banish love handles," etc. As a result of this, I see many women using the wrong exercises in the gym, focusing only on certain muscle groups like butt, arms and abs, while completely neglecting other muscle groups.

Not only is this ineffective, but over time it can easily lead to muscular imbalances and potential injury. I teach my clients that this type of spot fat reduction is a myth and that they will get the best results from a well-rounded and balanced program that includes big and heavy multi-joint exercises that recruit more muscle and burn more calories.

Aesthetic benefits aside, some of the best and most rewarding results I've seen in my clients are the improvements they've seen in their mental toughness. There is nothing that will make you feel more like you can take on the rest of the world than successfully completing a tough workout session with weights. Many of the women who come to me initially feel weak, unhappy with themselves and their appearance and lack confidence.

After a few weeks of regular training and controlling their diet, the change in their self-esteem is simply breathtaking. Many of them are unaware of the physical and mental strength they possess and it is only when they surpass personal bests or can perform flawless push-ups or pull-ups that they realize their true capabilities. This spills over into other aspects of their lives - their career, their family life and how they deal with stressful situations. It is very rewarding to observe this.

Leg exercises for women

If I could choose just 5 exercises for one of my clients and her lower body training to help her maximize each of her workouts, I would choose the following exercises:

1. Classic squats with a barbell
2. Romanian deadlift
3. Walking lunges
4. Leg presses
5. Barbell hip thrusts

These five exercises are perfect for working all the muscles of the lower body, burning more calories during a training session and even training movements that are used in daily life. For example, squats can help you sit down and stand up or lunges can improve your gait and make activities such as climbing stairs or running easier.

Once a program has been built around these exercises, other isolation exercises such as gluteus exercises, calf raises or step-ups can be added to round out your workout. Below are a few different workouts that you can use in different situations to get more out of each training session and develop the stunning legs you've always dreamed of.

Leg workouts for women

The time saver

Vacation time, busy kids, a deadline on a major project - there are countless things that can contribute to a hectic schedule. But being busy doesn't have to mean physical inactivity. With a little ingenuity, you can complete excellent workouts within a short period of time using supersets, circuit training or short rest intervals.

This template will allow you to continue using the important and beneficial multi-joint exercises while saving time that you can use for your other commitments. Not to mention, this workout is great for increasing metabolic stress and pump during your workout.

The Volumizer

On the opposite side of the spectrum is the following program. If you have a little more time to dedicate a few weeks to a program with higher volume, more sets and more reps, this can be a great way to stimulate new growth and improve your overall work capacity.

The strength program

Getting stronger and increasing the weights on the bar is a great thing in itself, which can boost self-confidence. In addition, focusing on lower repetition ranges can improve myofibrillar hypertrophy. This is muscle growth that occurs when the muscle fibers become larger due to mechanical stress (such as the stress that comes from moving heavy weights with few repetitions).

This is different from so-called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, which many believe is caused by higher repetition ranges that result in cellular swelling and an accumulation of metabolic products to potentially increase the overall volume of muscle tissue. This type of growth comes from training sessions similar to the training session in the last example.

As mentioned earlier, this workout focuses on myofibrillar hypertrophy through a repetition scheme with lower repetition ranges. In addition to this, I have observed in my clients and myself that moving heavy weights results in adaptations that will carry over to training with lower weights and higher repetitions. After training with heavy weights, training with lighter weights can be less mentally challenging and training with a given weight and more repetitions can feel easier.

Get started

If one of your goals is to get better looking legs, then it's time you take control of your progress by using proven exercises that can give you better and faster results than all those mainstream exercise strategies used by many women due to silly social norms and misinformation. Using the workouts described above is a great starting point to get one step closer to your goals and build the body you've always dreamed of.

https://www.muscleandstrength.com/articles/leg-training-women

References

1. Schoenfeld, Brad J. "Is There a Minimum Intensity Threshold for Resistance Training-Induced Hypertrophic Adaptations?" Sports Med Sports Medicine (2013): 1279-288. web. 22 Dec. 2015.
2. "Test ID: TTFB." Mayo Clinic: Mayo Medical Laboratories. Web. 22 Dec. 2015. .

Joe Weider, aka "The Master Blaster," is one of the more controversial characters in bodybuilding and fitness. But whether you love him or hate him, you can't deny his extreme influence on how exercisers around the world train.

