Tightening up your midsection is one thing. Toss in a couple of sets of crunches each week, cut back on the soda, and voila, you’ve changed things for the better. But building up a sliced and diced set of abs is a much greater challenge. Are you ready to push your body to a new level, and get your abs sharper than they’ve ever been before?

First you will want to clean up your diet – in a big way. Yes, you can cut out a little bit of junk and see some subtle change. But you need to do more. Begin by cutting back the obvious items which you don’t belong for health reasons – fast food, soda, and other obvious snacks and junk food. Then, begin cutting back on the carbohydrates – just 500 calories per day from your baseline number – until you reach a point where the scale starts showing some weight loss.

Addressing your cardiovascular exercise will be your next step. Initially, you’ll want to use something like 4-5 walks per week, each lasting 20 minutes at a moderate pace. Add to that three weekly sessions of more intense cardio using an elliptical or stair stepper.

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Finally, one of the most important aspects is training – specifically abdominal training. You’ll want to hit your upper, side and lower abdominals at least four times per week. Use crunches for upper abs, along with rope crunches and machine crunches. Side abdominals are best hit with broomstick twists, which will allow you to train them without much resistance. Using heavy weight will result in a thickening of the midsection, which will harm your symmetry. You’re trying to get your abs tighter, remember? Finally, use leg raises and frog kicks for the lower abdominals.

Give it time and be patient. When you implement all 4 of these changes, you will likely see an initial loss of water weight, and you’ll be highly encouraged. Then, you’ll have a bit of a bounce back, where a little weight may return – and that can be frustrating. Always keep the weights low (or use none at all) and the repetitions high for best abdominal development results!

Unless you’ve ever been injured or competed in a bodybuilding show and blown away by a competitor with a “Christmas Tree”, you have probably not paid much attention to the lower back. This is known as the lumbar region, and is the very vulnerable area you try to protect with a belt during squats. It is the muscle group built with the legendary deadlift, and that which is often overlooked until it is too late.

Whether you’re looking to dominate back poses in a bodybuilding show, or just avoid injury in all things you do building a primo lower back should be near the top of your list of priorities. But it’s not always an easy thing to do. Let’s check out the three exercises you should be using on a daily basis in order to get your lumbar region as developed and as strong as possible!

Deadlifts first
Load up that bar, put on your brace, and pick up that heavy weight! Keep your head up, your form safe, and don’t round your back. Never jerk the bar, instead opting for smooth and controlled repetitions for best results. Use 4 to 5 sets, running from 12 reps per set down to 6 repetitions per set as the weight gets heavier and heavier.

Hyperextensions
This is often mistaken for a sit-up machine, and that’s the use that many people in the gym find for this device. It’s actually designed for you to lay in it face-down, elevated 2 feet off the ground, so that you can bend up and down, training the lower back with or without a weight in your hand. This movement should follow deadlifts, and your rep range should vary from 20 reps without a weight to 8-10 reps while holding a 25 or 35 pound Olympic plate.

Hyper-extension machine
This is a Hammer Strength or Nautilus offering that many top of the line commercial gyms are not offering. Located in the long row of machine designed for circuit training, this machine allows the user to sit down, often buckle in, and lean back, using the muscles of the lower back get to work.

Always fully stretch your lower back before diving into 12 sets of these hard-hitting movements. Stretch afterward as well. Always stop immediately if you sense any pain or injury, and just move on to another movement, perhaps choosing biceps or calves as a safe alternative if you believe the integrity of your lower back has been compromised. Train hand and on a consistent basis, and enjoy the results!

When it comes to building an ideal 4-day bodybuilding muscle group split, shoulders always seem to be the ‘odd man out’. Chest gets its own day. Back enjoys its own day. Arms and legs need their own days too. Shoulders are something hit with back, sometimes with chest, and sometimes added in with legs – anything to keep them from needing that 5th training day which places too much stress on your central nervous system. After all, we all grow faster when we’re training 4 days (heavy days, that is!) each week, with 3 days to rest. Training 5 days per week, with only 2 rest days, results in a situation where you can’t find enough time to heal.

Combining shoulder and back days seem to make the most logical sense. You can do it – but you will need to very carefully select which exercises you will be using. Spending an hour on a dozen sets of cable exercises for burning out your back just doesn’t make sense here. Choosing 3 heavy back movements (such as deadlifts, chins, and barbell rows) and 2 heavy shoulder movements (such as seated barbell military press and bent over side dumbbell laterals) will be the way to go. Your workout will consist of twenty total work sets – 12 for back, and 8 for shoulders. Each set should be taken to failure, with 6 to 12 repetitions per set being the ideal. Train hard and then get out of the gym – 20 sets maximum!

