How To Gain Muscle MassA Muscle Building Routine For Massive MusclesHow to gain muscle mass is something I get asked about all the time. Last week, I mentioned how I got up to a personal record body weight of 206.5 pounds. At the end of my bike training I went into October at a lean 161 pounds. So some of the muscle I added was muscle I had previously built before and then I just kept going right past previous records, peaking at 206.5 pounds. That's some serious muscle building, right (Pics coming soon) Almost all guys that weight train would love to do this and need to know how to gain muscle mass. Did I mention I'm now in my mid thirties? And I've been training since I was in high school? So how did I finally manage to get these results? I'm constantly learning, reading scientific studies, trying new ideas in the gym, keeping track of those ideas, keeping what works and tossing what doesn't. Here are some of the things I incorporated into my training and nutrition to get those kind of results. Keep in mind that you may need to tweak these tips to fit your body type, recovery ability, time you have for weight training, etc. First, I trained each body part only once per week. This isn't ironclad. I vary it depending on how I split up my body parts, as well as my intensity level and how many sets I'm doing per body part. Sometimes, I'll even work the same body part three times per week. I do that when I'm doing a full body workout routine and only doing 1 or 2 all out sets per body part. "How to Gain Muscle Mass" Split Routine: (continued below)
I used three separate weightlifting routines, rotating them each week. For the first week I would keep all reps in the 5 - 8 range. I took 2 minutes (3 for squats and deadlifts) rest between sets and didn't use any intensity techniques. I did train to failure. This meant that sometimes I would have to lower the weight on the third set to make sure I'd get at least 5 reps. For the second week I did two different rep ranges, using 8 - 10 and 12 - 15, training each set to failure. For week three, I used a variety of different intensity techniques. Keep in mind I didn't use them all in the same weight training routine. I included techniques such as drop sets (love 'em!), multi rep rest pause sets,end of set extended set techniques like x reps, etc. I kept my between sets rest to a minimum (when I wasn't doing drop sets or multi rep rest pause which got a max of 20 seconds between sets) to a minute to a minute and a half. I had two exceptions to this for intensity week. On back day all I did was deadlifts. Not a great exercise for intensity techniques. Instead I did a set of 20 rep deadlifts, going all out. If you've ever done that, you know what I'm talking about and know you really can't do anything else, if you truly give it a top effort. On leg day, I did the same thing but for squats.
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