Tag: training
How To Increase Vascularity: 15 Effective Strategies to Get Diced
Let’s be honest; prominent veins on a muscular physique look badass. Vascularity is considered a symbol of leanness, muscle mass, strength, dedication, hard work, and, as we said — badassery. Not only that, but a vascular dude is also a nurse’s dream.
Although most lifters want to get more diced and vascular, it is easier said than done. Multiple factors, including your diet, training, and body fat percentage, affect the visibility of veins in your body, and you must do everything right to maintain them throughout the year.
Vascularity is a highly sought-after attribute in fitness and bodybuilding, as it can improve your aesthetics. If you’ve ever noticed, most professional bodybuilders get super vascular close to a show; however, they lose their sharpness as soon as they start refeeding after the contest. Your vascularity can change daily, depending on your food intake and body fat percentage.
Contrary to what most people think, crisp conditioning and monster vascularity are not reserved for bodybuilders. Anyone can improve the visibility of their veins and blood vessels by controlling a few factors.
In this article, we go over the basics of vascularity and everything you need to know about improving the appearance and prominence of your veins, including the factors that affect your vascularity and the 15 most effective ways of improving it.
Understanding Vascularity
Vascularity is defined as the visibility and prominence of veins and blood vessels beneath the skin. There is no special exercise or diet to improve your vascularity. You must control several factors to enhance the visibility of veins and blood vessels under your skin.
Vascularity is chased by folks striving to achieve a shredded and muscular physique. Your vascularity mainly improves when your blood flow increases, causing the vessels to expand and become more prominent. A vascular individual’s veins will generally be thicker, wider, and denser than an average person’s.
Besides people that train, individuals with a physically intensive job and a low body fat percentage usually have insane vascularity. Manual labor keeps their blood flow high throughout the day, which expands their veins.
Bodybuilders chase vascularity as it can boost their aesthetics by enhancing their muscle definition and making them look bigger and stronger.
When veins and blood vessels become more visible as a result of a low body fat percentage, it gives the appearance of tightly wrapped skin around your muscles, helping you achieve a 3D physique, which is a jargon in the bodybuilding world for well-defined, full, chiseled, popping, and separated muscles.
Now that you are well-versed with the basics of vascularity check out the factors that affect your vascularity and the best ways to improve it.
Factors Affecting Vascularity
Although many people want to improve their vascularity, only a few understand the role of veins in the body and how it affects their overall health and well-being.
Blood vessels, including arteries, veins, and capillaries, transport oxygen, nutrients, hormones, and immune cells throughout the body. Arteries deliver oxygen-rich blood from the heart to various tissues and organs, while veins bring the oxygen-depleted blood back to the heart.
During a pump-inducing workout, your veins get dilated and move closer to the skin’s surface to make more space for the blood to return to your heart, so oxygen and nutrient-rich blood can be circulated again.
Multiple factors influence vascularity and impact the visibility and prominence of veins and blood vessels. Understanding the factors that affect your vascularity will help you fine-tune your fitness regimen. All the 15 methods mentioned in this article (and your vascularity) will come down to these factors and how you manage them.
Genetics
Like most things in bodybuilding, this is where it starts. Some people naturally have more visible veins due to their genetic makeup. Others have to slog away to achieve their vascularity and conditioning goals. Plus, some people have thicker and wider veins than others, making their vascularity stand out.
Furthermore, different people will respond uniquely to the same diet and exercise program. Your training partner might achieve crisp vascularity much faster than you, or vice versa.
Body Fat Percentage
Vascularity is a sign of low body fat as an individual must have a low amount of subcutaneous fat to unveil his muscle definition and veins. Achieving a lower body fat percentage should be your primary objective if you want to improve your vascularity.
Related: Body Fat US Navy Calculator
Muscle Mass
Your vein visibility and prominence improve as you build muscle mass. As you build muscle, your veins come closer to the skin surface, which improves their visibility. Conversely, you will lose some vascularity with a decline in your muscle mass.
Improvement in vascularity boosts your physique aesthetics as it boosts your muscle separation and definition. Most lifters report the development of lines and striations as they shed body fat and build muscle mass.
Hydration
Hydration is a complicated and often misunderstood subject when it comes to improving vascularity. Contrary to what most people believe, you must be adequately hydrated to improve your vascularity.
Many people make the mistake of cutting their water while trying to lose weight. However, it can lead to health issues. On the flip side, not managing your water and food intake can lead you to hold onto water weight.
Diet
You must follow a nutrient-dense whole-food diet and count your calories if you want to improve your vascularity. Plus, your diet should be rich in antioxidants and nitric oxide boosters. These will help dilate your blood vessels, improve blood flow, and make your veins more visible and prominent.
Blood Flow
Efficient blood flow and vasodilation are essential for pronounced vascularity. Cardiovascular exercise, nitric oxide production, and certain supplements can influence blood vessel dilation.
Hormonal Balance
Your hormones play a crucial role in influencing your vascularity. Testosterone can boost vascularity by helping improve muscle development and blood flow. Men are usually more vascular than ladies as they produce more testosterone. On the flip side, estrogen is the female sex hormone, and higher estrogen stores lead to bigger fat stores.
Bodybuilders that take synthetic testosterone often experience a boost in vascularity as their bodies are primed to shed excess fat and build muscle mass.
Age
There is a decline in vascularity with age as your skin loses elasticity and blood vessels become less prominent. Testosterone production in men also declines with age, which is another reason for muscle mass and vascularity loss.
Medications
Certain medications, such as beta-blockers, can affect blood flow by reducing vasodilation. Such types of medicines can lead to a fall in vascularity. You must consult your healthcare professional before starting a workout, diet, or supplement program if you are on any medication.
15 Best Ways To Improve Your Vascularity
Here are the 15 most effective ways of boosting your vascularity:
Target Muscle Groups Where You Want to Improve Your Vascularity
You cannot spot-improve your vascularity in a certain muscle group, as you must focus on losing body fat and building muscle by following a balanced diet and training program. Vascularity tends to be generalized to the entire body. However, you must target specific muscle groups during your workouts to improve your musculature and conditioning.
When someone says they want to improve their vascularity, they are usually referring to their arms. You’ll hardly ever find someone looking for ways to increase the vascular density in their glutes (it would be borderline gross if they did).
If you want a thick and gnarly cephalic vein and your forearm veins to look like a roadmap, you must focus on training your upper and lower arms effectively. Train your target muscle groups two to three times per week to improve your vascularity. However, you must take into account your experience level and training intensity. Advanced lifters that follow a high-volume and high-intensity training program should limit training each muscle group to twice weekly.
Follow a Balanced Exercise Regimen
Many people go all-in on isolation and machine exercises while trying to increase their vascularity. However, they leave significant gains on the table by following this approach. Your workout program should have a balance of compound and isolation exercises.
Compound movements help build muscle mass, which pushes your veins closer to the skin layer. On the other hand, isolation exercises help improve your conditioning and muscle definition.
Furthermore, since you must prioritize losing body fat (and weight) to improve your vascularity and conditioning, you should favor compound exercises that involve multiple muscle groups, as they will result in higher caloric expenditure.
Your workout programs should also maintain a balance between strength training and cardiovascular training sessions since you cannot enhance your vascularity while gaining body weight or fat.
Incorporate HIIT Exercises into Your Training Regimen
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) involves alternating between several minutes of high-intensity movements to significantly increase your heart rate to at least 80% of your maximum heart rate, followed by short periods of lower-intensity movements or rest.
HIIT exercises boost blood flow to the target muscles, improving vasodilation and the visibility of your veins. You must incorporate HIIT strength training and cardiovascular sessions into your training regimen for optimal improvements in your vascularity.
Remember, you don’t have to turn every workout in your training program into a HIIT workout. Use a training protocol that promotes cardiovascular adaptations, including improved heart health, increased blood volume, and enhanced vasodilation, and you’ll be on your way to achieving road-map-like veins.
Capitalize on Advanced Training Principles
Incorporating advanced training principles such as super sets, drop sets, and intraset stretching can significantly increase blood flow to the target muscles, which can help induce hypertrophy and enhance your vascularity.
Furthermore, the blood flow restriction (BFR) training technique can help boost your vascularity. BFR or occlusion training combines low-intensity exercise with blood flow occlusion, producing similar results to high-intensity training.
BFR training involves performing an exercise while wearing a BFR cuff around the top of the target muscle group. Notably, BFR should be restricted to one exercise per workout. Overdoing it can lead to limb numbness and other vascular issues. Although BFR was initially used in gyms for achieving a muscle-ripping pump, this technique is now gaining popularity in the clinical setting. [1]
Cut Your Calories
Most people need to shed excess body weight to increase their vascularity. You must enter a caloric deficit to lose weight, meaning you must expend more calories daily than you consume.
Your current body weight, objective body weight, and body fat percentage will determine your daily calorie intake goal. You can use our convenient online calculator to determine your ideal calorie intake target.
Break down your daily calorie intake goal into a suitable macronutrient split to work toward your dream physique. Follow a high-protein and low-fat diet to expedite your weight loss progress. Eat a decent amount of carbohydrates before a workout to ensure you have enough energy to get you through a HIIT workout.
Include Blood Flow-Boosting Foods in Your Diet
A vascularity-boosting diet must consist of nutrient-dense whole foods, such as nitrate-rich vegetables, citrus fruits, and garlic. These foods can promote vasodilation, improve blood circulation, and support overall vascular health.
Nitrate-rich vegetables such as spinach, arugula, kale, and beetroot are packed with dietary nitrates. Nitrates convert to nitric oxide in the body, which relaxes blood vessels and boosts blood flow.
