The key to building muscle is progressive-resistance weight training. This means lifting heavy weights and slowly increasing the weights you’re lifting over time, as you grow stronger. To quote Arnold Schwarznegger from his The New Encyclopedia of modern bodybuilding:
Your muscles will grow only when they are subjected to an <em>overload</em>. They will not respond to anything less. Muscles will not grow bigger or stronger unless you force them to. Making your muscles contract against a level of resistance they are not used to will eventually cause them to adapt and grow stronger. But once they have adapted sufficiently, this progress will stop. When this happens, the only way to make your muscles continue to grow is by further increasing the amount of overload to which you subject them. And the primary way of doing this is to add weight to your exercises.
It’s helpful to know some weightlifting terms as you build a workout program for yourself. A rep is one complete movement of an exercise. In other words, lifting and lowering a weight one time. A set is a group of reps. How many reps and sets you do depends on what your goals are. Bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarznegger usually lift an amount equal to 70%-75% of their one-rep maximum, which is another way saying the maximum amount they could lift in a single rep. For example, the highest weight I can bench press once is approximately 225lbs., which mean I typically do bench presses with a weight of around 165lbs. Since my goal is to build muscle, I usually do about 4 sets of 8 reps. When I find that this number of sets and reps is not challenging me anymore, I will increase the weight slightly, perhaps to 175lbs.
For somebody just starting out a weight-training program, I would suggest lifting lower weights and doing extra reps and sets so that you can learn the proper technique for each exercise. Bad technique can cause your muscles to grow incorrectly, or even worse, lead to injury. When I started working out 2 years ago, I created a plan that has benefited me greatly. My friend, who has only been working out with me for 7 months, has seen great progress as well. Below you will find a simplified version of my plan; each cycle is followed for 6 weeks, followed by 1 rest week of no exercise, and then the subsequent cycle. Weight for each cycle is determined by how easily you can finish the last set; if you can finish it, you’re lifting too light. When you’ve completed the third cycle, you start again from the first:
Cycle 1: Endurance
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5 sets of 12 reps per exercise. Don’t rest longer than 1 minute between sets. No warmup necessary.
Cycle 2: Strength-building
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3 sets of 4 reps per exercise. Rest between 1.5–2 minutes between sets. Do at least one warmup set with lower weight first.
Cycle 3: Mass-building (or, the Bodybuilder’s workout)
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4 sets of 8 reps per exercise. Rest between 1–1.5 minutes between sets. Do at least one warmup set with lower weight first.
I have found this program to work very well for me because each cycle helps you get stronger for the next cycle. Plus, each cycle hits the different types of muscle fibers we all have in our muscles.
In addition to the exercise routine, keeping a diet is important for muscle-building. Your body needs extra calories to grow muscles, at least 400 calories above your usual diet. Protein is especially important as your body uses the amino acids in protein to rebuild your muscles bigger. However, carbs and fat are also important to give you the energy to lift. This is a rather detailed subject I’d suggest doing research online as to how much you should be eating of each macro-nutrient.
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