Best Workout For Mass - Bodyweight Training
There are thousands of articles, books, videos, and eBooks developed which are devoted to using bodyweight exercises as a way to improve overall health, athletic conditioning, and to burn fat.
However, not enough is being written about bodyweight training for mass gain.
This is because not enough people understand how exactly to put on muscle mass with bodyweight training.
Well, frankly speaking, you will not become the next Mr.
Olympia by using bodyweight training alone.
However, you can getfreakishly big and strong using very simple bodyweight training principles.
The muscle you place on your body with bodyweight exercises will be functional muscle, or muscle that actually enhance your health and daily function as opposed to countering against it.
We've all seen bulky bodybuilders who look good on the outside, but there are a million things wrong with them on the inside.
Time Under Tension (TUT): The Forgotten Principle Time Under Tension (TUT) refers to the amount of time that you place stress on your body with a particular movement.
This training principle has been lost in popularity and abandoned for more exciting circuit type workouts which many individuals write about.
However, Circuit Training alone will not help you put on lean muscle mass throughout your body.
You must use the principles of TUT if you ever want to succeed in your hypertrophy goals.
It isgenerally accepted that you need to engage your muscles under stress for 30-70 seconds in order for substantial hypertrophy to occur.
Circuit Training is all about moving fast between a variety of exercises, and very rarely does an individual spend 30 seconds on a movement.
Well, it's time to give your circuit and interval workouts a rest and understand how to use TUT to increase muscle mass with bodyweight exercises.
TUT + Compound Exercises + Antagonistic Supersets = More Muscle The first step in creating your TUT workouts is to stick to compound movements.
With bodyweight training, this isn't much of an issue, as 95% of all the movements are compound in nature.
The second step is to organize your workouts into a superset fashion.
Supersets are where you perform two exercises back to back with little to no rest.
The key, however, is to use antagonistic supersets.
Antagonistic supersets refer to two movements that train opposing muscle groups.
For example, you can perform a chest movement, followed by a back movement.
You can even alternate between an upper body and lower body movement.
But make sure that you are not working the same muscle groups back to back in a row.
One of the primary reasons why I love supersets is because you can condense even your mass building workouts which require greater rest for recovery.
For example, lets assume you are doing a set of pushups followed by a set of pullups.
Here's what a traditional mass building workout would look like:
Now, if we alternate between each exercise, we can rest for a shorter time, while still getting the same or even better results.
For example, perform a set ofpushups, then rest 30 seconds.
Do a set of pullups.
While you do the pullups, your chest muscles are still at rest.
Rest after your pullups.
Hence, your chest is getting 30 seconds of rest after the pushups.
Then additional 60 seconds rest while you perform the pullups (since we said earlier that each set takes 60 seconds to perform).
Finally, your chest is getting an additional 30 seconds rest after the pullups.
So, you're getting a total of 120 seconds rest per muscle group, which means you'll be stronger and be able to perform more difficult movements.
This, of course, means you'll pack on even more muscle mass.
Here is what a superset mass building workout would look like: 3 rounds of:
Since we're trying to increase our TUT per movement, we will have to slow down the movements considerably.
There are three areas where you can slow down a movement:
But to review, what we are simply doing here is using the superset method and increasing the TUT of a bodyweight movement by decreasing the tempo of a movement.
Start using some of these concepts into your current program to convert them from fat burning workouts to mass building routines.
However, not enough is being written about bodyweight training for mass gain.
This is because not enough people understand how exactly to put on muscle mass with bodyweight training.
Well, frankly speaking, you will not become the next Mr.
Olympia by using bodyweight training alone.
However, you can getfreakishly big and strong using very simple bodyweight training principles.
The muscle you place on your body with bodyweight exercises will be functional muscle, or muscle that actually enhance your health and daily function as opposed to countering against it.
We've all seen bulky bodybuilders who look good on the outside, but there are a million things wrong with them on the inside.
Time Under Tension (TUT): The Forgotten Principle Time Under Tension (TUT) refers to the amount of time that you place stress on your body with a particular movement.
This training principle has been lost in popularity and abandoned for more exciting circuit type workouts which many individuals write about.
However, Circuit Training alone will not help you put on lean muscle mass throughout your body.
You must use the principles of TUT if you ever want to succeed in your hypertrophy goals.
It isgenerally accepted that you need to engage your muscles under stress for 30-70 seconds in order for substantial hypertrophy to occur.
Circuit Training is all about moving fast between a variety of exercises, and very rarely does an individual spend 30 seconds on a movement.
Well, it's time to give your circuit and interval workouts a rest and understand how to use TUT to increase muscle mass with bodyweight exercises.
TUT + Compound Exercises + Antagonistic Supersets = More Muscle The first step in creating your TUT workouts is to stick to compound movements.
With bodyweight training, this isn't much of an issue, as 95% of all the movements are compound in nature.
The second step is to organize your workouts into a superset fashion.
Supersets are where you perform two exercises back to back with little to no rest.
The key, however, is to use antagonistic supersets.
Antagonistic supersets refer to two movements that train opposing muscle groups.
For example, you can perform a chest movement, followed by a back movement.
You can even alternate between an upper body and lower body movement.
But make sure that you are not working the same muscle groups back to back in a row.
One of the primary reasons why I love supersets is because you can condense even your mass building workouts which require greater rest for recovery.
For example, lets assume you are doing a set of pushups followed by a set of pullups.
Here's what a traditional mass building workout would look like:
- Pushups, 3x10, 60 seconds rest between each set
- Pullups, 3x5, 60 seconds rest between each set
Now, if we alternate between each exercise, we can rest for a shorter time, while still getting the same or even better results.
For example, perform a set ofpushups, then rest 30 seconds.
Do a set of pullups.
While you do the pullups, your chest muscles are still at rest.
Rest after your pullups.
Hence, your chest is getting 30 seconds of rest after the pushups.
Then additional 60 seconds rest while you perform the pullups (since we said earlier that each set takes 60 seconds to perform).
Finally, your chest is getting an additional 30 seconds rest after the pullups.
So, you're getting a total of 120 seconds rest per muscle group, which means you'll be stronger and be able to perform more difficult movements.
This, of course, means you'll pack on even more muscle mass.
Here is what a superset mass building workout would look like: 3 rounds of:
- Pushups, 10 reps
- Rest 30 seconds
- Pullups, 5 reps
- Rest 30 seconds
- Go back to pushups.
Since we're trying to increase our TUT per movement, we will have to slow down the movements considerably.
There are three areas where you can slow down a movement:
- Eccentric - Lowering portion of the movement (example: lowering yourself during a pushup)
- Concentric - Rising portion of the movement (example: pulling yourself during a pullup)
- Isometric - Position held for time (example: holding the bottom position of a squat)
But to review, what we are simply doing here is using the superset method and increasing the TUT of a bodyweight movement by decreasing the tempo of a movement.
Start using some of these concepts into your current program to convert them from fat burning workouts to mass building routines.
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