Gaining lean muscles is not as complicated as you might think. If you want to become bigger and stronger, you only have to do three things; lift heavy weights, stick to a set diet that mirrors your goals, and get enough rest.
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However, executing the three steps may be easier said than done. It is common to find yourself trying to fulfill your food cravings only to break your dieting requirements. While you may love a good burger and BBQ, you can quite easily add up plenty of calories derailing your training diet.
Still, it does not mean that you shouldn’t get one of the best offset smokers and enjoy a weekend barbeque party if you want to gain lean muscles.
Apart from maintaining a healthy diet, you should also ensure that your workout routine focuses on building up your cardio strength and weight lifting. Incorporating both exercises in your routine helps you burn more fat while ensuring that you build muscles without beefing up too much.
But how do you balance both cardio and weightlifting without giving much preference to either of them? Here are some exercises that you can include in your routine if you want to balance the two categories to gain lean muscles.
Workout Using a Stationary Bike
You can start your workout with a stationary bike workout while in a low-resistance setting for about 4 to 5 minutes. You can then ride for 40 more seconds as fast as you can and slow down to recover for about 20 seconds. You should repeat the sequence for about six times.
Build Arm Muscles Using a Rowing Machine
An essential part of building lean muscles is building your arm muscles while reducing the size of your gut. Just like any other workout, it is best to start by warming up your body. Set the band’s resistance to level 5 for a few minutes before elevating it to level 10 and rowing as fast you can for about 30 seconds.
Afterward, you can change your positioning and grip the handle pulling it at a moderate pace for about 60 seconds. You can use this chance to catch your breath then repeat the whole process seven times while alternating between fast and slow rowing.
Lifting Weights
If you want your body to perform and look like an athlete, you should add strength training to your workout routine. One of the best strength training exercises to incorporate in your program is lifting weights.
Lifting weights helps boost your metabolism rate since you can burn more calories by building lean muscles. When you do it the right way, you can improve your body posture and help with your joints’ alignment and the development of core strength.
Workout with Resistance bands
Resistance bands are an inexpensive and practical way to work every muscle in your body. They are great tools for working your upper and lower bodies as well as your core muscles. An excellent way to work the upper body is by performing the alternating chest punches exercise. It entails tying the ban in a loop behind you and standing with your feet width apart. Place one foot forward, while the other remains at the back. Pull the resistance band forward from both the right and left side 100 times on each side.
Exercise Using A Treadmill
A treadmill is a great instrument to help you burn more calories while still maintaining some lean muscle mass. It also helps in exercising your glutes, hamstring, and calves. Before using a treadmill, warm up for about three minutes. You can then start exercising by first walking then increasing the pace till it becomes challenging for your legs, glutes, and heart.
You can make it more challenging by increasing the working out at an incline and alternating from the low inclines to the high inclines as you continue the workout.
You may think that you need to use fancy gym equipment to build lean muscle, but that is not always true. You can still get the same results by only utilizing your body weight. How so?
Running /walking
As simple as it sounds, running with a good pair of shoes is enough cardio exercise to transform your body. You can observe such results from runners, swimmers, and athletes since almost all have lean bodies. Although they may also observe a good diet, they burn tremendous amounts of calories as they work out through running.
If you decide to start running and walking exercises, consider pulling in your navel into the core. It will help you gain much more strength. You can start running a slow jog for about 30 minutes, and then you can continue to add the time every week.
Perform Squats
Squats are an incredible way to exercise if you want to develop strength and power. If you perform them correctly, they can help you burn up more calories, strengthen your core, prevent injuries, and improve your balance and posture.
When performing a squat, you need to observe some safety precautions to prevent any dangers from occurring. Some of these precautions include:
- Ensure that you only go as far down as your body allows you and stop immediately you feel discomfort around your knees or hips.
- It would be best if you placed your eyes forward when exercising. It ensures that your neck remains in a neutral position.
- Maintain a solid base by ensuring your feet are wide apart. You can use a narrow stance if you want to target your outer thighs. However, it decreases your stability and places more pressure on your knees.
- Maintain an upright posture by keeping your spine straight and in a neutral position.
- Avoid lifting what you cannot handle since it can cause strains to your lower back, knees, and hips.
- Ensure that your core muscles are activated through the entire process.
- Perform Push Ups
Pushups provide your upper body with enough strength. The exercise works your shoulders, chest, and triceps. When performed correctly, it can also help you build strength on your lower back and core. They are handy when done regularly and consistently.
Moreover, you can perform them from anywhere, including your home, provided there is space. To achieve the best results, continually challenge yourself by increasing the number of pushups you can perform each week and incorporating various types of pushups.
When you continually perform only one type of push up every day, you will eventually not benefit from your workouts. Your muscles tend to adapt to the stress you expose them to. Therefore, you should try to continually improve the type of exercises you perform if you want to improve in physical and fitness levels.
Perform Crunches
Crunches are essential for the development of your core strength and toning your midsection. It strengthens your core muscles and improves your posture, mobility, and flexibility of your muscles. Be careful for pregnancy however.
Crunches are not effective when it comes to burning abdominal fat. However, they can help you build muscle mass and increase your body’s ability to burn fat.
You can perform an abdominal crunch by lying on the floor on your back with your knees bent and hands over your chest or behind your head. Your back should be flat down to the ground with your belly pupped towards the spine. Slowly lift your shoulders from the floor while maintaining your neck and chin straight. As you lift your upper body from the floor, you should exhale. Then hold your new position for a few seconds before lowering your lower body. Repeat the process a few more times.
Are the Exercises Above Always Practical?
Including the above exercises in your workout routine is a sure step towards gaining lean muscles. Each component can have significant effects on your muscle-building goals. However, to ensure that they are effective, you should consider increasing your training frequency. You can reduce the timeframe for the sessions for recovery purposes, but by continuously exposing yourself to a training stimulus will increase the speed at which you gain mass.
Moreover, you should avoid sticking to one rep range if you want to gain lean muscle effectively. Since your body continually adapts to every situation, you need to continually challenge it by switching the rep scheme frequently from lower-rep sets to higher-reps.
Summing up
Even though the time you spend working out is significant, it is also equally important to always ensure that you get enough rest and good nutrition. By avoiding stress and sleeping for about 8 to 9 hours every day, you can achieve tremendous results that may be surprising.Continually changing your training techniques is also crucial if you want to avoid plateaus and stimulate continuous growth. However, it is still essential to follow a training program until you reap all benefits from it. Your body will increase in strength and efficiency when you expose it to similar training patterns for a set of time. If you want to lose weight or attain a leaner physique, you should burn more fat by following the steps above.
This is a collaborative post.
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