50 Muscle Building Tips - Part 2
50 Muscle Building Tips - Part 2
It’s easy to lump all pro bodybuilders into the same category: a bunch of genetic freaks who were able to build physiques that are simply unattainable for the average man. But having spoken with hundreds of them over the years, I have found that there are tremendous variations among them and how they respond to different styles of training, different exercises and nutritional tactics to become the amazing muscular specimens they are. And despite what the cynics out there may think, the pros do have valuable advice that can help the rest of us gain muscle mass and be the best that we can be. Here, I’ve delved back into the vaults to bring you 50 tips and secrets from a wide range of pro bodybuilders over the past decade and beyond. Among them, you will be certain to find more than a few that will be key to improving your physique.
26. Markus Ruhl
I use the time while I am driving to the gym to think about the exercises I am going to do for the body part I will be training (that much, I always know). You can’t plan exactly how many sets and reps you are going to do. Some days, you are stronger and have more energy than you do on other days.
27. Gustavo Badell
We all have different bodies and metabolisms. I train my body parts once a week and get great results that way. When I have tried training them twice a week, I got too tired all the time, I felt weak and I got no results.
28. Melvin Anthony
I’ve tried working biceps and triceps apart, on different days, but it never seemed to be as effective. I have been doing them together as supersets since almost day one in my lifting career, and my arms have always continued to improve. Here’s a workout I want you to do for the next month, twice a week:
Superset 1: Skull-crushers and barbell curls – 3 supersets, 8-12 reps each exercise.
Superset 2: Cable pushdowns and cable curl ‘21s’ – 3 supersets, 8-12 reps for pushdowns and 21s for the curls (7 reps for the bottom half of rep, 7 for the top and then 7 full reps).
Superset 3: One-arm overhead dumbbell extensions and dumbbell concentration curls – 3 supersets, 8-12 reps each exercise.
Rest only about 90 seconds between supersets.
29. Steve Kuclo
“Blood-starving sets” are only for arms or legs. It’s similar to 7s in that you do five sets with only 30 seconds rest between, but here is the critical difference. Between sets, you keep the limbs you’re working raised to about heart level. That makes it much harder for blood to pump into the muscle, and the lactic acid builds up because it has no way to exit due to the impeded blood flow. When you put the limbs down to do your next set, the blood rushes in and the pump is crazy.
30. Jonathan De La Rosa
Getting a striated chest is really all about your diet and getting your body fat very low, but I do feel that any isolation movement can help bring out deeper separations. Just be sure to squeeze the pecs together hard on every rep.
31. Chris Cormier
I think most of the time, if your arms are lagging, you should train them on their own day. But there’s another option you can try that I’ve had a lot of guys do, and almost all of them got good results from it. For four weeks, you are going to train arms three times a week. This isn’t about heavy weights. It’s all about pumping the muscle and flushing it with blood. For 10 minutes straight, you are going to superset barbell curls and lying triceps extensions. The number of sets doesn’t matter— you are going strictly by the clock here. Keep the sets all around 10 to 15 reps.
32. Lee Priest
You don’t have to get sore from workouts. I do happen to like it when I get sore the next day, though, because it makes me feel like I had a really good workout. I know I pushed myself. There are a lot of times I wake up the next day without any soreness and I think, crap! I guess I didn’t train hard enough yesterday.
33. Ben White
If you want proof that you don’t necessarily need squats to build big legs, just look at me. My legs have been built with leg extensions, leg presses, hack squats and lunges. I have gone heavy on the leg presses and hacks, and those stimulated the growth you see today. Hack squats are especially useful at improving the outer sweep of the quads.
34. Dennis Wolf
I have always made better gains when I had a training partner there to assist me in squeezing out two or three more reps. Just going to regular, positive failure will work for a beginner or an intermediate bodybuilder, because their body isn’t so used to training yet. Once you have progressed to a more advanced level, it takes more and more intensity to break down the muscle tissue and continue to grow.
35. Charles Glass
I have worked with a lot of bodybuilders who were trying to improve the size of their quads and hams, and I found again and again that doing cardio the day after leg training interferes with the recovery process. You can get away with doing low-impact cardio right after your actual leg workout, but the next day you really need to leave the legs alone.
36. David Henry
Unless your top goal is cardiovascular fitness, I would not do your cardio first. It saps your energy for the weight training, and makes it very difficult to focus 100 percent on your lifting.
37. Markus Ruhl
I don’t do back squats anymore, because I can’t get my arms back to grip the bar on my shoulders (being huge does have its drawbacks at times), but I still do front squats. On those I go all the way down. I actually don’t think it’s very healthy or safe, to be honest, but going deeper does bring about the best results, and that’s what counts for a pro.
