Change in the world of strength training seems to evolve at exponential paces. Maybe we don't notice it on a day-to-day basis – one session at the gym is never very different from the day before – but step back for a moment and contemplate how far we've come.

Our history of exercise for the sake of building muscle dates back two-and-a-half millennia. Milo of Croton, a 6th century BC war hero and famous wrestler in Ancient Greece, was said to have carried a newborn calf on his back every day, until it was fully grown. That's not unlike adding weights to our lifts as we progress in the gym.

By the 2nd century AD, evidence exists of rudimentary dumbbells. Egyptian hieroglyphs depict men lifting and tossing bags of sand. A rod supporting two church bells became a dumbbell in old Europe, replacing stones as the primary lifting object. In Persia, meels developed an ancient version of the clubbell.

Still, 2,500 years of development can't even compare to the progress we've made in the last century. (Of course, with all the focus on things like heirloom crops and romanticism about returning to traditional ways of life, someone today might make a killing opening a gym that features stones and meels instead of machines!)

By the 1960s, gyms began to open in the U.S., and weight-resistance machines were developed. Nautilus machines opened the door for regular exercisers to engage in weight training, building strength without trying to emulate the hulks in popular films like Pumping Iron.

Unfortunately, with the progression of more accessible weight training came the development of a sedentary American lifestyle. Before a half-century ago, most of our jobs required us to move around. Even people who never considered exercise as an end-unto-itself were able to stay in shape, through the movement required by their daily tasks.

Conversely, it's easy today to sit at a desk all day (even writing blogs about exercise!), eat a few less-than-healthy meals, and then veg out in front of the TV all night because we feel crummy from not moving around enough! For many people, especially with office jobs, incorporating weight training into their lives requires going out of our way to some degree.

But it's not just in the gym where change happens. Our lifestyle carries over to every moment of our day, from when we open the fridge in the morning to when our head hits the pillow. And fortunately, it's in that holistic approach to training that evolution has really sped up lately. We know more today about how to build muscle mass than ever before in history!

A few key things we've come to learn in recent years:

1. The kitchen is more important than the gym.
   It goes without saying that you can't just eat right, sit around all day, and build muscle. But you also can't build muscle mass if you're not feeding them properly. It's been said that 80 percent of body sculpting work happens in the kitchen. Eat chicken, brown rice, whole grains, fish, egg whites, potatoes, and plenty of produce. Shoot for 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, every day. Pass on the pizza, beer, and ice cream!

   What we've learned in the last 20 years about the importance of avoiding processed foods, in favor of whole foods, makes a bigger difference in the gym than any other development.

2. Understand the science.
   When muscles grow, it's called hypertrophy. You know the 'pump' you feel after working out? That's a temporary boost, called 'transient hypertrophy,' due to the accumulation of fluids in the intracellular spaces of our muscles. We want to create chronic hypertrophy through long-term weight training, which requires consistent workouts. Once a week won't cut it for sustained muscle growth.
    
3. Challenge Yourself
   To make our muscles grow, we have to confuse them! If your body becomes accustomed to a lift, it'll stop growing. Switch things up and slowly add weight to your reps. Your body will adjust and build more muscle. Bring a notebook to the gym to help with this, and don't worry about looking silly. Keeping track of your weight and reps will not only help you progress, but it'll serve as motivation to stay on course. The big thing to remember: You can't just stick with one routine and do it for longer and longer. You won't get results. You've got to vary your regimen!
    
4. Rest Up
   It's funny how our society doesn't always realize the value of something until we start to miss it. With our 24/7 lifestyles, sleep has never come at such a premium. But it's also never been so important. Your muscles grow while they're resting. Take at least one day a week off from your workout routine. And get that eight hours of sleep every night – it'll pay off in the results to your physique.

Try telling a weight lifter 100 years ago that the keys to success include eating their vegetables and sleeping, and you'd likely get a laugh! But there's a reason that records keep getting broken. We're evolving more all the time.

Brett Warren is a fitness and weightlifting enthusiast from Boston, Massachusetts. He is passionate about nutraceutical science and loves his job developing workout supplements for Force Factor. Brett's extensive background in biochemical engineering means he's one scientist you don't want to mess with. When Brett is not crushing it in the gym or working at Force Factor, you can find him spending time outdoors with his family.

However, even though millions of people are chronically overweight, they're "under-muscled." The objective of this post is to change that.

To build lean muscle mass, you have to take on a serious weight training and diet regimen. Hopefully, you are starting from a point where you are relatively lean or just need to drop a few pounds of body fat. But if you're seriously overweight, you can still follow the prescription I'm about to give; just realize that it's going to take some time and a lot of effort to see lasting results.

All that said, it's pretty easy to build lean muscle mass.

