8 Mental Tricks For Huge Muscle Gain

Achieving huge muscle gain takes time and effort. If you truly desire it then it becomes necessary to test your personal limits. The reason why most people fail at achieving the huge muscle gain they crave is because they fail to push themselves hard enough in the gym. The reason is simple…

It’s intense. It’s hard. It hurts like hell.

It’s time to toughen up because you’re going to have to conquer those feelings of pain that come with a hard session at the gym if you ever want to achieve anything.

You deserve huge muscle gain, so check out the techniques below to learn how to numb your feelings of pain and push past them to reach your goals.

1) Life-Threatening Situations

When you reach the end of your set and you feel like quitting, just imagine that you are in a life or death situation where you have to lift a boulder off of yourself or someone you love in order to survive. For example, pretend you are hanging from a cliff during your pull-ups. During deadlifts you could imagine that you’re lifting a boulder off of someone.

2) Magnetic Force

Use the force – visualize the weights as magnets being pulled the opposite direction. When you’re doing a bench press you should think of the ceiling as a magnet powerfully drawing the bar upward.

3) Envision Your Muscles

The purpose behind working out is to break down those muscle fibers to encourage your body to adapt and grow. As you’re in the middle of a set, picture what’s happening to the inside of your muscle tissue and how all the fibers are responding. Imagine your muscle fibers being broken down and filled with blood and nutrients, and realize that this is exactly what will help to create huge muscle gain.

4) Have Someone Watch You

We’re not talking safety here, we’re talking about an audience. You are more likely to push yourself harder during your workout if you think you are being judged.

5) Positive/Negative Force

Imagining that you are shoving something negative away from you helps with any pushing exercise. Imagine anything for this exercise, including feelings, material objects and people. For pulling exercises you just do the exact opposite. This could be financial, romantic or an emotion.

6) Set Ridiculous Goals

If your goal is to perform 9 reps, increase that to 100 instead. Do everything you can to honestly believe that you’ll get to 100. When you start to lift, convince yourself you will not stop until you reach that 100 reps.

7) Close Your Eyes

Make sure to use this technique only if the exercise is very simple to perform. Avoid exercises like squatting or deadlifting while trying this. With the basic exercises, simply shut your eyes. You won’t see anything that could distract you from executing a perfect set.

8) Pretend It's Someone Else's Pain

Huge muscle gain comes with a price and that price is the pain of training yourself either all the way to muscular failure or very close to it. If you are about to approach muscular failure, imagine that your pain is being felt by someone you hate. The more intense you get, the more pain they receive. It might seem pretty harsh, but it gets the job done.

How To Build Chest Muscles: Developing Massive Pecs

I don't know a single bodybuilder out there that doesn't want to develop some huge chest muscles.

Sadly, many inexperienced, ignorant lifters will push themselves to the edge doing endless sets of bench presses and cable crossovers in their desperation to develop chest muscles. Listen, you really don’t have to work that hard for an awesome chest. Like I mentioned before, all you need is effort, consistency, and continual progress in the amount of weights you lift to build chest muscles.

 A press and a flye are the two basic motions that are commonly used when using weights to build chest muscles; however, if you truly want to see massive results from your chest workouts then you need to focus on the pressing movements.

The anabolic effect of high intensity pressing movements is vital to your chest workouts, although flyes still have their place from time to time. Yes, I am talking about those old school, basic lifts like dumbbell presses, heavy barbell presses, and my least favorite - wide-grip dips.

When you’re developing massive pecs you can’t rely on secrets or killer techniques to get there. Go for the basic presses, put your mind into overload and constant progression, and it’s my guarantee that you will see some impressive gains.

With that said, check out these lifts to successfully build up your chest muscles:

Flat/Incline/Decline Barbell Bench Press

The standard barbell press is a basic exercise in any routine designed to build chest muscles. It’s a basic move that lets you handle the most weight through the given range of motion.

When you work with the incline press, you are putting more stress on your upper chest region with the opposite being the decline press which targets the lower and outer regions of your chest muscles. The flat bench press helps you to target both the upper and lower chest muscles. Look, when you want to build your chest, you need to place your bets on a standard barbell press as the biggest component of your routine.

