Kingtut

In their quest to build muscle fast and just hit the weights, most body builders over look one of the most important aspects of building muscle. Warming up.

In order for your workouts to be effective and to maximize muscle growth, you need to warm up properly before you start “pumping iron”. A good warm up has immense benefits the two most important of which are:

1. It enables you to lift much more weight. Lifting more weight progressively leads to greater strength and eventually muscle growth.

ii) You reduce your chances of getting injured.

I recommend structuring your warm up into 3 short parts. Start with a light cardio routine. Five minutes on the stairmaster, treadmill or cylcle machine should be sufficient. Make sure you do not exert yourself during this phase. You will want to conserve all your energy for the actual workout. Too often I see people doing cardio vigorously, dripping in sweat and then proceeding to workout. When you do this you have little left to give during the weight lifting phase.

Cardio prepares you heart and lungs for the heavy lifting that will follow. It also produces synovial a fluid that sits between your joints, lubricating them against friction whenever you move. It has an egg-yolk like look and is viscous in nature. You definitely want lots of it flowing before you hit the weights.

The next part of the warm up is stretching. Stretching increases your flexibility and also further prepares the muscles for the difficult task of weight lifting ahead. It is difficult to explain the various stretches in words, so see the link at the bottom of the article for how to stretch. Do a complete body stretch before the actual workout and also try to stretch in between sets. Good stretching can double the effectiveness of your workout.

The final part of the warm up is doing extremely light weights on the exercises that target the muscle group you intend to work on that day. For example ,if you are working on the upper body (chest, back, shoulders, biceps or triceps) do light push ups or bench pressing with just the weight of the bar. After you complete this you are now ready to begin your workout in earnest.

Again, do a whole body stretch but warm up sets for just the muscle groups that you are targeting on that day. Ideally your work out should last no more than 15 minutes. Always try to maintain laser focus on what you have planned so that you minimize the time spent in the gym, spending no more than 75 — 90 minutes total for each training session. One way of enhancing this focus is to visualize powerfully during the cardio part of the workout.

Since cardio is the least mind intensive part of the workout, use the time spent on cardio to visualize the results you want and the intensity you will bring to bear when lifting the weights. The mental part of bodybuilding is just as important and should not be neglected.

To recap what I just said in one sentence: You ABSOLUTELY MUST warm up before working out if you want to maximize muscle gain and avoid injuries.

By Don Demarco. Don is a fitness enthusiast and writer. Enroll for a FREE muscle building course visit Ultimate Men’s Workout . Also see Men’s Workout Stretches . http://www.MensWorkoutHeaven.com