If your goal is to get 100% better at something, what would be the best way to go about it? I can think of two ends of the continuum. The approach you select will be somewhere along this continuum: doing one thing twice as good (or 100 percent better), or performing 100 activities 1 percent better. I think that most people attempt the first approach, but the latter is much more realistic.
Taken a step further, to make each of these small building blocks more effective, you could also change things that occur outside of your workouts. So you concentrate on changing your habits and making fractional improvements in many areas that will stack on top of each other to bring you huge benefits.
So here are five easy lifestyle changes you can make to help you build muscle up.
1) Replace Traditional Cardio with HIIT
Aerobic exercise has a negative impact on muscle gaining because it burns branched chain amino acids (BCAA) and glycogen. Rather, concentrate on HIIT sessions for fat burning, e.g. a 400-meter sprint followed by a 400-meter recovery jog, repeated for a total of four times.
2) Increase Total Time Under Load (TTL)
Instead of focusing on the number of reps, concentrate on the total time your muscles are under load. Try spending 2 seconds on the negative contraction, 1 second at a neutral contraction (bottom of the exercise), and 1 second on the positive contraction. Lengthening the negative is an easy method to overload muscles and promote muscle weight gain.
3) Increase your Sodium Intake
Not only is fish high in protein, it is also a natural source of essential fatty acids, which are vital for both your overall health and your muscular health. Essential fatty acids make your muscles more sensitive to insulin, so they aid glycogen storage and increase the absorption of amino acids into your muscles, while also preserving glutamine storage.
4) Mix up your Total Time Under Load
One really easy way to add variety to a workout, confuse your muscles, and build muscle up is to switch up your repetition tempo by adding an explosive day once per week, or an explosive set once per workout. It looks like this: 2-second negative contraction, 1-second neutral, explode as fast as you can on the positive contraction and repeat.
5) Cheat on your Diet
If you haven’t yet read the Cheat to Lose Diet, you should. It’s a pretty interesting theory into how the body metabolizes food. The short story is that your body burns fat when a hormone is present in your body, and that hormone appears as a direct result of overeating! So once a week, cheat, and follow your cheat day with two very low-carbohydrate, high protein days. You’ll enjoy the cheat day and burn more fat to boot.
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
