Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Exercise for mass building- how frequently, how many reps, rest between sets and more...

First let’s talk about food: Three types of Macro Nutrition’s:
1. Protein
2. Carbs (Slow carbs, Fast Carbs)
3. Fat (Saturated Fat & Avoid Trans Fats)

Your body can take energy from any of the three. Some Carbs are slow digesting. For example- all whole grain items, sweet potatoes. Fast digesting Carbs are white potatoes, white bread. Slow digesting are not stored as fat.

During a mass-building phase, strive to take in a minimum of 2 g and up to about 3 g of carbohydrates per pound of body weight per day. During cutting phases, reduce total carbohydrate consumption to 1 g per pound of body weight.

Some common question that most of us have when working out regularly.

1) Count Calories?
When breaking down a bodybuilding diet, macro nutrients are often split into percentages. For instance, an off season dietary recommendation might be to get 50% of calories from carbs, 30% from protein and 20% from fats. To do this accurately, you have to have this valuable information: every gram of carbs has approximately four calories, every gram of protein has four calories and every gram of fat has nine calories. This calorie differential explains why bodybuilders, even those who are not on a low-fat diet, need to pay attention to fat calories, as well as to carbs and protein. For gaining mass, shoot for at least 20 calories per pound of body weight when getting lean, cut calories to 15 or less per pound of bodyweight.

2) How frequent you should exercise?
Allow at least 72 hours between workouts for most body parts (calves and abs, excepted). So if you train triceps on Monday, you can hit them again on Thursday.
Cardio can rob your recuperative reserves. Avoid leg-intensive cardio the day prior to leg day.


3) How long should you rest?
 Well it depends: If the goal is to slash the fat then your rest should be minimum no more than 90 seconds.
If you want to build mass- rest between 2 to 4 minutes. If you are doing a compound exercise like squat or dead lift or chest, rest at least 2 minutes.

4) How many reps to do?
Heavy Exercise- 5-8 reps
Mid compound- 7-10 reps
Isolation: leg extension- 10-15 or higher. Moderate wight and higher repetition
First do the compound lift and then move to isolation workout.
Abs and Calves are exception to these.

5) How much should I lift?
Heavy weight is not important. What is important is that you are firing the targeted muscle or not. I have seen many folks in the gym lifting very heavy but they do not gain the size, because they are using swing to lift the weight. To gain the muscle size, you need to break the muscle fiber to trigger the growth. And to break the muscle fiber you need to lift as much as you can control during negative motion (for example while coming down). One way to know the weight is too heavy or not is to count 1,2,3 while coming and make sure the weight is in proper control