Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you’re digging through this website, and reading this article, I’m going to safely assume two things.
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You give a shit about building muscle and unlocking a physique that fills you with pride, while striking fear into the hearts of your enemies.
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You’re willing to take that extra step and look for valuable information that can help you achieve exactly that. Kudos, my friend.
This being the case, you’ve probably spent hours digging through now-defunct forums, articles of old, and trying every muscle building “hack” in the Google search results for “how do I get fucking stacked?”
Does that sound about right?
Here’s the thing.
You could spend the rest of your life digging through the annals of Google on your quest to figure out what exactly you can do to build more muscle in less time.
There are more articles floating about the internet on getting jacked than I care to share. Much – if not all of it is rehashed information – and some of it is so painfully misleading and false that it hinders more lifeters than it helps.
This being the case, it’s plain as day as to why so many lifters struggle to make the gains they want, and battle information overload on a daily basis.
My aspiring-to-be-jacked friend, fear not.
On my journey to breakdown and simplify the art that is physique development and making ridiculous gains, I’ve made significant progress in terms of figuring out what does work, and what doesn’t. Having put in the leg work (literally), I don’t want you to waste as much time as I did.
Here’s the thing; building muscle is a lot more simplistic in execution than it’s portrayed as.
And certainly more simple than that sentence comes across as.
While getting jacked, shredded, and tanned isn’t always cut and dry, these 4 tips will help you cut through the noise, get off the hamster wheel of stagnation, and start making some serious gains (finally).
Dig in.
Muscle Building Tip #1 – Don’t fire all your bullets at once.
This applies to many different aspects of life, but holds especially true in the contexts of building muscle and torching body fat.
In a fat loss scenario if you come out guns blazing from day 1 having pulled out all the stops, what are you going to do when your body adapts? You’re left in the awkward position of having to figure out what more you can throw at yourself and what more you can “take away” to keep making progress, and dropping that there body fat.
You gotta keep some bullets in the chamber. You never know when you might need them.
This is ultimately what leads to people spending 2 hours, twice per day on mind-numbing cardio work, training for 90 minutes, and eating rabbit food with a side of crumbs at each meal. Doing so sinks you into a place that is frankly, abhorrently unsustainable. When you finally snap, and realize that you can’t keep this up for any longer, the weight piles back on quicker than you can say “where are the damn cupcakes?”
Closely followed by: “Who ate all the damn cupcakes?”
The processes for making schweet gains or obliterating body fat are quite similar in their execution.
Baby steps, baby.
Cut your carbs from ONE meal, let that marinate for two weeks, then see if you need to make further changes. Don’t pull ALL your carbs all at once. Yeah, you’ll lose a bunch of fat. But once you’ve removed them all, what are you going to remove next when you inevitably plateau? Air? I should think not.
Likewise for muscle building.
You can start off with high intensity, high volume, training 7 days a week, and using every intensity technique you can think of, but what happens when the muscle stops growing and you can’t face eating another cup of rice?
You’ve got nowhere to go, and that’s a terrible, terrible spot to be in if you’re trying to transform your physique.
The solution: Put ONE bullet in the chamber, and fire it. Wait 1-2 weeks, assess your progress. ONLY if you’ve stopped progressing, load another bullet and fire it.
Muscle Building Tip #2 – Don’t stress about periodization, but do rotate the focus of your training phases.
Many coaches wield a massive boner for elaborate, highly technical and masterfully designed periodization plans. In the context of strength and power development, this makes sense.
But something tells me you’re not here to sniff ammonia, beat your chest a few times and add 117 pounds to your total (not that there’s anything wrong with that. Rather, we’re talking about unadulterated hypertrophy. In this case there are simply too many variables to lay out a well-periodized plan that you’ll be able to execute without any hiccups (thus defeating the purpose of your artfully designed, beautifull painted periodized plan that would make Vincent Van Gogh jealous).
You know those days where all of a sudden you feel as if you’ve been hit by 2 busses, been abducted by aliens, and left in the Sahara desert for 2 weeks with one bottle of orange juice? Yeah, you can’t really predict those days, and when they happen, that’s going to a throw a wrench into your eloquently designed, periodized 12 week training block.
Yeah. Feeling like this guy is the absolute worst. But, it happens to all of us.
