"PICture" Yourself Gaining Muscle Mass

When it comes to gaining muscle mass there are three basic principles that you need to be aware of. If you choose to ignore them your gains will be very minimal. PIC, as in picture, is a simple little acronym I have created to make these principles easy for you to remember.

Progressive Overload - In order for your muscles to constantly be growing you need to be constantly pushing them to new levels. When your muscles are put under enough stress the fibers tear. To prevent this from happening again your muscles adapt by growing during the repair process. If you continue to use the exact same workout without increasing weight, reps, sets, or frequency of your workouts you will fail to tear the fibers to the same extent. By increasing either your weight, reps, sets or frequency of workouts on a continual basis you will maximize the the stress on your muscles forcing them to grow at a faster rate. This is called progressive overload. One word of caution though - too much stress or stress too often can cause injury and even permanent damage, so don't forget to rest and let your muscles heal.

Increase Caloric Intake - This is probably the biggest problem that many novice muscle builders have with gaining muscle mass. Simply increasing your calories isn't what your body really needs. If you scarf down a bunch of pizza, beer and cake to increase your calories, your not going to be happy with the results. The purpose of increasing your calories is to give your muscles what they need to build and repair themselves and to supply your body with the energy it needs to have an effective workout. Protein is one of the most essential needs in growing your muscles and should be a major part of your diet. Don't load up on sugar and fat as your body won't use this for building muscle. The only time I would recommend loading on sugar is when it is accompanied by protein just before a workout for energy.

Compound Exercises - A lack in compound exercises is also big mistake made by many novice muscle builders. It's completely natural for people to gravitate towards isolation exercises like bicep curls and triceps extensions because they want big, ripped arms busting through their t-shirts. Isolation exercises however don't give you a complete workout. In other words, you are limiting your growth to just a few specific muscles whereas with compound exercises you are involving all of the supporting muscle groups as well. The more muscles you have involved the more overall muscle growth you get. So if you want to gain muscle mass throughout your entire physique compound, muscles are the way to go.

Though these three principles may seem very simple, they are critical to your muscle building success. Leave any one of these out of your program and your results may be less than desirable. Once you put all of these in place, however, it won't be long before you will be able to "PICture" yourself with a bigger physique.