I love building muscle. It’s what I’m most passionate about. It’s what I think about when going to sleep and what I think about when I wake up.

Most experts will agree on the best muscle building exercises. I think it’s important to use the ones that you enjoy doing.

For example, deadlifts are an amazing muscle building exercise, but I hate doing them because they just are not fun.

So I don’t do them.

There is nothing wrong with that.

My advice is that instead of picking a great exercise and performing it half-ass, you should pick an exercise you like and perform it with 100% intensity.

That’s my philosophy.

I also believe that you should focus on just a few compound exercises and try to constantly improve on these by either increasing the weight and/or the reps.

My 5 Favorite Muscle Building Exercises

1 – Lat Pulldowns

Lat Pulldowns are a great back exercise. I recommend these for most people over pull ups because I feel that most people can create a better mind-muscle connection with lat pulldowns.

2 – Seated Cable Rows

Seated Cable Rows are another great back exercise. I prefer these over 1-arm dumbbell rows simply because I feel it more in my back when I perform the cable rows.

Again, it’s the mind-muscle connection that is critical for muscle growth.

3 – Weighted Pushups

As most of you know, I hate the barbell bench press. They destroy the shoulders and are more of a front deltoid exercise than they are a chest-building exercise.

Pushups are the most under-appreciated muscle-building exercise in existence.

Once you can bang out more than 20 push-ups then you should add weight.

4 – Dip Machine

The dip machine is great for the chest and triceps. I prefer these over bodyweight dips.

I feel like I have much more control and I like that I can manipulate the load.

5 – Goblet Squats

Squats are awesome. There are barbell back squats, barbell front squats, hack squats, and goblet squats.

I love goblet squats.

You can use a dumbbell or weighted vest or both.

A Perfect Split with the above exercises

Monday

1a) Lat Pulldowns  5 sets x 12-15 reps

1b) Weighted Pushups  5 sets x 12-15 reps

2)  Goblet Squats  2 sets x 15-20 reps

Tuesday – off

Wednesday

1a) Seated Cable Rows  5 sets x 8-12 reps

1b) Dip Machine  5 sets x 8-12 reps

2)  Goblet Squats  2 sets x 15-20 reps

Thursday – off

Friday

1) Goblet Squats  2 sets x 8-12 reps

2a) Lat Pulldowns  2 sets x 8-12 reps

2b) Weighted Pushups  2 sets x 8-12 reps

3a) Seated Cable Rows  2 sets x 8-12 reps

3b) Dip Machine  2 sets x 15-20 reps

Saturday & Sunday – off

If you follow the above split, keep records, and try to increase the weights consistently, you will make huge gains in muscle.

The post My 5 Favorite Muscle Building Exercises appeared first on Muscle-Build.

This is one that often baffles even the most-seasoned athlete – should I train if I’m sick?

Well, it depends. But our training and nutrition expert, John Berardi, put together a very handy infographic that gives us specific recommendations based on your symptoms and “day into” your illness.

Give it a look.

Should you exercise when sick? [Infographic]

The post Exercise When Sick? Yes or No? appeared first on Muscle-Build.

You should see the post right above. If you can’t read it, go follow Ken on Facebook and login.

The post Interesting Perspective on the History of Ironman Magazine appeared first on Muscle-Build.

Winter is my favorite time of year. Why?

Because it’s bulking season. You know – eat, lift, eat.

Guys love bulking season, but most make the same huge mistake (no pun intended).

What’s the mistake? They become fat.

In their attempts to gain muscle, they eat everything in sight which leads to excessive fat gain. You cannot force-feed muscles to grow. It does not work that way.

So, after the typical 6 months of bulking, they need to diet for 6 months to lose all that fat they gained. During those 6 months of dieting, they lose most of the muscle they gained–if not more.

Back to square one.

So, what’s the solution to building muscle without getting fat?

Well, I came up with 5 of them.

Implement one or all of them at once.

5 Ways to Gain Muscle Without Getting Fat

1 – High/Low caloric intake days

I love this strategy. It’s simple. It works.

The idea is to eat a high amount of calories on your weight training days and a low amount of calories on your non-weight training days.

Your body needs more calories for energy and muscle building when you train.

I would recommend consuming 500 calories over your maintenance on your high days and consuming your maintenance on your off days.

This strategy will help you keep the fat gain at bay.

2 – Get lean first prior to starting your bulk phase

Yea, yea, yea, I know you want to get big.

But, you gotta listen–the leaner you are, the more likely your body will add muscle versus fat.

Conversely, the fatter you are, the easier it is for your body to gain fat.

If you are a man, get under 10% body fat before you start bulking and never ever let yourself get above 20%.

If you are a woman, get under 20% body fat before you start bulking and never ever let yourself get above 30%.