Always take a rest day immediately following this combined training session. Two rest days might be even better! Your central nervous system is going to be beaten down after 20 sets of heavy compound movements from this back/shoulder day, so don’t plan a trip to Disney World the day after this – plan a day at the pool relaxing with a nice steak! You’ve got to heal, because that is when you grow.

If either your back or shoulders is one of your top 2 lagging muscle groups, then you will want to reconsider this option. If your chest and arms are very strong, and your back and shoulders are weak, then you should consider combining the chest & arms into their own single day, and giving back its own day, and shoulders their own day. Always customize your training so that you can give the most time, energy, and other resources to the muscle groups that need it the most!

You train biceps very hard, but you never seem to be able to enjoy the new muscle growth that you desire. What is holding you back? Willpower alone can’t build big arms. You have to avoid some of the more common mistakes faced by lifters. Let’s look at why your biceps routine might be letting you down.

You aren’t using enough free weights
Cables are attractive, easy, and seem to deliver such an excellent pump, or drawing of blood to muscle groups, that one would think has to deliver new muscle growth. However, this isn’t the case. To build new muscle, you need to use free weights – barbells, dumbbells, and even kettlebells. Tear up those muscle fibers on an individual basis, and you’ll see when the muscles repair, they’ll grow back bigger and stronger than before.

You aren’t eating enough food
Every inch of new muscle on your arms will be accompanied with a 10 pound gain on the scale. You can’t stay the same weight and build 2-3 inches of new arm muscle. You gotta eat – 3500 calories for each new pound of muscle – in order to make this happen!

You don’t enjoy enough sleep
Your muscle recovery, heal & grow when you sleep. If you’re sleeping 5 hours between partying and work, then your biceps are never going to be able to grow to their maximum potential. Decide which is more important to you, and sleep accordingly!

You’re not using good form
“It don’t mean a thing if its got that swing!” Using your back to hoist up additional weight might make for an impressive lift, but it means your hips, back, shoulders, and other parts of your body are doing the work – instead of the biceps. If you want the biceps to grow, you need to hit it with specific targeted training. Often, that means peeling 20% of the weight off the bar, and moving through your repetitions slowly so that you feel the burn in your biceps!

They need individual attention
Many bodybuilders will place biceps to be trained immediately after back on a combined back & biceps day. This makes sense, since the biceps will already be thoroughly warmed up and will likely be sore anyway, so many lifters have used this logical combination for decades. However, this training method results in a situation where your biceps are never trained with the full energy and intensity they’d have without a brutal 45 to 60 minute deadlift & row session first. Try putting them first on a combined biceps & triceps day and see if they grow as a result!

You can walk into any gym in America and see the same thing – people of all ages bouncing from machine to machine, bench to bench, trying to build up their muscle with some sort of instinctive, random training to keep their muscles guessing. Or, they just don’t know what they’re doing! Cables, dumbbells, machines… they might all look the same to the casual lifter. But the trainer intent on building up a few dozen pounds of new muscle mass over the next several years needs to learn to sort them out.

Isolation movements – such as cable exercises – should be used only for the purpose of ‘toning’ or bringing out greater detail in a muscle group. You aren’t trying going to build new muscle using these – you are only going to bring out some definition and lines in your existing muscle. You should be using these when getting ready for a show – not to start your workout!

Hybrid movements, or machines such as Nautilus or Hammer Strength, are best used for halfway through your workout AFTER you have worn yourself out with the heavy free weight compound movements (discussed below). The machines force you to move actual weights, but they also remove the use of stabilizer muscles and any requirement of balance. You simply have to move the weight – you don’t have to control it. These movements are effective but not ideal.

Compound free weight movements are going to be the top weapon at your disposal when looking to add new muscle size and strength. Squats for legs, bench press for chest, military press for chest, barbell curls for biceps, skull crushers for triceps, and rows and deadlifts for back – THESE are the movements you should be using.

Your set range should be about 4 sets of each of these exercises with every workout. Knock out 6 to 10 repetitions using a fairly heavy weight. Your repetitions should be slow and deliberate, controlled in order to ensure that your muscles are doing the work, and not the tendons and ligaments of your body.

Additionally, you will want to make sure you are giving your body ample tools for recovery from these workouts based upon tough compound movements. Four to five solid meals of proteins (chicken, beef, eggs, and fish) and carbohydrates (rice, potatoes, and pasta) along with 7.5 to 8.5 hours of sleep each night will give your body the tools needed for growth and repair on a daily basis.

Your physique is coming together well – but you can’t seem to get one or two muscle groups growing to catch up with the rest of them. No worries – our bodies are all built differently, and the methods of training we use from the very first time we hit the weight room are still affecting our outcomes differently. Finally, some muscle groups will just grow faster than others, based upon your body. Here are some techniques you can employ to bump up some muscle growth in those stubborn muscle groups that won’t grow, no matter what you do!

