It’s not even a question about whether we want to build muscle quickly or not. Of course we want to, we want everything quick. Given the choice, why would we ever want something to take longer than it needs to? With as much effort as it takes to build muscle and lose fat, the sooner we see results, the better.
If you look at the average person you will see that they don’t build muscle quickly. They build muscle either very slowly or not at all. The average gym may be one of the most inefficient and non-productive places on the planet! If you think of building a body the same as building a house, the average person would most likely be homeless because the damn thing would never get built. The majority of people spend their time at the gym like hamsters on a wheel. They put forth some effort, but don’t actually make any progress. The days and months go by and they usually look pretty much the same as they did when they started.
[Ryan Reynolds is the perfect example of being in great shape without being too bulky. I would rather have this look than the bulky, steroid head look that so many young guys are after. The only problem with this though is that with a shirt on, he doesn’t look all that muscular. With a shirt off, you can see that he is very lean and also has a decent amount of muscle. The majority of woman would rather their guys look like this anyways, which is an added bonus! Don’t believe me? Ask your wife or girlfriend what look they like better, Ryan Reynolds or Ronnie Coleman. ]
I don’t want you to waste your time with your workouts. I want your time in the gym to be time well spent and I want you to see results. I am going to go over why I feel that most people’s workouts are not productive and what can be done to change this.
There was a time shortly after quitting my job as a carpenter to give my business my full attention, that I slacked off from working out. I was so busy and something had to give in order to get everything done. I was too tired to get up early and lift and I was too busy at night to train. After taking a month or so off, I felt really shitty and needed to get back in the gym. I couldn’t stay away for too long, but I also couldn’t waste time either! I decided that if I was going to put the time in, I needed to actually get results. I lifted for years and pretty much just maintained where I was at. I didn’t get any bigger and I didn’t get any stronger. I was like a see-saw. I would get stronger for a while and then a little weaker, then a little stronger, etc.
It was like pissing in the wind! I was doing the work, but it wasn’t very effective. . . . and I needed to take a shower afterward!
As I thought about what it takes to build muscle quickly, I finally realized why me and most of the people around me where not making progress. I am natural, as in drug-free, and always have been. Of course if I wanted to build muscle quickly, I could of took steroids, but I never did. This post is written with the other natural athletes in mind. (I doubt that there are any steroid heads reading this blog anyways. They don’t need to learn how to build muscle quickly, it just comes natural. . . . Uh, well not natural. How about it just comes easy? Besides they are too busy cutting their shirts in to string tank tops and going shopping for skull caps!)
The main reason for my lack of progress was that I was not following the principle of progressive resistance on a consistent basis.
Okay, I can here you saying. “So that’s the big secret, Kelly? Progressive resistance? Everybody knows about this already. I thought I was going to learn something here and you bust out with progressive resistance?!!!”
Bear with me, because if you are not making consistent gains and you are truly being honest with yourself, I can tell you that you aren’t doing as good a job at it as you think. In order for you to trigger the growth mechanism that causes muscle growth, you need to force your body by consistently doing more than you did the last time. Whether it is another rep, more weight, an increase in the number of sets, a decrease in rest between sets, etc. You have to do more or your body will not grow. It has no reason to, you haven’t done anything to cause it to grow. Just showing up and mulling around the gym with no set purpose or plan isn’t going to cut it. Thousands of people in gyms around the world are proof of that.
The best advice that I can give you is to get a workout journal. A spiral notebook works great, although anything that you can use to write down your workout is fine. Write down everything that you do every workout. Write down the exercise that you did, the weight, how many reps, how many sets, everything. It only takes an extra minute or so to write it down, just do it. Once you have everything down on paper, you can use this to set goals for your next workout, and guarantee that you will do more than you did last workout. If you did eight reps your last workout for a set, this time do nine. Your mind is an incredible tool if you use it properly. If you set a certain number of reps as a goal in your mind, you will most likely get it. If you don’t write down what you did, you will never remember from workout to workout, and you will most likely quit before you push your body far enough.
[There are so many things wrong with this! Where do we begin? I love how the people beside this wackadoo don’t even look over at her. She does have a great Elvis move though at about 40 seconds in!]
Without having a record of what you did, you will not know what you should do for your next workout. The progression doesn’t have to be that much. It just needs to be more and it needs to be consistently more each workout. If you actually take my advice and train with a purpose and a set goal in mind, you are going to gain muscle. If you force your body to grow, it will grow. Hard work in the gym isn’t a guarantee that you will build muscle. People train hard in the gym everyday, but people don’t consistently gain muscle everyday. It’s the little differences that make all of the difference. It may be one rep here, another five pounds there, less rests between sets this workout, etc. The small changes are going to make the big gains. Try this and as long as you are getting enough rest in between workouts and are eating properly, I guarantee that you will build muscle quickly. Related Posts The Best Muscle Building Supplement- Creatine Wins! The Muscle Building Routine That I Am Following. . . . And Loving! The Key To Weight Loss And Gaining Muscle Tagged as: build muscle, build muscle quickly, progressive resistance, Resistance training, ronnie coleman, ryan reynolds, workouts
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