One of the best parts of the gym is the ability to grunt and make faces like a real brute and get away with it. This usually happens when you’re pushing through some pain and yelling at your muscles not to fail on you.
In this article today, I’m going to be explaining the importance of muscle failure and how to achieve it.
We’ve all been there. That point of complete exhaustion when your muscles cry Uncle and you can’t lift a single thing.
I was on the incline bench yesterday lifting a lot heavier weight than usual. On my third set, as I was coming down, my muscles reached their limit. If I didn’t have a spotter, 85 lbs would’ve come crashing onto my face.
I knew I was done with chest for the day, and unlike so many other trainees, I moved on to another exercise after that.
When you train to complete muscle failure, you’ve recruited (just about) every fiber in that muscle to do a particular movement and they’ve ALL failed. The lactic acid build up from your muscles oxidizing themselves has reached a critical limit and they can’t move anymore.
This is important because you’ve now effectively torn that majority of the muscle. Giving you the maximum chance of recovery.
It’s like this. If you only damage 60% of your muscle, only 60% of it will repair itself. But if you damage 95% of your muscle, 95% will repair itself and you will see growth a lot faster. It may take longer to recover, but generally, you’ll see greater growth because you have greater repair going on.
With that being said, it’s a good idea to have a spotter with you when you do this. Either your training partner, or someone else. This can be dangerous as I’ve pointed out above, but if you want to see greater growth, this is a great strategy.
Of course, you need to know when you’re close to failing and communicate that, and your spotter needs to be vigilant.
I would end with the cliche, No Pain, No Gain, but that’s not exactly true, lol. So I’ll just say, Train Hard and Train Smart.
Get Big. Get Ripped. Get Fit With Mitch.
Filed under Body Building Tips by on Feb 2nd, 2010. 1 Comment. 
Pretty much everytime I’m in the gym, people come up to me and ask “So what’re you working on today?”
I smile and say “Everything” and they look at me like I’m crazy.
This whole split day workout routine has been drilled into us. Mainly by friends and magazines. It’s a pop culture fad that has infested our gyms.
I’ll admit, I fell victim for a long time as well.
In this post, I’ll discuss the pros and cons to doing full body workouts vs. split day workouts.
Split Day Workouts
I did these for a long time and was able to see moderate results. I was only able to see isolate results and they took a while to come by.
The main reason for this was because when you do a split day, say, arms and legs, you don’t get the maximum hormonal benefit from these.
Your body releases amounts of muscle building hormones based on the amount of damage it has to repair. So the more muscle you damage, the more GH and Testosterone it realeases for instance.
So splits like abs and arms, are pretty bad because you don’t get a lot of hormone release to repair these muscles. This in turn can lead to overtraining because most likely, you’ll get anxious and hit the gym again to workout these muscles before they’ve repaired themselves all the way.
Split routines also tend to focus on doing multiple exercises per muscle. This can quickly lead to overtraining because from experience and research, you only need to overload a muscle ONCE in order for it to grow.
Once you do that, you can move on to another muscle because you’ve already started the repair process for that muscle.
If you continue, you’ll start dipping into other energy reserves that you’ll need for other workouts.
The good thing about split workouts is that they don’t take a lot out of you in terms of hormonal system, or central nervous system completion, so these systems repair quicker. These systems also take longer to repair, generally, than your muscles.
By cutting the recovery time down, you may come close to matching your muscles. But again, this depends on your individual physique and experience.
The other good things about splits is that they tend to be shorter workouts – thus as I stated before, less stress on your nervous system.
In my opinion, you should do splits that incorporate large muscles along with smaller muscles – back and chest for instance. This will release more hormones for you to repair with.
Another good idea is to do lower body and then upper body using compound exercises. Again, for the hormone benefit because you’ll be working larger groups of muscles.
Splits are also a good idea for intermediate to advanced trainers – which is probably why they’ve become so popular with beginners. They want to lift like the “big boys”. Different strokes for different folks.
