Train Like an Athlete by ATHLEAN-X (Video Podcast)

If you have been wanting to build muscle but you just haven’t been seeing the results that you have been looking for with other workouts, it is time to rethink your approach. In this video, I’m going to give you a muscle building 101 course on the most important things you need to focus on when it comes to building bigger muscles and achieving muscle hypertrophy. No gimmicks or phony shortcuts needed here. Just pure muscle building science to help you get over the hump and start packing some size on your frame.

To get you started, it is important to understand that everything comes down to just one concept and that is the intensity of your training. Now I don’t just mean how psyched up you are to tackle your next workout. I mean, in addition to that, how intensely focused are you on achieving your goal? If you are as much as you say you are, then you will realize that there are many things that need to be addressed outside of just showing up to the gym and trying hard.

It starts with a plan. No successful lifter has ever built appreciable amounts of muscle size without having a plan for getting there. I’m not just talking about knowing what you are going to do in the gym that day (although that would be a great start)! I’m talking about knowing how this workout is going to impact the next one and the next one after that. With a goal in mind you need to have a map for getting to your goal and it starts with knowing what steps you are going to take from one workout to the next.

With that in mind, it is now time to actually start lifting the weights. From here, the intensity that I hinted at in the beginning becomes crucial. Are you simply counting to 10 or 12 or are you pushing with every bit of effort with the rep count secondary? I hope it’s the latter. When it comes to training for more muscle size you need to realize that your effort will dictate everything. Overload is critical. The use of compound lifts to build up a strength base is a must in order to set the stage for growth. Your use of other techniques (like volume training) should still equate to an overall overload if the end goal is to get bigger.

This is where many people fall off the path. There is simply no way around hard work when you are trying to build muscle. Which leads us to the next point and that is, once your set is done what are you doing with your time. If you sit around and let far too much time pass between sets then you are dramatically decreasing the effectiveness of the workout. Rest times should be prescriptive and serve to keep your muscles stressed for the entire workout. They should not be looked at as times to jump on social media and take you out of the frame of mind necessary for building muscle.

In fact, some people ease into their rest periods too quickly. I believe that the use of some sort of set intensifying technique (like drop sets, forced reps, negatives, super sets, etc) is a great way to ensure that you tap into the reserves that your body was likely hanging onto that your mind was unwilling to let go. If you want to achieve greater muscle size you are going to need to interrupt that thought pattern and train harder. I always say, you can train hard or you can train long but you can’t do both.

Finally, every natural lifter knows that the only way to build bigger muscles is to allow your body to recover between workouts. This simply can’t happen if you aren’t prioritizing it. In fact, I would say that even if you get everything else right up to this point, if you screw this up, you will blow all opportunities to grow as big as possible.

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