How to get bigger muscles?
Question:
I would like to get bigger muscles, especially to my upper body. Is is true that if you want to get bigger muscles, I should use big weights? What about the pauses between sets, how long should they be?
Answer:
Your muscle grows in size, this is called muscle hypertrophy, when it is made to work against heavy resistance. In other words, yes you need to use big weights to get big muscles. If you want to get bigger muscles, your exercising should use big weights, but still the motion in your repetitions should be clean. Always remember, to get the best results it is everything about the motion, if you have to swing and rock yourself to get the weights up then you are using too big weights! Also you should do always return the weight back to the initial position in your reps in a controlled manner, this is called the negative part of the repetition. This all is just about keeping the “feeling” and control to your muscle throughout the exercise, don’t just let the weight drop down to the initial position!
There are many different workout routines you can choose from. A pretty basic is to exercise three to four weeks with big weights and relatively short sets 5 – 8 reps a set, and after these week you should do a week of recovery by doing longer sets from 10 up to 15 with lighter weights. This is a one way to get a nice muscle growth.
For the recovery time between sets, my opinion is 1 to 2 minutes maximum, others say 3 minutes and some say 30 seconds. If you are trying to get bigger muscles, it might be that 2 – 3 minutes will give your muscles enough time to recover. You can use that time to stretch the muscle that is being exercised.