Muscle building - strength training for muscle growth

introduction

Muscle building is a physical process that can be traced back to stress on the muscles. Excessive exertion of the muscles tells the body that the available muscles were not sufficient for this task and that the muscles must therefore grow in order to be better prepared for this exertion during the next exercise. Muscle building is based on this simple principle. While our ancestors needed muscle building as a survival advantage, nowadays a muscular body is considered an ideal of beauty and provides a certain degree of stabilization of the trunk and joints.

What is the best way to build muscle?

In short, strengthening and building your muscles is not a great art and works to a certain extent through any type of training. However, there are factors that significantly favor muscle building.
To name the main components in this interaction: type of training, training intensity, recovery period, nutrition.
In the following, the corresponding components for muscle building training will be considered:

• Exercise type: Weight training is the type of exercise that promises the greatest muscle growth. Muscle can also be built up to a certain extent with your own body weight. In order to get beyond this, however, additional weights must be used.
• Training intensity: This should be adapted to the physical capabilities of the person exercising. A different training intensity is recommended for a beginner than for an advanced user. While at the beginning of the muscle building the main focus should be placed on the correct execution of the exercise, since the strength and muscle increase almost automatically comes, with the more advanced you need a more precise plan of the muscle building training. Here the muscle building is mainly achieved by the fact that the trainee accommodates a variance in his training in order to keep sending the muscle new growth impulses.
• Recovery period: Even if it should be difficult for beginners in particular to allow the muscle a regeneration break, experienced athletes know how important this time is. Because the muscle can only grow when it is not used. Provided, of course, that you have stimulated him accordingly through training. In addition, it is important not to let the physical exhaustion become too great, otherwise performance will decrease. Therefore, shortly before this point of performance decline, athletes take a relaxation phase in which they only train with light weights to allow the muscles to regenerate. In addition, the protein synthesis within the muscle is increased up to three days after a training load, so that training the same muscle every four days would be sufficient to achieve muscle building.
• Diet: This point should not be neglected, as the food ingested is the basic material for the muscle components. Since the muscle consists of proteins and these in turn consist of amino acids, the body must be provided with a sufficient amount of proteins in order to enlarge the muscle. Another cornerstone of nutrition is daily calorie intake. While it is important to consume enough calories to meet the body's needs so that existing muscles are not broken down, consuming too much calories means that excess energy is stored in the form of body fat.
  

How often do I have to exercise to gain muscle?

In principle, it would be enough to train every muscle in the body once a week to gain muscle. This is a practice that is followed, for example, by some competitive bodybuilders. In this case, however, this also means that each muscle group, when it is trained, is used with 5 to 6 different exercises.
Hobby athletes or recreational athletes are usually limited in their time frame and must also be able to cope with everyday stress. In order to calculate an ideal training frequency for maximum muscle growth, the protein synthesis of the muscle - the muscle growth at the molecular level - must be considered.This is greatest in the 24 hours after exposure, but is also increased on the second and third days afterwards.
So you could say that it is enough to train each muscle group every 4 days to get optimal muscle gain without wasting valuable time.
However, there are also people who train all muscle groups in their body every day. Even if the regeneration time, which is important for building muscles, is not observed in this case, the muscles are recovered by training the muscles with another exercise.

How can I accelerate muscle growth?

The regeneration times of the muscles are important for rapid muscle building. Even if it may sound a bit contradicting at first, the muscle grows after the exercise in the time in which it is not used. Sufficient sleep and little stress can be absolutely helpful in this regard for rapid muscle building.
In addition, it is important to provide the body with all the necessary micronutrients. Vitamins are an important factor in ensuring that metabolic processes can take place in our body. If they are neglected, muscle growth can be slowed down. In addition, the correct distribution of macronutrients is also a factor that should not be neglected. The muscles need sufficient energy reserves to be able to be fully used. A low-carbohydrate diet is therefore an obstacle to maximum muscle building.
Of course, muscle building can still be accelerated with the help of anabolic steroids. However, this should be discouraged as the potential long-term effects are enormous and the use of these substances is illegal.

What to think of supplements for building muscle - does it work?

