By: Julia Aidan
Submitted: 2009-10-02 10:28:04 | Word Count: 615
There are two different practices; weight lifting and body building. Bodybuilding is about balance, muscle mass and size whereas weight lifting is all about getting bigger and increasing your strength. Of course both these have similarities in the end result. The concluding result is you become larger.
Starting as a professional body builder is not going to generate results because to build muscle you need sufficient time. It's better to cover the essentials first, and then move forward steadily.
[ advertisement ]
A higher calorie intake is the foremost necessity in order to gain muscle. This may sound too easy, but you'll have to consider that the force needed to stem a growth in muscle mass will have to come from a high calorie food intake.
These calories should be taken from the right kind of food. Some food products will make you put on fat while only a few preferred products assist in gaining lean muscle. This is where you should employ the 40/40/20 principle.
What does the 40/40/20 principle set down? It says, 40% of your calorie intake should come from proteins, 40% from carbs and the remaining 20% from fats. For example, you require 3000 calories a day. Your typical diet in this case should consist of 1200 calories from protein based food such as fish, meat and eggs, 1200 calories from carb-rich food such as rice, pasta and potatoes and the remaining 600 calories from fatty food such as butter.
The exact stance and proper form of exercise play a chief role in the victory of your work out. You have to put proper stress on the muscle that you want to develop better. It's very important to learn the right way of doing all exercises though it may take some time. For instance, in a bar work out, even if you add more weights, it won't have much effect if your posture is wrong. If the pressure is not employed in the right place, development cannot take place and there are chances of injuries. You may get a muscleman image by doing heavyweight workouts, but you're not likely to gain lean muscle mass if you don't do the work out properly.
Remember to alter the stress levels placed on your muscles at recurrent breaks. To do this, you just have to add more weights. Very easy isn't it? But very easy to forget too! It's very effective if, for instance you do 8 reps on a 100 kg bench press, and then follow it with 9 reps on the next level. Else, you can average and do 8 reps on a 102.5 kgs. If you just do 6 reps with 102.5 kgs, its more than enough.We have to be forward thinking with weight training.
To stimulate maximum muscle development, what should be the 6 - 12 rep range? When you're not competent to do more than 6 reps, you're just increasing power, not weight. If you've observed power lifters, you'd see they are very strong, but not big because they don't workout for mass. When you do more than 12 reps, you enhance the tolerance capacity of muscles. It's better to do 10 reps with heavy weight than 20 reps with barbell. Just use this plan: if you're not able to do more than 6 reps with a particular weight, decrease the weight and boost frequency. Alternatively, increase the weight, if you can do more than 12 reps.
