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Beginner's Guide to Getting Jacked: How to Start Building Muscle




Introduction

The road to gains is a long and perilous one. Fuelled by break-ups, ambition, and everything in between, it’s a journey that will permanently change your perspective of the world. Athletic performance covers many areas, but there is a commonality in all forms of athletics, muscle. If you do not know how exactly you want to improve your body, building muscle is a great starting point and I am going to show you how to get started.

 

Topics covered:

  • Understanding Muscle

  • Strength vs Hypertrophy

  • The Secret to Success

  • How to structure your training

 

Understanding Muscle

For a long time, muscle was thought to be involved only in locomotion. Now, it is classified as an organ due to its significant effects on the body’s hormones and brain neurotransmitters. So, we can say that it has some pretty important functions and its not just there to make you look cool AF. In training the muscle, improving its proficiency and causing it to grow, we can expect the important functions of muscle to improve with it. I am not going to go into detail about the biochemistry of muscle (that is only for the muscle nerds) but I would like to quickly explain the mechanics of it. Muscle is made up of 2 proteins, called actin and myosin. Myosin are thick bands of tissue and actin are thin, both run parallel to one another. At the ends of these protein bands, they are connected to wall-like structures called z-lines and these form the outer parts of the muscle cell. When muscle contracts, the actin pulls on the myosin, and in turn pulls these outer walls closer, causing the muscle cell to shorten. So, when muscle contracts it shortens (generating a force), when it relaxes it does not generate a force and lengthens again. Right, now we that we know how muscle works, how do we build it?

 

Strength vs Hypertrophy

Muscle has two important aspects to it. Strength is its ability to produce a force and hypertrophy is the size of the muscle cell, affecting the thickness of the protein bands as well as the number of molecules stored in and around the muscle. These molecules can encompass things like energy for the muscle and water. Strength has a lot to do with how quickly your brain recruits the muscle fibres, which fibres are recruited and the order in which they are recruited. This makes strength very movement specific. This is why you often see people who look very normal, but they can deadlift 200+ kg’s with ease. No simple task for your average person. In contrast, optimal hypertrophy training aims to make the movements more difficult in a sense. Now please, I do not mean performing exercises on bosu balls or one leg, what I mean is recruiting as many muscle fibres in the movement as possible, often more than what is necessary. Strength and hypertrophy can be manipulated to achieve certain niches in sport requirements, but in a beginner’s case you want to build both simultaneously. You want your muscle to get bigger and stronger. These two components also have an interlinking relationship. The bigger your muscle gets, the stronger it becomes, and vice versa.

 

The Secret to Success

The secret to building high quality muscle is no secret at all, it is just not what most people want to hear. You want to be consistent in getting stronger. That means, not only showing up to the gym, but actually improving on what you did last week. This is only accomplished consistently if you supplement your training with a good diet and enough sleep. Your muscle does not grow in the gym. In the gym you create a stimulus that gives your muscle a reason to improve. It is outside of the gym that your muscle heals, recovers, and comes back stronger. It is only then demonstrated next time you return to the gym. Think about taking one exercise on a certain weight and improving your performance in it by 1 rep per week. Such a small feat to accomplish. But that feat accomplished week after week for a year will increase your total reps by 52! These slight improvements consistently done year after year is what creates the transformational experience so many people are after. And this experience is not meant for everyone to have, only the select few that are willing to sacrifice for it.

 

How to Structure Your Training

Now if you understand how muscle works, and you have the right mindset, the next logical step will be to construct an exercise program so you can get started! Just as any good program starts, we begin with setting the goals. If you are a beginner, your goals should be to:

1)       Increase muscle mass around the whole body.

2)       Increase muscle strength around the whole body.

3)       Build consistency in exercise, diet, and sleep.

These are your 3 goals, and they are also pretty easy to track. Track strength by recording your workouts, track muscle mass/size by measuring your waist and weight. If weight goes up and your waist stays the same or decreases, you are gaining muscle. Track your diet by being calorie and protein aware and then get your sleep-in order by going to bed and waking up at regular times.

