Weight loss plans

As a Personal Trainer I am asked how to build muscle on a daily basis by guys who have been confused by the amount of different advice from individual trainers or fellow gym members over the years. Whether youre just starting out on your journey in fitness or youve been trying to get fit for years, this issue has probably affected you at some stage.

Today, we end that.

Firstly we need to establish your goal. Believe it or not, this is the area where men first lose their choice. Whereas women are forthcoming in their desire to lose body fat, men tend to want the best of both worlds. How many times have we heard that somebody wishes to lose fat but also get bigger and stronger? Too many.

The fact is this goal makes it harder for you to succeed. If youre not used to training you may find that you get the best of both worlds for the first month or so but after your body adapts to your new training lifestyle those results slow down. You need to make a choice.

Most people assume what they do in the gym will determine whether they get bigger or lose fat. This is incorrect. This mainly comes down to diet. In order to get bigger you must eat more than you do now each day, whereas to cut youll need to eat less. So this is why we must make a choice, depending on our individual goals.

Of course, if you are an athlete with a quality sports nutrition program and a lifetime devoted purely to your fitness you can structure a plan to achieve both simultaneously. But for most of us, who go to the gym to get fit and also have busy jobs and family lives, that is unrealistic.

Once you have set your goal, in this case to get bigger otherwise you wouldnt be reading this article, we can get your diet in place and begin looking at the following aspects of your gym routine:

* Which exercises are best?

* How many times per week should you train?

* How many reps and sets are optimal?

When it comes to strength and size there is one type of resistance exercise which stands above all others by a long, long choice. Were talking, of course, about compound exercises. Thats right, the basic exercises such as bench press and squat still reign supreme when it comes to muscle mass. Dont waste time isolating the lower half of your forearm, focus your time on big exercises.

Furthermore, understand the importance of rest. When training for size your body does not grow while your are in the gym. On the contrary, it grows while you are at rest. Try not to perform more than 4 sessions per week and you will see a great return in gains. Its hard to stay achoice when you get into training, but it is very important.

When it comes to repetitions, this easy-to-follow system will keep you on the right track for building lean mass and keep you progressing at a good, constant pace. Your target zone is 8-12 reps. This is the fundamental training zone for growth. Start with a weight you can push out eight repetitions with and as your strength increases youll notice you can get more reps out over the coming training sessions. Once you can push out more than twelve, increase the weight and return to eight reps. This progressive stance will keep you from reaching any kind of plateau.

Now you know the basic rules of how to build muscle in the gym, we recommend you take some time to apply the tips to your own individual routine and you will be amazed at the results you can achieve!