The solution: Spend 4-6 weeks hammering away, training with one focus in mind. Whether it’s bringing up a week or lagging body part, using specific set and rep scheme, implementing two new intensification techniques or trying a new training split. Reap the rewards of a committing to and crushing your goal. After the 4-6 weeks? Shift your focus, rinse and repeat.
I could dress this method of muscle building periodization up with fancy words, elaborate protocols and some buzzwords, but it really, truly is as simple as that
Muscle Building Tip #3 – Just because you can’t see a muscle (back, traps, rear delts, triceps, hamstrings, calves) when you look in the mirror, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t train (double your efforts).
A hallmark physique is built upon much more than just the muscles seen when you look in the mirror. If that’s all you train, you’re literally neglecting half of your body, and consigning your physique to mediocre levels by default. This won’t do and to a diehard lover of physique development, it’s offensive.
Have you ever seen those guys at the gym – with rounded shoulders and hunchback aside – who look impressive from head on, but as soon as they turn to the side or your approach them from behind (ha-ha), they all but disappear? These are the guys who only train what they see in the mirror, and this is the exact trap you want to avoid falling into. These are the guys whose self-worth is often built upon how much they bench/have upright rowed for them.
Steer clear of the trap-less trap.
The solution: Train your back, traps, rear delts, triceps, hamstrings, and calves. While that might look like a lot, if you regularly train each major body part, you should be able to cover all your muscle building bases.
Muscle Building Tip #4 – Training is about building muscle, not losing fat (let your diet do that).
Google “training to lose fat” and you’ll end up with a bunch of exercises and training sessions that claim to unlock some magical fat burning pathway.
This is a lie.
While certain types of training will lead to a greater caloric expenditure, and may lead to a greater after-burn via elevated post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), there’s an argument to be made for simply adding a little more weight to the bar or adding a few extra sets to your session. Dissecting these magical fat loss programs, however, is not the point here.
My point is that your focus while you’re in the gym should ultimately be placed on building muscle, aggressively at that. You’ve got 22-23 hours of the day to take care of the fat loss side of things.
The gains. Oh, the gains.
The deeper you get into bodybuilding circles, this is where you’ll see the importance of peri-workout (pre/intra/post workout) come into play. The idea being that in order to maximize muscle protein synthesis and stimulate as much growth as possible, you need to support your session as best you can through food, hydration, and whatever supplements you can afford that will enhance your session (typically things that will aid muscle contraction, improve blood flow, and reduce fatigue).
The solution: Set yourself up to trigger as much muscle growth as you during your session. Then over the rest of your day, shift your focus to fat burning via simple calorie control.
The Final Reps – and a bonus tip.
To review:
- Don’t fire all of your bullets at once.
- Rather than stress about planning out a periodized training program, focus on rotating through phases of different training focuses every 4-6 weeks.
- Train the muscles you can’t see just as much as you train the ones you can see (if not more).
- Enter each training session with the goal of building muscle. Use your nutrition to control how you look.
Before you go, I want to send you off with one final tip. One that differs from the rest in that it leans towards actionable rather than philosophical.
It’s the key to exerting a degree of control over when, and what muscles grow.
The secret sauce to developing your physique in record time.
Everything works, until it doesn’t, but this tip is one that just keeps on giving (gains).
I’m talking about the high-powered muscle building effect of body part specialization.
You see, muscle growth is never linear. Instead it comes in quick bursts and rapid spurts of progress. While you may not be able to turn hypertrophy on or off with the press of a button, you can influence these bursts of growth, and in which muscles they happen.
Therein lies the beauty of using body part specialization to build a truly impressive physique.
A physique that commands attention and causes second glances.
A physique that finally speaks to the blood, sweat, and tears you’ve put into your training.
A physique that you can be unequivocally proud of.
On the chance that that’s not enough to convince you, let’s take this a little further.
Go on now, hit this here link or the one in my bio below. I’ve built a leg specialization program called 8 Week Leg Assault, and it’s got your name written all over it.
It will surely unlock the leg gains you’ve been looking for, and bring balance to your physique.
About the Author
Alex is a short shorts enthusiast, espresso connoisseur, and budding master chef (certainly not your average meathead). When he's not training legs or learning how to better serve his clients, he can be found exploring how to further crush life, perfect his flair in the kitchen, or pull the perfect shot of espresso. He's recently opened enrolment to his flagship training program, 8 Week Leg Assault. Click on through here to build wheels of steel.
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