Guaranteed muscle mass

Here is a brief summary:

1. The author increased his body weight from 52 to 127 kilos using these techniques.
2. Repetitions: This is what works when it comes to building a significant amount of muscle mass. This means sets with a repetition range of 8 to 20, but you need to get stronger within a certain repetition range.
3. Over-warming is a technique where you warm up to above the weight you plan to use for your workout. This will allow you to perform more repetitions on your working set than if you simply work your way up to your working set weight during the warm-up.
4. 50% sets are sets where you go to muscle failure, pause for 60 seconds and then try to achieve half the reps you did on your initial set.
5. In the 350 method, you choose a weight and try to perform 50 total reps over the course of three working sets.

Addicted to muscle mass

Mass. As a young man, nothing caught my attention more than that one word. This probably had something to do with the fact that I weighed just 52 kilos when I started training, with the mop of hair on my head probably accounting for most of that weight.

Once I got hooked on iron, my desire to build muscle was only surpassed by my desire to breathe oxygen. I wanted to be the guy that people looked twice or three times at in public. I wanted the admiration of other exercisers and friends. I wanted "sleeve busting arms" and all those other exaggerated slogans that describe what muscle mass entails.

These thoughts kept me on fire under my butt during times of slow or no gains and kept me from giving up. When you feel this kind of passion, you really only have one option: get better - or in this case, "get more muscular."

That's why I devoured every magazine and book I could find on training and nutrition for mass gain. I'm thankful I didn't have the internet back then, because I'm sure I would have been paralyzed by the amount of information. Since the amount of information was much more limited, I was forced to follow a few guidelines and developed my own theories and methods over time, which ended up serving me quite well. They were at least good enough to get me to the point where I'm sitting here writing this article with a relatively lean 127 kilos of body mass.

The best thing about having limited amounts of information was that it forced me to investigate exactly which theories worked and which didn't. I wasn't bombarded with scientific studies or discussion. I wasn't bombarded with scientific studies or discussion on forums between guys who weren't more muscular than me. So I went to the source: big and strong guys.

I found out over and over again that most successful guys followed the same principles. I found that these principles worked well for me too. I simply made a few adjustments based on my personal preferences and my personal recovery ability.

Here are some of the most effective techniques I've used over the years to really build muscle mass.

1 - Strong repetition ranges

One of the rules you need to follow if you want to get more muscular is that you need to get stronger. I've never found a way around this dilemma. Ultimately, you have to put more weight on the bar and do more reps than before. But the key is one little word in the last sentence: reps.

You need to get stronger within a certain repetition range. In most cases, this means between 8 and 20 repetitions. And not single reps or sets of 2 or 3 reps.

There's a reason that virtually every bodybuilder on the planet does a lot of reps: because this is what works to build a significant amount of muscle mass. I've found for myself that sets of 8 to 12 reps for the upper body and sets of 12 to 20 reps for the lower body are the most effective. We're talking hypertrophy here, not building maximum strength.

A lot of people conflate these ideas and don't really understand that even though these two ideas complement each other, you can't train for maximum muscle mass and maximum strength at the same time. One of the two will always have to take a back seat.

They are two different traits and they require very different approaches. Spend two years training for maximum muscle mass and getting stronger in the repetition ranges described and you will probably also achieve a higher maximum weight for one repetition (1RM weight). However, this is more or less just a side effect of this type of training and not the actual purpose.

You will not get as strong as if you had spent this time working on developing maximal strength by doing single reps and sets of two, three and five reps and as a side effect of this you would have built some muscle mass - although you would not have built as much muscle mass as you would have by training for hypertrophy.

Specificity is the key. If you really want to maximize your muscle mass, then prioritize this. Train for hypertrophy - and hypertrophy alone.

2 - Simple progression and 'over-warming'

During my early years, I used a very simple approach to my repetition goals. I took the weight I wanted to be able to do X reps with and worked towards that goal.

For example, I remember wanting to be able to do 12 repetitions of incline bench presses with 45 kilo dumbbells. At that point, I was able to do sets of 7 to 8 reps on a fairly consistent basis. So I stayed at that weight until I was able to do 12 reps and then increased the weight to 50 kilos.

Simple progression - and it worked. This kept me very focused on achieving goals for months in a row and kept me from deviating from my program. I had repetition goals for each exercise and I only increased the weight when I reached those repetition goals.

I also discovered something that made these sets more effective. This is a little trick I call "over-warming".

Over-warming was a technique where I went beyond the weight I had planned for my work sets when warming up. I found that this over-warming allowed me to consistently perform more reps on the working set than I could perform if I only warmed up to the working weight.

For example, if you plan to use 150 kilos for your work sets of squats, your warm-up might look something like this:

• 60 x 10
• 100 x 5
• 130 x 4
• 150 x 3
• 160 x 2
• 175 x 1
• 150 kilos on the work set

Because of my powerlifting interest, I was later able to assign some intensity ranges for both warm-up and work sets. The heaviest one-rep warm-up set was 85% of my max weight for upper and lower body exercises. The lower body work sets were around 70% of my maximum weight, while the upper body work sets were performed at around 75% of maximum weight.

The average exerciser can generally perform about 8 to 10 repetitions at 75% of their maximum weight and about 12 repetitions at 70% of their maximum weight. There is some variance from person to person, but these ranges work for most.

As far as increasing the weight, I increased it when I could do 12 to 15 reps on upper body exercises so that I could get back to 8 to 10 reps. I did the same with lower body exercises when I could do 18 to 20 reps.

