The anterior delt acts to flex the shoulder raise the arm up , the lateral delt acts to abduct the upper arm raise your upper arm out directly to your sides , and the posterior delt acts to abduct the shoulder pull the shoulder back when the elbows are raised. The rectus abdominis acts to flex the spine, rotate the torso, and resist spinal extension prevent your lower back from arching inwards. The gastrocnemius is the big muscle underneath the back of your knee and the soleus is a smaller, flatter muscle which runs underneath the gastroc down to your ankle.
Both the gastroc and soleus act to plantarflex the ankle point your toes down. A: Bodybuilding is a marathon, not a sprint. It can be difficult to accurately determine if you are making visual progress day-to-day or even week-to-week. But ultimately, because of the relationship between strength gain and muscle gain, the main metric I want you to use for tracking your progress is strength.
Taking body measurements a few times a year can also be helpful arms, thigh, waist, neck but simply focusing on steady strength progression will be your best proxy for determining muscular progress.
A: How you respond to training will be largely determined by genetic factors. As a rough ballpark estimate for untrained male individuals, lbs of muscle gain per month is reasonable lbs of muscle gained in your first year. For early intermediates with about 1 year of lifting experience, progress will likely slow down to roughly 0. For practical purposes, women can divide muscle gain estimates in half. A: Gym equipment is optional as there are no required pieces of equipment to gain muscle and increase strength.
With that being said, investing in an 10mm prong or lever belt, knee sleeves, squat shoes, and straps can be beneficial in allowing you to lift more weight for certain exercises.
When should I wear it? A: Optionally use a lifting belt for working sets on exercises like squats, deadlifts and overhead military presses. Is the program not working? A: Muscle soreness is largely attributed to eccentric contractions [22] and long muscle length contractions [23].
With that said, the main goal of the program is to establish a strength foundation, not to get you feeling sore. In fact, reduced soreness over time indicates that your body is adapting and recovering, which is actually a good thing for continued progress. Should I skip the gym until I am not sore? A: You may experience increased soreness when you first begin the program because it is presenting a new stress to your body.
Foam rolling can help reduce DOMS [25] and increase ROM [26], so if you are consistently getting sore week after week, consider adding a short minute foam rolling routine at the end of the workouts. Otherwise, training while sore is not inherently problematic for muscle growth unless it puts you at an increased risk of injury. Otherwise, in the case of mild soreness, perform a slightly longer warm up for each exercise and use your own discretion with avoiding injury being a top priority.
One extra rest day will not set you back very far, but a serious injury will. A: Eating in a slight caloric surplus will yield the best results and best recovery, however, if your main goal is fat loss, eating in a caloric deficit will be necessary.
As a beginner, you can continue to make strength and size progress while in a moderate caloric deficit and achieve body recomposition lose fat and build muscle at the same time if protein intake is sufficient 0.
Can I add to it? Why is there such little exercise variation from week to week? A: Changing exercises from week to week is more likely to flatten out the strength progression curve. While there is some variation from week to week, most exercises are kept constant to ensure both progression by adding volume incrementally to these specific movements and mastery of exercise form and technique.
If after 8 weeks you feel like you need to switch things up, then you can run one of the other 2 programs included in this manual. There are 3 different splits. Which one should I run? Since adherence and sustainability are arguably the most important factors for long term success, it is important to start with a program that you think you will enjoy and actually stick to.
Have a look through the 3 programs and go with the one that looks most appealing to you. What do I do after I finished the program? You have the option of running back through the same program again for another 8 weeks or moving on to one of the other splits provided.
After the year mark of running these programs, you will likely want to graduate on to one of my Intermediate Programs. What are the blank boxes in the middle of each program for? They are for you to track your weights each week, so you can focus on strength progression from week 1 to week 8. Of course, this will only work if you print the program out. The other option would be to keep a notebook and simply pencil in your lifts each week.
Keeping up with this habit of tracking is going to be an extremely important part of your success on this program. Please direct all other question to [email protected] Please avoid directing questions about this program to my social media as it is not a reliable means of making contact with me or getting the correct information.
Warming up should function to increase your core body temperature, which improves performance [1] [2]. Your circadian rhythm also helps determine your core body temperature at any given point in time.
When you wake up, your core body temperature is at its lowest, and it increases throughout the day. Secondly, warm-ups serve as a way to increase muscle activation. Doing dynamic warm-ups exercises and drills which take you through a range of motion can improve performance and force output [4].
A proper and complete warm up helps strengthen this mindfulness. Lastly, foam rolling has been shown to reduce DOMS delayed onset muscle soreness [5]. Light foam rolling for minutes prior to lifting is recommended. Before beginning with your working weight for the first exercise for each bodypart, perform a basic loading pyramid where you pyramid up in weight with light sets, getting progressively heavier until you reach your working weight for that exercise.
While I encourage you to run the program as written and include all of the listed exercises if possible, in the case of risking an injury or flare up, it is always wise to avoid exercises that you think may cause pain and stick to exercises that you can perform safely.
The exercises below are the ones that most commonly require substitutions. When making a substitution, keep the sets, reps, rest times, etc. Below is one example of how you could set your training week up for each routine, but keep in mind that as long as you are getting all of your training sessions in by the end of the week, how you space out your rest days is much less important.
For this reason, this program focuses primarily on building a solid strength base with carefully selected, fundamental movements. The exercises included here should be mastered before moving on to other more complex or more niched variations. The program sticks mainly to compound movements exercises which use multiple joints and go through a large range of motion. Since compound movements move multiple joints, they generally stimulate more overall muscle mass than isolation movements single joint movements and as such optimize your time and effort investment in the gym.
Progressive overload is generally regarded as the most important programming principle for all strength and size related goals. Although they seem pretty simple on the surface, they require a complex interplay of trunk stability, shoulder tension, and muscle coordination to even get you up off the floor for a push—up.
The push—up should be mastered before attempting any other form of push. Still need help: Try the Serratus push—up first:. Once you are all over the horizontal push and creating tension in the shoulders and integrating trunk stability, repeat the process with the vertical push:.
As with the push the pull, we break it down into horizontal and vertical movements. Many people know about the pull-up, but few people incorporate the horizontal pull into their program. The horizontal pull shoulder is dialled in before the vertical pull to prevent shoulder issues.
As with the push patterns, the horizontal pull teaches shoulder stability and trunk integration. Probably the most straightforward exercise to see how this fits into our day to day life. The carry is the epitome of functional movements.
Think walking, running, sprinting — basically any sport you will play in your life. But like everything, we must learn to walk before we run. Walking and running is something we sometimes take for granted as humans.
Almost everyone does it daily, but it is a complex interaction of single-leg strength, stability, coordination, and integration. Double Suitcase Carry:. Single Arm Suitcase Carry:. Overhead Farmers Carry:. As with all these exercises, start with the basics and focus on form. Once confident, you can begin to add load and keep it varied, engaging, and prevent your body from overuse injuries.
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