Citrus fruits like oranges, grapefruits, and lemons are rich in vitamin C and bioflavonoids that support blood vessel health and improve elasticity. Garlic has been shown to improve blood flow and lower blood pressure. [2]
Contrast Showers
Contrast showers, also known as contrast hydrotherapy, involve alternating between hot and cold water during a shower. Many athletes use contrast showers for their potential benefits on circulation, recovery, and overall vascular health. [3]
Hot water showers promote vasodilation, resulting in the widening of blood vessels. On the other hand, cold water showers induce vasoconstriction, which leads to the narrowing of blood vessels. Alternating between hot and cold water during your shower can improve vascular health, blood circulation, and recovery after workouts.
In a contrast shower, you shower in hot water for three to five minutes, switch to cold water for one minute, and repeat this cycle three to five times. You must, however, always finish your contrast shower with cold water.
Make Peace with Cardio
Cardio exercises can make entering a calorie deficit easier, helping you reach your vascularity goal faster. You should ideally do two cardio sessions daily to shed excess body fat. The first should be a 30-45 minute low-intensity steady state (LISS) session done first in the morning on an empty stomach.
The second cardio session of the day should be a 15-minute high-intensity interval training workout (HIIT) done after your resistance training session. You can use a different cardio machine each time to keep your workouts interesting.
Massage
Although massages and self-myofascial release tools such as a foam roller might not directly impact your vein visibility, these practices can optimize muscle function and overall vascular health, which can enhance vascularity.
The mechanical pressure applied during these massage techniques can result in vasodilation, the widening of blood vessels. Since massage techniques can boost blood flow, they can improve your vascularity.
Sauna
Sauna sessions involve exposure to high temperatures, which can improve your overall vascular health and boost your vascularity. The rise in body temperature during these sessions leads to vasodilation, which improves blood flow and can improve your vascularity in the long run.
Regular sauna sessions can also improve your cardiovascular function. It can strengthen the heart and improve its efficiency in pumping blood through the body. Sauna sessions may boost nitric oxide release and improve endothelial function, which is the inner lining of blood vessels and plays a crucial role in vascular health.
Manage Stress
Fitness and bodybuilding aren’t something that you do for an hour a day in the gym. It is a lifestyle. You must stick to it 24X7, 365 days a year. (366 days if it is a leap year — but you get the point.)
Chronic stress is one of the most common reasons behind deteriorating health. The stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline can cause vasoconstriction, which reduces blood flow. These stress hormones can hamper your vascularity by making veins and blood vessels less visible.
Chronic stress leads to poor blood circulation, which limits the flow of nutrients and oxygen to your muscles. It can also cause water retention, leading to bloating and puffiness, which can negatively affect your vascularity.
Sleep Well
As you’ve probably noticed, improving your vascularity involves juggling multiple things, which can be exhausting. You must sleep seven to eight hours each night to allow your body enough time to recover from your day.
Getting a good night’s sleep regulates your blood pressure, helps balance your hormones, improves endothelium function, and reduces inflammation, which can all lead to better vascularity.
Avoid Alcohol and Smoking
Not only do alcohol and smoking hamper your vascularity, but they can also negatively affect your vascular health. Smoking can lead to vasoconstriction and result in increased blood pressure and reduced blood flow.
Excessive alcohol consumption and smoking increase your risk of developing atherosclerosis, a condition characterized by the buildup of plaque inside arteries, which can limit your blood flow and restrict your ability to achieve muscle pumps.
Use Supplements
We don’t mean that you must use supplements to improve your vascularity, but they can significantly improve your conditioning. Many pre-workout supplements come with nitric oxide boosters, which can deliver insane pumps in the gym through vasodilation, which also leads to better vascularity.
You can also get standalone nitric oxide booster supplements, such as L-arginine, L-citrulline, or beetroot extract, which can promote vasodilation and boost vascularity. Omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin C, vitamin K, and antioxidants are other compounds that can increase your vascularity.
Cut Water [Only When Close To a Special Event]
Many models and professional bodybuilders cut water significantly before a photo shoot or stepping on stage, as it helps them eliminate water weight and the related bloating and puffiness. Cutting water helps improve their aesthetics by enhancing muscle separation and definition.
Furthermore, some compounds, such as diuretics, can help eliminate water. However, they are extremely dangerous. You must consult your healthcare provider before undertaking water manipulation or water depletion.
Note: The content on Fitness Volt is for informative purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice to diagnose, prevent, or treat health problems. If you’re suffering from a health issue, are pregnant, or are under 18 years old, you should consult your physician before starting any new supplement, nutrition, or fitness routine.
Wrapping Up
Vascularity serves as a visual marker of fitness and a testament to an individual’s dedication and hard work. Since multiple factors affect your vascularity, figuring out the right formula might require some trial and error.
Although this article lists 15 ways to increase your vascularity, you don’t have to do them all at once. Start by making 3-5 adjustments and fine-tune your routine after every few weeks. Depending on your experience level, improving your vascularity can be a slow process. Beginners might need to drop their body fat levels considerably to reveal their veins. It can take you 12-24 weeks to achieve noticeable progress.
Now that you know the ins and outs of how to increase your vascularity, what are you waiting for? Grab that blood flow restriction band, and head out to the gym. Best of luck!
References
Wilson JM, Lowery RP, Joy JM, Loenneke JP, Naimo MA. Practical blood flow restriction training increases acute determinants of hypertrophy without increasing indices of muscle damage. J Strength Cond Res. 2013 Nov;27(11):3068-75. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e31828a1ffa. PMID: 23446173.
Ried K. Garlic lowers blood pressure in hypertensive subjects, improves arterial stiffness and gut microbiota: A review and meta-analysis. Exp Ther Med. 2020 Feb;19(2):1472-1478. doi: 10.3892/etm.2019.8374. Epub 2019 Dec 27. PMID: 32010325; PMCID: PMC6966103.
Juliff LE, Halson SL, Bonetti DL, Versey NG, Driller MW, Peiffer JJ. Influence of contrast shower and water immersion on recovery in elite netballers. J Strength Cond Res. 2014 Aug;28(8):2353-8. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000000417. PMID: 24531433.
How to Get Better at Push-Ups
Push-ups, or press-ups as the Brits call them, should be at the top of every exerciser’s to-do list. Working your chest, shoulders, and triceps, push-ups are more joint-friendly than bench presses, require no equipment, so they’re the perfect excuse-free exercise and can be modified to suit all fitness and experience levels.
Being able to do push-ups is a sign that you are fit and healthy. In fact, in studies, people who could do an above-average number of reps had a lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, and all-cause mortality (1).
Unfortunately, a lot of people are bad at push-ups. Either their form needs work, or they can’t do many reps. Needless to say, you can’t wish yourself to get better at push-ups – it takes time and effort!
However, that work will pay off. With dedication, perspiration, and time, you’ll soon be banging out push-ups like a pro.
We reveal the best strategies for becoming a certified push-up master!
How to Perform the Perfect Push-Up
Before we reveal the best methods for getting better at push-ups, it’s worth spending a moment to check that you know how to do this classic exercise correctly. Poor form wastes energy, making push-ups less effective, and could even lead to injury.
So, revise your push-up technique and make sure that each and every rep will make your inner drill instructor proud!
Kneel down and place your hands on the floor so your fingers point forward and are about shoulder-width apart.
Brace your core, pull your shoulders down and back, and rotate your elbows in towards your sides to engage your lats.
Contract your glutes and quadriceps to increase full-body rigidity.
Walk your feet out and back until your body and legs are perfectly straight. Lengthen your neck and tuck your chin in.
Keeping your body straight, bend your arms and lower your chest to within an inch of the floor. Pause for one second.
Drive your hands into the floor and push yourself back up to full arm extension.
Pause for a second and then descend into another rep.
Inhale as you bend your arms, and exhale as you straighten them.
Looking good, bro! Now you’ve got your technique dialed in, it’s time to look at the strategies and methods you can use to boost your push-up numbers.
How to Get Better at Push-Ups
Whether you are a beginner or an experienced expert, these methods will help reinforce your technique and improve your push-up numbers:
1. Grease the groove
To get better at push-ups, you need to practice doing push-ups. This is the heart of training specificity, one of the most important fitness principles. Grease the Groove (GTG) is a training method popularized by strength specialist and former Soviet special forces instructor Pavel Tsatsouline.
With the GTG method, you do multiple low-rep sets of your chosen exercise spread throughout the day. You avoid training to failure, which causes fatigue. Instead, each set is only about 50% of your maximum and ideally separated by an hour or more.
So, for example, if you can do a maximum of ten push-ups, to grease the groove you do multiple sets of 4-6 reps, focusing on making each push-up as technically perfect as possible. Remember, this is meant to be push-up practice and not a fatiguing workout.
Aim to clock up 6-10 GTG sets per day for the next 21-28 days. Then, when you retest your maximum, you should find that you can do more reps despite not having done any max-rep sets.
2. Train using a more challenging push-up variation
If you want to get better at bench presses or squats, you don’t just load up the bar with the same old weight and use that load for every workout. As every lifter knows, that’s a great way to go nowhere fast.
Instead, you gradually put more plates on the bar, forcing your muscles to adapt and get stronger. This is called progressive overload and another critical fitness principle.
While you could wear a weighted vest to make push-ups harder, it’s usually more convenient to overload your muscles with more demanding push-up variations. For example, putting your feet on a raised box shifts more weight onto your arms, and using push-up handles increases your range of motion. Both make your reps harder.
So, spend the next few weeks focusing almost entirely on a more demanding push-up variation. Then, when you return to standard push-ups, they’ll feel more manageable, and you’ll be able to crank out more reps.
Related: 15 Intense Push-up Variations for Bodybuilders
3. Train your push-ups like you mean it!
Wanting to get better at push-ups is not the same as training to get better at push-ups! So, if you want to become a push-up pro, you must make them the cornerstone of your workouts.
Ideally, you should do a push-up workout three times a week, working a little harder each time you train. So, for example, you could do 3-5 straight sets per workout, pushing each one to failure, or follow one of the push-up workouts in this article.
Either way, if you want to get better at push-ups, you must prioritize them.
