If you work hard at the gym but don’t feel like you’re building the superhero physique you’re aiming for despite your hard work, add 5 or 10 minutes each day. You may think that just exercising is not enough. It can completely change the look of your chest, back and arms. But given that we’re suggesting he’s 5-10 minutes, Fitness his editor asks: “What do I have to lose?”
Heavy Lifting vs. Frequent Lifting
I love to lift heavy things. I compete in strongman competitions, do bodyweight deadlifts up to 3x his, and regularly walk hundreds of kilos on different carries. I’m also a big believer in the cardinal rule of progressive overload. This means that building a bigger muscle requires putting that muscle through increasingly difficult work, and that usually means bigger and heavier weights.
However, long, hard physical work takes a toll on your body, and you’ll have to recover for days before stressing that area again. This is not necessarily ideal. especially, new research This suggests that training each part of the body more often is best for increasing frame size.
high frequency training
When it comes to building muscle mass quickly in specific muscle groups, especially the upper body, I’m a firm believer in the high-frequency approach. Here, the target muscles are given an enormous amount (sets and reps), but that amount he concentrates on one giant, heroic workout that leaves him sore for the rest of the week instead of the next few days. Disperse throughout. .
But if you do this, you have to be smart. As mentioned above, throwing around heavy iron requires even heavier healing. Therefore, strenuous bench work every day slows growth at best and causes injury at worst. On top of that, we only have a limited amount of time per week. How much time do you really spend in the gym focusing on dozens of extra workouts each day when you’re already working on weightlifting, accessories, conditioning and cardio? Do you have reps to tone your chest and back?
No, what we need are some moves that we can do every day, use heavy weights without breaking our bodies in half, and can be done quickly almost anywhere.
What we need are push-ups, pull-ups, and an extended family of those bodyweight exercises.
What movements should I do every day to make my chest, back and arms bigger?
Pull-ups, bodyweight exercises, push-ups, and dips are great for adding muscle-building mass to your existing training regimen. Not only does it help you recover faster due to its lower inherent resistance, but it’s also easier to perform outside of your regular gym session. Plus, it requires a lot less warm-up than the equivalent barbell move, so you can quickly get stuck before you can get back off the barbell again.
Adding a simple pull-up bar or parallette to your doorway may only put you back a few pounds, but it can stretch your torso a few inches. When I first tried this type of high-intensity training, I couldn’t afford a gym membership and was living payslip to payslip on the top floor of my apartment. I unhatched the loft to do the pull-ups on the ceiling rafters, and most incredible, got a bargain Zimmer frame from a charity shop to do the dips.
When choosing which movements to nudge every day, it’s important to be realistic about which movements you can actually recover from. With this type of high-frequency training, you want to avoid movements that feel “heavy” the first time. For example, if he can only do five pull-ups with a gun pointed at him, then doing endless pull-ups every day is probably not the answer. However, band-assisted pull-ups are possible. On the other hand, if push-ups are a little too easy and you have to do lengthy sets of 30-40 reps to be effective, band resistance push-ups may be the solution.
A good rule of thumb is to use a move that can be performed 10 or 20 times and perform about half the set. I am personally a fan of dips and pull-ups. Because you can effectively train your biceps and triceps. However, you should try and identify exercises that leave you feeling pretty high after a series of low rep sets and not sore for the next day’s workout. Worse, joints begin to ache and numb.
Longevity is the father of consistency, and consistency is king here.
Frequency Training: How many repetitions and sets should I do each day?
Once you’ve established the best moves for your body, the next thing to do is explore until you find the sweet spot or “minimum effective dose” that allows you to achieve the right amount of daily reps without draining your remaining strength. to continue. Training sessions can leave your muscles sore for days on end.in the meantime the study There’s a lot of conflict about the “optimal” number of sets to do each week for muscle growth, and the Goldilocks zone seems to be somewhere around the “20-30 sets per body part” range. With daily splits, he does 3-5 sets of each movement each day. Not the biggest investment in the world with the potential for big returns.
At first, try to keep each set to about 50-75% of what you think you can do at full capacity. For example, if you can do 20 dips, work in sets of 10-15 max. Do you have 15 pull-ups on your rocker? Work in the range of 5-8. The first few sets may feel easy or even ineffective, but try to keep your breaks to a minimum. Then gradually the difficulties come. Also, remember that the goal here is to accumulate a lot of work over the course of the week, not to go all out from start to finish. First 5 minutes.
One of my personal favorite protocols is to do 5 pull-ups and 10 push-ups every minute for 5 minutes each morning. After just a few weeks in this regime, I am always amazed at how quickly visible changes can occur.
If this is too difficult, try using a resistance band to aid your pull-ups and adopting regular or close-grip push-ups instead. Consistency is key here. In just one week, you’ll accumulate about 500 or more chest and back swellings in exchange for just five minutes of training a day.
How long should frequency training be done?
Einstein famously quipped, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”But when it comes to building muscle, doing the exact same thing over and over again can eventually lead to No results.
As I said earlier, “progressive overload” is the inevitable key to muscle growth. Therefore, this kind of training quickly overloads the muscles and leads to growth, whereas doing the same thing day after day quickly leads to stagnation. Of course, you can add a few more reps to each set, or wear a weighted vest for a few sessions a week. We recommend that you do so. Ultimately, though, you either have no time to do the mounting work you’ve done so far, or you never recover from it. The law of diminishing returns will eventually hurt us all.
We recommend using this approach for 4-6 weeks or until you notice plateauing weight gain (or mild joint pain). Your best bet at this point is to give her a week to lighten the load and drop a lot of volume to allow her body to recover and undo the barrage of pull-ups, push-ups, dips and chins. Bigger and stronger than ever before.
Is there anything else I should consider to maximize my profits?
This type of high-frequency approach works on its own, and so did this author, but the real magic is in using it as an “extracurricular” focus time. If you can keep up with this approach with regular lifting sessions at the gym and still recover well, you’ve earned your ticket to the Gain Train.
However, movements that are too similar should be reduced or eliminated from the gym menu to avoid overuse injuries. If you’re already doing 200 dips every week in the yard, you don’t need, and probably aren’t even encouraged to do many sets of heavy dips in the gym. Listen to your body. If a particular activity in the weight room is interfering with your daily push-up or pull-up routine, consider eliminating it.
Remember, this is just a short phase. My love affair with bicep curls isn’t over, I’m just taking a break.
To build muscle optimally, you need to focus on getting enough rest and perfectly fueling your body, regardless of what style of training you’re doing. This is doubly true if the time between sessions is only her 24 hours, even if the sessions are only 5 or 10 minutes long. So make sure you’re moving the big boulders of recovery for muscle gains.
- Get at least 8 hours of sleep each night.
- Aim for 1.5-2g of protein per kg of body weight.
- Burn adequate calories to fuel your training session. At a minimum, 30-40 calories per kg of body weight is a good goal.
So what do you think? Do you have 10 minutes to spare to get the best body of your life?