Now for the fun bit, the exercise routine. You want to select a collection of exercises, that when all completed, has worked every muscle in your body. Now there are thousands of combinations you can do this in. But to break it down you want to choose exercises in all the planes of movement your body has. Simplified, they are:

  • Horizontal push

  • Pushing something in front of you.

  • Horizontal pull

  • Pulling something in front of you.

  • Vertical push

  • Pushing something above your head.

  • Vertical pull

  • Pulling something from above your head.

  • Hip hinge.

  • Bending your hips under a load.

  • Knee bend

  • Curling your heel to your bum.

  • Foot press

  • Pushing onto the balls of your feet.

  • Trunk rotation

  • Rotating your upper body.

  • Arm curl.

  • Bend at the elbow.

  • Arm extension.

  • Straighten at the elbow.

You need to choose 10 exercises, max, to work every muscle in your body. Like I said, there are thousands of combinations you can choose from, but I will give you a simple list to start from.

  • Barbell bench press.

  • Bent over barbell curl.

  • Machine Lat pulldown.

  • Standing over dumbbell press,

  • Barbell back squat.

  • Seated leg curl.

  • Standing calf raise.

  • Landmine oblique twist.

  • Flat bar cable bicep curl.

  • Flat bar tricep extension.

 

Next is how you must perform these exercises. The goal here is to learn and get stronger. I want you to track your strength of each exercise as 1 set of maximal weight between 10-18 reps. This is called your “Top Set”. In the beginning, you only need to do 1 top set but you need to do a bunch of warm up sets before. You cannot simply just walk up to the exercise and expect to do your best performance. So, for each exercise you must perform at least 2 warm up sets, followed by your top set. Then move on to the next one. You warm up sets are the actual exercise you need to perform, just at a lighter weight, titrating the weight up from 1 set to the next. Here is an example as to how this will look:

Say we are on the bench press, and you know 60kg for reps to failure will end up between 10-20 reps. Right, this is now your top set weight. Start warming up at 30kg, do a few reps until it feels good. Rest 60 seconds then go up to 40kg and do a couple of reps until it feels good. Lastly rest again for 60 seconds then go up to 50 or 55 kg and do 1-3 reps. Then you are ready for 60kg to failure, remember to rest for 60-90 seconds before the top set to make help with performance. Keep in mind that these warmup sets must not make you tired or hinder performance at all. They are there to ready you for a maximum performance effort. Now, let’s say in week 1 your best on bench press was 60kg for 14 reps. In the second week (or next session) you must aim for 15 reps at least. Once you go over 18 reps, it is time to increase the weight and start building the reps up again. If you cannot do at least 10 reps, the weight is too heavy, and you should drop it down.

 

Last thing on the check list is the number of sessions in the week. You can start off by doing this same routine 2-3 times per week. Make sure you leave a day or two in between these sessions so you can recover. And do not train if your muscles are still sore or tired. Next, you can throw in a couple of cardio sessions in between, this will help you with recovery and added fat-loss. So, an example of the week’s schedule will look like this:

Monday: Weight training

Tuesday: Zone 2 cardio

Wednesday: Weight training

Thursday: Zone 2 cardio

Friday: Weight training

Saturday: Rest

Sunday: Rest

 

Embarking on a journey to enhance your athletic performance is not just about hitting the gym; it's about transforming your lifestyle to achieve optimal strength and muscle growth. By understanding the basics of muscle mechanics, integrating both strength and hypertrophy into your workouts, and consistently pushing your limits within a structured training framework, you pave the way toward significant gains. Remember, the secret lies in persistence, a balanced diet, and proper rest. Stay consistent, and you'll see transformational results that go beyond the gym. For more insights and guidance on your fitness journey, keep following my blog and for any queries about my online coaching, please send me an email or send me a message on Instagram!

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