Related: How to Train for 20 Consecutive Pull-ups and 50-Push-ups
4. Strengthen your core
While push-ups are undeniably a chest, shoulders, and triceps exercise, they also require plenty of core strength. If your core is weak, your midsection will sag and collapse, and some of the force generated by your arms will be lost.
Think about a sportscar spinning its wheels – all that smoke and rubber looks impressive, but until the car starts going forward, all that energy is wasted.
Plug your energy leaks by strengthening your core. That way, your whole body will move as one solid unit, and all of your efforts will go into pumping out push-ups.
The best core strengtheners for better push-ups mirror the demands of the exercise you’re training for. Planks are a great choice, as are Pallof presses, hollow body holds, body saws, pot stirrers, and ab wheel rollouts.
These are anti-core exercises, meaning they prevent rather than promote movement, so your core muscles work the same way they do during push-ups, i.e., as stabilizers.
5. Pump up the volume with some easier push-up variations
How do you train to do more push-ups when you can’t do very many push-ups yet? Short of moving to Mercury, where gravity is about two-thirds of Earth, the most obvious way is to regress your push-ups and perform a less demanding variation.
Making push-ups easier means you’ll be able to do more reps, developing your muscular endurance and work capacity simultaneously.
Ways to make push-ups easier include:
Three-quarter or kneeling push-ups
Incline push-ups (hands on a bench or similar)
Wall push-ups
Band-assisted push-ups
Do a few sets of regular push-ups, and then, as fatigue sets in, switch to a less challenging variation so you can do more sets. This extra volume will lead to greater and more rapid increases in push-up performance.
6. Strengthen your triceps
Lots of muscles are involved in push-ups, but the most common “weak link” is the triceps. This is hardly surprising, given the size of the triceps compared to the chest. As such, a lot of people find that their arms fail before their pecs, bringing their sets to a premature end.
Avoid this trap by working on triceps strength and training them separately. Good exercises for this purpose include:
Spending extra time on your triceps will turn what is usually a push-up weak link into a much stronger one.
7. Beef up your upper back
Believe it or not, your upper back plays a crucial role during push-ups. Muscles like your lats, traps, and rhomboids must work hard to stabilize your shoulders and prevent unwanted movement. A weak upper back can undermine your push-up performance, like doing chest presses on a wobbly bench.
So, for every set of push-ups you do, make sure you also perform at least one set of upper back training.
Good upper back exercises include:
In addition, complementing your push-up training with upper back exercises will prevent any muscle imbalances and keep your shoulders healthy.
8. Be consistent
Getting better at push-ups will take time. You must train hard and often to develop the muscles that drive your body up and away from the floor against the pull of gravity. Not only do these adaptations take time, but they’re also quickly lost if you fail to keep up your training.
In other words, consistency matters.
So, don’t expect any quick fixes; you’re not going to become a push-up stud overnight. However, if you keep pumping out the push-ups 3-4 times a week for the next few months, your performance will improve, and your hard work will pay off.
Set yourself some targets, e.g., doing 10, 30, or 50 perfect push-ups, to help keep you motivated and to remind yourself what you’re trying to achieve.
9. Eat for success
Good nutrition goes hand in hand with better push-up performance – or it should do! You are what you eat, and if your diet consists mainly of junk food, your muscles will probably perform like junk, too.
Eating healthily ensures your body gets all the nutrients it needs to power your muscles and recover from your workouts. Of course, food is also one of life’s pleasures, so you should enjoy what you eat, too.
This all means you need to adopt a balanced, mostly healthy diet, with a little wiggle room left for the occasional unhealthy snack. Make sure that you consume enough protein for muscle repair and growth, adequate carbohydrates for energy, and sufficient healthy fats. You’ll also need vitamins, minerals, and fiber, all of which are easily sourced from vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.
Finally, adjust your food intake based on your dietary goals, i.e., eat more for muscle growth and less for fat loss.
There is no need to adopt a strict diet. Rather, it’s best to create your own eating plan based on your grocery budget, likes and dislikes, and your cooking ability.
10. Have a plan
You now have all the information you need to become a fully qualified push-up ninja! However, it would be a mistake to try and use all these tips and strategies at once. That will probably cause a “system overload,” and you’ll end up making no progress at all.
Instead, you need a plan!
A plan will help you focus on what’s important while ignoring what is not. It’ll provide you with a path to follow, taking you gradually closer toward your goal. Training without a plan is like going on a journey without a map; you might end up in the right place, but if you do, it’ll be more by accident than design.
So, grab a sheet of paper and start planning your future push-up workouts, starting with some goals. Then, decide on how many push-up workouts you will do per week and what training methods you will use.
Example goal – 50 straight push-ups
Monday – three max rep sets, two minutes rest between each one
Wednesday – 100 push-ups in as few sets as possible
Friday – 10 push-ups every minute, on the minute (EMOM)
Grease the groove push-up workouts twice a week (Tuesday and Saturday)
Don’t worry if your plan isn’t quite right – you can finetune it as you go. Just make sure it’s progressive, i.e., you do a few more reps each week.
Get Better at Push-Ups – FAQs
Do you have a question about getting better at push-ups or push-ups in general? No sweat because we’ve got the answers!
1. What muscles do push-ups work?
Push-ups are a compound exercise, meaning they involve multiple muscles and joints working together. As such, they use a comprehensive list of muscles.
Because you must work hard to keep your body straight and stable, push-ups work virtually every muscle on the front of your body, including your legs and abs. However, the load on these muscles is relatively small. Instead, the push-up mainly works your upper body pushing muscles.
These muscles are:
Pectoralis major – located on the front of your chest and known as your pecs for short, these muscles are the agonist or primary mover during push-ups. In other words, they’re the muscle doing most of the work.
Anterior deltoids – the deltoids are your shoulder muscles. There are three groups of fibers or heads: anterior (front), medial (middle), and posterior (rear). All three are involved in push-ups, but the anterior deltoids are the most active.
Triceps – located on the back of your upper arm, the triceps are responsible for extending your elbows during push-ups. The triceps are often the first muscle to fatigue when you do a high-rep set of push-ups.
Serratus anterior – so called because it looks a little like the edge of a serrated blade, the serratus anterior is located to the side of your chest and helps keep your scapulae or shoulder blades flat against your ribs. Well-developed serratus anterior muscles look super cool!
Rotator cuff – the rotator cuff is the collective name for the four small muscles that control and stabilize your shoulder joint. They are the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis. With no bench to support your shoulders, you’ll need to use these muscles to prevent unwanted shoulder joint movements.
Other push-up muscles include your rectus abdominis, hip flexors, quadriceps, and tibialis anterior.
2. Aren’t push-ups a beginner exercise?
While many exercisers do push-ups when starting out, they usually progress to bench presses as they get stronger and more experienced. This suggests that push-ups are only useful for novices.
This is not the case!
While you can bench press more weight, push-ups teach you to use your entire body, making them much more functional. With no bench to support you, you’ll need to stabilize yourself, just like in “real life” outside of the gym.
Plus, there are many ways to make push-ups more demanding and as effective as bench presses for increasing strength and muscle mass.
The bench press is arguably the most popular gym exercise. Still, in terms of bang for your buck, push-ups could be better and are the most widely performed exercise on the planet. Push-ups are definitely not a beginner’s exercise, and everyone who works out should do them.
3. I can’t do a single push-up – what can I do?
Plenty of people can’t do a single push-up. However, almost everyone can learn and train to do this awesome exercise.
Your first step is to regress the push-up until you find a variation you CAN do. For example, you can do kneeling push-ups, countertop push-ups, or wall push-ups. Work on mastering that variation and then progress to a more difficult one when you feel ready. Continue in this way until you can do regular push-ups.
You can also supplement your push-up training with strength exercises such as chest presses, bench presses, machine dips, and triceps pushdowns. All of these exercises can be scaled and progressed to match your current strength level.
The other thing to consider is your body weight. If you are very overweight, push-ups are bound to be challenging. Start trying to lose a few pounds, and you should find push-ups begin to feel easier.
4. Push-ups hurt my wrists – what can I do?
Many people suffer from tight forearms and wrists, especially those who spend a lot of time using a keyboard, performing repetitive manual tasks, or otherwise keeping their hands and fingers clenched.
Doing push-ups takes your wrists into extension, which means those tight muscles are strongly stretched, and can be uncomfortable or even painful.
Ideally, you should work on your forearm flexibility to alleviate this problem with targeted stretching. The prayer and kneeling forearms stretches are ideal for this purpose:
In the short term, using push-up handles allow you keep your wrists straight, which should take pressure off your joints so you can do push-ups without the pain.
5. How many push-ups should I be able to do?
The number of push-ups you can do will depend on your age, gender, weight, fitness, and experience level. That said, there are norm tables that indicate how many push-ups the average person should be able to do.
For example, men in their 30s should be able to do 41 push-ups, while women should be able to do 19.
Check out this article to see how many push-ups YOU should be able to do.
Closing Thoughts
Push-ups are a fantastic exercise! You can do them anywhere and anytime, and you don’t need any equipment, so they won’t cost you a dime. Regular push-up workouts will develop a stronger, more muscular upper body, pumping up your pecs, delts, and triceps. They’re even good for your health, and people who can do a lot of push-ups generally live longer (1) and suffer fewer cardiovascular events.
There are lots of different push-up variations to try, from beginner to ultra-advanced. There are also several ways to organize your push-up workouts, from straight sets to ladders to pyramids.
Push-ups need never be boring!
That said, you CAN have too much of a good thing, and it’s probably a bad idea to do push-ups every day. In fact, you should be good results from 3-4 push-up workouts per week.
Use the strategies and tips in this article to master the push-up and become a certified push-up master. Your efforts will be rewarded!
References:
Yang J, Christophi CA, Farioli A, et al. Association Between Push-up Exercise Capacity and Future Cardiovascular Events Among Active Adult Men. JAMA Netw Open. 2019;2(2):e188341. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.8341 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30768197/
How To Gain Muscle Fast: The 12 Most Effective & Proven Tips
Every individual on this planet would gladly embrace the opportunity to effortlessly achieve instant muscle gains. However, life isn’t so easy.
