Tips to increase our strength and our muscles without stalling

When a person starts going to the gym, usually what they are looking for is either an aesthetic goal or a performance goal, and if we talk about training with loads, the goals in terms of performance are usually to increase strength and aesthetics, increase the muscles, So let’s give you some tips to achieve these goals.

It is always interesting to remember and emphasize that an increase of force does not have to entail an increase of the musculature, that is to say, one can increase the force without increasing the muscular mass, since the force depends mainly on the recruitment of motor units.

Basic concepts that every routine should have

As I commented at the beginning of this article, if we want to increase our muscles without stagnation, we have to think that our goal should also be to increase our strength, as we said long ago to be great, you have to be stronger.

I do not mean by this that pure training of strength is the best to generate hypertrophy, but we must take into account some basic concepts that must have every routine , such as the following:

• Priority in multi-articular exercises : first, routines should be composed of 60% to 80% by multi-articular exercises (bench press, squats, dead weight, dominated, backgrounds, military press, rowing, among others). Mainly these exercises should be trained with the aim of increasing the force in them, so, a recommended strategy is to follow some progression of strength (type 5×5, 5/3/1 or any other that interests us). In these types of exercises, when training strength, we do not have to perform the slowest eccentric phase, we simply have to train strength as it should, since holding the eccentric phase will not allow us to increase our strength in those exercises.
• Auxiliary exercises yes: if the goal is to increase our muscles, we should not leave aside the monoarticular auxiliary exercises, which must compose the rest of our routine, between 20% and 40%. In this type of exercises we are interested in doing the repetitions technically well, so that it is more interesting to take a weight with which we can complete between 12 and 15 repetitions correctly , to choose a higher weight in which we continuously Balance or not be able to endure and perform the technique correctly.

Errors to avoid in our training

There are some mistakes that are very common to see in gyms when the main goal is to increase strength and muscle, some of the most frequent are described below:

• Go to muscle failure: one of the most common mistakes, but the most common, is to try to look for muscle failure, this for the only purpose is to overload the muscles, being at great risk of suffering an injury and also prevents recovery For the following workouts. Never, whatever the objective, must be reached muscle failure, it should be noted that it should not train in the same way a natural subject as a subject that uses chemistry.
• Change the routine very often : there is also the false belief that you have to change the routine every four to five weeks, and this is not correct. Precisely if we want to improve our strength and muscle, there must be a neural and muscular adaptation and if we continually change the routine, we will not achieve this adaptation and we will find it increasingly difficult to progress.
• Base our routine on monoarticular exercises : many people follow routines generally divided, with a high volume, composed of many series and repetitions, which makes difficult the recovery later facing the following sessions. In Vitonica we always recommend fullbody or torso leg routines.
• To think that force should only be trained by those interested in strength : if we always move the same loads, we will stagnate quickly, it is a mistake to think that we should not increase our strength.
• Exceeding with cardiovascular exercise : Many people overdo themselves with cardiovascular exercise, and precisely in excess, make it difficult to increase muscle mass.
• To think that more is better : more repetitions, more sets or even more intensity is not going to mean that it is better, we simply must learn to regulate well the loads and the volume of each session.

Errors that are committed in the diet

Basically the errors that are discussed in the diet, at the level of muscle mass increase and later definition, we can divide them into two big mistakes , although logically there are many more, especially if we stop to analyze each of the stages:

• To make excessively caloric diets : to increase muscle mass, in a volume stage, we should not perform an excessive caloric surplus, that the only thing that is going to cause is that we increase our fat percentage rather than recommended and very quickly. In addition, by increasing our fat percentage so quickly, there are imbalances in the hormonal system, which even causes our insulin sensitivity to worsen, making it increasingly difficult to lose fat.
• Doing too low calorie diets : on the other hand, in times of definition, it is not necessary to make a very abrupt reduction of calories, since, the only thing that is going to cause is that we accumulate fatigue more quickly, tiredness, malaise and in the end, we will lose Fat, muscle and health.

So the best idea is to have a healthy diet, balanced and compatible with our lifestyle, to give us enough energy to face our days, even when we perform caloric deficits to lose fat, which is still feasible. Food is the fuel of our body , we should not see it as an enemy.