Add a meal to your day
First off, you’ll need more energy to train harder – extra carbs will provide that. Next you will need more amino acids for growth – and protein in greater amounts will deliver that. One more meal added to your daily meal regimen can give you the nutrients you need to grow!

Use Drop sets
Are your biceps lagging? Instead of getting frustrated, you have to train them harder. Complete your standard 8 repetitions with your standard 80 pounds (for example), and then set down the barbell and grab the 65 pound barbell, at which time you will complete 6 more reps. Immediately drop the weight and grab the 50 pound barbell for another 6 or 7 repetitions. Your arms will be pumped beyond belief. Take a few minutes’ rest then do it again!

Give Pre-exhaust a shot
Isolation followed by compound movements – this is the way to go when trying to make a lagging muscle group do MORE work in order to give it greater growth. Isolate the biceps first with seated concentration curls, using very slow repetitions with a light to moderate weight. Then, grab that heavy barbell and knock out 6 to 8 heavy repetitions. The biceps will be FORCED to do the work on each set – no longer allowing the forearms, back and hips to carry the workload.

Twice a week
Most of your muscle groups are probably trained once per week, and you see good results. But bumping things up to TWICE per week can result in a situation where the muscle group (particularly those that recover faster) can enjoy two muscle stimulation sessions per week. Give it a shot and see if more training equates to more results for you!

Are you ready to firm up your upper arms, maybe add an inch or two to your biceps? If you have your rest & nutrition in check, then it’s all just a matter of getting your biceps training right if you want to see some new growth. Here are some techniques you should consider using to bump up your biceps!

“I go, you go”
You’ll need a training buddy for this workout, and he/she will have to be someone with similar levels of strength. Grab a barbell with a weight which will allow 10 to 12 repetitions. Complete your repetitions, then pass it to your buddy so he can do his reps. Only instead of him putting it back on the rack, he will hand it back to you. You’ve had 45 seconds of rest, so you should be able to eke out 7 or 8 more repetitions. You pass him the bar, and he struggles with a few more. This process continues, the two of you taking turns completing as many reps as possible without the weight hitting the floor. By the end, 5 or 6 minutes in, you will both be struggling to complete even a single additional repetition, and the pump you have will be insane. This is a great way to finish up a workout!

Down the Rack
Start at the 60s and complete as many dumbbell curls as possible. Step to the left to the 55s or 50s, and repeat. Continue moving down the dumbbell rack, curling at each interval until you’d down to the 15s or 10s, struggling to move that dumbbell a single inch.

Iso/Compound training
Choose an isolation movement such as seated DB concentration curls. Complete your 10 reps with each arm, then grab a barbell and blast out 8 to 12 reps with the heavy barbell for standard standing barbell curls. Placing the isolation movement first ensures your biceps will be isolated and torched by the concentration curls, and will do MORE of the work on the compound movement of biceps barbell curls. Instead of the back, shoulders, and forearms grabbing an unfair share of the work, you will have the biceps working harder than ever.

Super Slow Curls
6 seconds on the positive/work part of the curl repetition, and 3 seconds on the negative/down part of the rep. It’s that simple. Knock out 6 to 8 repetitions with somewhat reduced weight and greatly reduced velocity when moving the weight, and observe muscle fibers firing that you didn’t even know you had!

Remember that these techniques should be used in addition to a standard 12-set biceps workout, completed once each week. Stick with two compound exercises for 4 sets of 8 to 12, followed with one isolation exercise for 4 sets of 10 to 15 repetitions. Use these four techniques to help reach results faster. And as always, make sure you’re eating plenty of protein and clean carbs, and enjoying 8 hours of sleep each night to give your body plenty of time to grow & recover!

Hitting the gym can become monotonous over time, but you can change that! Here are some tips for bumping up your training intensity to ensure you keep seeing fresh results and keep delivering a better package, every year!

Train with a buddy
You are in the gym to build muscle, but protecting yourself is and should always be first on your list. For this reason, you may stop short on the squat or bench press before you hit that final dangerous repetition where you’re not quite sure if you can make it. Bringing a buddy along ensures you will train until that weight is ready to fall on you – at which point he will save your skin. Plus, training with a buddy is good motivation to push harder and makes the time pass faster!

Visit a new gym
You’ve been hitting that same gym with the same people and same machines for years, right? Your body and mind are both probably getting used to it. Choose which muscle group of yours needs the most help, and visit a new gym each week for that muscle group’s training. Your mind and body will be equally stimulated with the new challenge and surroundings, and your workouts will be better as a result!

Add super sets
One set of biceps barbell curls is great. But what about a sets of standing barbell curls, followed with standing alternate dumbbell curls, topped off with some slow motion cable biceps curls? If you want a pump and better training intensity, you should work to make a good thing even better by combining muscle building exercises.

