Training program to build lean muscle

These exercises often get your heart rate going and give a dose of cardio, especially if you do them as part of a HIIT circuit.

Over time, you may be able to work your way to the floor. Most exercises have several modifications. Before getting started, consider doing your own research or schedule a session with a personal trainer who can teach you moves that make sense for you. Muscle also protects your body from injury and can ease pain by addressing posture or body imbalances.

This concept leads to confusion because of the myth that muscle weighs more than fat. But a pound weighs a pound, regardless of what it contains. The process of the body attempting to recover or return to its resting state after a workout produces an extra calorie burn that can last for several hours to more than a full day. This afterburn effect is known in scientific lingo as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption EPOC. The higher the intensity of your workout, the longer EPOC will last.

Although more research needs to be done on this topic, research suggests that increasing your muscle mass may make you less hungry, which could help with weight loss and decrease the risk for developing type 2 diabetes. If weight loss is your goal, gaining muscle can help you look leaner, burn more energy both during and after exercise, and even potentially change your eating habits.

If we have weak muscles and slump because of fatigue, we might experience achiness or stiffness. If we strengthen our muscles, however, we can hold good posture for longer and stave off pain, according to a study. Strength training can also correct imbalances in the body like lordosis or uneven shoulders that could lead to discomfort.

After age 30, we say goodbye to approximately 3 to 8 percent of our muscle mass per decade, with even more significant losses later in life. This muscle loss may account for more fatigue, weight gain, and increased risk for fracture. We can ward off age-related muscle loss, termed sarcopenia , with exercise that includes a combo of cardio and strength training.

The benefits of muscle-building transcend giving you an athletic or lean physique. Adding brawn can boost your confidence to do new activities, improve your health, and amp up your life enjoyment as well as keep you feeling agile and able throughout the years.

When this tissue is stretched you will see increases in muscle growth. There will be a higher deliverance of minerals, amino acids and oxygen to the tissues. With this set-up, perform seven sets of 15 reps for the last exercise you do for each muscle group.

It's important to keep your rest periods between these sets shorter - right around 30 seconds total. Note: it will be common to adjust the weight downward from what you'd normally use for this particular exercise due to the fact that you are using a much higher total number of sets and the longer rep range will demand that you're not lifting as heavy.

The pros to this program beside the obvious better fascia health are that it still allows for a great deal of flexibility on your part with overall structural design.

If you want to specialize in certain body parts you can definitely do so or if you prefer to keep the rest of the program lower in total volume because you don't have the best of recovery rate, you can certainly do that as well. Another pro to this approach is that the higher rep and set range for that one exercise will stimulate the metabolic rate considerably, so whether your goal is muscle building or fat loss, provided you're eating the correct accompanying diet, you can see a boost in results through that manner as well.

Potentially the one con you may see with this approach is, if you struggle with recovery, you may not be able to work out as frequently as you're accustomed after performing this protocol. After time you will likely find that your body adapts, so try not to abandon the program too quickly if this is in fact what you find.

Stick with it and make sure you eat properly and stretching in between sessions without adding too much cardio training to the week overall and you'll likely start seeing results and improvements with the level of fatigue you feel. This is another extremely intense training program so you must always monitor recovery between sessions.

Some people may choose to only employ the FST-7 principle in one of their workouts for a particularly lagging muscle group, while others may try it through all workouts during the week. Do expect more soreness from this program than you may have experienced before and be prepared to adjust and adapt your own schedule based on this. Here's a sample FST-7 program that you could use that applies the principle to all muscle groups.

Note that you're best off doing an isolated exercise for your set of 7, which is why the exercises are chosen as such. Take between 60 and seconds of rest on the exercises apart from the exercise where you are to perform seven sets.

Here the rest period needs to be shorter and kept around 30 seconds for maximum muscle pump. This set-up is typically performed on a two on, one off schedule and allows you to hit each muscle group twice per week. The pro to this type of workout program is that it is a good option for beginners weight lifters looking to build mass. Since it still allows enough rest over the entire week and breaks the body up so each workout is slightly less stressful, it's a good place to start. Advanced trainees can also intensify the workout through the total set number, exercise selection, and rest periods used, allowing for increased muscle gains at any level.