Dietary supplements - so-called supplements - have irretrievably established themselves in the fitness market and rightly so. Even though the necessity of certain preparations can be disputed, there are also a large number of products whose effects cannot be denied.
Protein shakes, for example, are used by most athletes to meet their daily protein needs. In addition, they offer an excellent alternative to protein from meat for vegetarian and vegan athletes. Since proteins provide the basic building block for muscle building - namely the amino acids - an adequate protein intake is essential. As a rough guideline, about 1-1.5g of protein per kilogram of body weight can be assumed. Of course, it must be said that diet with supplements is not a substitute for a full meal and should normally only serve as a supplement. Most supplements live up to their promises, strictly limited to benefits.

Whether it is worthwhile for each individual cannot be answered in general, but must be decided by everyone. As already mentioned, however, not all supplements show such clear differences between taking and not taking them, so that not every available dietary supplement has to be used.

Read more on this topic at: Supplements for building muscle

What to think of protein?

As mentioned above, protein, or to be more precise, amino acids, is the component of our muscles. Ingested protein is broken down into its constituent parts - the amino acids - in the intestine. Only these can then be absorbed into the body and transported to the muscles via the blood. Here the amino acids are absorbed into the individual muscle cells and only then reassembled into proteins or proteins.
From this version it is actually already evident that building muscle cannot work without amino acids. However, the question arises: How much protein do people need a day? According to the Federal Ministry of Health, 15% of our daily calorie intake should come from protein. This can be enough for building muscle. With an intake of one to one and a half grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, muscle building should work better. However, claims of three grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day are exaggerated and, according to current knowledge, do not make any significant difference to the one and a half grams mentioned.
In addition, the proteins can be of animal or vegetable origin. So far, animal protein has been considered to be of higher quality because it is more similar to human. The extent to which this aspect affects muscle building has not yet been adequately researched.

Read more on this topic at: Muscle building and proteins or protein powder for muscle building

Anabolic steroids

Anabolic steroids actually have their origins in medicine and are mainly used here to induce puberty in boys and to increase growth. Due to their mode of action, however, they are also wonderfully suitable for increasing muscle growth. Steroids pass through the cell membrane of the muscle cells and stimulate protein synthesis here. Steroids would even be able to let the muscles grow without further training. However, this effect can be increased significantly through training. However, the use of steroidal anabolic steroids should be discouraged under all circumstances. They increase the risk of a heart or cerebral infarction by massively promoting the artherosclerosis of the blood vessels.
If the testosterone levels in the blood are constantly increased, the body also ensures that the body's own testosterone production is reduced. The corresponding cells in the testicles shrink and in the worst case can end up in the man's impotence. Men also tend to develop a female breast as a result of testosterone abuse, whereas women can have increased hair on the face.
From a medical point of view, anabolic steroid abuse can only be discouraged in order to avoid the long-term consequences.

Read more about the topics here:

• doping
• Doping in sport
• Muscle building and anabolic steroids

What other muscle building products are there?

As already mentioned, protein is the basic material of human muscles. However, since these proteins first have to be broken down into amino acids in the body, there are preparations that bypass this first step by consisting of amino acids. These “protein sources” can then be absorbed more quickly. So-called BCAAs are usually offered in this segment. BCAA stands for branched chain aminoacid, in English: branched-chain amino acids. These are essential for the human body and make up a large part of the composition of the human muscles.

Read more on this topic at: BCAA to build muscle

But protein sources that seem unusual at first glance are already available to buy. For example, you can buy hemp or pea protein.
So-called boosters are another point. These are often caffeine-based drinks that are supposed to lead to better concentration and higher performance during training by providing the muscles with better blood and thus also with oxygen. As a rule, larger weights should be able to be moved, which in turn means greater stress and thus also growth stimulus for the muscle.

How do I have to eat for ideal muscle building?