How to Build Lean Muscle Mass

These are some general guidelines to follow. You can check out Building Muscle in 30 Minutes a Day for an in-depth view of how to put it all together. Note that you need to do some form of cardio in order to supercharge your calorie-burning efforts. Here's what I propose:

• Follow the Building Muscle in 30 Minutes a Day system.
• Add 30 minutes every single day of cardio. It can be fast walking, running (not jogging, too hard on the joints), cycling, or active hiking. I prefer mountain biking, but you can do anything you want as long as you do it hard for 30 minutes.
• Eat frequent, small meals. The idea here is to maintain blood sugar levels so that you don't get hungry and don't burn muscle for fuel.
• Add 4 Fat-Loss Secret Ingredients to your diet.
• If you cannot prepare 6 meals a day, buy a meal replacement supplement like MetRx. You really cannot afford to miss meals.
• Portion control is king! Don't eat a lot. Use smaller bowls, plates, and utensils.
• Eat slowly. You may feel like you're grazing all day (because you are) but it's necessary.

As you might surmise from the above list, diet is very important. In fact 80 percent of your success can be attributed to nutrition. Don't take it lightly. In order to build lean muscle mass, you have to eat lean, quality food. No fat diets DO NOT WORK but neither does "all you can eat."

Choose to eat wisely and train smart. You'll build a better-looking body that will be healthier, too!

So I was into weight training last year, during high school. Then I graduated and lost my access to a gym, and most of my muscle with it. I was wondering if muscle builds up faster the second time around, if it's been developed before and then atrophied (as opposed to building it up for the first time).

Question Best Answer – Chosen by Voters

In a word, yes, your body builds muscle faster after it's atrophied. It's called "muscle memory." There was an infamous case of muscle memory back when Arthur Jones, creator of the Nautilus system, used a young and just rehabbed Casey Viator in his studies on high intensity training. Viator, a Mr America, had been in an industrial accident and had lost considerable muscle size. In fact, he lost over 30 pounds as a result of the accident and subsequent allergic reaction to one of his medications.

Jones, the marketer, sought to use Casey as a case study of the effectiveness of his Nautilus equipment and high intensity training techniques. In 28 days, Viator gained 45 pounds.

It was very easy for Viator to regain the weight that he had lost. Most of the weight gain was from muscle memory, not due to the efficacy of the training equipment or method.

An "average" man who had never attained that sort of size would have gained relatively little weight in such a short period of time.

Note, though, that gaining considerable muscle mass in a short period of time is possible, though very difficult. It's much easier to regain size than it is to build it in the first place.

This is why guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger can leave competition for YEARS (he retired in 1975 and returned to win the Mr Olympia again in 1980) and train for literally a few months and regain their previous stature.

So, long story short, it's far easier to regain size than it is to build it in the first place. You should be back in top form within 2-3 months of hitting the gym hard.

Source(s):

If you’re already a member (and membership is free), you know the password! So just go check it out.

Here are 5 random muscle building tips that may make a big difference in your training.

– Don’t exceed 5-6 reps on most of your warm up sets. Your first set could consist of a very light weight for 10-20 reps just to get loosened up and get the blood flowing but beyond that you want to keep the reps low. The reason for this is that you don’t want to build up too much lactic acid or accumulate too much fatigue with your warm ups.

– Don’t stretch before your workout in the hopes of preventing injury. This doesn’t work. The only benefit of stretching before a workout is to help you get into positions you might not be able to reach (such as a full squat) because you are tight in specific areas (such as the hamstrings and hip flexors). But stretching for the sake of injury prevention is an outdated idea and doesn’t really work.

– Don’t over-analyze and over-think everything you do in the gym. This never gets you anywhere. Don’t worry if the incline of the bench is supposed to be 50 degrees or 55 degrees. Don’t worry that if you don’t supinate at exactly the right time that you won’t activate your biceps optimally. Don’t stress out about the exact grip width on the bar. If someone tells you that a 16? grip on the bench press hits your triceps better than anything else, but because of an injury or anatomical difference you can only comfortably use an 18? grip, don’t sweat it. People over-think themselves to death and they never get anywhere because of it. Go to the gym, get stronger, go home, eat, sleep and repeat. Don’t turn it into advanced calculus. That is one of the best muscle building tips I can give you.

– Always train both sides of the joint with equal volume. Therefore if you do six sets per week of pressing exercises you need to do six sets per week of pulling exercises. If you do two sets of curls you should do two sets of triceps work. And so on and so on…

– If you can’t get your forearms to grow, try hitting them with more frequency than other muscle groups. They can easily be trained three times per week and recover without any problem. Also, try to hold the bottom stretched position of wrist curls for 3-5 seconds per rep. When you finish training the forearms, hit them with a deep stretch for both the extensors and flexors for 30-60 seconds. These muscle building tips should get the forearms to grow.

For more incredible muscle building tips please visit MuscleGainingSecrets.com.

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He is the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more How to Build Muscle Fast tips, check out http://blog.muscle-build.com/go/muscle-gaining-secrets.php

The most important thing is to focus on your metabolism — you want to place it in an anabolic state. You’ll learn all about it in this article. If you want a full training and diet plan, check out my Hardgainer’s Manifesto (coming soon, but sign up now and get a discount when it’s released).

In any event, check out the Carnival, as there are a TON of useful articles that will help you build a better mind and body.