Thursday, April 28, 2011

5 Tweaks to Build More Muscle

I'm doing the "road warrior" thing this weekend and I just finished up Workout D from my current
personal 4-week program. Now it's time to finish the rest of that rib-eye steak I ordered from room
service last night

My workout went like this:

Big Shoulder Warm-up (I have a video on my youtube channel showing what I do)

1A) DB 1-Arm Shoulder Press - 3x6
1B) Chin-up - 3x8-12 with a 4 second eccentric (lowering phase)

2A) Seated Row - 3x12
2B) DB Rear-Deltoid Raise - 3x15

This gives your upper back a pump, which is weird if you've never had one before.

3A) DB Triceps Extensions - 4x8
3B) Supersetted with stretching and more shoulder mobility exercises like stick-ups.

That was it. Nothing too crazy, because it was a hotel gym. I always plan my Workout D to be light
and "portable", because I never know where I'm going to be at the end of the week, but I'm almost
never in a gym with barbells.

Obviously that program focuses on building upper body muscle.

And building muscle has been a big topic on the TT Member's forum lately, from both men AND
women.

I recently answered a member's question and gave him 5 ways to tweak a traditional Turbulence
Training workout to get more muscle building from it.

Here's what I said...

1. Stop doing interval training.

Listen, you're not going to lose your fitness or cardiovascular health benefits if you stop interval
training for 4 weeks. It's not a big deal.

If you want to build muscle, intervals will not be a big help.

So stop intervals, or at the very least cut the interval workouts in half, or even better, just do 1
interval training session per week.

2. Add 200-300 calories to your post workout meal.

You know the drill here. Your muscles are hungry to replace the carbohydrates burned during the
training session, and your muscles need some - not 50grams - but some protein - 20 grams is
enough.

3. Add 200 calories to breakfast.

If you are coming off a low-calorie fat loss diet - let's say 1800 calories - then adding 500 total (split
between after your workout and at breakfast) will be a good place to start your "muscle building while
keeping fat off" efforts.

4. Keep off-day activity light. I recommend doing extra foam rolling, mobility moves, light
bodyweight training, stretching and just walking around. The great thing is that you can split this up,
so you don't have to do it all in one session. You can do a morning walk, some stretches before work,
some shoulder mobility exercises at lunch or breaktime, and a little bodyweight circuit before or after
dinner. Again, check out my youtube channel for over 200 exercise videos - lots of ideas at
www.youtube.com/cbathletics

5. Finally, the extreme tweak - Do resistance training up to 4 days per week.

Stop all intervals. Switch to an A-B-Off-A-B-Off-Off routine, doing only resistance training.

Use TT2K4 for this, from the main Turbulence Training manual here:

=> http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com/trial-offer.shtml

The first thing to note about this program is that it is an Upper-Lower split.

So you can adapt it to a muscle building program by using it on an A-B-Off-A-B-Off-Off type
schedule and by removing the interval training.

BUT only follow this for 3 weeks because you would be doing the workouts 6 times each.

Also, if you do that, take OUT the shoulder press from one of the Workout B sessions to cut back on
shoulder training a little.

Here's workout A from TT2K4

1A) DB Incline Press - 6 repetitions
No rest.
1B) DB Rear-Deltoid Raise - 10 repetitions
Rest 1 minute & repeat 2 more times for a total of 3 supersets.

2A) DB Row - 6 repetitions per side
No rest.
2B) DB Floor Press - 8 repetitions
Rest 1 minute & repeat 2 more times for a total of 3 supersets.

3A) DB Triceps Extension - 8 repetitions
No rest.
3B) DB Incline Curl - 8 repetitions
Rest 1 minute & repeat 2 more times for a total of 3 supersets.

Bam.

Get the complete Turbulence Training manual here:

=> http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com/trial-offer.shtml

Five simple tweaks to a proven workout system that will help you build muscle,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS

PS - This would be a perfect program to use in the 11th TT Transformation Contest.

The contest starts on Sunday, and you can win $1000 in one of these 4 categories for your
transformation:

1) Men Over 40
2) Men Under 40
3) Women Over 40
4) Women Under 40

Find out all the details here:

=> http://www.TransformationContest.com

Looking forward to your success.

Alright, breakfast time.

Have a great day.

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