Flat/Incline/Decline Dumbbell Press

Dumbbell presses are yet another great exercise to build chest muscles. They do have a great advantage over barbells since the motion you have to use is more natural which allows for a less likelihood of shoulder injuries.

This exercise also prevents one arm from cheating for the other (even more necessary for someone such as me who has a disabled left arm) which is something that often results in strength imbalances. In the end the only disadvantage is your inability to take on as much weight. Either way, a standard dumbbell press is a great tool to help you to build chest muscles.

Wide-Grip Dips

You shouldn’t overlook this amazing movement for the chest. You’ll want to use a wider grip and be sure to lean forward to shift the stress from your triceps onto your pectorals. I wish I could still have this in my routine, but my left arm bruises whenever I’ve tried since I had my arm surgery. Unless you have some problem such as mine than you really need to include this into your chest workout.

Add resistance by using a weight belt if your own body weight is not sufficient. If you want to maximize overall chest development then dips are the perfect compound movement.

Sample Chest Routine

Flat Barbell Bench Press: 2 sets of 5 to 8 reps

Incline Dumbbell Press: 2 sets of 5 to 8 reps

Decline Dumbbell Press: 2 sets of 5 to 8 reps

Wide-Grip Dips: 2 sets of 5 to 8 reps

If you want the massive gains like my friend Sean in the picture below here was able to get then follow this routine for starters. If you want a complete understanding of how to gain huge muscle mass and transform your life then check out the site that links from the picture.

Weight Gain and the Forbidden Cardio

You’re thinking of doing what!?

You’ve heard it, I’ve heard it – it is bullshit.

I had been doing martial arts for years and then when I started bodybuilding to gain weight and muscle I start being told by everyone that I need to abandon my passion.

I bought it.

I ditched the dojo and joined the gym. It was the worst mistake of my life. Not the part of joining the gym, o f course, but rather leaving behind my greatest hobby all because a bunch of “expert” bodybuilders had convinced me that cardio was evil. The way bodybuilders talk about cardio is as if doing an hour of jogging or martial arts is going to cause your muscles to disappear and cause you to lose a hundred pounds.

I’ve seen fat people run on the treadmill for over an hour, they look exactly the same afterwards.

Let’s find some common ground:

Running for five hours a day, every day, is a bad idea.

I’m afraid that’s the best I can do. The point is this, if you are trying to bulk up and gain weight then you need to be consuming more calories. That’s a given. Cardio uses a good amount of calories (although not as much as you’ve probably been tricked into thinking).

So how can this problem be solved? You consume some more calories.

Check this out.

It’s a chart showing the amount of calories burned per hour during different workouts. It’s not 100% accurate, but it’ll give you a good idea of the extra amount you need to eat if you’re going to do cardio.

Exercise                                                               Cal burned

Boxing, sparring                                                633

Aerobics, high impact                                     493

karate, kick boxing, tae kwan do               704

So 700 calories. Is that a good amount? Sure.

Is it so much that I should give up martial arts? Hell no.

I’ve read blogs from a few people that think like me and they say that you should eat a big meal before you do cardio since this supposedly will keep you from losing weight. If you’ve ever been in martial arts and ate a big meal beforehand, you know this is a bad idea.

Good news, though. You don’t have to. Eat an apple before you go into the dojo and then drink a protein shake after you get home. Consume the extra 600 calories within a couple hours after you get back. Pretty simple, really.

If you enjoy doing some sort of cardio then let no one tell you to stop.

Don’t be a one trick pony.

If someone were to ask you what you do with your free time, I expect you to be able to say more than just bodybuilding. Don’t be one of those douche bags at the gym that have nothing else in their life so they stay there for ten hours a day.

Go out, get laid, find other hobbies and enjoy the road leading towards inevitability.

My Leg Workout

As my earlier post pointed out, compound exercises are the key to muscle growth. It works out multiple muscles and allows you to do your workout in less time thus allowing more time for recovery. Plus the sooner you ditch the gym the sooner you can start drinking whatever nasty protein drink you drink.

