You already know what a barbell looks like and what you need to do on a Scott bench. Now it's time to start an adult conversation about what your workout should be like and how to properly shape and pump up your muscles.
You are no longer new to the gym, and you can even distinguish a pronated grip from a supinated one, however, all this is child’s play, and it’s time for you to learn everything about how to pump up your body at any age, even at 20 or 40 years old.
A complete guide from a professional to creating an intensive, smart training program. You'll learn concepts such as training load and volume, and learn how to optimize your workouts to achieve maximum results. The training complex for the whole body will be divided into 3 days according to the split format:
- How to pump up your chest and back muscles
- How to pump up the muscles of your shoulders and legs
- How to pump up arm muscles
How to quickly build up body muscles
The initial desire “I want to pump up”, thanks to which you got into the gym in the first place, should grow over time and transform into the desire to pump up correctly and avoid unnecessary injuries. Proper muscle development is based on knowledge of technique, load distribution, volumes, well-structured rest intervals and knowledge of body biomechanics.
When determining the intensity level to create an effective training program for the advanced, there are three things you need to think about first. These are volume, loads and avoiding overtraining.
Using different weights and different numbers of sets can be difficult, but it will allow you to overcome plateaus and not just build muscle properly, but maximize your genetic potential.
These variations can also change as you train different parts of the body, depending on your individual weaknesses.
Your goal in building your individual periodization strategy should be to reach an optimal level of training, accompanied by the effect of supercompensation. At this stage, you can plan no more than 3-4 strength exercises per week with the addition of supporting activities: yoga, cardio, stretching, trekking, swimming, etc. to improve your aerobic and general endurance.
The structure of strength training can be built in a split format, dividing the work of target muscle groups on different days, or follow circuit training for the whole body. In our article we recommend split training. Try this intensive three-day program for more advanced athletes.
Chest and back muscle training
We recommend starting each strength training session by working the abdominal muscles with one or two exercises. This way you will warm up your body perfectly and effectively load one of the most important muscles - the rectus and oblique abdominal muscles.
For the main part of the workout, use 3-4 working sets and 1 warm-up set with 8-12 repetitions. Try to get close to muscle failure in the last 2 by selecting appropriate weights.
Training plan
Regardless of where you train at home or in the gym with the goal of pumping up your body in a month , this process will one way or another be accompanied by a number of difficulties and even failures. To achieve the specified result, as a rule, calories are cut excessively, and cardio training is added in tons. As a result, the person loses patience due to the feeling of exhaustion and everything has to start all over again.
To avoid such mistakes, you need to adhere to a specific plan and recommendations given below:
- The training plan must be planned out and should begin with completing a set of exercises in the program - 4 workouts per week .
- The diet must be designed so that the daily calorie intake does not exceed two thousand . At the same time, the share of fats per day should be no more than 20%, the rest should be equally distributed between proteins and carbohydrates.
- Monitor progress: take photos and weigh yourself.
It should be noted that planning is an important component on which the effectiveness of classes largely depends. No one should encroach on the time allotted for training, so it is better to discuss this with others in advance, focusing their attention on the fact that this is a matter of principle. Do not interrupt the exercise! The result directly depends on discipline, diligence and patience.
So, to achieve your goal in a month, you need to use the plan described below. The program is divided into 4 sessions aimed at working three main muscle areas: upper and lower abs, obliques. Each workout is carried out once during the week, that is, a total of four different training sessions per week. Thanks to this training plan, within a month your body will become beautiful, sculpted and toned, like a bodybuilder.
Day 1 - Chest and Back
Body Twist - Russian Twist
- 4 sets of 20 reps
- Body Part: Press Equipment: No
Incline Dumbbell Press
- 4 sets of 12,10,8,8 repetitions
- Body part: Chest Equipment: Dumbbells
Dumbbell flyes lying on an incline bench
- 3 sets of 10-12 reps
- Body part: Shoulders Equipment: Dumbbells
Bringing hands together in crossover
- 3 sets of 12 reps
- Body Part: Chest Equipment: Block
Pull-ups
- 4 sets of 12,10,8,8 repetitions
- Body Part: Lat Equipment: Bodyweight
Reverse grip pull-ups
- 3 sets of 8-10 reps
- Body Part: Lat Equipment: Bodyweight
Downward pull of the upper block
- 3 sets of 10-12 reps
- Body part: Lat Equipment: Block
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Shoulder and leg muscle training
Today is the main day of the week and you are working some of the most difficult muscles. Starting traditionally with the abs, I recommend doing 2-3 shoulder exercises at the beginning of your workout. This will allow you to accurately control the trajectory of movement, better feel your body and avoid losing control of the technique.
If desired, add a seated dumbbell press, a military press, or a Smith machine to the complex for a general workout of all the shoulder girdles.
