Muscle Build

We can rebuild you (pt 1)

So you want a new, more muscular body? Gentlemen, you have the technology to build one. This is the first part of a three-stage programme specifically designed to improve your physical performance and promote new muscle growth.

This programme will do more than just slap slabs of muscle on your arms and chest. It will make sure your gains are balanced and proportional so that you prevent injury. After the three stages your whole body will be functionally stronger, allowing you to focus your training on the specific areas you want to improve.

In this first four-week phase you’ll work with light weights and high reps, often using an unstable platform such as a Swiss ball. This challenges your muscles to maintain a strong body position during an exercise. The muscles surrounding your joints will become stronger and less prone to injury, providing a superb foundation for building bigger muscles in stage two of the programme.

At first you’ll target every muscle in your body, using just your own bodyweight for resistance. This is an excellent way to iron out any imbalances in muscle strength, improve your grip endurance and learn to hold good body position. Then you add weight to place the muscles under a greater load and fatigue them more completely. Finally, you’ll use big, multi-joint movements to teach muscle groups to fire in the correct sequence, which will become vital when lifting heavy loads later on in the programme.

Stick with MF’s plan and after four weeks you’ll have burnt off fat and prepared your muscles for the mass-building workouts in next month’s issue. You may not be the world’s first bionic man, but you’ll be fitter, stronger, faster…

How to do this workout

Do workouts A, B and C once a week each, leaving at least one day’s rest between each workout. Half an hour before each workout, have a drink with a high carbohydrate content or eat a banana to fuel your effort. Warm up by doing five minutes on a cardio machine, then warm-up sets of press-ups or chin-ups and bodyweight squats to raise your heart rate and get your muscles warmed up. Find the appropriate piece of kit and make sure you have enough space to do all the moves. Leave one minute’s rest between sets and two to three minutes between exercises.