Another big advantage to this type of set-up is the fact that it will allow you to include more isolated exercises. If you want to specifically target one of the smaller muscle groups biceps, triceps, lateral deltoid, etc , you can do so more easily. Because this type of bodybuilding program is so versatile, there really aren't a great deal of cons with it.

You can change it around a great deal to meet whatever your individual needs are, making sure you get what you're looking for from your workout program. The one con you may find with this workout is due to the fact that since it is made to be a 4-day program, it should be performed four days of the week.

If you have scheduling conflicts, that may be a problem for you. Even this could be overcome by doing one week of lower, upper, lower training and the next week of upper, lower, upper training—and continually alternating as such. There is an endless amount of exercise-selection choices for this type of workout plan and you should format the program according to how much volume you can handle, any muscle groups you want to focus on and whether you primarily focus on strength or size.

The following sample program is a good combination of compound and isolation exercises. It will target both the strength and size aspects of your fitness level. Aim to take about one minute of rest between the first group of exercises and then shorten the rest period to seconds for the second. Perform Workout A and Workout B one after each other and then break for a day before moving to Workout C and Workout D to round out your training week.

Lastly we come to full-body workouts. The 5 x 5 program could also be considered a full-body workout program to a degree, since you work almost all the major muscle groups with the three exercises you choose. But, true full-body programs will provide one direct exercise for each muscle group—quads, hamstrings, chest, back and shoulders arms are worked when doing chest and back.

In addition to those lifts, you could also throw in a few isolated exercises if you want to hit the smaller muscles individually. One big pro of this program is again that it can be appropriate for a beginner, provided they use a lower total set number for each exercise and watch the volume. It can certainly be used by advanced individuals as well. Since it has the high-frequency aspect working for it, it typically proves to be successful.

There are a number of different combinations you can create a full-body workout with and can utilize different principles within the workout to add variety and keep progressing. One main con of the full-body workout program is that it's not as good if you're looking to specialize in a certain body part since you have to perform some exercises for each body part in the same session.

Typically with specialization workouts you're going to want to dedicate two or three lifts to the body part you're specializing in, making the workout slightly crowded once you fit everything in. For each full-body workout, you'll hit all the major muscle groups while using as many compound exercises as possible to keep overall volume under control.

The few isolation exercises are added toward the end of the workout to help further bring out muscle definition and increase the muscle pump you experience. Aim to complete the following workouts alternating between them over the course of two to three days per week with at least one day off in between for rest.

Take seconds of rest between the sets of the first grouping of exercises and seconds of rest between the sets of the second grouping of exercises. Like seriously muscular. That means taking every opportunity to learn more about the intricacies of hypertrophy muscle growth and turning the science of muscle physiology into an art form. Although there are a few different types of muscles, the ones in your arms, legs, chest and shoulders are all referred to as skeletal muscles.

They look like this because these fibers are made up of filaments arranged like rope that are organised into functional units called sarcomeres. And as the individual filaments wrap around each other they form the lines that give your muscles their stripy look.

After your workout, your body uses stored energy to build back the damaged cells. It uses cellular process to fuse damaged muscle cells together to form new proteins. As an in-built safety mechanism, your muscle fibers build back both bigger and stronger than they previously were. This makes complete sense too if you think about it, as your body is just trying to protect itself. Both of these result in muscle damage, which of course is the first stage of new growth.

This simply means that when you lift a heavy weight you create such a stimulus that muscle fibers become damaged. Go back a few years and increased muscle mass was only thought to occur with a rep range of But as more and more research becomes available we realize that you can get jacked at any rep range. Remember, mechanical tension causes growth with heavier weights… but metabolic stress can also trigger muscle mass with lighter weights too.

Key Point: You can grow muscle regardless of what rep range you use. On this lean muscle plan we want you to bring your A-game.