Day 2 - shoulders and legs
Crunches
- 4 sets of 20 reps
- Body Part: Press Equipment: No
Raising dumbbells in front of you
- 3 sets of 10-12 reps
- Body part: Shoulders Equipment: Dumbbells
Standing dumbbell lateral raises
- 2 sets of 10-12 reps
- Body part: Shoulders Equipment: Dumbbells
Elevated Back Lunges
- 3 sets of 12-15 reps
- Body part: Quadriceps Equipment: Barbell
Lunges with barbell to the side
- 3 sets of 12-15 reps
- Body part: Quadriceps Equipment: Barbell
Smith machine deadlift with straight legs
- 4 sets of 15 reps
- Body part: Hamstrings Equipment: Exercise
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Arm muscle training
At the end of the week, you will have the most enjoyable training. Your arms have been waiting in reserve and feel great after a few days of break after training the pectoral muscles and back, where their role was high. Start with the abdominal muscles and gradually move from joint to isolation exercises. It is advisable to finish with forearm training and a good warm-up.
Day 3 - hands
Crunches at the upper block while kneeling, working the oblique muscles
- 4 sets of 15 reps
- Body Part: Press Equipment: Block
Barbell curl
- 4 sets of 10 reps
- Body part: Biceps Equipment: Barbell
Alternating dumbbell curls while standing
- 2 sets of 12 reps
- Body part: Biceps Equipment: Dumbbells
Barbell curl
- 3 sets of 10 reps
- Body part: Biceps Equipment: Barbell
Dips
- 4 sets of 10 reps
- Body part: Triceps Equipment: Body weight
Seated French press
- 3 sets of 10-12 reps
- Body part: Triceps Equipment: Dumbbells
Wrist curl with a barbell while sitting on a bench, palms up
- 3 sets of 15-20 reps
- Body part: Forearms and wrists Equipment: Barbell
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Muscle recovery
A mandatory element of quickly pumping up your muscles is stretching after training. There is never enough time or energy for them, and the effect is not visible to the naked eye. But truly this one addition to your training routine will take you to the next level.
Just the fact that all the professionals, like bodybuilders, lifters, and CrossFitters, emphasize this advice in their interviews should pique your interest in stretching. We offer the following complex.
The next element of rapid muscle recovery is a personal massage roller. A full body myofascial massage will be a quality addition to your post-workout muscle stretches.
The theory of “anatomical trains” has quite confidently proven the importance of fascial massage for the speedy recovery of the body, and the location of functional lines in the body suggests which parts of the body should be trained in combination with each other.
Finally, your recuperative repertoire should include a relaxing massage for athletes at least once a week.
Sports nutrition for weight gain
Well, what kind of a muscleman are you without sports nutrition? Without a shaker with chemistry, the hefty big guys from your rocking chair will never accept you into their sect of adherents of fake muscles.
Therefore, I recommend that you first read the article about weight gainers for skinny guys. And then you'll be ready to read about how to drink protein so it can actually help you gain weight.
Are you doing everything right, but your muscles aren't growing? For you, my new article is about why muscles don’t grow .
How to properly pump up body muscles
Having dealt with training, let's look at how methods of varying intensity and alternating loads shape our muscles.
Increasing training intensity
There are various ways to pump up, but brave and determined guys are only interested in effective techniques.
Let's figure out how ways to pump up muscles with training of varying intensity can lead to the formation of a sculpted body. The need to constantly increase the intensity of training is ignored not only by the average gym goer, many experienced bodybuilders and competition participants also do not understand it. No matter what your fitness level, you all need to remember one thing: intensity is the key to progress.
If you do 4 sets of 10 reps of squats every day with the same weight for several months or - scary to think - years without trying to increase the intensity of the training, then you will not see strong muscles. Simply because your body will not put any effort into changing muscle size.
Just because you gain a little size after a workout doesn't mean you're stimulating muscle growth. This is especially important for experienced athletes, because after people have trained consistently for years, extreme measures must be taken to significantly improve performance and build huge muscles.
When it comes to preparation, the term "intensity" takes on many different meanings. When designing a workout, it is necessary to increase and decrease the intensity of the program in all its forms to pump up the muscles and avoid overtraining.
To do this, monitor your body condition daily, do orthostatic tests, especially after hard days. Knowing how your body reacts to different levels of intensity will allow you to use many different methods to increase muscle growth and properly tone your body.
Load planning
It is believed that for muscle size it is better to work with heavy weights in a small repetition range. This type of load will allow you to improve your strength, but you can’t expect a huge increase in muscle mass from such training.
The second option is to work with light weights and high reps. In this case, you increase muscle hypertrophy, leaving strength indicators at the same level.
It is a mistake to work only in one range, using only one type of load. A serious training program for experienced athletes should include heavy, medium and light loads.
To build muscle over a long period of time and make progress, use the progression method.
Increasing the maximum weight used for both high and low repetitions should be the ultimate goal of any training program, because this alone is one of the most important factors in pumping up huge muscles in the body.
Volume increase
The volume of strength training is the sum of the exercises performed and the weight of the weight. If your goal is to maximize volume and build huge muscles, use high intensity and high volume training. This will allow another mechanism to be involved in the process - hyperplasia.
Unlike hypertrophy, which increases the size of your existing muscle cells, hyperplasia helps increase their number.
