A set of exercises and nutrition recommendations for muscle growth

Begin­ners in the pow­er fit­ness areas, as a rule, gain mus­cle mass very quick­ly, care­ful­ly observ­ing all the nec­es­sary con­di­tions for this. And those peo­ple who reg­u­lar­ly vis­it the gym and per­form basic exer­cis­es for 2–3 years, hav­ing achieved a cer­tain vol­ume of mus­cles, often face sta­bi­liza­tion of mus­cle growth. Dur­ing this peri­od, the mus­cles stop active­ly devel­op­ing and increas­ing in vol­ume, and in order to over­come this stage, you need to make some changes to the train­ing process and increase the amount of pro­tein in the diet.

An example of a fitness activity to stimulate muscle growth

For expe­ri­enced gym goers, to over­come the peri­od of sta­bi­liza­tion in mus­cle devel­op­ment and in order to stim­u­late mus­cle growth, a fit­ness pro­gram that involves train­ing three times a week can be used as a basis. On the first day after a qual­i­ty warm-up, which includes artic­u­lar gym­nas­tics and light car­dio, you need to per­form the fol­low­ing set of exer­cis­es:

• Squats with a bar­bell (5 sets of 6 reps).
• Flex­ion of the low­er limbs, lying in the sim­u­la­tor (4 sets of 8 times).
• Clas­sic bar­bell bench press on a hor­i­zon­tal sports bench (3 sets of 10 bench press­es each).
• Work with weights on the uneven bars or in the grav­it­ron (3 sets of 10 push-ups).
• Twist­ing lying on a bench with a neg­a­tive slope (50 twists in each of 2 approach­es).

On the sec­ond train­ing day, to acti­vate the process of mus­cle growth, you should per­form the fol­low­ing strength exer­cis­es:

• Dead­lift with a bar­bell in its clas­sic ver­sion or in the ver­sion of “sumo” (3 sets of 10 times).
• Bench press in a sit­ting posi­tion (6 reps in each of 5 sets).
• Breed­ing of the upper limbs with dumb­bells in a stand­ing posi­tion (4 sets of 8 times).
• Weight­ed shrugs (4 sets of 8 reps).
• Bend­ing the upper limbs with lift­ing the bar to work out the biceps of the shoul­ders (4 sets of 8 times).
• Hyper­ex­ten­sion to strength­en the mus­cles of the back (up to 12 times in each of 4 approach­es).
• Bring­ing the knees to the chest while hang­ing on the hor­i­zon­tal bar or grav­it­ron (4 sets of 15 rep­e­ti­tions).

The third train­ing day involves the fol­low­ing set of exer­cis­es:

• Squats with a bar­bell (3 sets of 10 squats).
• Exten­sion of the low­er limbs in the sim­u­la­tor (12–15 times in each of 3 approach­es).
• Bench press (5 sets of 6 reps).
• Breed­ing the upper limbs with dumb­bells lying on a hor­i­zon­tal bench (4 sets of 8 times).
• Pull-ups with a wide arrange­ment of brush­es on the cross­bar (4 sets of 8 reps).
• Clas­sic crunch­es (2 sets of 50 reps)

Mass Exercise Recommendations

In order for fit­ness class­es con­duct­ed accord­ing to the pro­gram pre­sent­ed above to be as effec­tive as pos­si­ble, it is nec­es­sary to apply the fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions of expe­ri­enced instruc­tors when per­form­ing train­ing move­ments:

• warm-up and warm-up approach­es before per­form­ing the main phys­i­cal activ­i­ty is an oblig­a­tory part of fit­ness, which in no case should be neglect­ed. Not only the effi­cien­cy of work depends on the qual­i­ty of the warm-up, but also the min­i­miza­tion of the risk of injury, after which it is nec­es­sary to recov­er for a long time, skip­ping work­outs or work­ing not at full strength;
• cor­rect work­ing weight. Use the max­i­mum work­ing weight only in basic exer­cis­es (squat, bench press and dead­lift). In the rest of the train­ing move­ments, you can take a mod­er­ate weight, allow­ing you to com­plete the work with­out tech­ni­cal errors;
• micro-peri­odiza­tion of fit­ness class­es should be fol­lowed, alter­nat­ing light, medi­um and heavy train­ing. Light work­outs include those that use shells with a mass equal to 50–65% of the max­i­mum pos­si­ble weight, and the ele­ments are per­formed 10 times. In train­ing of medi­um inten­si­ty, work is car­ried out for 8 rep­e­ti­tions with shells, the mass of which is 65–80% of the max­i­mum work­ing weight. Heavy high-inten­si­ty train­ing involves per­form­ing exer­cis­es with shells weigh­ing 80–95% of the max­i­mum, and the num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions in the approach does not exceed 6 times;
• includ­ing aux­il­iary train­ing move­ments in the les­son, you need to choose those that involve mus­cle groups that are not involved in the base. In addi­tion, the ele­ments of aux­il­iary train­ing need to be changed peri­od­i­cal­ly in order to be able to work out the mus­cles of the whole body;
• To stim­u­late mus­cle growth, you need to con­stant­ly increase the load in fit­ness class­es. This can be done by increas­ing the work­ing weight or the dura­tion of the load peri­od, as well as by reduc­ing the dura­tion of the breaks between sets.

Diet modification for gaining muscle mass

A bal­anced diet and a well-orga­nized eat­ing reg­i­men play an impor­tant role in the process of build­ing mus­cle mass through intense strength train­ing. It depends on what nutri­ents and in what quan­ti­ty they enter the body with food, whether a per­son will have enough ener­gy to per­form strength exer­cis­es and recov­er after them, and the body will have enough of all the com­po­nents involved in the for­ma­tion of new mus­cle tis­sue cells.

For active mus­cle growth in the diet, you need to make the fol­low­ing changes:

• the num­ber of meals should be increased to 6 times a day, 3 of which will be con­sid­ered main, and 3 — snacks. The vol­ume of por­tions of the main meals should be 100–200 g more than snacks. Such a diet allows you to avoid the appear­ance of an acute feel­ing of hunger and the accom­pa­ny­ing stress;
• the amount of pro­tein in the diet should be at least 2.5 g per kilo­gram of body weight. The lack of pro­tein obtained from prod­ucts can be com­pen­sat­ed by the use of pro­tein shakes and oth­er sports sup­ple­ments;
• the diet should con­tain slow car­bo­hy­drates in an amount suf­fi­cient to pro­vide the body with ener­gy used to main­tain nor­mal life under con­di­tions of intense phys­i­cal exer­tion, as well as for sub­se­quent recov­ery.