Most gyms have an individual who has been lifting for several months, if not years, but cannot seem to move the needle in the right direction. Also, most lifters cancel their gym cards without achieving their goal physique.
Although most exercisers want a muscular physique for its aesthetic benefits, there is more to it than meets the eye. Building a jacked physique improves your overall strength, functionality, and athletic performance. It also reduces your risk of falls, improves brain health, boosts self-confidence, and promotes a better quality of life. [1][2]
Many newbies think advanced lifters are hoarding secrets that unlock super gains, such as if you read a certain Bible verse just before starting a workout, you’ll be blessed with the physique of your dreams. This is one of the reasons why beginners are always asking for ‘tips’ and ‘tricks’ from much bigger and jacked dudes.
We are sorry to be the bearers of bad news, but this assumption is only partly true. Yes, only partly. There are bodybuilding secrets that only the elite know. However, it is about to change with this article. Also, if you are wondering, reading a Biblical verse before a workout doesn’t do much. (I’ve tried it.)
In this article, we go over the factors that influence muscle gain and the most effective tips to gain muscle mass fast. We also uncover how much time you must expect to wait before seeing noticeable changes and answer some of the most frequently asked questions about this subject. We have a lot to cover, so let’s get right into it.
Factors Influencing Muscle Gains
Several factors determine how quickly you can gain muscle mass. While some are under your control, others cannot be modified. However, it doesn’t mean you cannot gain muscle or speed up your bulking progress. Fine-tuning these factors can get you to your dream physique in a record time. Furthermore, the 12 tips for gaining muscle mass can be clubbed under these factors.
Genetics
Genetic factors play a crucial role in your transformation program. Your genetics determine your body composition, structure, height, weight, and how much muscle mass you will gain in a particular time.
Genetically superior lifters will gain muscle mass and strength faster than their counterparts. However, folks that were left behind in the genetic lottery shouldn’t hang their heads low. You can make the most of what you’ve got by following an effective diet and training regimen.
Related: Bad Chest Genetics and How To Build a Barrel Chest
Hormonal Balance
An individual’s hormonal balance can turn the tide of muscle and strength gains in his favor. Folks with a generous level of natural testosterone production are better positioned to make muscular and strength gains.
High natural test production is the reason the ladies do not gain as much muscle mass as the men. Most steroids are synthetic versions of testosterone that boost your T-levels and muscle-building potential.
Other hormones that influence muscle gain include growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). Notably, you must avoid tweaking your hormone levels using supplements or gear, as it can have long-term health implications.
Age
Building muscle becomes more difficult with age as your natural testosterone levels decline. The decline in the muscle-building potential for both genders starts to occur after 40.
Although gaining muscle mass will become more complex with age, you can hold onto your gains by working hard in the gym and following a balanced diet. Folks who engage in strength training usually hold onto their muscle mass longer than untrained elderlies.
Muscle Memory
Muscle memory is often overlooked while discussing the speed at which an individual can gain muscle mass. If you are a gym regular, you’ve encountered a person who seems to have undergone an astonishing transformation practically overnight. No, these folks don’t have a version of The Vita-Ray Chamber that Steve Rogers used to transform into Captain America in their basement. Muscle memory hit them like a lightning bolt.
Do some digging, and you’ll find that these folks had a decent physique back in the day and have just recently resumed training. It is much easier for a person to regain muscle mass than for a new lifter to build it. This is why you should never compete with anyone at your gym; you never know where they are coming from. Trying to keep up with them can lead to burning out or, even worse, an injury.
Experienced lifters will start seeing positive results within a couple of weeks after returning to their tried and tested diet and training program. In contrast, newbies should expect to spend 12-16 weeks adhering to a strict fitness routine before they achieve noticeable gains.
Related: Muscle Memory For Bodybuilding – How to Use It to Regain Lost Muscle
Training, Nutrition, and Recovery Program
This is a no-brainer. Your gains will depend on the effectiveness of your workout, diet, and recovery program. You cannot expect to build muscle mass while overlooking any of these areas.
Furthermore, you must be patient and consistent with your transformation journey to reap the fruits of your labor. Some people overlook their recovery to gain muscle fast; however, this can negatively affect their growth potential, lead to a muscle and strength plateau, and increase their risk of injury.
Lifestyle
Your lifestyle plays a significant role in determining how fast you can transform your body. Do you prefer the stairs over the lift? How often do you work out? Do you use a standing desk at work or sit on a chair for most of the day? And finally, do you prep your meals in advance or go out to your favorite fast food restaurant whenever you are starving? These factors will determine how quickly you shed body fat and build muscle.
12 Best Tips on How To Gain Muscle Fast
Spoiler alert: We do not have steroids on this list. All the tips mentioned in this article are WADA-approved (World Anti-Doping Agency) and will help you achieve a jacked and shredded physique while improving your overall health and well-being.
Without further ado, here are the 12 best tips for how to gain muscle fast:
Start with a Goal
Starting their transformation journey without a goal is the first mistake most people make. You must set SMART goals to speed up your results and get the best bang for your buck. SMART goals are:
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Attainable
R: Relevant
T: Time-Bound
For example, “build muscle mass” is not a SMART goal. Instead, your goal should be to “build 2 pounds of muscle mass in a month.”
Furthermore, your muscle-building goals will also change depending on your training style. Bodybuilders that train for hypertrophy can expect better muscle-building results than CrossFitters who juggle multiple things.
No, this is not a jab at CrossFitters. It is just that you should be aware of the results you can expect and the difference between different training styles.
Use a Personalized Training Program
Most lifters make the mistake of following a cookie-cutter training program. Not only does this return poor results, but it also wastes a lot of time, effort, energy, and money. Each individual is different and will react to different training programs uniquely.
Owing to a lack of knowledge, many folks with a lagging lower body end up following a training regimen designed for a lifter with a weak upper body. An ideal training program will bring up your lagging muscle groups and polish your strengths.
Furthermore, you must follow a balanced training regimen to speed up your muscle gains. Your workouts should have a balance of compound and isolation lifts. Compound movements will help build muscle mass and strength, whereas isolation exercises will improve your conditioning.
In contrast to the popular practice, you should not eliminate cardio training from your muscle-building training program. Cardio exercises will help lower your body fat, which will improve your muscle definition.
Related: Build Your Program: How to Design the Perfect Training Plan
Work With a Coach
Most people try to do everything on their own in their muscle-building program. Using an expert’s help can speed up your gains by significantly shortening your learning curve. A personal trainer will give you a personalized training program to suit your needs. Plus, he can help avoid injuries by showing you the correct exercise form.
Also, seeking the help of a registered nutritionist can help you lose body fat and build muscle mass. Getting your training and nutritionist to work together can skyrocket your results. Hiring a diet and training coach might cost you a little money upfront but will pay dividends in the long run.
Eat More Calories
Sticking to your regular diet after starting a training program can help with body recomposition. It can result in fat loss and toned muscles. However, you shouldn’t expect significant muscle gains while sticking to the same diet.
You must enter a calorie surplus to build muscle mass, meaning you must eat more calories in a day than you expend. Eating a surplus of 500-1,000 calories daily can result in gaining 1-2 pounds weekly. [3]
However, you must ensure that the additional calories come from nutrient-dense whole foods. Eating empty calories can have counterproductive results as it can lead to a gain in body fat.
Nail Your Nutrition
After determining your daily caloric intake, you must follow a suitable macronutrient (carbs, protein, and fat) split to optimize muscle gains. Follow a high-protein and high-carb diet to gain muscle fast.
Focus on splitting your protein intake into equal quantities throughout the day to boost your recovery and build muscle mass. Furthermore, consume a carb-rich meal two to three hours before a workout to ensure you have enough energy stores to get you through a grueling workout.
Incorporate Progressive Overload Into Your Training
Most people experience muscle and strength plateaus during their muscle-building campaigns. These stagnations result from following the same training routine for a prolonged period. You must constantly challenge your muscles by switching up your training regimen. It will keep your muscles guessing and help you avoid a plateau.
Progressive overload involves gradually increasing the intensity of your strength training routine. You could do it by increasing the weight, frequency, number of sets and repetitions, or time under tension.
Contrary to what most lifters believe, you don’t always need to train to failure to achieve hypertrophy. Pushing your muscles to failure in each exercise can lead to overtraining, which can set you back on your muscle-building goals.
Use Advanced Training Techniques
Advanced training techniques are a progressive overload method. However, they deserve individual recognition. Using advanced training techniques such as super sets, drop sets, and intraset techniques can help ignite muscle growth, as they put your muscles under significant stress.
You can include two advanced training techniques (ATT) in a single workout. Notably, you don’t need to use an ATT in every exercise, as it can lead to muscle exhaustion and overtraining. Beginners should seek expert guidance while using these methods to limit their risk of injury and optimize their performance and results.
Train Each Muscle Group Multiple Times a Week
If you want to build bigger, fuller, and rounder muscles, you should train them multiple times a week. The more often you stimulate your muscles, the more opportunities they have to adapt to a higher workload, which can help them grow bigger and stronger.
Your training frequency will depend on your experience level. Beginners who follow a low-intensity full-body training regimen can train each muscle group up to thrice weekly. However, advanced lifters following a high-intensity regimen should limit their weekly workout frequency to two sessions per muscle group.
Switch Your Training Routine Frequently
Staying glued to the same training regimen for a prolonged period can lead to diminishing results. You must consistently change your training style to keep your muscle guessing and avoid hitting an overhead ceiling. Besides switching training programs, changing training approaches can also be an effective technique for building muscle mass.
For example, if you’ve been following a bodybuilding program for an extended period, you could switch to a CrossFit program for improved metabolic conditioning, which can boost your muscle definition.
That said, you shouldn’t switch your training regimen too often, as it can lead to subpar results. Give your training regimen between 12-15 weeks to work its magic before trying a new workout program.
