Bodybuilding

Why Can't I Grow?

By Mark Hayward

There are literally thousands of people training in gyms all over the world that have one thing in common- they are desperate to gain muscle but despite their efforts, nothing much seems to happen. If this is you then read on...

 

Not Eating Enough Food

The first and biggest mistake is, are you eating enough food? It might sound obvious, but the body won't add weight to itself without the additional calories to do so. You may think you are eating a lot but if you sat down and honestly worked out how many calories you are consuming you would be surprised. This means every day of the week too. Gaining weight is really not too difficult, it's simply energy in vs energy out.

Calorie dense foods are to be your friend, olive oil and nuts are excellent sources of good fats that will get you growing.

If you have to get a quality weight gainer and carry it around with you, then your excuse of 'not having enough time to eat' will no longer be valid. Also you will need at least a gramme of protein for every pound of bodyweight. Try using a protein powder to achieve this.

 

 

 

Lifting Light Weights

 

Your long term goal for the next few years should be to be squatting and deadlifting 180-200 kg and benching 140 kg. Most people will get near or surpass these goals if they train hard enough and will have the development to show for it. You don't deadlift or squat? Then stop reading and get back to the gym right now. You will be able to handle more weight on these big lifts and other such as as chins, dips, barbell and dumbell rows, power cleans, close grip bench presses, barbell shoulder presses, glute ham raises, all deadlift variations and barbell and dumbell curls. Try to add weight and/or weight to the bar every week, keep the sets low- no more than 3 per exercise, work really hard and you will get there. You will need a training log for this to see what you did the week before.

 

Exercise Selection

 

Tying in with above, if you can't squat or deadlift 140 kg then I don't want to see you doing tricep pushdowns and having 'shoulder days' at the gym. You are working such a small amount of muscle mass and fibres with these exercises and training spits the body just has no reason to grow. Use multi joint movements NOT isolation movements until you are big and strong. Don't forget you have

a back and legs. Getting strong on these muscle groups will do far more for you than any other as their potential for size and strength is so much greater. Th

e body wants to grow as a whole, a weak back and legs will act like the weak link in a chain, stalling your progress for eternity.

 

Burning Up Too Many Calories

 

If you play football 3 days a week, go out running then train six days a week at the gym then you are leaving little left for muscle growth.

You shouldn't be in the gym more than 3 days a week until you get a lot bigger and stronger, if football is your thing then do that but don't moan that you can't gain weight, some cardio is good, running is good for cardiovascular fitness, but not for health and body building,

unless you do interval training style. So relax more, if you really can't then start eating like you've not seen food for six weeks! You will need at least 8 hours sleep most nights- go to bed at 9pm if you have too.

 

 

Unrealistic Expectations

 

There are four types of bodybuilders- those who grow easily, those who take performance enhancing supplements i.e. steroids, those who train and eat sensibly for many years and the other 90% who look the same week after week. All competitive body builders take drugs and are genetically gifted, so it is unrealistic to compare yourself to them. Even then they are only in top shape- huge and ripped for a couple of weeks at most. We all know of someone who has been training for a few weeks and had surpassed everyone else in the gym, apparently without really knowing what they are doing. When asked how they did this the will always say 'just hard work'. Some may actually work

hard but the truth is they could grow by lifting a cornflakes packet. They should really say ' I chose the right parents and don't really know what I'm doing'- never ever take training advice from people like this. You should be the smart trainer- do your home work and work hard you can still look incredibly impressive. Just don't compare yourself to drug users and genetic freaks.

 

Have a Plan

 

Are you the type to go to the gym and when you get there say 'what shall I do today', or meet up with five of your mates

and do what they are doing (usually every variation of the bicep curl known to mankind or sometimes chest and shoulders in between checking out the girls and gossiping like one). Use a proven routine, such as 5x5 and stick with it for a few months. Don't worry what anyone else is doing and if you need a training partner choose one that is there to train not gossip and check out there puny 'pumped up' arms in the mirror.

If you follow the principles above you will start gaining muscle at serious rate, your mates will think your are on steroids and say you're 'training wrong', just let them drive themselves into the ground and give up in frustration. Enjoy the ride and train smart!

 

 

Chest Training

By Mark Hayward

 

Of all the muscle groups that make up the human body, the chest is one of them that bodybuilders seem to prioritise more than any other. People ask me all the how they can work the upper chest, the lower chest, the inner chest, the outer chest, the upper middle and the lower outer. It is just confusing and absurd. Building a thickly muscled, well developed chest is not that complicated. It may not happen as quickly for some compared to others, but it certainly is not so tricky. We will take a look at the structure of the pecs then you will see that training this group is really very easy.

The primary component of the chest is the large muscle named Pectoralis Major. It is only one muscle of many that is used to move the shoulder girdle and manipulate the arm (above the elbow). All of the muscle fibres that make up the Pectoralis Major run from the sternum and the sternal ends of the first 7 ribs, all the way to a small bump on side of your humerus bone call the greater tubercle. This is almost

the same exact point of where our lats attach to our arm. Fact, the fibres that attach to the arm run over the fibre of the lattissimus muscle. All of the fibres run in one direction, from the sternum to the humerus. There are no facsial divisions or tendons that would constitute the distinction of a inner or outer chest. The Pectoralis major is all one piece. There is no reason to try to find exercise that will increase the size of the inner part more than the outer because there aren't any that can do that. An easier way to think

of this is to find a rubber band and place it between the thumb and index finger of one hand. Let's imagine that your thumb is your sternum making the part of the rubber band closest to your thumb the "Inner Chest". With that said, you cannot move your thumb. Now, by only moving your index finger, I want you to try to stretch out only the part closest to your thumb. You can't do it! The whole band is going to stretch. And that is the same as how your pecs work.