3 – Cyclical Bulking

Let me know if this sounds familiar.

You bulk for 3-6 months, get fat, then cut for 3-6 months and you end up looking the same as you did when you originally started 6-12 months ago.

This is known as “traditional bulking.”

I don’t know about you, but the hardest part for me is psychologically having to cut for 3-6 months.

That sucks.

I had to do it when I competed in my bodybuilding contest.

It’s a long time to be miserable.

I’ve got a better idea–cyclical bulking.

Focus on building muscle for 4-8 weeks then follow that with a short cutting phase of 1-2 weeks.

Each bulking cycle will leave you with a little fat to burn off in those 1-2 cutting weeks.

Shorter cutting weeks leads to less muscle loss.

Plus it’s easier psychologically to only have to diet 1-2 weeks at a time versus 3-6 months.

4 – Consume the majority of your daily carbs around your weight training sessions.

You can stick to the traditional 3-6 month bulking phase if you want. Try consuming the majority of your carbs immediately after your weight training sessions.

Your body craves carbs post-workout. Carbs will be stored as glycogen which is a source of energy for your muscles. Your body will not store carbs as fat post-workout.

Carbs are beneficial post-workout. This is the only time I recommend consuming simple sugars as well.

Implementing this eating strategy will help you pack on muscle without getting fat.

5 – Perform your damn cardio

I fall victim to neglecting my cardio during bulking season. I mistakenly think that cardio will “burn up my muscle,” or something ridiculous like that.

Let’s say you burn about 700 calories a week performing cardio. That’s not a lot. Probably like 3 moderately intense 30 minute sessions. That adds up to about 3,500 calories a month or 1 pound.

That’s 1 pound of fat less that you do not have to diet off once you start your cutting phase.

So, if your bulking phase is 6 months, you will start your cutting phase with 6 pounds of less fat than you normally would have had you neglected your cardio sessions.

So, do your cardio when bulking.

Ok, so forget about traditional bulking. It’s dead. You need to start bulking smarter. Think about gaining muscle while minimizing fat gain.

You’ll thank me when summer rolls around and all the fat guys are sweatin’ bullets because they have to drop all that fat that accumulated during their dirty bulking phase.

You, on the other hand, will be able to coast to single-digit body fat.

The post Lean Bulking: 5 Ways to Gain Muscle Without Getting Fat appeared first on Muscle-Build.

Check it out – The Hardgainer Solution on Amazon’s Kindle is on sale right now for 99 cents. I don’t know how long the sale will last but this looks like a bargain while it lasts!

Topics covered:

• The background and history behind this program, including its roots in Scott’s training sessions with Bill Pearl in the 80s
• Explanations and introduction to the program’s methodology
• Guidelines for not just “what” to do when you workout, but HOW to workout effectively
• A complete breakdown of over 80 individual workouts (plus links to get formatted, printable versions of the workouts)
• How to “keep it alive” and stay fresh while staying consistent on the same program
• Guidelines and formulas for determining your nutritional needs
• A list of meal plans for different calorie levels
• The importance of UNDERtraining

See that last one? It’s the most important of all. Many hardgainers are high-strung, full of energy, and never know when to stop moving. They often are worriers, and you can find them tapping their toes even when “relaxing.”

If you are finding it difficult to add lean muscle mass, this is probably your biggest hurdle. You have to shift your entire mindset away from “doing more” to “doing less”. It’s hard. I know. I’ve been there myself and wrote my own book about it, The Hardgainer Manifesto.

The post The Hardgainer Solution appeared first on Muscle-Build.

I don’t know you, but I’m pretty sure that you started this whole weight lifting thing because you wanted to build big arms.

Am I right? Thought so.

And the great thing about building big arms is that there is always room for improvement. Your arms can always get bigger. And I’m here to help.

Look, a lot of things work for building big arms. All I’m trying to do is give you another option.

Possibly one that you’ve never tried before.

It’s called High Frequency Training or HFT.

Tell me if the following split looks familiar.

Typical split

• Monday – Back (10 sets)
• Tuesday – Chest (10 sets)
• Wednesday – off
• Thursday – Legs (10 sets)
• Friday – Arms (10 sets Biceps / 10 sets Triceps)
• Saturday & Sunday – off

Chances are you are following a split very similar to the one above.

Is there anything wrong with it?

Not at all.

However, when you want a muscle to grow faster, you want to stimulate it as often as possible without exceeding your ability to recover.

Stimulating a muscle 3 times a week will lead to more growth than just stimulating that muscle 1 time a week.

This is where HFT comes in.

Take a look at the following HFT split for big arms.

