David Jessee

You want to build muscle mass, and you want to build muscle fast. Those are great goals and can be achieved with a little planning and hard work. Even if you are a hard gainer, building muscle comes down to consistent action. I am not going to give you the one-size-fits-all super secret workout – no such thing – everyone is different and you need to find what works best for you.

There are a lot of tweaks that can be done to people’s programs that will make a huge difference in their gains. Often times it comes down to a slight change in grip or stance and you should always look to make these subtle adjustments, but I will give you one easily implementable tip that you can start right away.

Alright, the tip is simple. Write down your progress. That’s it? That’s a tip that is going to help you gain more muscle? Yes – if you use the information to make adjustments. It’s pretty simple, let’s say you benched 225 pounds last week and did 6 reps. How many reps or how much weight are you going to do this time? “As much as I can” you say and that is great, but what if you knew that you had to do seven to beat yourself (you last week)? Wouldn’t that give you an immediate goal? Sounds overly simple, but so many people fail to do it – instead opting for intuitive lifting. Would you like the construction company that built the office building you work in to use “intuitive” building, or start and stick to a plan – making adjustments when noted? You can do the same with your body.

What you need to focus on is reaction to stimulus. Yes, you need to scientifically study your own muscles reaction to the weight resistance training that you are engaging in. Don’t worry, it sounds complicated, but it’s not. So here’s the deal – put together in writing a weight lifting routine – anything that you are comfortable with. I am not giving you the routine as not everyone will be able to work out the same number of days or like the same exercises, but just put one together that is challenging and different from the one you are doing now.

Again, I am not going to give you a routine, but since I said that you can build muscle fast even if you are a hard gainer, I am going to give you some guidance – which you will need to track. Doesn’t matter what exercise you want to do this with, just make sure it is a compound exercise. Warm up adequately and then do a set where you can’t do any more than six reps and do them till failure. Next, increase your weight until you are doing a set where you can no more than 2-4 reps. Last, try and do a 1 rep max. Be safe and do it with a partner or a machine. Now the next part is key: keep this up for a month and track your progress. I can almost guarantee that you will progress, but if you don’t then this type of lifting isn’t optimal for your body – so try something else and track it.

Heavy progressive weight to failure will work very well for most – as long as you really are doing it to failure, but if for some reason it isn’t working for you – try a different methodology and track it. Make sure you give sufficient time – 4-6 weeks to make sure a program is working. If you track you progress, you will know – if you don’t, you are just guessing.

So you know you need to track progress for optimal gains – at least I hope you know that. It really isn’t hard to bring a notebook to the gym – and if you can’t do that – you are not serious about building muscle. Do it, challenge yourself. If you are worried about how you will look to other in the gym – grow a pair – do you really need their approval. Not to mention, you will make gains and pass up those people who simply train intuitively. For them, that is good enough, but if you want to be better than average, you need to set goals, track, and adjust as needed.

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