Men’s fitness and muscle building training methods

Achieving progressive overload training, maintaining a reasonable caloric surplus, and giving muscles sufficient recovery time are all indispensable. All fancy training methods and supplements and folk remedies are essentially an extension of these three points, without exception.

To be honest, I have seen too many brothers who are new to fitness. They spend every day doing bicep curls in the dumbbell area. After practicing for two months, their arm circumference did not increase much. Instead, they bruised their rotator cuffs first. When asked why he didn't practice bench press and deadlift, he said, "That's for strength training. If I want to build muscle, I have to practice isolation movements." In fact, this is because he was led astray by the fragmented fitness content on the Internet. Speaking of this, some people must ask, is it better to practice the five-point division of bodybuilding, or the upper and lower/whole body division of powerlifting? There is really no absolute standard answer to this question that has been debated in this industry for almost ten years: If you have more than a year of training experience, have understood the force generation mode of each movement, and can squeeze out 5 days a week to go to the gym, then there is no problem in dividing it into five points. You can focus on one part at a time and fill up the capacity (that is, the sum of weight × number of times × number of sets), and the muscle building efficiency will still be high. ； But if you are a complete novice, or you are a regular 996 and can only squeeze in 3 or 4 days a week to practice, then there is really no need to force yourself into a five-point split. Up-down splitting or whole-body splitting is more suitable for you. Practicing the bench press, deadlift, squat, rowing, and shoulder press clearly each time is much more useful than practicing 10 isolated movements. After all, compound movements are like the steel skeleton of building a house. Isolated movements are just paint applied later. Without the skeleton, no matter how thick the paint is, the house cannot stand.

As for the "progressive overload" that everyone often struggles with, it really doesn't mean that you just add weight every time until you get injured. I used to take care of a brother who is a programmer. He is 178cm tall and only weighs 110kg. When he first started training, he could bench press 60kg for 3 sets of 8. If he had to push it to 65kg, his movements were crooked like twisting twists, and his waist slipped after just two exercises. In fact, there are many ways to overload: this week you can do 3 sets of 8 with 60kg, and next week try to do 3 sets of 9, or shorten the rest between sets from 2 minutes to 1 minute and 40 seconds, or even control the eccentric for half a second more, which can give new stimulation to the muscles. There has also been a lot of debate recently about "should you deliberately slow down the eccentric"? The old-school bodybuilding advocates eccentric control for 3 seconds, saying that the muscle fibers are more fully torn and the effect of muscle building is better. Now new research says that deliberately slow eccentricity during heavy weights will increase joint pressure. In fact, a compromise is fine: small-weight isolation movements can slightly control the eccentricity to feel the force, and heavy-weight compound movements are fine as long as the body does not fall freely. There is really no need to stare at the stopwatch to count the time every time you train.

It's no use just working out in the gym. I've seen too many people train harder than anyone else. They stay in the gym for two hours at a time, then turn around and go drink cold beer and eat barbecue after training. Their weight hasn't changed at all in three months. That's because they haven't kept up with their diet. When it comes to muscle-building diets, the debate between "dirty muscle-building" and "clean muscle-building" has been quarreling for many years: the older generation of bodybuilders like dirty muscle-building, and directly increase the caloric surplus to 500 or even 1,000 calories. They say that as long as you eat more, you will gain weight, regardless of whether it is fat, and you can just brush it off later. ； Nowadays, more and more natural fitness people prefer to build muscle cleanly. The surplus should be controlled within 300 calories. The more muscles will be gained and less fat will be gained, and there will be no need to suffer from fat loss in the later period. I have been through the trap of building muscle myself. When I first started training, I heard people say that to build muscle, you need to eat more. Eat hamburgers, fried chicken, and Coke. I gained 20 pounds in three months, and my body fat increased directly from 15% to 25%. Now I only allow myself to eat 300 more calories a day to gain muscle, which is about one more carton of milk and one tea egg. I have gained seven or eight pounds in three months, and most of it is muscle. I can hold up my shoulders when wearing a T-shirt, and my belly is not bulging, so I feel much more comfortable. There is no need to worry about protein. As long as you can eat 1.6-2.2g per kilogram of body weight every day, it is enough. For a 70kg person, five eggs, two chicken breasts and a carton of milk are enough every day. If you don’t have time to cook, you can just make a spoonful of protein powder. That thing is concentrated milk, not a hormone, and it goes without saying that it will change your taste.

After eating enough and practicing enough, the most easily overlooked point is rest. Novices have always asked me before, “Do I need to sleep 8 hours a day to build muscle? I work overtime every day and only get 6 and a half hours of sleep. Is my training in vain?” It’s really not true. The old saying is that "muscles grow while sleeping." Now new research has confirmed that muscle protein synthesis is at a high level 24-48 hours after training. There is no need to stick to the 8-hour deadline: as long as you have a fixed schedule, sleep 6-7 hours every day, and take a 20-minute nap at noon, it is completely fine. I am afraid that if you stay up until 3 o'clock today to sleep for 5 hours, and tomorrow you will sleep for 10 hours, and the schedule is like a blind box, which will really affect recovery. Some people say that you can lose muscle by not doing any aerobic exercise during the muscle-building period. In fact, it is not that exaggerated. Jogging for 30 minutes once or twice a week can improve your cardiopulmonary capacity and help you carry a larger capacity during training. As long as you don't run for more than an hour every day, you won't lose much muscle at all.

To be honest, there is really not so much mystery about building muscle, and there is no need to worry about watching fitness videos every day. Today I will see this blogger saying that he should practice 10 movements, and tomorrow he will see the other one saying what magic supplements he should take. You should first go to the gym and train more than three times a week, eat enough protein, and sleep enough. You will definitely see changes in three months. If you really don’t know how to start, find a good buddy to guide you twice, which is more useful than trying to figure it out on your own for half a year. Oh, by the way, don’t compare it to those who take medicine. People may gain muscle in a month, but you may need to practice for half a year. Just relax your mind. Fitness is a long-term thing. If you go slower, you will go further.