Are you having difficulty gaining the muscle mass you want? Well, you are not alone. There are millions of people like you who train regularly yet never really make the sort of progress they'd like. But there's a simple reason for this - they are not training in the most effective manner. But if you'd like to do something about this and start making real progress, the best way to gain muscle mass is to do the following...
Lift Heavy Weights
If you use lighter weights for sets of 12 reps or more, you won't be doing much to stimulate muscle growth if you are naturally skinny. However if you train below 5 reps, whilst this might be great for building strength, it won't do much to help you grow either.
So if you really want to build big, powerful, dense muscle in the shortest possible time you should train in the 5 - 8 rep range most of the time. This will build size mostly due to myofibrillar hypertrophy; that is growth of the muscle fibres themselves. And it has the added advantage that it will build a good amount of strength too.
You also need to focus most of your efforts on the big compound exercises too. Doing leg extensions, tricep kickbacks and lateral raises will not do much to put muscle on you. Instead you need to do plenty of squats, bench presses, deadlifts, bent-over rows, overhead presses, power cleans, chin-ups and parallel bar dips. These work the most total muscle mass when you perform them, and they also produce the best hormonal response, so doing them will build muscle faster than anything else!
Train At The Correct Frequency and Volume
If you are a beginner or a hardgainer, the best way to gain muscle mass for you is not to do some form of body part split routine. Instead you should do a brief full body workout three times per week. Or if you are a bit more advanced you could do a two way split routine, alternating say upper body and lower body over three or four weekly sessions. Most people will still do better with three sessions per week, but if you recover well you may find you gain even better with four.
It's also important not to do too many sets. Three or four sets of 5 - 8 reps is plenty, and doing more will only hinder your ability to recover. But do a couple of work-up sets first to prepare your body for the heavier sets.
Keep Adding Weight To The Bar
This is known as the principle of progressive overload. You need to keep getting stronger on all your lifts, as the stronger you get the bigger you will be able to get. So ensure you keep adding weight to the bar as often as you can. If you are a beginner you should be able to increase the weight you are using on most lifts every workout, but your gains will soon slow down and you'll find you can do this less often. But keep doing it as often as possible.
To gain muscle mass you need to train hard, but don't go to the point of failing to complete a rep. If you train to failure, or do those really slow grinding 'death reps' too often you will just put your central nervous system into shock, and if you burn out your CNS you could easily stop your gains dead.
So the best plan is to start with a weight that you could get 7 or 8 reps with, but just do three sets of 5 reps. Gradually increase this until you can do three sets of 8, and then increase the weight and drop back to three sets of 5. Your level of effort should be cycled though, so that when you start off you will stop your sets with a couple of reps still left in you. But as you progress you will push harder until you get to the point where you could not do another rep. But you should never fail whilst doing a rep if you want to get bigger and stronger.
These then are the most important factors you need to know to devise a workout that will allow you to train in the best way to gain muscle mass. Follow these recommendations and you'll be guaranteed to make the progress you desire.
David Welburn is a biomedical scientist who has been involved in health and fitness his entire life. You can find out more about the best way to gain muscle as well as other aspects of natural health and fitness at http://www.thenaturalhealthservice.net
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