Joe popularized the so-called Weider Principles - a collection of guidelines and methods to help bodybuilders reach their maximum potential. While these guidelines may be dismissed as bro-science, it turns out that many of them are backed by solid scientific research. Here are six of our favorite principles.

1 - Instinctive training

The instinct principle dictates that training intensity should be based on how you feel during a given training session. Basically, you use a combination of experience and instinct to guide you in your daily training sessions.

This helps address the fact that external factors such as sleep patterns, diet, relationship issues, stress and pain can significantly affect your ability to train at a maximal level on a daily basis.

Recent research seems to support an instinctive approach to training. In scientific circles, this strategy is referred to as "autoregulatory training" and scientific studies have evaluated its applicability in different flexible periodization models.

In one study (McNamara et al., 2010), 16 novice resistance trainers were divided into two different resistance training groups. All subjects used the same training volume and repetition schemes (10RM, 15RM, and 20RM) twice a week, with one group performing this training program in a predetermined manner, while subjects in the other group were allowed to decide when to perform their training sessions based on how they felt.

At the end of the 12-week training phase, the subjects who were allowed to train instinctively had increased their leg press strength by 62 kilos, while the subjects in the control group had only increased their strength by 16.

Despite these impressive results with novice exercisers, instinctive training is better suited to more advanced exercisers. To achieve optimal results, you need to be in tune with your mental, physical and emotional state and know how these factors affect your training capacity.

This knowledge develops over time through training experience. A beginner is simply not familiar enough with the nuances of training to accurately assess their daily capacity for maximum performance, which can lead to less than optimal results.

It's also important to understand that instinctive training has its drawbacks. When you're not highly motivated to exercise, it can be tempting to give in to laziness. The flexible nature of this strategy provides a ready-made excuse to take things easy even when you're feeling good.

So you need to be honest with yourself. If you're the type of exerciser who needs set rules to stay on track, then a more traditional periodization program might be the better option for you.

On the other hand, you can't take this to the other extreme and think that it's okay to force yourself to do anything that won't result in broken bones and torn muscles. Remember that the body needs adequate rest to regenerate its resources. Otherwise, you will quickly reach a state of overtraining and your progress will come to a standstill.

So, regardless of subjective feelings, you should ensure that you integrate regular recovery phases into your training program.

2 - Continuous tension

The principle of continuous tension states that muscles will respond in a desirable way when placed under continuous tension with no rest periods during repetition. Maintaining continuous tension can be achieved in several ways:

1. By eliminating pauses in the movement at the highest or lowest point of the movement.
2. By avoiding the upper part of the range of motion during certain exercises.
3. By minimizing momentum (excessive momentum can result in a significant deceleration phase in the upper range of motion, which is characterized by reduced muscle activation).

As it turns out, scientific research supports that training with continuous tension can provide a potent stimulus for muscle hypertrophy, even when relatively light weights are used (Tanimoto et al., 2008). The real benefits behind this principle probably have less to do with reduced momentum and more to do with acute restriction of blood flow to the working muscle.

Repetitive muscle contractions cause vascular compression, which impairs the inflow and outflow of blood during exercise, generating a hypoxic intramuscular environment. There is evidence that the hypoxia effect mediates a hypertrophy response, possibly due to an accumulation of metabolic products and a reduction associated with such training.

These factors are believed to combine to increase muscle growth through a variety of mechanisms, including increased muscle fiber recruitment, an acute increase in anabolic hormone levels, changes in myokines, production of reactive oxygen species, and/or muscle cell swelling (pump).

Here is our opinion on this. When performing the big basic exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses and pull-ups, focus on moving heavy weights, using good form and setting new personal bests. Feel free to pause at the highest or lowest point of the movement if necessary, use increased momentum to your advantage when appropriate, and make sure you go low to the bottom and all the way to the top (use full range of motion).

For more specific exercises, however, you can consider using the principle of continuous tension. Imagine a bar that moves continuously up and down without resting - this is what your repetitions should look like.

For many exercises, another Weider principle known as the principle of partial repetitions combines well with the principle of continuous tension, as some exercises involve a complete drop in joint torque and muscle activation in the target region.

The upper range of flying movements for the chest or dumbbell pull-ups do not put the target muscles under adequate tension. For this reason, partial repetitions that are limited to the lower two-thirds of the range of motion may be ideal for these exercises as they allow for more consistent tension in the target muscles.