Focus on Your Recovery
Irrespective of how hard you train in the gym, you cannot make the necessary gains until you give your muscle enough time to recover. Remember, you break muscle tissue in the gym. They grow back bigger and stronger outside the gym, especially while you’re sleeping.
Feel free to take a day off if you feel sore from your workouts. Pushing too hard without proper rest can lead to overtraining and increase your risk of injury. Furthermore, you could use self-myofascial release, massages, and cold plunges to speed up your recovery.
Supplements
Although supplements are not necessary for building muscle, they can help you on your journey to a more aesthetically appealing physique. Furthermore, supplements are a godsend for people who cannot meet their macronutrient needs through nutrient-dense whole foods.
Pre-workout, Whey protein, creatine, and BCAA supplements are all you need to build muscle mass. However, take this with a grain of salt as the optimal supplements for you can change depending on your current physique and training objective.
Track and Monitor Progress
You must track and monitor your progress to keep yourself accountable. Having a SMART goal is like racing against the clock. It will push you to do your best and surpass expectations. You could track your progress using photos, taking body measurements, and keeping a training journal where you record your exercises, sets, reps, weights, and the RPE (rate of perceived exertion).
Sharing your goals and progress with your family, friends, and coaches will keep you accountable. Furthermore, it can motivate your near and dear ones to join you and work towards their best self.
Gaining muscle mass and strength requires time, patience, consistency, and determination. You should be willing to stick to your training goal for a long period. It doesn’t end here. You must work just as hard to maintain your gains.
How Much Muscle Can I Gain and By When Can I Expect Results?
Much Muscle
The rate at which you gain muscle mass and the expected time before you can see noticeable results will depend on several factors, including your genetics, age, gender, hormone levels, training, diet, recovery program, and lifestyle. Further, your commitment and adherence to the 12 tips mentioned in this article will dictate your results.
Most people can expect to build between 0.5 to 2 pounds (0.22 to 0.9 kilograms) of muscle in a month. That said, the amount of muscle you gain in a month isn’t necessarily the same as the gain in numbers you see on the weighing scale. The uptick in your weight could be the result of a combination of water weight, muscle mass, and fat build-up. [4]
Building muscle mass isn’t as simple as it might sound. It requires stressing your muscle fibers to a point where they must adapt and grow bigger and stronger to handle the load. Your body does this by building or recruiting more muscle fibers, increasing their density and numbers.
Furthermore, the amount of muscle mass a beginner can gain will vary from what an advanced lifter can accomplish. Beginners initially experience quick and significant muscle gains; however, their rate of growth tapers as they gain more experience.
Lifters can boost their muscle and strength gains with high-intensity training. On the flip side, their gains might tank if they decrease their training frequency, volume, or intensity.
FAQs
What is the fastest way to gain muscle mass?
A lot goes into building muscle mass. It is a combination of several things. You cannot build muscle mass by tweaking one thing in your daily routine, let alone doing it quickly. Following the 12 tips mentioned in this article will help fast-track your muscle-building progress.
How much muscle mass can I gain in a week?
It depends on several factors, including your genetics, current fitness level, nutrition, training program, and recovery. That said, an average untrained individual can gain around 0.25-0.5 pounds (0.1-0.2 kilograms) of muscle mass per week. However, this rate decreases as you gain more experience and approach your genetic potential.
Can I gain muscle without entering a calorie surplus?
Weight training while sticking to your original diet can help achieve body recomposition and a well-toned and sculpted physique. However, you must enter a calorie surplus and eat a protein-rich diet to build muscle mass.
Note: The content on Fitness Volt is for informative purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice to diagnose, prevent, or treat health problems. If you’re suffering from a health issue, are pregnant, or are under 18 years old, you should consult your physician before starting any new supplement, nutrition, or fitness routine.
Wrapping Up
The 12 muscle-building tips mentioned in this article are backed by science and endorsed by fitness experts and athletes. The quickness of your gains depends on several factors, including your genetics, current fitness level, nutrition, training program, and recovery.
Remember, building muscle mass and strength is not a sprint but a marathon. Gaining quality muscle mass can take time and demand commitment and patience. Pushing too hard too soon can lead to excess fat gain and increase your risk of injury. You must stick to your guns when the going gets tough. Focus on improving in each workout, and the results will follow. Best of luck!
References
Thomas MH, Burns SP. Increasing Lean Mass and Strength: A Comparison of High Frequency Strength Training to Lower Frequency Strength Training. Int J Exerc Sci. 2016 Apr 1;9(2):159-167. PMID: 27182422; PMCID: PMC4836564.
Sherrington C, Fairhall NJ, Wallbank GK, Tiedemann A, Michaleff ZA, Howard K, Clemson L, Hopewell S, Lamb SE. Exercise for preventing falls in older people living in the community. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2019 Jan 31;1(1):CD012424. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD012424.pub2. PMID: 30703272; PMCID: PMC6360922.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021). Losing Weight. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/losing_weight/index.html
Krzysztofik M, Wilk M, Wojdała G, Gołaś A. Maximizing Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review of Advanced Resistance Training Techniques and Methods. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2019; 16(24):4897. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16244897
5 Simple Exercises – A Routine for Daily Calisthenics Training
There are several variables you need to consider when writing a workout plan. Once you’ve determined your training goal, you must choose a split, pick your exercises, put those exercises in the correct order, select a set and rep scheme, and allocate appropriate loads and interset rest times.
Invariably, your first draft won’t be perfect, so you’ll need to make changes on the fly, finetuning your workout until you’re 100% happy with it.
It’s no wonder some fitness professionals charge so much to design programs!
However, even the most well-designed workout routine is not worth the paper it’s written on if you don’t actually do it.
And that’s the rub, isn’t it?
You’ve got your gym membership, new workout, training shoes, lifting belt, knee sleeves, chalk, and all that other stuff you drag around in your gym bag. But, if you can’t get your butt in the gym and work out, you’ll never build muscle, get fit, or lose weight.
So, while variables like your training split, set and rep scheme, and exercise sequence ARE undeniably important, the most critical consideration for effective training is consistency, and consistency is KING!
In this article, we share an excuse-free calisthenic workout you can do at home. It’s designed to create an unbreakable exercise habit and make skipped workouts a thing of the past.
Use this workout when you are too busy to hit the gym or as an alternative to complicated, time-consuming gym-based programs.
Calisthenics for Excuse-Free Workouts
While there is nothing wrong with dumbbells, barbells, and machine-based strength training, you’ll need access to all this stuff if you want to use it. Of course, that usually means joining a gym.
Unfortunately, gym memberships can be expensive, and just getting to and from a gym can be time-consuming. When time is short, your workout will probably be the first casualty. After all, exercise is a leisure activity, and things like your job and family commitments will always take precedence.
While you could buy some equipment and build a home gym, this is not always practical; you’ll need enough space for your training equipment and the money to buy it.
The good news is that you can get a GREAT workout using just your body weight. In fact, the only equipment you really need is a pull-up/chin-up bar, which can be purchased very cheaply.
Calisthenics, or bodyweight training, has a long and storied history. The word calisthenics has its roots in ancient Greek and comes from the words for beauty and strength. Bodyweight workouts are the ultimate in fitness convenience, as you can do them almost anywhere and anytime.
And because you won’t have to travel to train, you should have no problem squeezing your workouts into even the busiest of schedules. With fewer barriers, sticking to your exercise routine should be a breeze.
But you’ll need to do more than a few push-ups a day to get fit, lose weight, or build muscle. Instead, you’ll need an effective but straightforward routine. And that’s where we come in.
In the next section, we share a simple yet powerful bodyweight workout program that always delivers excellent results!
The 5 Simple Exercises Routine – Overview
As its name implies, the 5 Simple Exercises Routine revolves around five basic calisthenic movements performed five days per week. You get weekends off for rest and recuperation.
The exercises are:
Push-ups
Air squats
Pull-ups
Reverse lunges
Hanging knee raises
However, rather than do the same number of sets and reps each day, you’ll do one set of four of the exercises and five sets of the other. This adds up to nine high-quality sets per week, which is more than enough to produce good results (1).
This is a form of daily undulating periodization, where the volume/intensity of your workouts varies from day to day. However, the exercises are sequenced in such a way that you do each one back-to-back, which makes for a very time-efficient workout. In fact, even if you take it easy, you should be finished in 15-20 minutes.
Here are your workout plans:
Monday
Focus exercise: Push-ups
#
Exercise
1
Push-ups
2
Air squats
3
Push-ups
4
Pull-ups
5
Push-ups
6
Reverse lunges
7
Push-ups
8
Hanging knee raises
9
Push-ups
Tuesday
Focus exercise: Air squats
#
Exercise
1
Air squats
2
Pull-ups
3
Air squats
4
Reverse lunges
5
Air squats
6
Hanging leg raises
7
Air squats
8
Push-ups
9
Air squats
Wednesday
Focus exercise: Pull-ups
#
Exercise
1
Pull-ups
2
Reverse lunges
3
Pull-ups
4
Hanging leg raises
5
Pull-ups
6
Push-ups
7
Pull-ups
8
Air squat
9
Pull-ups
Thursday
Focus exercise: Reverse lunges
#
Exercise
1
Reverse lunges
2
Hanging leg raises
3
Reverse lunges
4
Push-ups
5
Reverse lunges
6
Air squats
7
Reverse lunges
8
Pull-ups
9
Reverse lunges
Friday
Focus exercise: Hanging leg raises
#
Exercise
1
Hanging leg raises
2
Push-ups
3
Hanging leg raises
4
Air squats
5
Hanging leg raises
6
Pull-ups
7
Hanging leg raises
8
Reverse lunges
9
Hanging leg raises
How many reps?
The number of reps you perform depends on your current abilities and how you feel on any given day. So, for single sets, you do as many reps as possible (AMRAP), and for the five sets of your focus exercise, you do about 50-60% of your last AMRAP score.
For example, if you can do 25 push-ups in a single set, do five sets of 12 to 15 reps on your push-up focus day.