3 - 50% sets

One of the methods I found to work amazingly well was something I picked up from Dr. Ken Leistner: 50% sets. In this method, you perform your working set to muscle failure, pause for 60 seconds and then try to achieve half the reps you did on your initial set.

For example, if you did 12 repetitions of bench presses with 150 kilos, you would pause for 60 seconds and then do your best to do 6 repetitions - i.e. half the repetitions you did on the first set. This is a very effective strategy when it comes to staying focused because you are essentially trying to beat three personal bests at once:

• The number of total reps on the first set compared to the previous week
• The number of reps on the 50% set
• The number of total reps on both sets compared to the previous week

4 - The 350 method

The 350 method is something I developed while playing around with powerlifting assistance training. You take a weight and try to perform 50 total reps over the course of three work sets.

I used this method a lot on the incline bench press and found that when the weight went up on my 350 sets, so did my other pressing exercises. This is a great (and painful) way to do a lot of reps and it can be used very effectively with any exercise. For example, I chose 100 kilos as my weight for 50 reps in the beginning. In general, my sets fell into these types of ranges:

• 100 x 22
• 100 x 13
• 100 x 8
• Total reps = 43

I stayed at 100 kilos until I was able to do all 50 reps. I then started aiming for 50 reps again - this time at 125 kilos.

This may seem like a big jump in weight, but when I finally reached 50 reps at 100 kilos, I had worked my way up to 30 reps on the first set (at this point I was well past the 50 total reps for the three sets). I reached 18 reps when I first tried the 350 method with 125 kilos on the incline bench, which was about the perfect starting point.

The training program

Let's combine all these principles to create a mass building template that will pay off.

First, the program needs to be built around multi-joint exercises. For lower body training, this means we're talking squats, front squats, leg presses, split squats and deadlifts with legs extended. For the upper body, this would be bench presses, incline bench presses, overhead presses, barbell rows, pull-ups and dips.

In addition to this, unilateral training is used for the lower body as most people have an imbalance in this area and unilateral leg training is excellent for injury prevention.

There is no need for a million isolation exercises. Many young exercisers get paralyzed into thinking that they need to do every exercise under the sun to achieve full development, when they should actually realize that getting brutally strong with high reps will build mass throughout the body.

You don't need four different variations of curls and three different variations of side raises to grow. If there's a lagging muscle group that needs to be brought up to par with the rest of your body, you should address it later, after you've built a solid foundation of muscle mass. You shouldn't worry about narrow shoulders if you weigh just 65 kilos.

The split

From a split perspective, it's a great idea to have an upper body day and a lower body day that rotate. You can train three days a week, but train both lower body and upper body three times in two weeks.

Week 1

Lower Body #1

1. Squats 85% x 1, 70% x AMAP*, plus a 50% set
2. Deadlifts with straight legs 85% x 1, 70% x AMAP (no 50% set)
3. Split squats 5 sets of 10-20

Upper body #1

1. Bench press 85% x 1, 75% x AMAP, plus one 50% set
2. Incline bench press 350 method
3. Barbell rows 2 sets of 8 then 2 sets of 12, as heavy as possible
4. Lat pulldowns (any grip is fine) 350 method
5. Barbell curls 350 method

Lower body #2

1. Front squats 85% x 1, 70% x AMAP, plus a 50% set
2. Leg press 350 method
3. Lunges (walking or on the spot) 5 sets of 10-20

Week 2

Upper body #2

1. Overhead press 85% x 1, 75% x AMAP, plus one 50% set
2. Dips with additional weight 350 method
3. Dumbbell rows 350 method
4. Pull-ups (wide, narrow or V-bar) 5 sets a AMAP
5. Dumbbell curls 350 method

Lower body #1

1. Squats 85% x 1, 70% x AMAP, plus one 50% set
2. Deadlifts with straight legs 85% x 1, 70% x AMAP (no 50% set)
3. Split squats 5 sets of 10-20

Upper body #1

1. Bench press 85% x 1, 75% x AMAP, plus one 50% set
2. Incline bench press 350 method
3. Barbell rows 2 sets of 8 then 2 sets of 12, as heavy as possible
4. Lat pulldowns (any grip is fine) 350 method
5. Barbell curls 350 method >p * AMAP = as many repetitions as possible (as much as possible)

Nutrition

It makes no sense to write an article about building muscle mass without talking about nutrition. Simply put, the above program and methods will work well - and damn well. However, no program or method for building mass will work without an abundance of food to provide the energy necessary for training and growth.

Most exercisers who think they're eating enough usually aren't. If there's one thing I can tell you about eating for mass gain when you're lean, it's that eating enough can be a chore. I remember days when I would gag at every meal because I was still full from the previous meal.

Eating large amounts of food is not an option, it's a necessity. There are numerous options to eat a lot in terms of making it easier to prepare. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, adding healthy oils to your food and shakes, lots of whole eggs, baked potatoes, tuna and oatmeal are all good foods that can help you take in extra calories and are both quick to prepare and cheap.

Stimulate, eat, rest and repeat

The methods described above work and they work very well. You need to put them into action and develop the mindset that nothing will stand in your way when it comes to breaking personal bests, eating like a maniac and sleeping like a baby.

These are the key factors to growing. Stimulate, eat, rest and repeat. That's basically the entire paradigm for building more mass.

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/guaranteed-muscle-mass

By Paul Carter