When performing exercises such as flying chest movements, pull-ups, hip thrusts and certain types of curls and triceps exercises, you should focus on maintaining continuous tension in the target muscle. Don't rely on momentum, don't be afraid to limit the range of motion and simply contract your muscles hard against the resistance.

3 - Muscle priority

The muscle priority principle states that you should train your weak points first during your training sessions. Weider reasoned that since this is when your energy levels are highest and your mental focus is strongest, prioritizing training will allow you to use higher intensity and greater effort on the muscles that need it most.

Although this principle contradicts the common belief that large muscle groups should be trained before smaller muscle groups, recent research seems to support Weider's hypothesis.

Studies consistently show that strength gains from exercises performed earlier in a training session are significantly greater than strength gains from exercises performed at the end of a training session (Simao et al., 2010; Dias et al., 2010).

In a recent study review, researchers concluded that, in terms of the magnitude of strength gains over the course of a training session, it is beneficial to structure the exercise sequence based on which muscles show the greatest need for improvement - regardless of whether this involves exercises for large or small muscle groups (Simão et al. 2012).

Conclusion: If your biceps are lagging behind your triceps in terms of development, then you should not hesitate to start your training session with a variation of curls. And if your legs look like upside-down bowling pins, then you should definitely start your workout with calf raises.

Many bodybuilders perform an incline bench exercise first during their chest training session and train their posterior shoulder muscles on shoulder day before heavy pressing movements. Don't blindly stick to the "heaviest multi-joint exercises first" mantra if you have an imbalance in your muscle development. If you have a noticeable strength or muscle discrepancy, prioritize the weak link in the chain by training it right from the start.

4 - Circulation principle

The circulation principle involves training a muscle group with multiple exercises within a training session. The idea is to flood the working muscle with blood so that nutrient delivery is maximized to promote optimal remodeling of the muscle fibers. In other words, this means "train for a pump."

However, it is questionable whether the increased nutrient delivery through increased blood flow affects muscle remodeling, but the cellular swelling associated with this type of training through repeated periods of reactive hyperemia (blood fullness) could very well promote hypertrophic adaptations.

Scientific studies consistently show that a hydrated cell increases protein synthesis while inhibiting protein degradation (Haussinger et al. 1994; Ritz et al., 2003). These effects are mediated by sensors in the muscle fibers that respond to an increase in cell volume by initiating anabolic processes as a measure to strengthen the ultrastructure of the muscle cell (Low et al., 1997). The result of this is better muscle development.

Here is our approach. Progressive overload is crucial. You need to make sure that you get stronger at the big basic exercises over time. However, once you've performed your heavy basic exercises of the day, you should definitely consider choosing a few exercises that pump as much blood as possible into the target muscle - which is especially true if hypertrophy is your primary goal.

Every good strength athlete intuitively learns how to pump blood into their muscles and this strategy seems to work slightly differently for each exerciser. Some like to perform high reps of push-ups or dips through full range of motion in supersets with flying movements or crossover cable pulls to pump up their pecs, while others swear by "shoulder blasters" consisting of multiple triple sets of 10 reps of side bent-over deadlifts for the posterior shoulder muscles, immediately followed by 10 reps of side raises, immediately followed by 10 reps of front raises to pump up their shoulder muscles.

For the gluteus, multiple sets of hip thrusts with very short rests can have the desired effect. There may also be a specific machine in your gym that will create a serious pump in a particular muscle.

Learn what methods you can use to get the best pump in a given muscle group and make sure to incorporate them at the end of your training session after you've performed a few heavy exercises focused on progressive overload.

5 - Muscle confusion

The muscle confusion principle states that exercise selection should be varied continuously over time. Weider believed that such an approach maximizes muscle development as it does not allow the neuromuscular system to adapt to a given exercise. As a result, your body is continually challenged by new stressors, stimulating increased growth.

One problem with performing the same exercise program repeatedly day in and day out is that it reduces exercise-induced muscle damage through what is known as the "repeated bout effect". Although excessive muscle tissue damage can interfere with your training, scientific research suggests that there is a kind of ideal point at which a moderate amount of exercise-induced muscle damage potentiates a supercompensatory response that ultimately increases muscle growth (Schoenfeld, 2012).

