Increasing Muscle Mass
If you wish to increase the size of your muscles you probably think it deals primarily with working out and training hard with freeweights. This isn't true, the majority of your muscle building potential lies within your diet. When your goal is to increase muscle mass, in a sense you are doing the opposite of losing weight. In most cases when you attempt to build muscle, you will gain weight. Therefore when you want to pack on muscle, you need to follow a diet plan opposite of what you would follow while trying to lose fat. But more on that later, let's focus on the exercising aspect of increasing muscle mass first.
There is no doubt about it, if you want to increase the size of your muscles, you must train with freeweights. I'm not even going to suggest that you use machine resistance, such as the technology offered by bowflex and other "machine" muscle building equipment. There is no question in my mind that training with dumbbells and barbells is absolutely the best method of building muscle mass. This applies to both males and females.
Machine resistance has one primary disadvantage that makes it inferior to freeweights. And that is the fact that the range of motion is restricted while using machines and doesn't allow your body to flow within a natural path. Your stabilizer muscles are not worked nearly as much as they are while using freeweights. The very term "free" is symbolic of muscle freedom. Being able to train with a form of resistance that allows your body to train naturally, is a lot more beneficial.
Secondly, in order to increase muscle mass you must continually place a foreign amount of stress on it. Meaning the only way your muscles will get bigger (hypertrophy), is if they are forced to get bigger. The reason muscles grow in size is not because they want to make you look tough, but because they are preparing themselves in anticipation that if they ever experience that amount of stress again, they will be strong enough and prepared enough to handle it more efficiently. In a juvenile sense, when confronted with a foreign amount of stress, your muscles get frightened and retalliate by becoming stronger.
As far as your diet is concerned, you must supply your body with a daily caloric surplus of calories. Meaning your body needs more calories than it burns daily. But these calories also need to be "good" calories. You need an ample amount of protein (at least 35% of your daily caloric consumption should come by way of protein) and low in fat + high in complex carbohydrates (the good kind of carbs).
Those are the basics of increasing muscle mass. If you're interested to learn more, visit our features tour to find out how we can prepare a customized fitness plan within 24 hours. Take our free physical analysis for a rough estimation of your personal daily caloric intake.
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