The most important aspect of a diet that aims to build muscle is the "calorie excess". In concrete terms, this meant that the body had to get more calories than it burned. This is the only way the body can prepare for bad times. This mechanism is used because the body stores the excess energy in the form of fat, but also in the form of muscle proteins if the training stimulus is strong enough. If you do not achieve this excess of calories, but actually consume fewer calories than you actually need, our body uses the energy reserves it has built up to get the energy it needs. Now, however, there is an evolutionary disadvantage: our body first breaks down muscle protein before it begins to break down fat as well. This can only be counteracted by challenging the muscles through vigorous training and thus signaling to the body that the muscle proteins are still needed.
The second important point in nutrition is the so-called macronutrient distribution. Every macronutrient (fats, carbohydrates, proteins and alcohol) is used by the body to provide energy and can therefore be converted into a calorie equivalent. For example, one gram of carbohydrates 4.1 kcal. This is how the calorie content of our food is composed.

Read more on this topic at: Muscle building and nutrition

Sufficient calories (see above) on the one hand, but also enough proteins, fats and carbohydrates on the other, are important for building muscle.
Proteins form the basis of our muscles. Muscles cannot be built without proteins. Carbohydrates are the fastest form of energy supply for the muscles. This guarantees that the muscle has enough reserves available to it during exercise. Carbohydrates are temporarily stored in the form of what is known as glycogen, which the muscle can then access. Fats, in turn, form an important basis for many human hormones and a proportion of the joint fluid.
A general nutrition plan is therefore not simply possible, since every person has a different calorie consumption, may have food intolerances or, for example, follows a vegan diet.
At: https://www.foodspring.de/ernaehrungsplan-muskelaufbau
However, you will find a nutrition plan creator that you can get along with very well at the beginning.

Read more on the topic: Muscle building nutrition plan

What does muscle building work like?

Muscle building training should differ depending on the athlete's level of training. This is at least the currently prevailing opinion of the professional world, since the muscle build-up of a beginner differs significantly from that of a “professional”. What they all have in common, however, is the achievement of a progression in training - that is, getting stronger or moving more weight. This serves on the one hand as an adapted stronger stimulus to make the muscles grow and on the other hand as an indirect success control. Because only those who have built more muscles can move more weight, provided the other parameters have not changed.
Training with primarily heavy weights and a correspondingly low number of repetitions is typical of muscle building training. The various muscle groups are usually stressed in several sets during training, between which a break is inserted so that the muscle can regenerate and then be stressed again with the highest possible stress.
While a 5x5 system is recommended for beginners, a system in which 5 sets of 5 repetitions each are performed for each exercise, it is recommended for more experienced athletes to incorporate a certain amount of variance into the training in order to keep sending the muscle new stress stimuli to stimulate him to grow.
During training, often only part of the muscles are trained per training day. For example, some muscles of the upper body can be trained on one day and those of the lower body the following day. Another possible division is, for example, the division: abdominal, chest, back, arms, shoulder, leg muscles. These can then be trained together at will.
Before any muscle training, however, it is crucial to warm up the muscles to be used in order to prevent injuries and increase the performance of the muscles.

What is the stress stimulus?

As already described above, a strong load on the muscles is necessary in order to achieve an adaptation reaction within the muscles. The harder the training of the muscles, the stronger the resulting stress stimulus.
There are 3 basic types of stress stimulus:

• The subliminal stress stimulus. This remains below the threshold from which muscle growth occurs.
• The supra-threshold stress stimulus. Depending on how strong the over-threshold the stimulus is, the muscles are preserved or the muscles grow.
• The over-threshold, too strong stimulus. This results in damage to the muscle or the nerve plexus connected to the muscle.

What is the ideal number of repetitions?

According to opinions, this depends on the size of the muscle. Many people tend to train smaller muscles with lighter weights and more repetitions. For example with the shoulder muscles. With larger muscles such as the thigh muscles, you can work with larger weights and then lower repetitions.
As a rough rule of thumb, however, keep in mind that the rep range should be between four and 14 repetitions. Of course, you can also build muscle outside of this rep range. However, it appears to be most effective within this limit.

What exercises can I do to build muscle at home?