It’ll probably take you a week to get used to this program and zero in on the correct number of reps. That’s okay and no different from finetuning your weights for a gym-based workout. So long as you a) take your sets to within 1-3 reps of failure and b) strive to do more reps week by week, you WILL make progress!
As for rest periods, these, too, are based on how you feel. Move as quickly as you can between exercises but don’t feel you need to rush. Rest long enough that you can perform at your best, but don’t dawdle, either. You may need to rest longer between some exercises than others, e.g., after a leg exercise that leaves you feeling out of breath.
As you get fitter and more accustomed to the routine, you should find you can move more quickly between exercises and complete each program a little faster.
Related: Sets vs. Reps: Everything You Need to Know
The 5 Simple Exercises Routine – Exercise Instructions
One of the best ways to maximize the effectiveness of any workout is to perform each exercise with perfect form. This keeps the tension on the muscles you want to work and stress off your joints. So, not only will your workout be more productive, but it’ll also be safer.
While you may be familiar with the simple exercises in this program, review the instructions below to ensure you are performing them correctly.
1. Push-ups
Push-ups are the most widely performed exercise in the world, yet many people fail to do them properly. That’s a shame because a well-performed push-up is a thing of beauty! So make sure your push-ups are perfect – make your inner drill instructor proud!
Steps:
Place your hands on the floor roughly shoulder-width apart and your fingers pointing forward.
Walk your feet out and back until your legs and body are straight. Brace your core, rotate your elbows in toward your sides to engage your lats, and pull your shoulders down and back.
Bend your arms and lower your chest to within an inch of the floor.
Push yourself back up and repeat.
Do not allow your hips to lift or drop out of alignment at any time.
Muscles targeted:
Primary: Pectoralis major, deltoids, triceps.
Secondary: Core.
Benefits:
One of the best upper body exercises – period!
Teaches you how to use your whole body in a coordinated, synergistic way.
Can be modified and adapted for all levels of exerciser.
Tips:
Use push-up handles to increase your range of motion and take stress off your wrists.
Bend your legs and rest on your knees to make this exercise easier.
Raise your feet to put more weight on your arms and make push-ups more challenging.
2. Air squats
The bodyweight or air squat is a CrossFit staple. Working all your major lower body muscles, air squats are also great for hip and knee mobility and health. A high-rep set of air squats is very cardiovascularly demanding, so it’ll help improve your fitness and burn lots of calories, too.
Steps:
Stand with your feet roughly shoulder width apart, toes turned slightly outward.
Brace your core and pull your shoulders back and down. Look straight ahead.
Bend your legs and squat down until your thighs are roughly parallel to the floor. Do not round your lower back. Extend your arms in front of you for balance if required.
Stand back up and repeat.
Muscles targeted:
Primary: Quadriceps, hamstrings, gluteus maximus.
Secondary: Core, abductors, adductors.
Benefits:
The undisputed king of lower body exercises.
Highly functional.
Great for improving knee and hip health and mobility.
Tips:
Raise your heels on a one-inch block for a more quads-centric workout.
Use a wider stance to increase inner and outer thigh and hip engagement.
Pause for 2-3 seconds at the bottom of each rep to make this exercise more challenging.
3. Pull-ups
Pull-ups are probably the most challenging exercise in this workout routine. However, by doing one to five sets of pull-ups five days per week, it’s an exercise you’ll soon master. If you can’t do pull-ups, you can do inverted rows instead, which work the same muscles but involve lifting less of your body weight.
Steps:
Hang from your pull-up bar with an overhand, slightly wider than shoulder-width grip.
Pull your shoulders back and down and brace your core. Bend your legs if necessary, so your feet are clear of the floor.
Leading with your elbows, bend your arms and pull your chest up toward the bar.
Extend your arms and lower yourself back down under control.
That’s one rep – keep going!
Muscles targeted:
Primary: Latissimus dorsi, biceps, forearms.
Secondary: Core.
Benefits:
An excellent back and biceps builder.
A good indicator of body weight.
An effective way to stretch and decompress your spine.
Tips:
Start each rep from a dead hand – no swinging or kicking your legs.
You can also do underhand grip chin-ups if you prefer.
Use a resistance band for assistance if required, like this:
4. Reverse lunges
Working your posterior chain with simple bodyweight exercises is not always easy. Most effective movements for this region involve weights, e.g., deadlifts, kettlebell swings, reverse hypers, etc. Reverse lunges are more glute and hamstring-centric than forward lunges and are a great complementary exercise to air squats, which are more quads-dominant.
Steps:
Stand with your feet together and arms by your sides. Brace your core and look straight ahead.
Take a step back, bend your legs, and lower your rearmost knee down to within an inch of the floor.
Push off your back foot and bring your legs back together.
Switch legs and repeat on the opposite side.
Alternate legs for the duration of your set.
Muscles targeted:
Primary: Gluteus maximus, hamstrings, quadriceps.
Secondary: Abductors, adductors.
Benefits:
Good for identifying and fixing left-to-right strength imbalances.
An excellent mobility and balance exercise.
Provides an effective indirect cardiovascular workout.
Tips:
Lean forward slightly as you step back to increase glute and hamstring engagement.
Start each rep standing on a two to four-inch platform to increase your range of motion and the difficulty of this exercise.
Do this exercise next to a wall or handrail for balance if required.
5. Hanging knee raises
With so many bodyweight core exercises to choose from, it can be hard to decide which one to do. However, most are too easy to deliver much of a core strengthening effect. Hanging leg raises are much more challenging and effective, which is how they made it into this workout program.
Steps:
Hang from your pull-up bar with your arms, legs, and body straight.
Brace your core, bend your legs, and pull your knees up to at least level with your hips. Tilt the bottom of your pelvis forward to maximize abs engagement.
Lower your legs and repeat.
Muscles targeted:
Primary: Rectus abdominus, transverse abdominus, hip flexors.
Secondary: Obliques, forearms.
Benefits:
A challenging and effective core exercise.
An excellent way to strengthen your grip.
Provides a useful way to stretch and decompress your spine.
Tips:
Use chalk or lifting straps to reinforce your grip.
Progress to straight legs if your abs are strong enough.
You can also do this exercise sat on the end of a bench for a similar but easier workout:
Simple Exercises Routine – FAQs
Do you have a question about this workout routine or any of the exercises in it? No worries because we’ve got the answers!
1. Is it safe to do the same exercises every day? What about recovery?
While it’s generally accepted that muscles take 48-72 hours to recover from a workout, that’s only true when you do intense bodybuilding-style workouts consisting of several exercises and multiple sets per muscle group
Simple bodyweight exercises are much less taxing, and providing you keep the volume relatively low, you should have no problem recovering from one workout to the next. In fact, you are only doing one hard training session per exercise per week, and the workouts themselves are very short.
So, rather than being dangerous or difficult to recover from, you should find that daily workouts lead to quicker improvements in your fitness and strength, plus you’ll master the exercises and become more proficient at doing them.
2. Can I change the exercises?
You can, and we actually encourage you to do so! Doing the same exercises daily could become boring, so use variations to keep your workouts fresh and interesting. For example, you could rotate between push-ups, decline push-ups, deficit push-ups, paused push-ups, and diamond push-ups.
While so much variation will make it a little harder to manage your rep count, provided you take each set to within 1-3 reps of failure, it will have the desired results.
3. How can I work some cardio into this routine?
The best cardio options for home exercisers are those you can either do at home or start and finish at home. This avoids having to travel for your workout, e.g., driving to the gym to ride an exercise bike, which is a colossal waste of time.
So, good cardio options that complement this workout routine include:
Try to accumulate a minimum of 10,000 steps (or the equivalent) per day for your fitness and health.
4. Are push-ups and pull-ups enough to build bigger arms?
While push-ups are predominately a chest exercise and pull-ups mainly work your upper back, both also involve your arms. Push-ups hit your triceps, while pull-ups also work your biceps.
In fact, your arms will probably fail before your bigger chest and back muscles when you do these exercises.
As such, push-ups and pull-ups have the potential to help, you build bigger arms.
That said, if more muscular arms are one of your training goals, you may want to finish your workouts with a couple of sets for your biceps and triceps. For example, you could do a biceps and triceps workout 2-3 times per week or train your biceps one day and your triceps the next.
However, avoid the temptation to do lots of direct arm training. Too much could lead to overtraining and interfere with your pull-up and push-up performance. That would be unfortunate given how productive these exercises are.
5. What is the best way to warm up for this workout
One of the great things about bodyweight exercises is how joint-friendly they tend to be. As such, you won’t need a long, in-depth warm-up before your workouts. However, you should still spend 5-10 minutes preparing your muscles and joints for what you’re about to do. This will not only reduce your risk of injury but also improve your performance, leading to a better workout.
Start with five minutes of easy cardio followed by dynamic mobility and flexibility exercises for your main muscles and joints. Finish your warm-up with one sub-maximal set (e.g., 50% of your normal reps) of each exercise. After that, you should be good to go!
6. Is 20-30 minutes of exercise per day enough for weight loss and fat burning?
Weight loss and fat burning have more to do with your diet than your workout plan. It’s much easier to eat less than it is to exercise more. Providing you have a sufficient caloric deficit, your body will have no choice but to burn fat for fuel. Adding exercise into the mix merely increases your energy expenditure and raises that deficit.
If you aren’t losing weight with 20-30 minutes of exercise per day, the chances are that you are still consuming too many calories. Adjust your diet to create a large calorie deficit. More exercise is not always the best way to lose weight, as it’s seldom sustainable.
Closing Thoughts
The 5 Simple Exercises Routine probably sounds too easy to be effective. After all, most workouts are much longer and harder, right? However, those workouts are also much more difficult to do consistently, and sticking to them requires cast-iron willpower, motivation, and lots and lots of time.
And that’s the problem, isn’t it?
For any workout to be effective, you actually have to do it. Not just for a week or a month, but for as long as it takes to get and stay in shape.
