How to Build Muscle

The main obstacle people find in building muscle mass is the amount of variation in the method and ideas provided by different people who 'claim' that their way of training is the most effective. Although, this may be true for their own pursuit of muscle mass, the difference between individuals is key for an effective regime of training and dieting. Firstly, it is important that you do your own research and find out the basics, these include researching exercises for each body part and learning how to perform them properly for optimal results.

-Designing a Routine-

The main concern in drawing up a routine is how many days you can dedicate to your training. A three-day split is recommendable for beginners as their muscles will overload with less intensity than intermediate or advanced lifters. In simple terms, on a Monday you can work your chest/triceps, back/shoulders/traps on Wednesday and legs on Fridays. Once you become more experienced in lifting you will need more volume in your routine to stress your muscles sufficiently and so you might want to spread out your muscle groups alternatively to over four or five days as you ideally want to keep your workout under an hour (explained later).

-Sets-

In terms of sets, the number of which you need to do is down to personal preference as everyone responds differently to weight training. However, a general range of sets would be ten for larger muscles such as the legs and back and around eight for smaller muscles such as biceps and triceps. Ultimately, it is worth experimenting with these numbers and adjusting them slightly i.e. if you have done eight sets for back but your strength has dramatically decreased in that you can only manage two or three reps of the original weight you used then there is no need for additional sets. Likewise if you feel you haven't fatigued or muscle group enough proceed with additional sets and maybe consider using a higher weight in your next session.

-Reps-

There are many different philosophies on the amount of reps you need to do for each exercise to provide optimal muscle growth. The most accepted range for muscle building is between 8-12 reps and for strength this range is between 1-5. However, from experience I find that these rep-ranges are limited and through manipulating reps ranges with sets you can design a routine that allows significant strength gains as well as providing optimal hypertrophy for building muscle. Moreover, I find training for strength helps for motivation as gains in strength are more noticeable in the short-term than building muscle which is a long-term process. Furthermore, if you mix the strength rep range with hypertrophy and use 6-10 you can yield the benefits of both ranges. Ultimately if you compensate this rep-range with an extra set to make up for doing less reps you should not be at a disadvantage in terms of the benefits of the 8-12 rep range.

-Diet-

By far the most important aspect of building muscle is diet; you need to be eating excess calories to provide extra mass needed for new muscle tissue to develop and grow. Moreover you need to get at least 1lb/protein per lb of bodyweight, this is essential for the growth and repair of muscle tissue. If you do not get enough protein and you eat at a calorie deficit you will fail to see any results from training regime.

Useful Article on Calorie Consumption..

http://www.bodybuilding.com/f un/calories.htm