5 Muscle Building Rules

Muscle building does not happen by random chance. It takes education, dedication and persistence.

To get that lean and muscular body that you want, follow these five muscle building rules for better results.

1. Focus On The Big Lifts
Stop wasting your time on exercises that don't produce rapid results. Concentrate on the basics. The best muscle building exercises are squats, barbell bench presses, rows and deadlifts.

These four exercises should be the foundation for your whole exercise program. Most people do pec deck, dumbbell kickback's and curls - and then wonder why they don't get any results! If you're not doing at least two of these four muscle building exercises each workout, you might as well not go to the gym.

2. Get Plenty Of Rest
You must rest to gain muscle - don't fight your body. Get at least 8-9 hours of quality sleep each night. Quality sleep means getting to bed before 11:00 PM.

If you're burning the candle at both ends, and are up till all hours of the night your body never gets a chance to repair itself for your next muscle building assault at the gym.

3. Cut Down Your Cardio Workouts
Don't make the mistake of trying to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. Do one or the other. Performing intense cardio daily will greatly hamper your muscle building efforts.

Limit your cardio to non weight training days, no more than 2x week, and keep the sessions brief. Never - I repeat NEVER do cardio before you weight train!

It's OK to do a cardio warm up for 5-10 minutes at a very low intensity - but you should conserve your energy for weight training.

4. Change Your Workout Routine Often
You're body is very efficient at adapting to change. After as few as six weeks, your muscle building efforts may come grinding to a halt.

When this happens you need to change your workout - and expose your body to a new muscle building program. Changing your workout regularly also helps eliminate boredom.

Try rearranging the exercise order, try new exercises or change the number of sets and reps for each exercise.

5. Learn To Perform Each Exercise Correctly
Before you lift even one weight, you'd better know what you are doing. Learning the correct form for each exercise is crucial. You'll increase your muscle building results, and greatly reduce your chance for injury.