There are also a small gathering of muscle that lie underneath the Pectoralis major, that are collectively called the Pectoralis Minor. It starts from the middle of ribs 3-5 and attaches to the coracoids process that comes off of the scapula. That's because of its primary function it goes from the bottom up. Its primary function is only to depress the shoulder girdle. means if you to support your self on something with our your feet on the floor with your elbows locked out, the pec minor would be a player in forcing your shoulders down rather than letting them pinch your head off. It is also involved in raising ribs 3-5. In other words, when you take a deep breath and your rib cage expands. Since it does not attach to the humerus, it does not have any involvement in actually moving the arm. Remember that the next time you hit the gym!

Now that we have a better understanding of what makes up the 'Chest' we can get into what the chest actually does. Going back the Pectoralis Major, By definition, it flexes, Adducts and medially rotates the arm (above the elbow). Flexing the arm mean that if you were to let your arm hang at your side, your chest would help you to raise it as if your were reaching for a door knob. Adduction means to bring back. So if your arms were being held up like you were being crucified, the Pectoralis major would help you to forcefully bring your arm back to your side. Rotation is a complicated way to say turning your arm in towards your body so that your elbows flare out to the sides. There is also Horizontal adduction. Which is much like regular adduction, however your arms are moving in a horizontal plane rather than a vertical one, for example clapping like a seal is horizontal adduction. And we have already talked about what the Pectoralis Minor does for us.

So now lets move on to some of the exercises that are most useful for these muscles in terms of adding thick muscle mass.

As we know how the muscle of the chest are put together and what it is they do for us in terms of movement, we can choose the most effective exercises.

 

The first exercise on the list is the flat barbell bench press.

 

This exercise is a adduction/horizontal adduction movement and by far the strongest movement that the Pectoralis Major can do. When we look at this exercise, it is very important to only look at the arm in terms of from the elbow up. What happens below the elbow has no bearing on the muscle of the chest. The flat barbell bench press is the best overall chest exercise because it allows you to handle more weight. This is of vital importance when trying to put on as much muscle in the shortest amount of time possible.

 

The next exercise on the list would be weighted dips.

 

This is also a triceps exercise- one of the primary functions of the chest was flexion of the arm, during the dip, our arms is in full extension at the bottom of the exercise. Forget about what is going on below the elbow. The arm is in full extension. From a forced extension, your chest is the prime mover that has to bring it back into the neutral position by flexing the arm. The triceps are involved, but the chest is the dominating muscle group here. By leaning your torso forward about 15-20 degrees, you can take some of the tension off of your triceps and more on your chest.

 

Next would be dumbell pullovers. This hits the Pectoralis minor hard.

 

The minor group runs from the ribs up to the coracoid process on the scapula. It has no action on the arms. With the pull over, it is important to get a full stretch by taking your arms to at least parallel to the floor so we place the minor group under the greatest tension. On the upward phase we need to remember to draw our shoulders towards our knees to depress the shoulder girdle. We have the incline barbell bench press. Although there is not inner or outer chest, there is technically an 'upper' chest. This refers to the sternal head of the Pectoralis major. This is differentiated by a grouping of fibres of the Pectoralis major that attach to the clavicle as opposed to the sternum. You can always tell people who do incline presses, and those who don't, these are the most effective exercise for adding muscle mass to the chest. There is no inner or outer aspect of the Pectoralis major, so stop wasting your time trying and asking!

I am constantly surprised by how many people insist on doing fly and cross-over exercises. I hope you can see why these types of exercises are don't have a place for adding mass to your chest. They are good for people who have weak or unstable shoulder joints and need to work on that area. However, if you don't have these types of problems, then don't do them. The stretch does not come into play for size increases. Your elbows will go to the exact same depth on a dumbell flye and a dumbell bench press. Yes, you will get a greater ROM than a barbell, but that is why we include dumbell bench press into the the list of best exercises.

As for the stretch, there is no way that a different hand position will stretch the Pectoralis muscle. What is the stretch then? It's actually your biceps and the coricobrachiallis muscle. The biceps muscle run from the gleno-humeral (shoulder) joint to just below the elbow. And the coricobrachiallis runs from the coracoid process to the middle of the humerus. This is the stretch that you feel. It is not the Pectoralis muscle. The only thing these exercises do is lighten the load placed on the Pecs. Unless you can do flyes with as much weight as you can do presses with, you shouldn't be doing them. Most of these exercises have been made up by poor personal trainers to keep their clients interested so they keep coming back. I just don't see any reason to waste time with those movements. I don't do them and chest development has never been a problem for me, just sticking with bench presses!

It's really very simple. There is absolutely no need to do 40 different exercises and you don't need a complex plan to hit the inner, outer and every fibre of the same muscle group.

Always ask yourself if what you and your friends are doing really makes sense. Sometimes what you 'Feel' and what is really happening are not one in the same!