38. Toney Freeman
Aside from not eating frequently enough (every two to three hours is ideal), the other huge mistake is insufficient calories. Usually the solution, if you are already eating 1.5 grams of protein per pound of lean bodyweight, is to increase your intake of healthy fats. I get mine from raw nuts like cashews, almonds, walnuts and Brazil nuts, as well as fish oil, olive oil, whole eggs, salmon and red meat.
39. Gustavo Badell
When you are talking about dumbbell presses for the chest or shoulders, keep in mind that it’s really not a straight up-and-down motion. I consider it to be more of a circular motion, like opening and closing a circle. You do want to bring the dumbbells toward each other, for a full contraction of the muscle.
40. Dallas McCarver
Staying injury free is critical to making consistent gains. Warming up enough and using good form is great, but you need to be a little more proactive than that, if you take bodybuilding seriously. I see a chiropractor every other week to get adjusted, and I also get a deep-tissue massage once or twice a month to break up adhesions and scar tissue that anybody who trains heavy and hard is going to accumulate.
41. Aaron Clark
Below is a sample shoulder routine that I do frequently.
Dumbbells Shrugs 4 sets X 10-25 reps
Traps are not part of your shoulders, but I have always done it this way. I like to start with them to fill everything in that area with blood.
Wide-Grip Upright Rows 2 sets X 15 reps
Another movement to get my shoulders warmed up and pumped.
Hammer Strength Shoulder Press 3 sets X 8-10 reps
Dumbbell Shoulder Press 2 sets X 8-12 reps
Two-Arm Dumbbell Front Raises 2-3 sets X 10-12 reps
Dumbbell Side Laterals 3-4 sets X 10 reps
Cable Side Lateral Raises 3 sets X 10 reps
Bent-Over Rear Lateral Raises 3 sets X 10 reps
Reverse Pec Deck 3 sets X 10 reps
Sometimes I end this workout with a couple of sets of incline barbell presses, too.
42. Juan Morel
There really isn’t a right or wrong when it comes to arm training. Everyone needs to find what works for them, and try different things. I have training partners who have huge arms and train them really heavy, and some who train them really light and have huge arms as well. Experimenting and finding what works for you is key!
43. Maxx Charles
I have tried using a full range of motion for chest in the past, yet my chest was not responding and growing. I realized that when I locked out, I was losing tension in my chest. As I experimented, I found that as soon as my biceps were higher than my chest in any pressing movement, the stress shifted from my chest to my shoulders and arms. I discovered that working in the mid-range of the rep allowed me both to maintain that critical tension and to use far heavier weights, and that combination soon led to new gains.
44. Ronnie Coleman
You can’t really put on muscle mass without adding a little bit of fat and water, too. That extra fat and water actually helps cushion your joints so you can lift heavier, with safety. The thing is, to gain muscle, you need to take in more calories than what your body needs. You don’t want to go too overboard, though, or else you end up getting fat!
45. Alexis Rolon
My chest training has changed in several ways. First, I use a wider variety of rep ranges now than I did years ago. When I was starting out, I did eight to 10 reps almost all the time, for everything. Eventually, I tried going a bit higher on the reps, as in 12 or even more, and found I was able to get a better connection with my pecs and also get better pumps. You do need heavy sets for six to eight reps for that muscle thickness and density, but you also need to do those sets of 12 or more reps to tap into each and every muscle fiber.
46. Lee Priest
People, especially young guys, seem to always be in a rush to get huge— and have the idea that using tons of juice is the way to do it. You can’t build a lot of quality muscle in a short time. The human body just doesn’t work like that. Even with very good genetics, it still takes years.
47. Rich Gaspari
With my genetics not being overly gifted regarding arms, I really needed to concentrate on just my arms on their own day, to give them a fighting chance to grow. I did some more research and thinking. What I felt was best for me was to train arms together, doing supersets of biceps with triceps. For me, training them together gave me the best feel in the muscles and got the most blood in the entire arm. Getting a great pump is integral to stimulating growth in the arms. What is also important is to train the arms from all the different angles, to hit the various parts of the arm.
48. Akim Williams
We are told to do 10-12 reps, eight at the lowest, to build the most muscle size. I can tell you that I have built most of my mass doing sets in the rep range of three to six. You can and should be incorporating some very heavy weights, for maximum density and thickness. As long as you take your time warming up, stay focused on what you’re doing and keep your form tight, you don’t need to be scared.
49. Lee Haney
Cardio allowed me to put on mass while keeping my calories high, and at the same time, never get too far off from my contest condition. I can honestly say that I never used any type of fat-burning drugs in all the years I competed, either. In the off-season, I did 20-25 minutes of cardio after all my weight-training workouts, except for leg day. I found that training legs was taxing enough, without using them for cardio immediately afterward.
50. Sami Al Haddad
Lateral raises have been the secret to my shoulder development. Early on, I realized that presses, particularly when performed first, seemed to mainly hit my front delts, and did next to nothing for the side heads that could give me the width and roundness I was in search of. I do six sets of dumbbell laterals, but each of these “sets” features three drops.