However, despite such super efficiency, a sharp and frequent increase in the number of approaches and repetitions can cause overtraining.
The best option here is to maximize muscle growth with high-volume training and do periodic low-volume training to ensure your body can keep up with the muscle-building demands you place on it.
Muscle failure
In this method of pumping up the body, you can use both large and small weights.
The set will simply continue until the point where another repetition can no longer be completed correctly without the help of a spotter partner. Training to muscle failure helps achieve more impressive results than with approaches stopped early. Although working to muscle failure is more effective, stopping the set shortly before failure can also produce large amounts of growth.
This is because the determining factor for muscle growth is overload, not failure. Constantly lifting heavy weights for varying numbers of repetitions will overload the muscles and speed up adaptation.
So how should you train? Strength growth does not always move steadily upward at an even pace; often its changes are similar to the ebb and flow of the tides. Therefore, training programs for experienced bodybuilders should contain both sets to failure and sets close to failure, as well as regular working sets.
Many of the benefits of training to failure can be reaped by performing sets very close to the point of failure. In this case, stopping the approach 1-2 repetitions before failure will sufficiently stimulate the muscle fibers without overloading the nervous system.
Rest periods between sets
Most bodybuilders use standard rest periods that they enjoy, staying within that comfort zone at all times. However, rest periods are another tool that can be used to increase the intensity of your workout and effectively pump up your body.
The length of rest between sets is directly related to how much energy is available to the muscles at the beginning of the next set. Rest of about 3 minutes after the approach allows the muscles to recover almost 100%, thanks to which you can use almost maximum weight in each approach.
This is why athletes involved in strength sports rest for so long between approaches. The use of long rest should be especially included in the training program for beginner bodybuilders, as this will help achieve progressive overload, and therefore the desired development of muscles throughout the body.
However, shorter rest periods of 60-90 seconds will restore approximately 85-90% of energy while having a greater impact on growth hormone levels than longer rest periods. Short breaks work great if the training is targeting hypertrophy with moderate to low load, high reps and high volume.
Research shows that the most dramatic increases in growth hormone occur when pumping muscles with a minimum of 10 reps per set and rest periods of 45 to 60 seconds.
If you want to experience consistent, sustainable muscle growth for years to come, remember these basic principles of load, volume, rest time and failure, and adjust them as needed.
Diet is the best way to gain weight
Everything here is extremely simple. To gain weight, you need to eat a lot . So much so that grocery store shelves are constantly empty and the world community is forced to send humanitarian aid to your city.
If you suddenly run out of food and you need to eat urgently, you can eat pet food. This, of course, is not the best choice, but what can you do to become 100 grams closer to your cherished goal.
The basis of the diet should be carbohydrates , there should be about 4-5 grams per 1 kg of body weight . Carbohydrates are found in porridge, vegetables, and flour products.
Next comes protein , about 2 grams per 1 kg of weight . Most of all it can be found in meat, fish, dairy products, all this is animal protein. There is also vegetable protein, but it is absorbed by the body much worse, so you shouldn’t rely on it too much.
Also, skinny guys should not forget about fats , but there is no need to cover everything with mayonnaise. The priority source of fats is fish, nuts and vegetable oils.
At first you may not be able to eat as much, but you can increase the portions gradually.
If the weight still doesn’t increase, then you need to increase the portions and pray that you don’t get torn apart.
In any case, modern medicine has not yet recorded cases of overdose of buckwheat, so go for it.
In one of the articles, I talked in detail about how to eat for a skinny guy.
Is it possible to build muscle at 40?
All of these aspects of training depend on each other, and if one is adjusted, then all the others must also be adjusted accordingly. Those who aspire to be true bodybuilders must be more conscious when increasing the intensity of their training.
This set of recommendations gives the most complete picture of strength training technology and opens the doors of the gym for both young and older athletes. There is no restriction to start building muscle at 40 or 50 years old.
Getting pumped up and sculpted muscles for a man or woman after 40 years of age is no more difficult than for a young person. More often than not, older athletes are more disciplined, while younger athletes find it more difficult to put together a training program. A person with an established career can afford sports supplements and the right amount of rest time and massages, while young guys are most often limited in this.
The human body easily adapts to everything, and if new conditions are not given to it, it will have no incentive to change. Try to create a plan that challenges you with its high intensity and have fun training.
Still in doubt? Watch the training of Alexander Yashankin, one of the brightest popularizers of bodybuilding in the CIS.
Sports nutrition will help speed up the process of quickly pumping muscles - proteins, creatines, gainers, arginines, BCAA, amino acids. These supplements are specially designed for athletes and fitness-active people of different fitness levels. Such drugs are completely safe, and their effectiveness has already been proven.
Rule 4. Comply with BZHU
Despite all his beliefs, the fitness trainer believes that counting calories is not at all necessary. In order to achieve an athletic body, you need to maintain a balance of fats, carbohydrates and proteins. Also, do not overuse salt and sugar. However, moderate addition of salt and other natural seasonings to dishes is allowed.
BJU “for dummies”: why count calories
