Weight lifting for weight gain

When you start training with weights for the first time the best part is that you will pick up good quality weight quickly. When we talk about good quality weight we are obviously talking about muscle otherwise known as your lean body weight.

Picking up muscle is what happens when the muscle gets stressed and science is split into two schools of thought. The one believes that the muscle actually breaks and duplicates itself in order to become stronger and the other is that the muscle expands in order to hold more blood i.e. oxygen and nutrients.

Whatever the truth is we know, because science has proven it, that the only way to pick up muscle is by progressive resistance. This means that the muscle will get bigger because you are stressing it on a regular basis. Regular does not mean once a week, it means a minimum of three times a week.

Over the years competitive bodybuilders have proved that the best way to increase the muscle that you put on is to increase the intensity of your workouts. This means a maximum rest of 90 seconds between sets and always looking for failure and ways to go beyond failure.

Effective routines have shown themselves to be routines that split the body up into different muscle groups. For example to do all your pushing movements on one day and then the pulling movements on the next day. One could do legs and calves on the third day and then a day's rest.

But there are many variations of this and the best advice that you will get is probably going to come from someone who can actually see you and talk to you about your gains to date. There are forums online that you can get good advice on weight training routines that have worked for others.

Sets and reps will be the bottom line to indicate whether you are going to pick up muscle quickly or not. It is best to stick to reps of 8 or 10 if you have been training for less than a couple of years. But as you get stronger and you get more muscle you want to start training towards failure and beyond failure.

This usually means adding on a weight that you can only lift (correctly) a maximum of 10 times. Then adding more weight and lifting the weight (correctly) 8 times. Most bodybuilders believe that anything less than lifting a weight three times will make you stronger but not stress the muscle enough to get muscle growth.

For more weight gain information go to Gain Weight Now