In other words, forever!
And that’s where following a simple, convenient workout comes up trumps. With fewer barriers to participation, you’ll start completing more workouts than you miss, and that’s what will give you the results you want.
Simple, frequent workouts will always produce better progress than complicated workouts you hardly ever do.
So, if you are fed up with starting workout programs you can’t stick to, try doing something so straightforward that it’s excuse-proof. Don’t let the power of simplicity fool you. It WILL deliver results.
References:
Baz-Valle E, Fontes-Villalba M, Santos-Concejero J. Total Number of Sets as a Training Volume Quantification Method for Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review. J Strength Cond Res. 2021 Mar 1;35(3):870-878. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000002776. PMID: 30063555. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30063555/
Are Calves Genetic? Unlocking The Mystery of Lower Leg Growth
“Are calves genetic?”
If you’ve ever seen someone who clearly has never stepped foot in a gym with full, rounded calves, the question has probably crossed your mind; especially if you’ve been hitting your lower legs with calf raises for years with little result. You’ve probably also noticed that some pro bodybuilders, with massive development in every other muscle group, just can’t seem to bring up their calves.
If calf development is genetic, it means those of us who have lucked out in the genetic lottery will never turn our calves into bulls. However, if that’s not true, we’ve still got hope. Let’s dig into the facts to find out.
Calf Anatomy
The calves are generally understood to comprise two separate muscles: the gastrocnemius and the soleus. However, some people contend that they are actually two parts of the same muscle. That’s because they both converge at the Achilles tendon and produce the same action; plantar flexion (ankle extension).
The meaty part of the muscle that we generally consider as the calf is the gastrocnemius or gastro. The soleus is a flat muscle that lies under the gastro and has minimal growth potential.
The gastro comprises two parts; the inner and outer head. Both heads originate at the base of the femur, on the medial and lateral condyles (the rounded structure at the end of the bone). These origin points are just above the knee joint.
The soleus originates just below the knee. The gastro and the soleus then converge into the Achilles tendon, which then connects to the heel bone.
Role of Genetics on Calf Development
Genetics does, indeed, have a part to play in your ability to build your calves. Three key genetic factors contribute to the size potential of your lower legs:
Muscle Fiber Type
Muscle Fiber Density
Muscle Belly/Tendon Length
Muscle Fiber Type
There are two types of muscle fiber; slow twitch (Type I) and fast twitch (Type II). Slow twitch fibers are created for endurance work required for repetitive movements like walking and running. The soleus comprises more fast twitch fibers, while the gastro, though it still has more slow twitch fibers, has a higher percentage of fast twitch fibers. Fast twitch fibers are designed more for explosive, strength-type work, as is required when doing calf raises. These fibers have greater growth potential than slow twitch fibers.
A study by Gollnick et al., published in the European Journal of Physiology, analyzed the muscle fiber make-up of the soleus and gastro and other lower body muscles. They found that, on average, the soleus contained 80% of slow twitch fibers, while the gastro averaged just 57% of fast twitch fibers. [1]
This study also revealed that there is quite a variance in the percentage of fast twitch and slow twitch fibers among the study subjects. The range of fast twitch fibers in the soleus was between 64% and 100%. Regarding the gastro, the range was between 34% and 82%. These differences are the result of the genetic lottery.
So, a person whose gastro comprises 34% fast twitch fibers (and therefore 66% slow twitch fibers) will have a genetic advantage regarding muscle-building potential compared to a person with 82% fast twitch and only 18% slow twitch.
This leads to whether changing your muscle fiber type with training is possible. In other words, could a guy with 82% fast twitch fibers in his calves train a certain way to reduce that down to 50% to have more slow twitch fibers?
The short answer is that researchers don’t know. There is debate among scientists on this question, with some believing that you’re stuck with what you were born with, while others contend that, by doing more of a specific type of training, you may be able to make up to a 10% change. So, you may have a 10% window to develop more slow twitch muscle fibers by doing a calf raise exercises. You would engage in running, cycling, and other endurance work to develop more fast twitch fibers for endurance.
Related: The Average Calf Size for Men and Women
Muscle Fiber Density
Your muscle fiber density refers to the number of muscle fibers per unit of muscle volume. Your genetics determines this. Some people will be born with more muscle fibers in their calves than others. As a result, they will have more muscle-building material to work with. Their muscles will be able to grow bigger and stronger than a person who is born with fewer muscle fibers in the calves.
There is scientific debate about whether it is possible to grow more muscle fibers. This is known as hyperplasia (contrasted with hypertrophy, which refers to making your existing muscles bigger). The current consensus is that if hyperplasia does occur, it would only be possible to a small degree. [2]
Muscle Belly/Tendon Length
Genetics determines the length of a person’s calf muscle belly. A long muscle belly runs down from the back of the knee at least halfway to the ankle. A short muscle belly sits much higher on the lower leg. The ideal for muscle development is having a long belly and a short Achilles tendon. However, the length of your muscle bellies and tendons is entirely a matter of genetics.
High calf bellies are better suited for endurance exercise. In fact, you will notice that many high-level sprinters, basketball players, and endurance athletes have noticeably high calves. It is believed that their longer Achilles tendon provides for more force production in the way that a longer rubber band would.
It is important to remember that, for most people, their genetic predisposition to building calves will be about the same as for the rest of their bodies. So, you’ll probably have the same proportion of slow-twitch to fast-twitch muscle fibers in all your muscles. The length of your muscle bellies will likely also be proportionate throughout your body.
Sometimes, what appears to be a genetic predisposition to weak calves is actually the result of training style and focus. A classic example is when Arnold Schwarzenegger came to America in 1968. Back in Europe, the bodybuilding focus was on the upper body. As a result, Arnold did very little calf work in the gym. Looking at him onstage at the 1968 IFBB Mr. Universe (in which he came second to Frank Zane), you may have concluded that he had terrible calf genetics.
Arnold Schwarzenegger / Instagram
Yet, when Arnold came to appreciate that he needed to seriously focus on his lower legs to start winning competitions, he undertook an amazing transformation. Rather than hiding his weakness, he actually cut all of his training pants off at the knee so that he could be reminded every day of what he needed to focus on. He performed 500-pound sets of standing calf raises, along with seated and donkey calf raises six times per week. Within a few years, during which he once said he invested 5,000 hours on calf training, he was able to turn his biggest weakness into one of his greatest strengths.
Factors Beyond Genetics That Impact Calf Development
So far, we’ve seen that genetic factors affect your calf-building potential. The length, muscle fiber type, and density of your calves will not change much over the course of your life. So, if you’ve got high muscle bellies and long Achilles tendons, there’s nothing you can do about that.
You can’t, for example, alter your calves’ shape by modifying how you do your calf exercises. You may have heard that you can better target the inner or outer head of the gastro by angling your toes in or out when doing calf raises. This is not the case. That’s because the inner and outer heads pull on a single Achilles tendon. This causes the ankle to extend in just one direction. If it were possible for the ‘inner’ calf to work differently from the ‘outer’ calf, each head would require its own separate tendon and separate attachment to the heel bone. That would allow each one to act separately based on toe angling.
So, while you can’t change your calf muscle shape, what you can do is maximize what you’ve been given. Let’s now consider the best way to train to maximize your genetic calf-building potential.
The most commonly seen calf training exercise in the gym is the standing calf raise. This involves placing your shoulders under a pad that is connected to a weight stack. You then place your feet on a block that allows you to lower your heels below your toes level.
I often see people doing this exercise with just their toes on the block. However, this is a limiting foot position that would be akin to doing barbell curls by gripping the bar with only your fingertips.
The best foot position when doing calf raises will provide the most support for the movement to follow. When it’s just your toes on the block, you’ll find those toes slipping off as you progress through your reps, probably resulting in a shortened set.
So, rather than just your toes, you should place the balls of your feet on the block. This is the large, bony pad just below your big toe. Each toe has its own sesamoid bone, running on a diagonal rather than horizontally across the foot. So, to give your foot the most support, you should place the ball of your foot on a slight diagonal from the big toe down to the little toe. This will result in a ‘toes in’ position.
By the way, if you feel your feet slipping off the block while doing a set, you should pause and reset your position. If you don’t, you will compromise your ability to get a full extension and contraction on every rep.
Ideal Range of Motion on Calf Raises
You will never achieve your genetic muscle-building potential unless you move your calves through their full range of motion. Yet, it’s common to see people using an extremely abbreviated range of motion that often equates to a short ‘bouncing’ movement. This usually happens when the person uses more weight than they can properly handle.
The whole reason that you have a block to stand on when doing calf raises is to allow you to get a contraction in the bottom part of the rep. So, if you’re doing reps where your heels don’t even come down to the level of your toes, you’re defeating the purpose of having a block!
It is far better to reduce the weight to achieve a full range of motion.
Knees Straight or Bent During Calf Raises?
If you have completely straight legs (with no knee bend) during the standing calf raise, you might experience some knee discomfort. To avoid this, you should slightly bend your knees throughout the exercise, especially when you start to go heavy. Make sure, though, that you keep your legs locked in this slight knee position to avoid bringing your quads into the movement.
How Much Weight for Calf Raises?
To maximize your calf muscle growth potential, you need to achieve maximum effort on your lower leg workouts. There are two ways you can do this:
Muscle fatigue that results from performing high reps in the 20 to 50 range.
Using a weight that limits you to 80-90% of one rep max, with low reps in the 4-10 range.
The weight you choose for the calf raise, along with every other exercise, should be based on the following parameters:
How many reps do you plan to do
Using a full range of motion
Eliminating momentum
Using proper technique
Maximum effort
Don’t let your ego get in the way when selecting your training resistance. It doesn’t matter what weight your training partner is using; if you cannot tick off each of the criteria listed above, the weight is not right for you.
When it comes to the rep range, the calves require more than the conventional 8-12 rep range for hypertrophy. That’s because of the high slow-twitch fiber makeup of the calves. Slow-twitch fibers are highly resistant to fatigue. As a result, they respond better to higher reps. On the other hand, your fast-twitch fibers require lower reps with heavier weight.
