Build Muscle in Less Time

When it comes to building muscle, many people still believe that more is always better, but the fact of the matter is that most people don’t have the time to spare to train for hours in a gym week after week. The goods news is that you don’t have to.

Quality vs Quantity

More time doesn’t automatically mean that you are going to get the best muscle size gains – why? Well it comes down to the quality of your training. You can train for hours and hours, but if your exercise choice and repetitions aren’t of good quality, then you might as well go back home.

High quality training will stress the muscle fibres adequately to reach the goals you want – even if the training time is brief. This stimulus then results in strength and muscle gains. Low quality training will never produce the same results for the simple reason that it won’t stimulate the muscle fibres sufficiently. Think of it like this: you could throw hundreds and thousands of ping-pong balls at a coconut-shy stall at the fair – will it fall? Now what if you throw an accurately aimed brick at the same coconut?

Intensity

People get confused by what we mean when we say intensity. In terms of lifting weights, if you want to increase the intensity; it’s all about performing more muscular work per unit of time. The main principles of creating more intensity in your workouts are as follows:

• Keep the rest between sets to a minimum, even if you are doing multiple sets per body part. The best way to do this is to use your rest time to train the opposite muscle group – while one group is working, the other is resting.
• Move from one exercise to the other swiftly – don’t waste time
• Generate enough fatigue by ensuring that at the end of each set you cannot do one more repetition with strict form – reach your failure point. If you finish a set thinking that you can do another couple of repetitions then you are not working at the correct intensity.
• Maintain proper form at all times, performing full ranged, slow, controlled movements for every repetition

If you’re new to resistance training the principles mentioned above will help you produce fantastic results. Stick with a routine and remember to mix it up on a regular basis by alternating exercises or changing the order of your workout to get the best results.

So remember, if you are after rapid results then stay determined and motivated; keep your intensity short and sharp. Reduce your chat-time in the gym and start lifting.