I’ve been doing full body workouts for about 2 months now and I can’t say I’ve been disappointed. I’ve been following Vince’s NoNonsense Muscle Building plan.
You can tell by his blog and youtube channel that he’s a fan of compound exercises, so it’s no wonder I find them in his plan.
Combined with a killer nutrition plan, I’m able to see steady growth and gains, and I’m back to an all time weight high for myself.
I see more all around and even muscle growth which is great to see (my girl love it too). I’m also able to make gains faster – I haven’t plateaued yet!
The best part about full body workouts is that your get the maximum hormonal release possible each time you workout. That means ALL your muscles, from large to small, reap an enormous benefit.
All while doing one exercise per body part.
The other good thing is that you don’t have to be in the gym as often. I workout 3 days a week now doing full body. Before, I was on a 4 day split. I shaved an entire day off my workout and I’m getting better results.
This allows you to build muscle faster and more effectively.
The downside to full body is that it takes a while to do (even doing one exercise per muscle) and you’re hella tired at the end. Your nervous system is shot.
However, once you build a tolerance up to this, you can recover faster.
Full body workouts are great for beginners because you can combine raw muscle building potential with huge hormone releases.
Ok, let me quit because this post is getting crazy long. Well needless to say, I’m a fan of full body workouts.
I’ll experiment with split workouts again sometime later, but only after I’ve reached my goals by doing full body workouts.
You too can follow the same plan I’ve been using to get great personal results by following Vince’s Plan.
Get Big, Get Ripped, Get Fit With Mitch.
Filed under Body Building Tips, Weight Training Routines by on Jan 25th, 2010. 1 Comment.
Alcohol is one of those things that has long been a nemesis to muscle builders around the world.
We’ve all heard of the infamous “beer belly” and have seen what it does to people.
Ironically, people work so hard to get rid of that fat and get a six pack when it was a “six pack” that did it to them in the first place.
I’m writing this post because I had a run in with our old friend recently.
By no means am I a big drinker. I may go out for drinks less than 10 times a year and even then it’s usually a Heineken or Mojito.
But this past weekend was a different story as my fraternity had a party.
We don’t have frat parties in the house with beer pong, we rent out clubs and have tons of girls show up.
Free drinks for brothers, and well, you get the picture.
The next day (Monday) I went to the gym for my usual Monday workout. Monday’s are usually hard, but this one beat my behind.
I experienced first hand how unwise it is to drink before you workout.
Alcohol does number of things to your body that are counter productive to your muscle building efforts.
It lowers your testosterone level. We know that testosterone is one of the major hormones your body releases when repairing your muscles.
Alcohol disrupts your sleep cycle, further messing up the release of other hormones like Growth Hormone which is crucial to muscle repair as well.
Alcohol will dehydrate you. Having plenty of water in your muscles is very important to a successful workout since your muscles are made up mostly of water. It allows them to move smoothly which will prevent muscle strains, tears, and other injuries.
Alcohol decreases your energy levels because it is a depressant. I was so tired when I went in to the gym. High energy levels from food and proper rest are very important to a workout as well.
Alcohol is very good at making you fat because it has a lot of calories and it’s easily converted to fat. This will definitely put a damper on things.
These are just some of the things that alcohol can do to you to negatively effect your muscle building efforts. I’ll stay away from the bar the next time I know I have a hard workout coming up.
It comes down to knowing your goals and not doing anything to take you away from that.
What has been your experience with alcohol and building muscle?
Mitch
Filed under Body Building Tips, Muscle Building Programs by on Jan 19th, 2010. Comment.
Flexibility has long been treated like the ugly girlfriend no one wants to talk about. She’s always there, but you wish she wasn’t.
Well flexibility can be more beneficial to you than an ugly girlfriend when it comes to your lifting.
I’ve “always” been flexible, and I say always because I began stretching when I was 9 for Tae Kwon Do. I was able to drop down in splits and do all sorts of crazy stuff guys shouldn’t be able to do up until I was about 18 yrs old.
