There comes a point in many people’s lives when their exercise goals pivot to muscle-building, in some capacity. When you first start, the world of weight training can be overwhelming and intimidating – especially when you head to the gym and see all the bench people lifting with ease. However, you need to remember that everyone starts at the bottom, all you need to do is understand how to get the most out of your workouts and get stuck in. Fortunately, we can help you with half of this by offering six muscle-building tips.
Eat Either Side Of A Workout
Working out relies on energy, which comes from the foods we eat. In particular, what we eat before and after will help to boost our performance and ease post-workout aching. For example, to make sure you’re energized, pack in plenty of carbohydrates and proteins before and after your workout. Further, you can take supplements to better improve your performance – Turkesterone.com covers it extensively.
Master Proper Form
Lifting weights can be dangerous if you don’t practice proper form. Therefore, before you start training, make sure you understand how to protect your body. If you feel as though you need extra support, hire a personal trainer to talk through everything with you. After all, if you develop bad habits at the beginning, you will find it much harder to break them. If there’s one tip on this list you must follow, this is it.
Prioritize Major Lifts
In your first weight training session, we suggest prioritizing major lifts. By this, we mean that any exercise that concentrates on numerous muscle groups needs to come before single-muscle exercises. The reason this will improve your workout is that major lifts will take more energy, which you have more of at the beginning of your session. Examples of major lifts include:
- Squats.
- Bent over row.
- Deadlifts.
- Shoulder Press.
If you’re using muscle-building machines, you will likely find them being called chest press, leg press, lateral pull-down, and horizontal row.
Stretching Is Vital
Whether you’ve been working out for years or you’ve just started, we’re all guilty of skipping those all-important stretches. However, this is a great mistake because stretching helps to alleviate post-workout soreness. As well as making your experience less painful, stretching will help to improve your range of motion, which is important when it comes to muscle training. As a benchmark, you should aim for ten minutes of pre and post-workout stretching. Further, when you’re taking a day off, you can do stretches while watching Netflix – or whatever it is you like to do in your free time.
Take Breaks Between Workouts
As your muscles grow throughout workouts, you will likely feel pain. Therefore, as well as stretching and eating protein-rich meals after workouts, you should take a day off between every session. All of this will help to reduce soreness. When you’re new to muscle fitness, a full body workout is recommended to get all of your body parts used to moving and growing.
Weights Before Cardio
Many people believe that cardio should be completed before weight training, likely because it helps to warm up the body. However, you need as much energy as possible to have a successful muscle-building workout. Therefore, cardio should be squeezed in at the end or in a completely different workout.
Take Home
Everyone will make mistakes while working out and be left feeling pain with every movement. However, if you practice these until it becomes second nature, you are much more likely to have a positive experience, which will help to keep you motivated.