A variety of muscle building exercises can also be performed at home. Be it with or without devices, if available.
If you enter the search term “home workout” on YouTube, you will be flooded with an almost unmanageable amount of videos.
To briefly highlight the advantage of the fitness studio at this point: With the help of machines, muscles can be isolated and thus specifically trained and additional weights are available here, especially for large muscle groups, which are essential from a certain point in muscle building in order to make further progress.
This is why exercises for smaller muscle groups are ideal for at home.
For example, push-ups or dips can be performed without any aids. If the exercises are to be made more difficult, the feet can be raised or the "extension and return movements" can be slowed down in order to keep the muscles under tension for longer. Exercises for the stomach such as classic sit-ups, leg raises and the like can also be performed at home without aids. If the trainee has light aids such as a door bar or light dumbbells available, pull-ups, exercises for the shoulder muscles, holding exercises for the abdominal muscles or the like can also be performed.

Some exercises are explained below:

• One exercise for the back extensor is sliding into the upturned armrest. Abdominal and gluteal muscles are also trained here. The starting position is sitting on the floor with your legs straight. The heels are placed on a towel or a slippery rag. The hands are placed right next to the hips. Now you should pay attention to your body tension and slowly lift your hips. As a result, you slowly slip into the upturned armrest. It is now important to keep the tension in the arms, trunk and legs and to keep the body stretched. The position should then be held briefly before returning to the starting position. During the entire execution, the head should always remain in line with the spine.
• The forearm support with hip rotation is another exercise that strengthens the back and builds up muscles. Place yourself in the forearm support so that your body does not sag and forms a line parallel to the floor. Now the hips are rotated alternately to the right and left without touching the ground.
• The so-called cobra owes its name to the appearance of the exercise for training the back muscles. The starting position is lying on your stomach on the floor, your legs are straight and your arms are next to your body. Now the head and shoulders are raised as high as possible and the arms are lifted off the floor to the sides of the body. This position can now be held for a few seconds. Alternatively, you can stretch your arms in front of your body in the air and make slight up and down movements. Moving the arms to the side is also a variant. If you want to increase the level of difficulty, you can also lift your legs to increase body tension and the intensity for your back.
• The pelvic tilt is an exercise to build up the back muscles in which you lie on your back on the floor with your arms crossed under your head. The feet are placed on the floor so that the legs are bent. From this position, stretch your pelvis upwards so that your body forms a line from your shoulders to your knees.This position is then held for a few seconds before the pelvis sinks back to the floor. Each athlete can individually determine the duration of the holding position. As the training progresses, the holding time increases due to the increased strength of the back muscles.

Read more on the topic: Weight training at home.

Muscle building without equipment

Special fitness programs such as Freeletics are aimed at building muscle without any equipment. As already mentioned in one of the above articles, muscle building is only possible to a certain extent. In order to achieve the greatest possible stress stimulus, the number of repetitions of the exercises is significantly increased.
In principle, this already describes the important aspects that must be observed for effective muscle building without equipment. The number of repetitions of 14 repetitions refers to training on machines or with additional weights. When training without equipment or additional weights, only the execution speed and the number of repetitions as well as the break between sets can be used as adjusting screws to increase the stress stimulus. In other words, people often work with breaks that are too short for the muscles to recover sufficiently.
The "simple" exercises such as push-ups, squats, pull-ups, sit-ups, etc. are performed with the highest possible number of repetitions and only short breaks.

Read more on this topic at: Building Muscle - Effective Exercises

How useful is EMS for building muscle?

EMS, which stands for electromyostimulation, is actually a physiotherapy procedure. Here it is used to counteract muscle wasting during long periods of lying down or periods of immobility. Training with EMS works with low-voltage electrical surges, which are also able to stimulate the so-called deep muscles, which supposedly cannot be achieved in this form with normal strength training.
EMS definitely leads to muscle building, it has been scientifically proven. How big the muscles can become is questionable. It is therefore used in weight training as a supplementary or supportive measure and not on its own. Even if full-body training is possible with the help of EMS, it is often used to strengthen the core muscles and not so much, for example, to build up the shoulder or arm muscles. In addition, the thought rife in many minds that this is not the “right training” and that one is tricking the body without actually doing anything for it. However, this is not the case. With EMS, the normal static muscle contraction is additionally stimulated by the low current flow, so that this workout is also extremely sweaty.

Read more on this topic at: EMS training

What are the risks in building muscle?