The hypertrophic effect of exercise-induced muscle damage is believed to be mediated by various myokines, which are growth factors that induce an acute anabolic effect within the muscle. Exercise-induced muscle damage also increases the activation of satellite cells, which support muscle repair and donate additional nuclei to the muscle fibers so that more muscle proteins can be synthesized. Performing a variety of exercises reduces the aforementioned "repeated bout effect" so that these responses are maximized.

Varying the exercises also helps to ensure complete stimulation of all muscle fibers in a given muscle. Contrary to what some believe, muscles do not necessarily contract the entire length of the muscle fiber. Instead, the majority of muscles are divided into one or more fiber bands that terminate intrafascicularly, creating separate areas within the muscle (Heron & Richmond, 1993).

These areas are often activated by different nerve branches, indicating that parts of a muscle will show greater muscle activation than other parts depending on the exercise performed (Wickiewicz et al., 1983; Woodley & Mercer, 2005).

For example, the long and short muscle heads of the biceps brachii show architectural sub-areas that are controlled by separate nerve branches of the primary neuron (Segal et al., 2001). As a consequence, elbow flexion targets motor units in the lateral area of the long muscle head and outward rotation targets motor units in the central area (ter Haar Romeny et al., 1982; ter Haar Romeny et al., 1984).

In addition, the short muscle head shows greater muscle activity in the latter part of an arm curl (i.e. greater elbow flexion), whereas the long muscle head is more active in the early phase of the movement (Brown et al., 1993). As you can see, variety is a good thing when it comes to muscle hypertrophy!

Now before you think that P90X is the key to muscle building nirvana, you should understand that you can't just put together a mishmash of unrelated movements for the sake of variety in anticipation of optimal gains. Instead, the basic idea is to design your training program in such a way that the training is systematically performed from different angles and on different planes of movement.

You should take into account how different exercises interact with each other from an anatomical point of view. A combination of both mass-building multi-joint exercises and targeted isolation exercises will synergistically influence symmetrical muscle development just as much as training with multiple modalities (i.e. barbells, dumbbells, cable pulleys, etc.) will.

The bottom line is that if you don't get stronger at the big, basic movement patterns over time, your muscle shape probably won't change much. You can train the pecs from any angle with any exercise imaginable - if you continue to only do 3 sets of 60kg bench presses with 10 reps, your muscle development will likely be lacking.

For this reason, you should use a variety of exercises, but at the same time make sure you always perform variations of squats, deadlifts and presses. There are thousands of modifications you can make to these exercises to 'confuse' your muscles while sticking to the best movement patterns.

For example, to add variety to the bench press, you could perform conventional bench presses, close grip bench presses, board presses, floor presses, bench presses in the rack, incline bench presses or bench presses on the reverse incline bench. Many of these exercises can also be performed with dumbbells and you can also change the set and repetition patterns. Vary your workouts intelligently, but never deviate too much from tried and tested methods.

6 - Falsification

The principle of abbreviation states that abbreviating to use a slightly heavier weight or to force a few more reps at the end of a set makes sense from a hypertrophy training perspective.

Many online discussions about whether bending during exercise execution makes sense have degenerated into endless debates. Brand new research has taken a closer look at this topic and has shown that there is an ideal point for technical form and the resulting joint torque requirements and hypertrophy stimulus when performing side raises (Arandjelović, published ahead of print).

The authors of the study make the following statement:

"A moderate increase in load and use of momentum allow for a further increase in torque. In contrast, excessive use of momentum results in lower demands on the target muscles, while excessive increases in load reduce the overall hypertrophy stimulus due to the reduced number of repetitions that can be successfully performed and the resulting dramatically shortened time under tension."

Here is our recommendation. You should not deflect or use excessive momentum when performing exercises with an inherent risk to the joints such as squats, deadlifts or standing shoulder presses. However, certain exercises such as barbell curls and side raises are good for using some momentum or faking. However, do not forge too much or you will reduce the load on the target muscle and put your body at increased risk of injury.

Conclusion

Joe brought us the IFBB, he founded the Mr. Olympia competition, he brought Arnold to America and he put together the Weider Principles. We believe all exercisers and bodybuilders would be well advised to learn these principles and put them into practice based on specific training goals. Even though they were compiled decades ago, new research confirms their value as viable training strategies.

By Bret Contreras, Brad Schoenfeld,

https://www.t-nation.com/training/6-lessons-learned-from-the-master-blaster

References

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