THE MUSCLE BUILDING CHEAT SHEET TODAY, I am going to show you the best way to build muscle. If what you're doing at the moment isn’t working, please pay attention. What I have to say might be just what you need to get better, faster results. STEP 1:GETREAL You might not like what I'm about to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. The fact is that some people have very favorable "muscle building" genetics and will see impressive results after only a few months of lifting weights. Others will build muscle more slowly. And that's just the way it is. In your first year of serious training you can realistically expect to build anywhere between 10 and 25 pounds of muscle. Under the right conditions, guys with a large bone structure and good genetics may see gains of up to 25 pounds, while smaller men with less favorable genetics will find that 10 pounds is about the limit.In year two, we can cut those numbers in half, giving you a gain of 5-12 pounds. In year three, the gains will be halved again, giving you 3-6 pounds of muscle. STEP 2: TRAINING FREQUENCY Anyone with average genetics who wants to gain as much muscle as they can in the shortest time possible will see the best results training each muscle group at least twice every seven days. Of all the training splits I’ve used over the years, the upper/lower split is my favorite. You hit the upper body on Monday, lower body on Tuesday, then take Wednesday off. Thursday is upper body, Friday is lower body and you have the weekend off. Each muscle group is trained twice a week. Monday: Upper Body Tuesday: Lower Body Wednesday: Off Thursday: Upper Body Friday: Lower Body Saturday: Off Sunday: OffSTEP 3: GET STRONG The next step is to train very hard and concentrate on getting strong at pressing, pulling and squatting. When I talk about getting strong, I don’t necessarily mean the amount of weight you can lift once. If you can deadlift double your bodyweight for a single repetition, you're stronger than most people. But you won't necessarily LOOK that way. However, if you can deadlift double your bodyweight for 18 reps, the chances are very high that you will have developed an enviable level of muscularity. Not only will you BE strong, you will look it as well. That doesn’t mean there’s a perfectly linear relationship between gains in strength and gains in size. If you double your strength in all your exercises, you’re not going to double your muscle mass. Nor does it follow that increasing the size of a muscle by 100% will produce an equal gain in strength. But other than your body doing a better job of using the available fibers in a given muscle, the only way to continue to increase the number of reps you can do with a certain weight is for your muscles to get bigger.You won’t always see this increase in muscle size on a daily or even a weekly basis. But it all adds up. And in a few months time, you will have more muscle than you have right now. The biggest guys aren’t always the strongest. And the strongest guys aren’t always the biggest. But it’s rare to see an extremely muscular guy who doesn’t also possess a very high level of strength. STEP 4: EXERCISE SELECTION Make sure to choose compound exercises that allow you to move a large amount of weight. The best exercises in each movement category are as follows: Horizontal push (flat/30-degree incline barbell bench press, flat/30-degree incline dumbbell bench press, push-ups) Horizontal pull (seated row, dumbbell row, inverted bodyweight row) Vertical pull (chin-up, close-grip palms-up front lat pulldown, wide grip front lat pulldown ) Vertical push (standing barbell press, standing dumbbell press, seated dumbbell press) Lower body quadriceps emphasis (squat, split squat, leg press)Lower body hamstrings emphasis (deadlift, Romanian deadlift, leg curl) Think of these exercises as the "big rocks" that should go into your training "bucket" first. That doesn't mean that you can’t include other exercises such as lateral raises, flyes, incline curls and so on. However, these exercises are the "pebbles" and "sand" and should be used as a supplement to rather than a replacement for pulling, pressing and squatting. STEP 5: HOW MANY SETS? When they look for advice on how to build muscle, a lot of guys turn to the muscle magazines. They'll tell you that the only way to make your muscles grow is to stimulate all your muscle fibers by "bombing them into submission" with lots of exercises, sets and reps. Truth is, you can't take a high volume (20-30 sets per muscle group) workout used by a heavily drug-assisted champion bodybuilder and assume that you'll get identical results by following the same program. It's not going to happen.For most guys, a total of 25 "work sets" per workout (excluding warm-up sets) is more than enough to get the job done. That's not 25 sets per muscle group. That's 25 sets IN TOTAL for the entire workout. STEP 6: HOW MANY REPS? There are many different set and rep protocols that you can use to build muscle. The one I use and recommend on all the major compound lifts is to ramp up to a single heavy set that is close to, but not quite, an “all out” set. You could probably just about manage another rep, but only if you were to compromise your technique. By ramping up, I mean doing a series of progressively heavier sets until you’re close to the maximum amount of weight you can lift for 5-8 repetitions. Once that set is done, rest for a minute or two. Reduce the weight by 10-20%, and perform another set. Do the same thing again. Then, move on to your next exercise. STEP 7: PUMP AND BURN A lot of people will tell you that "getting a pump" has nothing to do with muscle growth. And it's true that thetemporary increase in muscle size that you get after lifting weights only lasts for just an hour or so. However, the TYPE of training that leads to that "pumped" feeling DOES have a role to play in building muscle. As I mentioned earlier, probably the most important trigger for muscle growth is progressive tension overload — lifting more weight over time. But there's a second stimulus, which you might see referred to as accumulating byproducts of fatigue, metabolite accumulation, metabolic fatigue (or some other variation on the theme) depending on who you listen to. Metabolic fatigue is all about "going for the burn" and training in a way that makes your muscles feel like they're pumped up and on fire. And there are a number of different ways to stimulate metabolic fatigue. You can use multiple sets of a given exercise with moderate-to-high repetitions (8-15) and short (30-60 seconds) rest periods between sets. You could incorporate a "burn out" set at the end of a series of heavy sets. Drop sets (sometimes known as descending sets or stripping) are also a highly effective way to create a large amount of fatigue in a relatively short period of time.In short, it's a good idea to include low reps and heavy weights as well as higher reps and lighter weights in your training program. STEP 8: KEEP IT SIMPLE Once you have a decent training and nutrition program set up, the key to long-term success is to stick with it. Just keep adding weight to the bar at every opportunity and continue to feed your body with the nutrition it needs to grow. Forget about the latest muscle-building bandwagon that everyone else is jumping on, no matter now tempting it might look. Don't worry about complicated training routines, exotic muscle-building supplements or fancy diets. It's a lot more important to work hard on the basic exercises than to spend your time (and money) on the latest fad that the magazines are getting excited about. Concentrate on lifting heavy, training hard and eating right. Set challenging but realistic goals for yourself and work as hard as you can towards achieving them. Do that and the size will come. SHAMELESS PLUG Muscle Evo wraps up all my best ideas and advice into a complete “cut the waffle and just tell me what to do” training program that you can use to get in shape without spending unnecessary hours in the gym. Click or tap here now to learn more about Muscle Evo.