In addition to the success and profit from muscle building or strength training, there are some dangers that will be discussed below:
Exercising too much for too long a period can cause athletes to overtrain. This happens when the recovery is not enough for the high exercise load. The overtraining manifests itself in a performance kink in the athlete and can only be remedied by a sufficiently long training break.
Joint and posture damage can also occur. In this point, beginners are particularly at risk. Incorrect exercise can quickly lead to poor posture. This in turn leads to joint problems. It is therefore advisable to either film or be observed during training in order to check your own posture.
Muscle fiber tears can occur if the point loads are too strong. In the worst case, even tearing off entire muscle strands. It is therefore extremely important to know your own load limit and not to exceed it unnecessarily.
Another aspect that is more likely to be found in more experienced athletes is impaired self-perception. The athletes tend to perceive themselves differently from the rest of the world. Competitive athletes in particular can have very bizarre views of their own bodies when preparing for a competition. The diet associated with a bodybuilding competition also carries the risk of developing an eating disorder.

Important differences that should be considered when building muscle between women and men

The biggest difference in terms of muscle building is certainly the gender-specific hormone situation. Women have much lower testosterone levels than men. However, this does not mean that women should resort to testosterone supplements in order to achieve an equivalent muscle gain. Women, for their part, have a different growth hormone that is more pronounced in them than in men.
The overall strength of both sexes is also different. According to studies, women are able to achieve around two thirds of the maximum strength of a man. In order to achieve muscle growth, however, it applies to both sexes that a sufficiently large stress stimulus must be present. There are no advantages for either sex here.
Another important difference is a different diet. Compared to men, women should eat more fat than men and save more on carbohydrates. The protein requirement based on body weight can, however, be kept the same for both sexes.
Women should also be aware that it is much more difficult for them to reduce their body fat percentage so much that the muscles become visible. Physiologically, women are endowed with a significantly higher percentage of fat. This also means that women can never achieve a fat-free mass index (FFMI) as high as men.
However, women have better regenerative capacities than men. So you are able to complete a higher training volume than men.

Building muscle for women

The focus of muscle building training for women is also on building muscle mass and increasing strength. Surprisingly, muscle building training for women is not that different from that for men. Some variables need to be changed in order to achieve the training goals. Many women stay away from classic muscle building training for fear of becoming "muscle mountains". This is the absolutely wrong approach. Fat burning is most effective when cardio training (cardiovascular training) is combined with muscle building training and a healthy diet.

The female fear of building too much muscle through strength exercises is unfounded, since the female body has only 10-20 percent of the testosterone available compared to the male. Therefore, women have a biological barrier that prevents excessive muscle building in the first place.

For muscle building training for women, as with men, there are some important rules that must be followed. The exercises must be done cleanly and with correct posture. A lower number of repetitions (8-12) is recommended for women than for men. Women shouldn't shy away from heavy weights. The weight should be chosen so that the 10th repetition can just about be done on your own. In women this is around 40-60 percent of maximum strength. This degree of stress leads to a complex development of strength. Higher weights lead to more voluminous muscles. Women should also fall back on a sophisticated training plan on which all important muscle groups are trained to the same extent in order to prevent imbalances. When designing a training plan for women, it should also be taken into account that women mainly have their muscles in their legs, while men also have their arms. Muscle building training usually improves muscle strength and shape. The female body looks tighter and more toned overall.

Read more on this topic at: Building muscle for women

How can I ideally build muscle and lose fat at the same time?

This is considered the high art in weight training or bodybuilding and is therefore difficult to combine with each other. Rather, most athletes today rely on a downstream approach of muscle building and fat loss because it is easier to do. The combination of fat loss and muscle building is a phenomenon that can mainly be observed among beginners in weight training. Here, through the intensive start of training, muscles are built almost independently of the food supplied. So, for example, muscles could be built up in a calorie deficit, while the body at the same time relies on the fat reserves for energy supply.
As the training continues, this direct combination becomes more and more difficult, since these two processes are two completely opposite metabolic processes. While building muscle is an anabolic process, losing fat is a catabolic process. This means that completely different hormones influence the metabolism during this time.
With the help of diet, there is a bit of a trick in this regard, so some fitness forums consider it possible to combine both processes.
However, what is known as lean bulk promises greater success here. A muscle building phase in which you are only in a slight excess of calories, so that the body fat percentage does not increase too much. Short phases of the calorie deficit are built in at certain time intervals, in which the body burns the accumulated fat to provide energy.