Give super-slow a shot
This style of training was very popular for a brief time in the 1990s but has fallen to the wayside since. Bring super slow back! Train with 6 to 8 seconds on the positive work part of each repetition, followed by a slower gradual negative portion of the repetition for 3 to 5 seconds. You will discover the exercise is harder than it has ever been before, and any exercises used afterward will pale in comparison.

Construct a home gym
Training at the gym is nice, but it’s not YOUR home. You can’t train in your boxer shorts while checking your email and blasting Metallica or Jay-Z at any volume choose, while at the gym. But you can do it at home! For greater intensity, try adding the external factors that get you revved up normally – and do it while training in your home basement or garage!

Are you ready to get serious about adding new muscle mass to your body? If so, you’re in the right place. Check out these three workouts, designed to hit the major muscle groups of the body on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Enjoy!

Workout #1
Today is Monday, which makes it chest, triceps, shoulders & abdominal training day. Two incline pressing movements followed by one flat pressing movement for chest, all 4 sets of 6-10 reps, should be followed up with 4 sets of incline flyes. Hit shoulders next in this mass building day, with 6 sets of DB presses, 4 sets of side raises, and 4 sets of bent over lateral raises. Finally, finish for the day with 6 sets of crunches after 4 sets of skull crushers and 4 sets of seated bench dips for triceps. Size is on the way!

Workout #2
Wednesday is here, and you’ve given your body about 48 hours to recover. Back, Traps, Biceps & Forearm day has arrived. Start things out with chins – 50 repetitions, to be exact. Take as many sets as needed to reach your target number, then limp on over to the deadlift area. Four sets with heavy weight should be adequate, but make sure you’re using a back brace. Four sets of cable rowing and your back will be primed for some new muscle growth. Hit that dumbbell area for 9 to 12 sets of various standing & seated alternate dumbbell curls, keeping your focus upon slow and deliberate movement of the weight. Flex and feel is your goal! Finally, 4 sets of wrist curls for forearms and 6 sets of shrugs for traps, and you’re ready for a break!

Workout #3
It’s leg day, which means it must be Friday! Let’s kick things off with squats, of course, the foundation for any leg day where the goal is SIZE. After 4 sets of squats, you’re ready for 4 sets of leg press or hack squats – your choice! Your legs will start to shake, so it’s time to scale back the weight for lunges. Load up the bar and alternate each leg as your finish off the free weight portion of your workout for another 3 sets. Now you can move on to the seated leg extension, let curls for hamstrings, and then 8 sets for calves. Any seated, angled or standing calf raise will be adequate. You’ve trained legs – now go home, eat your steak & potatoes, and rest until Monday, when it’ll be time to train like this all over once again!

The results that we see from our efforts at the gym are often terrific. But finding the motivation to get to the gym in the first place can be difficult at times. Here are some tips for skyrocketing your gym motivation.

Train in a new place
Looking at the same four walls of a gym does become monotonous over time. Seeing some new places, new faces, and new pieces of equipment awaiting your conquer can boost your training motivation like nothing else. Check out a week or month pass for a few bucks, and you may discover the minimal cost is very much worth it when you see some new results!

Add a buddy
You have your own limitations when it comes to just about every exercise. Maybe you stop your reps and poundage out of habit, out of fear, or just because you don’t have that kick in the pants to train heavier. It’s time to change that! Bring a buddy to the gym, and you can push one another to new lifting heights while at the same time training in safer manner than ever before. Moving new weights without fear is a great way to stay motivated!

Toss in a new supplement
It can be difficult to find the energy to train all the time when you feel like you’ve always felt in the gym. However, you can add a pre-workout supplement for greater energy and pumps, and quickly discover how fast that changes! NOS and other supplements will have you bouncing around the dumbbell section, moving every weight you can with more intensity and insanity than you ever thought possible!

Reverse the order of exercises
The same compound exercises followed by isolation movements might work in the greater scheme of things, but it sure can make training bland. Why not try changing things up by putting lighter movements such as leg extensions first on leg day, with leg press than squats following. Sure, you might find you’ll move a bit less weight on the squats, but the pump and muscle stimulation you’ll be enjoying by that point might make that weight reduction worth it!

Rearrange your training days
We all have to start our training weeks with chest day, right? Wrong! Begin your week with leg day, then move to back and THEN work in a chest day. Your system won’t know what to think! And the new energy you’ll have for leg day will ensure a squatting session the likes of which you’ve never seen before!

Low intensity days
When it comes to the gym, just showing up is usually half the battle. We can’t always show up with 100% strength and energy. So cut back on a few workouts each month, sticking with moderate weight AND reps for those days. Give your central nervous system a break while keeping your muscles tone and strong.