How To Gain Muscle Mass -
Weight Training Essentials

 If you're looking for a step by step checklist that can take you by the hand and show you exactly what you need to do to build muscle mass without packing on excess body fat, look no further. While there are a lot of excellent muscle building programs that teach you how to gain muscle mass in 200 - 300 pages, there really aren't any resources that can teach you the process in a short, concise and actionable blueprint.

So I've put together a few short lists of the things that are mandatory if you want to gain muscle mass fast. Read through each of these lists, slowly implement the action steps and you will gain muscle mass - no exception! 

How To Gain Muscle Mass - The Essentials

1.) Train hard and heavy with free weights. Stay away from the machines, bands and bosu balls for now. Just keep it simple and train with plain old barbells and dumbbells - 90% of the time, that's all your body really needs to stimulate muscle growth anyway!

2.) How you structure your weight training workouts will vary greatly depending on your level of training experience and conditioning - but there are a few universal rules that everyone can apply to maximize the effectiveness of their weight training.

• If you are more concerned with strength and power, train in the 4 to 6 repetition range.
  
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• If you are more concerned with building muscle mass, train in the 8 to 15 repetition range.

How you incorporate these repetition ranges into your training is entirely up to you. There is really no right or wrong way to do it as long as you are providing your muscles with some sort of growth stimulating progressive overload at each and every workout. Either you train with a heavier weight, or you perform more repetitions with a heavy weight than you did the workout before.

If you are new to training and you haven't built up a decent level of strength and muscular conditioning, I prefer to focus on pure strength and power training. Lifting as heavy of weights as possible for very short repetition targets with moderate to long rest intervals. This helps you strengthen your muscles before attempting to really slam them with the to rep range!

If you are an experienced lifter who has already built up a decent level of muscular strength, then it makes sense for you to continue on the path to progress by incorporating a more advanced training model like undulating periodization.

3.) Let Basic free weight exercises form the base of your muscle building workouts. Stay away from single joint isolation movements, they will not allow you to stimulate as much muscle growth as heavy compound exercises like; squats, dead lift, bench press, incline press, barbell curls, rows, pull ups, lunges, st. leg dead lift and all of the dumbbell equivalents.

4.) Pay attention to your rest intervals - How much rest you need between sets also depends on your goals.

If you are targeting strength and power primarily, then you will want to rest for 3 - 5 minutes between sets.

If you are targeting muscle growth, then you will need to rest for 1 - 2 minutes between sets.

5.) Utilize the muscle building principles of Periodization and Undulating Periodization in order to ensure that you are getting the most from your muscle building workouts. Each of these powerful bodybuilding workout models are effective for keeping you moving towards your muscle building goals.

6.) Log your workouts. You'd be surprised at how few people actually take this simple and eye opening step. Just grab a spiral notebook and make note of:

1. The date of your workout
2. The exercises you performed for each workout
3. The weight that you were able to train with for each set
4. The number of reps you completed for each set
5. The rest intervals you utilized for each set

This is the only way you can be sure that your muscle building workouts are on the right track. This knowledge will allow you to spot periods of over-training as well as periods of ineffective training. Another great benefit of logging your workouts is that you will be able to identify exceptionally productive period of your training. You'll know exactly what you did to stimulate that response and you have all of the information you need to allow you to repeat the process at will.

If you're still on the fence wondering if you should really log your workouts just allow the Nike slogan to be your guiding light "Just Do It!" - you'll be glad you did.

7.) Keep your weight lifting workouts under an hour. Never train longer than this unless your goals have changed to something other than building muscle mass.

8.) When you head into the gym (or in my case, the basement) put your "game face" on. Get after it. Don't let anything or anyone get in your way. You know what you need to do, now just do it.

Stay away form socializing and hanging out in the gym. You're there to stimulate muscle growth as efficiently and quickly as possible, not to make friends - remember that, but don't be a jerk about it. Over time the people in the gym will grow to respect your work ethic and admire your bulging muscles...I promise!

When it comes to learning how to gain muscle mass and how to structure your weight training workouts for maximum muscle growth learn the basics and implement them. If you follow this advice, I guarantee you'll be surprised at just how much mileage you can get out of a basic no frills approach.

Take the time to learn how your body responds to different repetition ranges, different workout structures and different rest intervals. Make a plan and work it.

That's all you really need to know in order to put together an effective muscle building workout. Hopefully this pared-down checklist style approach to building muscle mass helps you make some serious progress towards your goals.

Keep an eye out for the other how to gain muscle mass check lists and implement the steps! In the mean time feel free to ask me any question you may have about building muscle, weight training, bodybuilding nutrition - or really anything else related to health and fitness. I'll do what I can to help you out.

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