Muscular Failure: The point at which no further repetitions can be completed using proper
form.
Training to failure requires alot of discipline and you absolutely must be willing to drive
through the pain barriers it takes to get there. Remember, your body does not want to build
muscle mass! When it comes to the overall survival of your body as an organism, piling on
slabs of excess muscle tissue is quite low on the priority list. You must force your body to build
muscle! Submaximal training intensity will leave you with submaximal results, plain and
simple.
3) Track Your Progress In The Gym From Week To Week.
This muscle-building technique is absolutely critical to your success. If there's one thing that I
want you to take away from this book, that is it.
Our bodies build muscle because of an adaptive response to the environment. When you go to
the gym, you break down your muscle fibers by training with weights. Your body senses this
as a potential threat to its survival and will react accordingly by rebuilding the damaged fibers
larger and stronger in order to protect against any possible future threat. Therefore, in order
to make continual gains in muscle size and strength, you must focus on progressing in the
gym from week to week.
This could mean performing 1 or 2 more reps for each exercise or adding more weight to the
bar. Don't try to improve by leaps and bounds everytime you workout, but rather focus on
making small, steady increases. Over the course of a few months, those small increases will
add up more than you think, and your body will continually adapt and grow to the ever-
increasing stress.
Overtraining is your number one enemy when it comes to building muscle size and strength.
When most people begin a workout program, they are stuck with the misguided notion that
more is better. They naturally assume that the more time they spend in the gym, the better
results they will achieve. And who could blame them? In most aspects of life this basic logic
seems to hold true. The more time we spend trying to reach a certain goal, the faster we tend
to reach it.
When it comes to building muscle, nothing could be farther from the truth! If you spend too
much time in the gym, you will actually take yourself farther away from your goals rather than
closer to them. Remember, your muscles do not grow in the gym. They grow out of the gym,
while you are resting and eating. Recovery is absolutely vital to the muscle growth process. If
you don't provide your body with the proper recovery time in between workouts, your muscles
will never have a chance to grow. Overtraining will also decrease your energy levels and will
promote an increase in certain hormones that stimulate muscular breakdown.
The main area where most people fail miserably on their muscle-building mission is on the all-
too important task of proper nutrition. Training with weights is only half of the equation! You
break down your muscle fibers in the gym, but if you don't provide your body with the proper
nutrients at the proper times, the muscle growth process will be next to impossible. You
wouldn't be able to build a house without bricks, and building muscle is no different. Nutrition
is just as important as what you accomplish in the gym, and it's very important that you keep
this in mind at all times.
The most important concept when it comes to proper nutrition is meal frequency. If you want
to build the greatest amount of muscle mass that you possibly can, you must consume a small
meal at least every 2-3 hours. If you fail to do so, your body will enter into a "starvation
mode". The body treats this lack of food as a potential threat to its survival and will begin
