Why do so many people go to the gym on a consistent basis and follow a muscle building routine, but make little to no progress? It doesn’t seem fair if you think about it. It’s hard enough to consistently go to the gym or even work out at home, but to not make any real progress can be hard to swallow. In this article I am going to go over what it takes to trigger muscle growth and why so many people’s workouts fall short.

Many factors go in to muscle building

There are many factors that go in to building muscle, and the actual routine that you follow is only one part of the equation. Your diet needs to support muscle growth as well, and you need plenty of time to recuperate.

So for growth to be possible from your muscle building routine you need the following to occur:

• Growth to be triggered from your workout
• Adequate diet that supports muscle growth
• Plenty of rest to allow growth and prevent overtraining

I am going to focus on the actual workout itself in this article. Regardless of what body part you are training, the best exercise is the one that recruits the most muscle fibers at the point of contraction. Many people believe that isolation exercises are not useful for building mass, I disagree. Many isolation exercises cause maximum contraction especially if you stop the exercise short at the point where resistance decreases. A concentration or cable curl is a perfect example, once you get so far up on the lift, resistance decreases and the exercise becomes less effective. You will get more out of it by stopping the curl at the point where the stress quits at the biceps and transfers more to the front delts. It may seem better to go through a full range of motion, but in this case, you get more resistance by stopping short.

Multiple sets can be counter productive

If you try doing barbell curls with strict form, at a slower pace for around 8-12 reps, stopping as I suggest, you will definitely feel the difference versus throwing the weight up and allowing your shoulders and momentum do most of the work. Another important point to consider is that once muscle growth is triggered, you do not need to do more sets. One or two sets to failure in the manner described above will trigger muscle growth as if turning on a light. You don’t need to keep turning the light on, once it’s on, stop and save your energy for the muscle growth that will take place during rest. Continuing beyond this point is only going to reduce the effectiveness of your workouts.

You can use this same concept of stopping short for other exercises as well, such as bench press, flyes, lateral raises, etc. I’m not suggesting that you never go through a full range of motion again, I just think that you should give this a try for a while and see how it feels. Just slowing down your reps a bit will make a big difference, especially if you normally go faster and cheat through your sets. By stopping short, you maintain constant resistance on the muscle and progressively overload it with cumulative fatigue throughout the set.

Muscle growth will not occur without progressive resistance

One final point that you need to keep in mind is progressive resistance. If you are not progressively doing more each workout, you will not grow. It’s really that simple. You need to either do more reps, add more weight, or rest less during the workout to cause muscle growth. If you have been bench pressing the same weight give or take for the last few years or longer, like so many people you see at the gym, you need to make a change. You need to do more, whether you need to change exercises and work up in weight, or you need to go slower, or any number of ways to progressively overload your muscles. If you don’t, it won’t matter what muscle building routine you are following, you are not going to see any real results.

There are literally thousands of muscle building supplements in the market today. Because of all these choices, it can be really frustrating when searching for the for the best muscle building supplement. This information will shed light on the best muscle building supplement which is whey protein.

With all the choices and the best choice for many may not really fit everybody’s needs, there is one supplement that a lot of health experts agree with due to the results it can give you. This supplement is whey protein.

Whey protein is one of the best among all muscle building supplements. There are other substitutes to whey like eggs and soy protein. You can also try these alternatives too. Let us discuss these alternatives first before convincing ourselves why whey protein is the best option.

Egg is perhaps of the best sources of natural protein. Eggs are rich in amino acids and can be digested quite easily by the body. The only disadvantage with eggs is its cost and the weird taste of raw eggs when added to your protein smoothie. Cooking the eggs every after workout might not really be convenient.

Soy protein is the cheaper source of protein compared to eggs. Unfortunately, soy protein does not contain much essential amino acids. Thus, it may not be too effective in building muscle mass fast.

Whey protein combines soy protein’s advantage on the cost and taste while still providing you with all the essential amino acid. Many experts agree that whey protein can be considered the best form of protein as of the present. It is well known for quick muscle gains due to the easy digestion of all its protein content. In addition, it taste really good especially with your protein shake and fruits. For its price, it can also easily replace eggs. Indeed, whey protein is the smart choice to quickly build more muscles.