Basic Muscle Building Facts Covered

Asking for advice on how to build muscle can seem rather daunting. This is largely due to the severe jargon which surrounds unfamiliar new techniques like body weight workouts and high intensity interval training but it is also something which needn't be so confusing.

This may come as a little shock, but the foundations of building lean tissue are primarily the same as they were thirty or forty years ago. Things have got more advanced in certain areas, but the overall principles still stand tall.

They are:

1. Multi-joint exercises outperform isolation exercise every day.

These are your biggest exercises and they include moves such as the barbell squat, deadlift and bench press.

The body is forced to grow at an advanced rate with these particular exercise because it needs to recruit far more muscle fibers to get you through the exercises.

2. Learn how many reps to perform.

Studies show that the greatest amount of lean muscle is gained when aiming for a weight which causes you to fail in the 8-12 rep range.

You'll be stronger on some exercises, naturally, but you can begin using your rep range as a guide to tell you if you are going too light or too heavy.

3. Consistency is the enemy.

If there was one thing that held people back in the gym more than anything else, it's consistency.

That may sound strange, but consistently lifting the same weight over and over will not see you hit new results. As your body begins to adapt to an exercise, you will need to push it harder than before to see new results. Therefore, make increasing your lifts an absolute priority.

4. Sleep to grow.

Contrary to popular belief, you do not build new size in the gym. The process of building actually takes place during sleep...

If you try to get eight to twelve hours of sleep on a consistent basis, it is a guaranteed method to increase your size and strength. That's because the body releases growth hormone and testosterone at this point, so neglecting this phase of the day is not advised.

This could be compared to leaving the cement to set on a brick wall, but returning the following day and trying to build on it even further. You're basically knocking yourself down all the time and going nowhere.

These time tested, established techniques set the foundations for how to build muscle as far as relevant scientific research goes. While it's easy to over complicate things and turn any gym program into a science lesson, the basics of techniques such as hypertrophy, high intensity interval training and fat loss are primarily the same as they were a decade ago.