Let me be frank, if you aren’t concerned with muscle growth then you aren’t concerned with looking your best, and that’s a fact… so shame on you! It doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female, you MUST know how to put on the quality pounds (muscle) while shedding the unwanted pounds (fat) to have a body that’s a piece of art.

What I’m going to talk about today is a fool-proof 4 step system that will undoubtedly help you put some muscle on your frame, or put more muscle on a frame that has hit a plateau. In fact, these steps can almost be considered “laws” because its the ONLY real way I know of stimulating growth. Every person that I’ve ever known who managed to pack on some muscle has followed these 4 steps whether they were consciously aware of it or not.

[Before we dive in, today is the give away day! Since there were 12 comments on the give away post, I used a random number generator and it spit out the #10. So checking back, it looks like “Suggy” is the lucky individual that holds that position. Apparently he wanted the grips to help with his self pleasuring experience, so congrats dude… may the handgrips help you make sweet sweet love to yourself. Check for my email for further instructions.]

Alright, let’s get on with the steps.

Step 1: Stimulate

Muscles need a reason to grow, plain and simple. So what is the reason? Adaptation to stress. If your biceps are capable of handling 30lbs and you decide to workout with 25lbs dumbbells, then there is no reason for your body to stimulate bicep growth since the stimuli presented is something it can easily handle. Also, you’re wasting your fucking time. The only benefit to that type of workout is that you’ll be burning calories… but why would you insult your strength and undercut your training like that? To me, it makes no sense.

Everything about humans is revolved around the “path of least resistance”. If you can get an certain result with X amount of effort, then why would you bother increasing the amount of effort to 2X? It’s inefficient. This philosophy has kept our species alive for hundreds of thousands of years, so it’s not something we want to change outright.

The paradox here is that the path of least resistance to muscular growth requires a level of resistance that is greater than what you’re accustomed to (that statement is quite the brain fuck eh?). But this doesn’t mean you need to destroy yourself. A lot of people will read what I wrote and think I’m talking about going to failure… I’m not. Well I am, but only sorta.

See, going to failure is a aspect of training you can use, no bout. But it’s a tool, it should NOT be used all the time. A hammer won’t help you if you’re working with screws. ANY training technique will become useless over a period of time because your body, smart as it is, will adapt to it. That’s its job. Ronnie Coleman, the 8 time Mr.Olympia winner made the following statement when it came to training for muscular growth: “Stimulate, don’t annihilate”. Very true.

Step 2: Feed

Stimulating your muscles to grow is one thing, but if they have no resources to repair and rebuild then you’ve done more harm than good. It’s like bulldozing a house then telling the contractor to build a new house that’s bigger, better and stronger with the same demolished materials that lie on the floor. Sounds pretty fucking ridiculous, yet a shit load of people are victim to this metaphor when it comes to building lean and quality muscle. Such loonballs.

If you’re increasing the intensity of your workout every time you hit the gym (if not, you SHOULD be) then you need to increase your clean caloric intake as well. I mean, it only makes sense right? For men, 1g of protein per lbs of bodyweight is still a good baseline of what you should be eating, some of you should be eating even more. For women, you guys can eat about 0.65g per lbs without a problem.

The bad type of weight gain (fat) occurs when the amount and type of carbohydrates you eat trump your daily protein amount. You need to realize that protein is like the “last resort” fuel for your body, it’s only used when the body doesn’t have sufficient amount of fats and carbohydrates.

Typically, I believe that no one needs more than 50-70g of CLEAN carbohydrates per day. Rest should be all protein and good heart-healthy fats. But on days you workout… any type of high glycemic supplementation after an intense workout does NOT contribute to your daily 50-70g limit. This is because your glycogen stores are so depleted that taking in high glycemic foods along with protein is actually beneficial since the insulin spike will help shuttle all the protein right into your muscles. This is a very generalized statement but true nonetheless.

Step 3: Recover

We aren’t talking about muscle recovery, that comes later, we are talking about the recovery of your Central Nervous System (CNS). Before your beaten up muscles are allowed to repair themselves and grow bigger and stronger, your CNS needs to fully recover so it can help trigger that process. Again I’m not going into great detail here because it’s beyond the scope of this article to explain exactly how this happens. Just know that after a punishing workout, it takes about 24 hours (sometimes 36) for your CNS to recover, and it’s only AFTER this step that the true magic happens…

Step 4: Grow

Now were talking! All of your hard work and proper eating habits have come down to this final phase. Many people use the term “recovery” as a means of muscular growth. Well it’s not! Once your CNS recovers, your muscles will recover, but what does muscle recovery really lead to? Growth! So that’s why I’ve ordered my steps in this way. The really weird thing is that you don’t have to do jack-shit once you reach step 4. Just keep your eating habits up, take it easy and let your body do it’s thing. Read a book, watch some TV, go talk to people and viola! You’ll grow.

The only downside is that step4 is HEAVILY reliant on the first 3. You CANNOT and WILL NOT grow unless you stimulate your muscles, feed yourself and allow your CNS to recover. By now, this better be common sense to you.

The Start Of Something “big”

So now you know the exact steps to follow and should have some kind of game plan ready to implement. Just know that these steps are never-ending… it’s like a cycle that repeats itself over and over again, helping your grow bigger and/or stronger each time. Depending on your body’s ability and training experience, this 4 step process can take 1-2 weeks to complete. Now, OBVIOUSLY there is a point where you will reach your human genetic limitation and stop growing because one of these steps will likely end up being your weakest link.

But the fact is that 99% of you will not hit this limitation for a LOOONG time, if ever. So don’t stop pushing yourself and don’t stop beating the SHIT out of your previous workouts. You are working out to IMPROVE yourself, not keep yourself in the same fucking state, so make sure you don’t waste your time. As my favorite saying goes, “if you aren’t growing, you’re dying”.

- FitJerk

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