While building muscle generally corresponds to an increase in weight, you should not be surprised if your overall weight does not increase. Your lack of net weight gain can easily be attributed to weight loss caused by a decrease in body fat offsetting your muscle gain. There are various tools and techniques that track body-fat loss. You can utilize them to account for this.
Stay active on your rest days. Being active increases your blood flow, and will help you to recover more quickly. The activity can be as simple as going for a walk. You can also go swimming, biking, or even get a massage. Engaging in these kinds of activities is significantly more effective than simply lying in bed all day.
Your top three exercises will be a squat, deadlift and bench press. This trio is thought to be the best foundation for bodybuilding success. They have been proven over time to build up strength, increase your bulk and improve conditioning overall. Use these exercises during your workout.
Make sure that you are doing deadlifts in your workout regime. This exercise causes a very large amount of hormones to be released, which is needed for maximum muscle growth. The deadlift utilizes virtually every single major muscle group. Those people who start out doing deadlifts usually see muscle gains very quickly.
Compound exercises are an easy way for you to get consistent muscle growth in all areas of your body. These are exercises that use several different muscle groups to perform a single lift. For example, bench presses work out your shoulders, triceps and chest all at once.
Use visualization exercises to picture what you need to do to reach your goals. Having vague, undefined goals with no real sense of how to accomplish them is a sure road to failure. Picture yourself sticking to your workout routine and visualize what you will look like in the future. This will keep you motivated.
Carbohydrates are key for muscle building. Carbohydrates not only fuel your body, but they are necessary to increase muscle tone. The ratio of carbs you should be consuming each day is about two grams for every pound you weigh.
Do not overwork your body. In order to build muscle mass, your body needs a chance to recuperate. When starting out, work your upper on one day, then work your lower body the next day. Take one day off each week where you do no workouts at all. This will make the workout less of a job.
Utilize pyramid training. A single weight lifting regimen doesn't yield results forever. This is why you should attempt to pyramid your weight by using heavier weights throughout every set. Heavy sets allow you to build up your strength, and the medium weights maximize your muscle growth. This allows you to gain both strength and size in just one workout.
Eat plenty of carbs. If your body runs short on glucose after hard workouts, your body will use muscle tissue for protein and carbohydrates, undoing your hard work. Stay away from low-carb diets, and eat an appropriate amount of carbs given the here intensity of your workouts--possibly a couple of grams of carbs per pound of body weight each day.
An important component of muscle building is your diet. There are good calories and bad calories, and you need to know the difference. If you eat a poor diet, you will fail to build muscle and will become fat.
Know your limits, and push yourself in an exercise to the point at which you hit that limit. Every time you do a set, don't give up until you are totally exhausted and can't lift the weight even one more time. If necessary, you can use a pyramid system and decrease the number of reps as you fatigue.
Use your head to think things through when you are completing squats. Move the bar to the area on your back closest to the trap's center. This will increase the work your glutes, hamstrings and hips perform, allowing you to take on more weight for each rep.
You now have the information that you need to begin developing a plan for optimum bodybuilding. This advice has worked for many others and is sure to help you obtain the muscle mass that you are striving to get. Work hard, stay dedicated and you will persevere against the body fat you are fighting.