Here is my current leg workout:

Exercise                               Sets                       Reps

Barbell Squats                   2                              5-8

Stiff-Legged Deadlifts    2                              5-8

Lying Leg Curls                   2                              5-8

Standing Calf Raises        2                              10-12

Leg Extension                    2                              5-8

Dumbbell Lunge               1                              Failure

Cable Crunch                     2                              10-12

Crunches                             1                              10-12

As you can see, I perform both leg and abs exercises on the same day so I went ahead and included those as well. I have a home gym so I’m limited in my equipment, but I would recommend adding in a leg press if you have one handy wherever you workout at. Before starting on your squats you need to also make sure to preform a proper warm-up to prevent injury.

This just needs to be something that gets your heart rate up such as jogging for five minutes to warm your body up and get the blood flowing. Stretching beforehand is unnecessary and some will argue that it is even harmful. As with everything in life, you should research this for yourself and make up your own damn mind.

The Road to Hell - How to Get Muscular Legs

I hate leg day. I really do. Thankfully I share this hatred with most of my brethren (pun forcefully intended). Tomorrow is the day I perform my weekly leg workout. It’s the day this site turns from Seraph to Demonic. It’s agony in its most righteous form. Its … okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but it is definitely my least favorite workout day.

Chances are that you also despise it. What do most people do when faced with pain? They avoid it. They do everything they can to stop it from happening. Those people are weak. Make no mistake, there is no good excuse to avoid an intense leg workout. It does a lot more for you then you might think.

Most of us don’t walk around with our pants off and shirts on (but major kudos to those of you who do), so we assume that we don’t really need to work on the muscles that don’t show. It seems almost logical on the surface. Let’s examine the facts though.

You look weak

Okay, this is the obvious one. Nothing looks more ridiculous then a guy with huge arms and scrawny legs. You won’t impress anyone even if your arms are on par with the Governator. Unless you wear baggy jeans (and I really hope you don’t), then your twig legs will be obvious. Plus you should want to go to the beach to show off your godlike body so just stop being so pitiful and go hit the squat rack already.

Your other muscles will grow

This is amazing, by doing an intense leg workout, the muscles throughout your whole body will grow bigger as a result of the increased secretion of testosterone and growth hormone. Your muscles will actually grow throughout your whole body as a result from training your legs. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Those are a couple of pretty damn good reasons to step up your game. They’re the reasons that although I’m not looking forward to my leg workout tomorrow, I will still be pushing myself to the threshold of anguish at the bottom of the squat rack for that last remaining rep. So do yourself a favor and start working out your legs as powerfully as you work your arms. It’ll be one of the wiser choices you make in this life.

How to get muscles

Gaining muscle really is simple. Unfortunately, when you look around the internet and fitness magazines you’ll see so much misinformation that the simple truths ultimately get lost in it all. To build muscle, all you need to do is this:

·         Add more weight to your lifts

One bullet point? Come on, there’s got to be more to it! Well, there’s not.

Fancy machines, those dozens of ads for new state of the art pills and powders, it’s all junk. They make money selling it and you lose money buying it. Most of it can damage your body. The meds raise your blood pressure; irreversibly damage your heart and kidneys, and worst of all – they cost a lot of money (okay, maybe that’s not the worst part).

Sure, there are certain other key factors involved in getting bigger. Not really, though. Here’s ALL you need to do:

·         Eat a good amount of protein every day and drink a protein shake after every workout (no need to go overboard though)

·         Improve either the weight you’re lifting from week to week or add another couple reps

·         Allow your muscles time to recuperate

Keep track of how much you lift every time you go to the gym. Aim for 6-8 reps. If you can do 8+ reps then it’s time to add another 5lbs to the bar. It might seem like a small amount, but in just one month you’ll be lifting 20lbs more than you were when you started. By keeping a journal with your current lifting states, you’ll also be able to mentally force yourself to blast out that last rep that you know you need. And that there is all you really need.

As always, you can email me at jay19_86@hotmail.com if you have any questions.

Building Each Major Muscle Group

 
With so much hyped up information and bogus "breakthrough" exercise methods popping up all the time, most lifters seem to have lost sight of the basics.

While the basics may not be as flashy and exciting as what most of the "other guys" out there promote, they'll pack raw muscle size and strength on to your body faster than any other method you'll come across.