It really came in handy when I ran track, as I never got injured, and handy again in lifting because I’m able to lift a lot more that people my size and again, without injury.
So that being said, Why should you improve your flexibility if you’re a lifter?
- Increase Blood Flow – means more of those vital muscle building nutrients can get to your muscles resulting in more effective workouts
- Decreased Risk Injury – No one likes to be injured and it’s true what they say, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” (or a hefty hospital bill)
- Increased Range of Motion – resulting in increased weight on your lifts
Those are the top reasons. Now that you know why you should improve your flexibility – Here’s how.
We did a lot of static stretching in Tae Kwon Do before class. Over time, my flexibility improved greatly. As I got into other sports, I realized that dynamic stretching before the sport was a lot more effective.
In football for instance, we did high knees and jumping jacks. Dynamic stretching is what you would normally call a “warm up” routine.
It’s a series of movements designed to mimic the sport and get the blood flowing.
Static stretching lacks this component.
So nowadays, before I lift, I do dynamic stretching and save the static stretching for after. It helps with the “cool down” and lessens the likelyhood of me being sore.
Here’s a sample of the dynamic stretches that I do before a workout
- High knees
- High kicks – take a stiff leg and fling it up high as you can – getting higher with each repetition
- Squat jumps
- Jumping jacks
- Torso twists
- Arm crossovers – cross my arms in front of my body alternating top and bottom
Like I said, these are just a few, but far more than anything I see most lifters doing in the gym. And they all wonder what my secret is…
In addition to doing dynamic stretches, you should warm up on the lift you’re doing. It’s best to lift 1/3 of the weight 10 to 15 times.
Lastly, you should spend a good deal of time in your static strecthing. This is where your real flexibility comes in.
A good rule is 15 to 30 mins each day. When you do this, try to improve from session to session. My friends and I used to have competitions on who could split the lowest.
This served as great motivation for us to reach our potential. The same holds true for you.
Set a goal to touch your toes (if you can’t) and challenge yourself each time you stretch to go further and hold it longer.
Trust me, the benefits greatly outweigh the temporary pain of doing this.
So until next time, Get Big. Get Ripped. Get Fit With Mitch.
Mitch
Filed under Muscle Building Exercises by on Jan 8th, 2010. Comment.
Hey if your read my post on how to set goals and achieve them, this will be a personal follow up to them.
Writing this out for you to see is creating a condition – I have to come close or risk looking like a fool on my own blog!
So here we go…
Mitch’s Fitness Goals for 2010
- Gain 20 lbs
- Run 2 miles 3x week
- Achieve my “look”
- Bench twice my body weight
Not a laundry list, but their targeted to what I want to achieve through lifting.
Your list may or may not be long. As long as each item on that list is important to you, that’s all that matters.
I feel a little short last year. Here are my goals for last year
- Bench 280
- Leg press 1200
I got up to 245 on the bench and 1000 on the leg press. I fell off from these goals because neither of them were tied directly into what I really want to achieve through lifting which are to achieve the body I’ve always dreamed of and have full confidence in the way I look.
This may sound like insecurity, but I like how I look now and I’m proud of the progress I’ve made. The body I’ve built is a testament to my willpower. However, though I’ve come a long way, I’m still not where I want to be yet. Don’t worry, I dont want to be some disgusting bodybuilder type. I want a functional, good looking, athletic body.
Being in good physical shape will free me from some ailments I currently battle as well. Next year, I may think about some type of fitness competition, but that’s another time.
I plan to achieve my fitness goals by following the plan I already have which is Vince’s No Nonsense Muscle Building program. When something works, you stick with it, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.
I’ll also be picking up and training a partner which you will hear more about in coming months.
To assist you in your goals, I’d like to know what they are for 2010. By telling people, you’re actually creating a condition and furthering your progress to that goal, so I highly encourage you to share.
Until next time, Get Big. Get Ripped. Get Fit With Mitch.
Mitch
Filed under Body Building Tips, Workout Motivation by on Jan 4th, 2010. 3 Comments.