A Better Split for Building Bigger Arms Using HFT

• Monday – Back (10 sets) / Biceps (3 sets) / Triceps (3 sets)
• Tuesday – Legs (10 sets)
• Wednesday –  Chest (10 sets) / Biceps (3 sets) / Triceps (3 sets)
• Thursday – off
• Friday – Biceps (3 sets) / Triceps (3 sets)
• Saturday & Sunday – off

You will notice that you are working your biceps and triceps 3 times a week instead of just 1 time a week in the previous example.

You will also notice that the total volume for your arms is basically the same.

Although you are working your arms more often, you are not adding any volume. You are simply splitting up the total volume into more sessions.

This is key.

Your biceps and triceps are small muscles, therefore, they recover faster and you can train them more often.

This is why your biceps and triceps are perfect muscles to use for HFT.

Try an arm specialization program using HFT and let me know what it does for you. Add your feedback in the Comments.

The post Build Big Arms With HFT appeared first on Muscle-Build.

This is a pic of Phil Pfister and me at the Arnold back in March 2010. I’m not a small guy. Look at that dude! He’s massive. His hand totally enveloped mine.

Good times!

The post Phil Pfister and Me at the Arnold 2010 appeared first on Muscle-Build.

Hi all, I just wanted to let you know that the Muscle-Build.com website is ALIVE!

After a couple years of letting it go dormant, I’ve brought on a partner (to be introduced later) who is going to help me get the site going again and keep it fresh.

It was quite the task to move two sites to a new web host. I may tell that tale one day, but suffice it to say that Muscle-Build.com and The Official Muscle-Build.com Blog have been fused together. In fact, if you try hitting that second link, you should be redirected right back here to this new site.

No longer will you have to navigate 2 sites. They’re all in one.

The look and feel of this combined site is quite different from the two web sites it came from, too. We’re making things a lot more organized so your user experience will be significantly improved.

We’re going to go balls to the wall on this one, so get ready for some good bodybuilding stuff coming your way.

The post New Beginnings appeared first on Muscle-Build.

The post Quick Post: Featured in Total Mind and Body Fitness Blog Carnival 85 appeared first on Muscle-Build.

1. Train harder than you think you can
2. Train less frequently than you think you need
3. Eat more than you think you need
4. Sleep more than you think you need
5. Train with fewer exercises than you think you need

See that pattern here? If you’re currently in a rut or aren’t making the kind of progress you want,

C-H-A-N-G-E

This quote has been attributed to a few people, but no matter who said it, it still rings true: The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again, expecting a different result.

It’s true. Most of us don’t train heavy enough. We don’t push ourselves. We think we can make up these deficiencies by training more often. Training heavy and training frequently are TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT things!

If we are trying to build muscle mass, we try to “eat more.” But it’s almost never enough! If you consume 2500 calories right now, and you’re not gaining weight, you probably won’t gain any mass at all without upping your calories by at least 1000. Yeah, one thousand.

Why? Because our bodies are terribly resistant to change!

We also live on too little sleep. Yes, I fall prey to this all the time! I certainly burn the candle at both ends (but I’m better today than I was at half my age – and I always wondered why I couldn’t gain muscle…), raising two very young children, working a “Joe Job,” building my internet businesses, training and consulting with people, writing books, etc. Oh, yeah, the hobbies, too! My gosh, 24 hours is not enough time!!!

Oh, another thing. Why do we have 17 different exercises for the biceps but only 7 for the pecs (count them: Bench press, inclines, declines, flyes, pec-deck, crossover, dips), when you really only need 2 (incline bench, dip – one builds the upper, the other the mid and lower)?

We stress ourselves out by making our workouts longer than they need be (anything over 45 minutes and you’re either a ‘roided out bodbuilder or professional athlete – OR you’re training for failure), more frequent than they ought to be, less strenuous than they have to be, and we eat crap (but not enough good stuff), and then, THEN, at the end of the day, we have nothing to show for it and only 5 hours of sleep time.

It’s no wonder progress is so hard to attain.

Simply. Say it out loud.

S-I-M-P-L-I-F-Y

1. Train intensely
2. Train less frequently
3. Eat more quality food
4. Sleep more (if you need an alarm clock to wake your ass up, you’re not sleeping enough)
5. Pare down the number of exercises you do

It’s really that simple. KISS still works. You gotta stimulate the muscle fibers; you cannot overtrain them. Then you gotta feed them, repair them, and make them bigger through high-quality food. Finally, you gotta rest (that really means sleep). In future posts, I’ll cover these topics in more depth. Now, get to the gym and train hard but simple. Eat before, during, and after your workout. And for goshsakes, get 8 hours of sound, restful sleep tonight. (I think all the above was a pep talk for me!)

The post 5 Steps to a Bigger, Leaner, More Muscular You appeared first on Muscle-Build.