How to Build Muscle

I think that everyone instinctively knows one thing: muscle and strength are directly correlated. You can't be strong without having a lot of muscle, and you can't have a lot of muscle without being strong. Think about it, when you look at a big guy on the street, you naturally assume that is strong. And at the same time, you assume that the skinny guys are weak.  You'd be surprised to see a guy with sticks for arms benching 200+ lbs.

I've seen literally hundreds of body building workouts on the Internet.  They all focus on doing high(8+) repetitions and giving your muscles a week rest period before you work them again.  You end up with all kinds of split routines that work a single group of muscles each day of the week. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, these workouts don't build strength.  They just really wear out your muscles. They're probably throw in some physiology like how micro-tears in your muscle are what cause your muscles to rebuild themselves larger than before, and they'll have you believing that they're on to something special. But if the body-building split workouts were actually effective at tearing your muscles, then everyone using those workouts would see tremendous growths in their strength (and size of course).  I can personally testify that you will not see awesome strength gains on body building workouts.  In fact after a year of a body building workout, I can say that my bench press went up a pathetic 20 lbs. I also lost 5 pounds in body weight. And trust me, it wasn't from following the workout wrong or not putting in the effort.  I was in the gym 3 days a week like the routine called for, and I rarely missed a workout.

So the routine that I'm going to be using from now on is a strength building program. I got it from StrongLifts.com.  You can sign up for an electronic book to learn more.  To get a quick overview of the workout I'm following check out the StrongLifts 5x5 Program. Note that regardless of how long you've been lifting weights, you are a beginner according to StrongLifts.  They have an intermediate and advanced program, but those are for people who have completed the beginner program.