Muscle builds like this: muscle overload – when you do resistance training (weights) at the right intensity, you actually cause tiny micro tears to muscle fibres. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you have hurt yourself, these tears are tiny and happen in life anyway in various other circumstances. Recover – after training it takes around 72 hours for muscle to recover, this means that these tiny tears repair themselves. Adaptive growth – this occurs after the recovery has taken place. Your brain remembers the stress that was placed on those fibres and adds a little more muscle tissue to adapt to the stress that you placed the muscle under so that you can cope better if you do it again. By continuing this cycle, you gain a little muscle each week as long as you continue the cycle. The critical thing here is to allow the process to take place, so always leave enough time between training each muscle group to complete the cycle before training it again. This is why we recommend 3 to 4 weight training sessions per week, doing each muscle group only once per week, never more.
How many reps: This is an age old question, but don’t get too worked up about it because it can be confusing. The bottom line is that you should fail completely by the end of each set. In other words, you should not be able to do one more rep by the end of your set, and this should occur between 5 and 12 reps depending on the phase of your training. See our website for more information.
Variation: It is vital that you change your programme at least every six weeks. The reason for this is because you begin to wear down connective tissue if you do the exact same movement every week for longer than six weeks. Your brain is far too clever to allow you to harm yourself, so as soon as your connective tissue begins to wear, your brain sends messages to your muscles to reduce their capacity to contract, in other words it makes muscle weaker. All you need to do is change the movements and intensity slightly every 6 weeks to avoid this. So for example, don’t do bench press all year long. Do it for 6 weeks, and then change to something like dumbbell press for the next 6 weeks.
Concentric and eccentric: Sounds a bit academic doesn’t it? Don’t worry, it’s simple. Concentric movement is when your muscles shorten, for example when lifting a dumbbell while doing bicep curls. When lowering the dumbbell the muscle lengthens and this is the eccentric movement. The concentric movement does very little to muscle tissue other than get the weight up so that you can lower it again. Do the concentric movement quickly, but controlled, and do the eccentric movement slowly as this is when you really hit muscle fibres and stimulate growth.
Always combine cardio and weights: Even if you are training for mass gain only, do cardio even if it is only for 20 minutes twice a week. Your body functions better if you have a balance of cardiovascular fitness, as well as strength and power. Becoming totally unfit will hinder your muscle gain goals. Conversely, even if you are on a total fat loss programme, do some weight training as well otherwise you may end up remaining pear shaped, but just a smaller pear. You won’t look any better if your waist size decreases but so do your shoulders, chest and arms. Aim for balance all the time.