In this article I am simply going to list each major muscle group on the body, along with some basic tips for building that muscle as quickly and efficiently as possible. Nothing "revolutionary" or "innovative" here... Just the bare-bones truth about building muscle fast.

Let’s get right to it…

Chest

If you want to get the most bang for your buck and develop your chest as quickly as possible, then forget about flye movements such as the pec-deck, dumbbell flyes or cable crossovers. Instead, place all of your focus on the big basic pressing exercises such as barbell presses, dumbbell presses and wide-grip dips.

If you want to include a few flye movements here and there at the end of your chest workout then that’s fine, but your primary focus should be on consistently increasing the poundage on all of your compound pressing exercises.


Back

Use bent-legged barbell deadlifts as your primary back-developing exercise. There is simply no other lift out there that will pack more raw muscle size and strength onto your back and your entire body than the basic barbell deadlift.

It is extremely challenging and uncomfortable to perform, but the rewards are well worth it. It will work you from finger to neck to toe, and if you haven’t been deadlifting up to this point, be prepared for some serious gains once you start.


Shoulders

Laterals raises are fine to include to isolate the medial head of the shoulder, but the meat and potatoes of any effective shoulder training routine is based on a compound overhead press.

Either perform a standing or seated military press with a barbell, or an overhead press using dumbbells. This should be the first exercise in your shoulder routine, with side laterals being performed at the end.

The front and rear heads of the shoulder receive plenty of stimulation during your chest and back exercises and therefore do not need to be specifically isolated.

Biceps

Cut down on your training volume and understand that the majority of your bicep growth is actually a product of hard and intense back training. Heavy chin-ups, pulldowns and rows all provide plenty of stimulation for the biceps, and direct curling movements are far less important than most people think.

Including a few sets of direct bicep work is still recommended, but going too far overboard can easily over train them and will actually slow down your bicep growth rather than speed it up.


Triceps

The same thing goes for triceps as well. Any time you perform a compound chest pressing exercise or an overhead shoulder press, your triceps will be heavily stimulated. Because of this, performing direct tricep isolation exercises should be done so cautiously and with only a small number of sets to prevent over-working them.


Abs

Since spot reduction is impossible and you cannot target fat loss from specific areas of the body, stop placing so much emphasis on the idea of achieving “6-pack abs” through the use of direct abdominal exercises.

Attaining defined and sculpted abs is mostly a product of your bottom line body fat percentage, and has very little to do with specific training techniques. Include a few sets of direct ab work for the sake of strengthening your core and building up the abdominal muscles themselves, but performing endless sets of situps and crunches is nothing more than a waste of time.


Quads

If you aren’t performing a basic barbell squat as the cornerstone of your leg training routine, you’re missing out big time!

Squats are by far the most effective lower body exercise in existence, and by a good margin. Not only do squats provide serious stimulation for the muscles of the legs, but because they force the body to secrete greater amounts of powerful anabolic hormones (such as testosterone and growth hormone) they will increase your upper body size as well.

As the saying goes, “you ain’t squat ‘till you squat!”


Hamstrings

Leg curls should be included in your hamstring training routine, but the real secret to a massive set of “leg biceps” is the stiff-legged deadlift.

You can perform SLDL’s using a barbell or dumbbells, and not only will they pack size onto your hamstrings faster than any other lift out there, but they will strengthen your lower back and add size to your upper back as well.


Calves

If you really want those stubborn calves to respond, then stop worrying so much about “feeling the burn”, and instead focus on truly training your calves to the point of muscular failure.

Rather than slapping on an arbitrary amount of weight and pumping out 20-30 reps until it starts to hurt, load up as much weight as you can possibly handle for 8-12 high quality reps. Execute each rep in a slow and deliberate manner, squeezing at the top and using a full range of motion until you cannot perform another rep despite your best efforts to do so.

To learn more simple but powerful tips for maximizing your muscle size and strength gains, go ahead and visit MuscleGainTruth. You can instantly download an exclusive collection of online muscle-building video lessons, as well as gain access to award-winning workout plans, meal plans, progress tracking tools and more.