Put Your Feet Up If You Want To Gain Lean Muscle
Posted on | May 2, 2010 | No Comments
When it comes to bodybuilding, much is written about the proper rest period needed to stimulate muscle growth. That is, muscles do not grow during the actual workout session. Instead, they grow during the rest period where muscle tissue repairs itself.
As such, it is best to avoid working out the same muscles too frequently. This rule is applicable to about 85 % of the muscles in your body. However, there are some muscle groups that not only can be worked out every day, but is almost necessary that they be worked on 5 or more days per week or else you won’t be able to gain lean muscle in those areas.
In particular, these muscles would be the abdominals, the calves, and forearms. You might be thinking, what makes these muscles so special that I can work them every day and not damage them?. The answer is simple, under normal everyday use these muscles a under constant stress are a “designed” to be very resilient and can therefore withstand normal weight training quite easily. Take your calves for example: whenever you walk you are flexing your calf muscles. As such, when you head to the gym and perform seated calf raises you may find these muscles to be very resistant to growth. Every time you grab something with your hand your forearms are also used and as a result also need to be able to handle constant strain. The abdominals are located in the core of the body and will twitch whenever you move.
So what exactly can you do in order to promote muscle growth in these areas? Basically, you can start prioritizing them in your bodybuilding workouts. Basically, every time you workouts spend a certain amount of time just working these muscles, and for maximum results try just doing these muscles in an entire session on top once per week.
What happens if you do this and they still seem resistant to growth? You could employ a tactic known as “shock bombing”. This tactic involves a high intensity workout session at the beginning of all gym sessions. Take the forearms as an example, you could begin my doing supersets of reverse barbell curls, reverse forearm extensions and forearm extensions for 3 sets of 10-15 reps. This would certainly hit the forearms hard and jolt them into growth.
As with all muscle groups there is a point where overtraining is possible, so learn when to stop training those muscles. Once you have noticed that they have responded well to your exercise plans, you would then opt to just perform moderate exercises to help maintain their shape and size. Knowing when to stop your specialization training will certainly help lower the potential for overtraining them.
So yes, even highly resistant muscle groups can be boosted into growth if you know how to go about it. As such, you never need to feel that any of your muscles will ever be lagging again.
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