A fit back has many advantages when it comes to losing weight. Since the muscles of the back make up a large part of our entire musculature, the back also plays an important role in terms of energy requirements and fat burning. If the back muscles are built up and trained, they need a lot of energy to be able to work. This energy can be obtained from superfluous fat cells. In order to achieve this, it is important to do good back training, but also to ensure that you have a balanced diet. The calorie intake should not exceed the consumption if you want to lose weight with back training.

You might also be interested in:

• Fat loss weight training
• Fat burning
• Burning fat through weight training

Building muscle as a vegan

What used to be considered impossible is no longer a problem these days. On the one hand, there are plenty of plant-based protein sources such as beans, lentils, soy and many more, and on the other hand, there is a large market for vegan dietary supplements that can help meet protein needs.
One aspect that is mentioned again and again, however, is the "value" of the protein. Since animal protein is more similar to human in its composition than vegetable protein, it is considered to be more valuable. The extent to which this affects muscle growth could not be shown in its entirety.
However, deficiency symptoms can occur after a certain time with an exclusively plant-based diet, as we also absorb some vitamins through meat consumption. Meat, for example, is the main source of vitamins B6 and B12. These vitamins should be supplemented with a vegan diet, otherwise anemia can occur after a certain period of time, which would mean a drop in performance during training, as the muscles are no longer sufficient could be supplied with oxygen.

Muscle building by region:

Overview of different exercises:

• Arm muscle training
• Abs workout
• Leg muscle training
• Chest muscle training
• Back training
• Shoulder muscle training
• Neck muscle training

• Training with the Thera Band ®
• Training plan

Muscle building in the legs / thighs

Muscle building in the legs can either be done with a machine or with the help of free weights.
Four muscle groups can be distinguished on the legs that can be trained. On the one hand, the anterior thigh muscles and the posterior thigh muscles. The calf muscles and the so-called adductors. These are located on the inside of the thigh.
Since the leg muscles are relatively large muscles, they are able to move relatively large weights.

• The front thigh muscles can be trained by doing squats as a free exercise or using a leg extension machine or leg press. The leg extension machine has the advantage that it trains the muscle in a very isolated manner.
• The hamstring can be trained with the Romanian deadlift or leg extension machine. In this case, too, the machine offers the advantage that the muscle can again be trained relatively isolated.
• The calf muscle culture can be trained by so-called calf presses. This can either be machine-guided or performed as a free exercise.
• The muscles of the adductor group can be maximally trained with elastic bands as resistance or with the help of special adductor presses

Read more on this topic at: Leg muscle training - exercises

Muscle building in the back

The muscles in the back are roughly divided into those of the upper and lower back. In the lower back there are flat but rather thin muscles, whereas the muscles of the upper back are made up of many small muscles. Machine-guided and free exercises can also be distinguished for these muscles. Deadlifts or deadlifts are recommended for the lower back. However, these exercises involve the use of a large number of auxiliary muscles. The lower back can be trained more specifically through exercises in which the freely hanging upper body is brought into extension. Depending on your preference, you can work with additional weights that you hold in front of your chest.

If you want to train your back muscles on a training device, you should consider the following exercises:

• Rowing exercises are ideal for the upper back. These can also be carried out freely or with the help of a cable tower. In this case, the cable tower offers the advantage that the resistance is constant. With bent-forward rowing exercises, the dumbbell can either be directed towards the abdomen or towards the chest. Another variation is the use of dumbbells or barbells or the type of handle, which can be either wide or narrow or as a "monkey handle".
• Latzung. On the lat pulldown you can effectively train your back and vary the exercises over and over again. Training on the lat pulldown mainly uses the broad back muscles (Latissimus dorsi) trained. The hood muscle and the rhombus muscle are also used. The so-called lat pulldown can be done in the neck or on the chest. When pulling down the back of the neck, the bar is gripped about shoulder width and slowly pulled down into the neck. You should be careful not to allow a hollow back and not to tilt your head too far forward. The back remains in an upright position and the abdominal muscles are tensed throughout the exercise. When pulling the lat pull down on your chest, you lean back a little with your upper body and pull the lat bar down onto your chest. In both exercises, when you let the bar up, you do not have to fully straighten your arms, but always have a slight bend in the elbow joint.
• Another exercise for the back is the chin-up, in which you pull your body weight upwards. Even when doing this, the arms should never be fully stretched and constant body tension should be maintained. When it comes to pull-ups, there are differences in grip width. The further you reach, the more strain is absorbed by the broad back muscles and biceps. The closer you grip, the more parts the triceps benefit. For more advanced athletes, the deadlift with the barbell is ideal. This exercise is very effective, but also very complex and not easy. Serious injuries can occur if this exercise is incorrectly performed. Therefore, you should only do this exercise with sufficient experience and an experienced training partner.

In general, for all back exercises, you should do twelve to 15 repetitions in three sets for muscle building training in order to exert a correspondingly strong stimulus on the muscles.

Read more on this topic at: Back training

Muscle building in the chest

A large number of free exercises as well as training machines are available to the trainee to build up the chest muscles:

• The simplest exercise listed here is the push-up. You train the chest muscles, but also the triceps and in most cases the shoulder muscles to a certain extent.
• It gets a bit more demanding with the bench press or the dumbbell press. Correct execution can almost completely rule out the strain on the shoulder muscles. When pressing dumbbells, you work with two individual dumbbells, so that additional muscles are used to stabilize the dumbbells.
• In terms of machine-guided exercises, a butterfly machine, flys on the cable and training on a chest press are ideal for chest training. Training on the cable puller has the advantage that the weight always has to be moved vertically so that the force of the weight on the muscle is the same at every point. This principle does not apply to the chest press, for example.
• As a step between machine-guided and free training, the bench press on a multi-press would be an option for the chest. The dumbbell is guided here and therefore cannot slip off so easily, etc.

Read more on this topic at: Chest muscle training - exercises

Muscle building on the buttocks

For the training of the buttocks muscles, a distinction can be made between free and machine-guided exercises:

• The lunges should be mentioned first of the free exercises. They can be performed without additional equipment, but also with additional weight in the form of two dumbbells. Depending on the length of the step, the primarily trained region can also be varied.
• Squats are another exercise. You also train the anterior thigh muscle. The squats can also be performed without additional weight in the mainly high repetition range. Of course, the intensity of this exercise can be increased by using additional weight. The use of a barbell on a so-called squatrack is ideal for this.
• Hip extensions are another exercise that can be done freely. The effort can be increased by using rubber bands. This exercise can also be performed on a leg extension machine against resistance.
• Last but not least, training on a stepper is ideal for training the buttocks muscles. It imitates walking upstairs, which is also good training for the muscles in the buttocks.

Read more on this topic at: Buttock training - exercises

Muscle building and alcohol

When building muscle, you must pay attention to a healthy and balanced diet. In addition, an athlete needs the right training program and sufficient recovery. Again and again one reads the statement that muscle building and alcohol are incompatible. Alcohol can have different effects on a training session. Alcohol affects muscle growth on several levels. On the one hand, the production of the body's own hormone testosterone is reduced, which severely disrupts muscle growth. Therefore, alcohol is not recommended after an exercise program for muscle building. In addition, alcohol ensures that the body generally absorbs and stores fewer nutrients. The ability of the body to absorb important nutrients is therefore slowed down by alcohol.

In addition, alcohol removes water from the body, which means that it is lacking in the breakdown of harmful substances and is also sorely lacking in muscle building. The muscle cells cannot grow optimally if the water supply is low and muscle building is inhibited. The lack of water also plays an important role in the body's temperature balance. The blood vessels expand due to the alcohol and ensure that the body cools down slowly. In order to maintain the body temperature, the body now needs more energy, which in turn is lacking in optimal regeneration after muscle building training. In addition, alcohol ensures unhealthy and unrefreshing sleep, which also has a negative impact on regeneration. Therefore, it is best to avoid alcohol after muscle building training.

You can find more information on this topic here: Muscle building and alcohol and Muscle development and nutrition