The usual explanation of why resistance training promotes gains in muscular size and strength is that resistance training imposes stress on contracting muscles, which leads to damage to muscle fibers. After the training, the body works to repair the fiber damage and institutes … [Read more...]
The Elements of Increasing Muscular Strength by Jerry Brainum 12/23
The primary goal of those who begin bodybuilding is to develop increased muscle mass and strength. Most resistance training members believe building larger muscles requires increasing muscular strength. On the surface, this seems to make sense. If you lift heavier weights, … [Read more...]
Overtraining: The Most Common Training Mistake by Jerry Brainum 11/23
Mistakes are common in bodybuilding, fitness, and sports training. Such mistakes can include poor exercise form, using too much weight, not training with sufficient intensity, resting too long between sets, playing with a cell phone rather than focusing on training, and many … [Read more...]
Optimal Triceps Training by Jerry Brainum 4/23
Most weight exercises can be divided into two basic types: isolation exercises and compound exercises. As the name implies, isolation exercises focus on specific portions of a muscle, such as training the upper back and the lower back. Or it can be even more specific, … [Read more...]
Do Hard-Gainers Exist? by Jerry Brainum 3/23
Although anyone can build muscle once they embark on a resistance training program, it seems that some gain more muscle faster than others. Those that experience difficulty in building muscle mass are referred to as "hard gainers." Many reasons are offered to explain why some … [Read more...]
Gaining Muscular Size and Strength: What Does the Research Show? by Jerry Brainum 4/22
How do you determine the best training techniques to develop added muscular size and strength? One obvious answer would be the time-honored trial and error technique. What this entails is trying various styles of training until you find the particular plan that works best for … [Read more...]
Don’t Have Time To Train? Sure You Do! by Jerry Brainum 12/21
People can offer all sorts of excuses for not exercising regularly. The most common excuse is time, as in "I don't have enough time to exercise." While many people do live busy lives, the notion that they cannot spare any time for exercise is usually not true. The simple truth is that … [Read more...]
Advanced Bodybuilding Training Techniques: Is There Any Science behind them? by Jerry Brainum 1/20
Beginners make gains no matter how they train. As such, the best way to train when you begin to lift weights is to follow a standard system of training, just doing regular sets and reps with nothing fancy added. Indeed, attempts to employ more advanced training techniques when … [Read more...]
Breaking Training Plateaus For Advanced Trainees by Jerry Brainum 8/19
Muscular gains come easy when you first begin training. At least it appears that way. All beginners, no matter what their genetic gifts may be for bodybuilding or lack thereof, make fairly rapid gains when they first start to regularly train. What happens is that you develop a … [Read more...]
Training to Muscular Failure: An Update with New Insights by Jerry Brainum
I wrote about training to muscular failure in the May 2015 issue of Applied Metabolics, and that article covered all the available research at the time related to training to failure. I also discussed the history of training to failure, and how the principle first came about. … [Read more...]