Here is a suggested rep scheme over six sets of calf raises, with the weight increasing on each set:
Set One (Warm-up): 50 reps
Set Two: 30 reps
Set Three: 20 reps
Set Four: 15 reps
Set Five: 10 reps
Set Six: 8 reps
6 Best Calf Exercises
Your gym-based calf training options are quite limited. After all, the calves only do one thing; flex the ankle. So every move must be a variation of the calf raise. These resistance-based exercises will primarily work your fast-twitch muscle fibers. However, there are other things you can do to also work your slow-twitch fibers. By including each exercise in your weekly routine, you will cover all bases:
1. Standing Calf Raise
Steps:
After loading the weight stack, slide under the shoulder pads and grab the handles.
Place your feet on the block, with the balls of your feet and toes pointed slightly inward.
Bend your knees slightly, and then keep your legs locked in that position.
Rise on your toes to complete calf extension.
Now lower your heels to below the level of your toes, going down as far as possible. Perform your reps in a smooth, fluid manner.
2. 45-Degree Leg Press Calf Raise
Steps:
Load the weight stack and then position yourself in the leg press machine with your lower back firmly against the back pad.
Place the balls of your feet on the base of the footplate.
Fully extend your calves by pushing your toes away from you. Keep your knees supple (slightly bent). Hold for a second.
Now lower your heels to below the level of your toes, going down as far as possible.
3. Seated Calf Raise
Steps:
Sit on a seated calf raise machine with your thighs tucked under the pads. Set the weights on the machine. Adjust the pad for your height. Place the balls of your feet on the footplate.
Fully extend your calves by raising your heels. Hold for a second.
Now lower your heels to below the level of your toes, going down as far as possible.
4. Jump Rope
Steps:
Stand with a jump rope in hand; feet shoulder together.
Rotate the wrists to bring the rope overhead.
Jump slightly to allow the rope to travel under your feet.
5. Toe Farmer’s Walk
Steps:
Grab a pair of dumbbells or other heavy objects in your home gym.
Walk up and down your gym floor on your toes until you have walked for 30 seconds.
6. Explosive Box Jumps
Steps:
Stand before a 24-inch high plyometric box. Hinge your hips and swing your arms to load the jump.
Jump both legs onto the box.
Immediately jump down on the other side.
Change direction and repeat.
Wrap-Up
While there is a genetic component to calf training, that doesn’t mean you can’t make the most of what you were blessed with. You can’t change the shape of your calf muscles and can only make minor changes to your muscle fiber type and density. However, you can increase the size of your calf muscle fibers by following a variable resistance workout program across a wide rep range. Besides the conventional gym moves like the standing leg press and seated calf raise, add jumping rope, plyometrics, and the toe farmer’s walk to transform your calves into bulls.
References
Gollnick PD, Sjödin B, Karlsson J, Jansson E, Saltin B. Human soleus muscle: a comparison of fiber composition and enzyme activities with other leg muscles. Pflugers Arch. 1974 Apr 22;348(3):247-55. doi: 10.1007/BF00587415. PMID: 4275915.
MacDougall JD, Sale DG, Alway SE, Sutton JR. Muscle fiber number in biceps brachii in bodybuilders and control subjects. J Appl Physiol Respir Environ Exerc Physiol. 1984 Nov;57(5):1399-403. doi: 10.1152/jappl.1984.57.5.1399. PMID: 6520032.
Nine Signs You Need a Rest Day
Of all the things you need to build muscle, get stronger, burn fat, or get fit, consistency is arguably the most important.
It doesn’t matter how carefully you plan your training or how balanced your diet is; if you don’t keep punching the clock and doing what needs to be done, your progress will be slow or even non-existent.
Ultimately, your body only responds to what you ask it to do. This is the fitness law of specificity. If you train hard and often, your body will adapt by getting fitter, stronger, and more muscular.
But, if you skip more workouts than you complete, your body has less reason to adapt and grow.
The bottom line is that consistency is often more important than finding the perfect workout or diet. Even the “wrong” program can produce great results if you do it often enough and with sufficient intensity.
That said, consistency can be a double-edged sword, and sometimes taking an unplanned day off may actually do you good. However, you need to be able to differentiate between feeling lazy and actually needing an extra rest day or two.
We reveal the top nine signs that you need a rest day.
The Top Nine Signs You Need a Rest Day
While sticking to your training schedule is usually a good thing, there are several signs that suggest the last thing you need is another punishing workout.
Intense exercise takes a lot out of your body, and it needs time to repair, recover and adapt after your workouts. There is a fine line between training hard enough to maximize gains and working so hard that you cannot recover.
Plowing on despite needing more rest can lead to overtraining syndrome, which is a chronic condition that can take many weeks or even months to overcome.
However, taking an unplanned rest day can help you avoid the overtraining trap and keep your training and gaining for the foreseeable future.
The following signs may indicate you need to skip training and take an extra rest day.
1. Reduced grip strength
It can be hard to know you are still tired from your last workout before you start your next one. After all, it’s only when you start training that you realize you aren’t feeling as strong or energetic as you should.
While you could abort your workout and go home, most people will push on regardless, making the problem worse.
Testing your grip strength before a workout could save you an unnecessary trip to the gym. Your grip force is an excellent indicator of the condition of the rest of your body.
You can test your grip strength with a cheap, readily available hand grip dynamometer. Take readings every day for a week to establish your average grip strength. Then, if you notice your score is more than ten percent lower than average, this suggests an extra day off will probably do you good.
2. Increased resting heart rate
Fit, healthy individuals usually have a lower resting heart rate (RHR) than their non-exercising compatriots. It’s not uncommon for well-conditioned people to have an RHR of 60, 50, or even 40 beats per minute (BPM), compared to the population average of 72 BPM.
However, if your RHR is 5-10 beats or ten percent higher than usual, it could indicate you are overtired and should take a rest day. A higher-than-usual RHR can also be an indicator that your body is fighting off the early stages of an illness, e.g., a cold.
Either way, if your RHR is higher than usual, take it as a sign that you may need an extra rest day.
The best time to take your resting heart rate is shortly after you wake up but before you get out of bed. Alternatively, you can use your smartwatch or fitness tracker to show trends in resting heart rate variance.
Related: Calculate Your Target Heart Rate
3. Even your warm-up feels hard
Warming up helps prepare your muscles and joints for what you are about to do. It may also lower your risk of injury. However, another lesser-known warm-up function is it allows you to assess your current condition and decide whether you are okay to train.
Typically, before doing their first heavy set, most lifters ramp up the weight over several warm-up sets, e.g.:
20kg/45lbs x 10 (empty bar)
40kg/90lbs x 8
60kg/135lbs x 6
80kg/175lbs x 3
100kg/220lbs x 5 (first heavy work set)
Warming up in this fashion helps fire up your nervous system so that the first heavy set is less of a shock. While it probably won’t feel light, your first work set should feel manageable.
However, if even your warm-up sets feel heavy, you should take this as a sign that you are tired and probably need a rest day. Pushing yourself through your workout will only increase your fatigue and could even lead to injury.
4. Familiar exercises or skills feel awkward
Fatigue doesn’t only affect your muscles; it also affects your central nervous system, or CNS for short. Your CNS comprises your brain and spinal cord and controls your peripheral nervous system (PNS), which in turn controls your muscles.
CNS fatigue will not only lower your potential for force production, making you weaker, but will also affect neurological fitness components such as balance and coordination.
So, if familiar movements feel awkward or more challenging than usual, e.g., standing on one leg, it’s a good indicator you need more rest and not a workout.
5. You are dreading your next workout
We all have days when we’d rather drink coffee and watch TV than sweat it out in the gym. But, once you’re actually there, you’ll be glad you went and feel terrific afterward. Giving in to your impulse to skip training would be an act of laziness.
However, if you are physically dreading your workout, you are probably suffering from fatigue and need a rest day. Not wanting to work out is a strong indicator that you are tired, and pushing yourself to train will potentially do more harm than good.
That said, you must be able to differentiate between laziness and really needing a rest day. Laziness is almost entirely psychological, whereas needing a rest day is more physical.
6. You’re craving high-energy foods
Your body is incredibly intuitive and is constantly sending you signals about what’s going on inside. Thirst tells you that you could be dehydrated and need more water while yawning lets you know you could probably do with a nap!
Uncharacteristic cravings for high-energy foods could be an indicator that your body is feeling low on energy and is after a fast-acting boost. However, simply eating something sugary probably won’t be enough to offset fatigue, so you should skip the candy bar and have an extra rest day instead.
7. You are sleepier than normal
Most adults need between 7-9 hours of sleep per night. This should leave you feeling refreshed, energized, and ready to face the day, including your workouts. However, despite sleeping well, if you wake up feeling tired or find yourself craving a nap, it could suggest that you need a day off more than you need a workout.
Disrupted sleep is also a common symptom of overtraining, so if you’re tired but still unable to sleep, you definitely need to back-off your workouts.
8. Your joints are achy
Muscle soreness is NOT a good indicator of fatigue. Muscles can feel sore just because you’ve done a new exercise or used an unfamiliar training method. Most lifters experience muscle soreness on a regular basis, and while it’s not an indicator of a successful workout, nor does it mean you’ve overdone it and need extra rest.
In contrast, achy joints are a better indicator that you need some extra rest. We’re talking non-specific joint pain here and not the pain you get from injury.
Non-specific joint pain is often caused by systemic inflammation and made worse by fatigue. So, if your knees, hips, lower back, shoulders, or elbows are uncharacteristically achy or stiff, you will probably benefit from an unplanned day off.
9. You feel unwell
Training while ill may win you a bravery medal from the gym bros, but it’s often a sign you need to take a day off.
When you are unwell, your body must divert vital resources to your immune system to help you get better. But, if you also exercise, those resources will be more thinly spread, and you could end up being ill for longer.
Also, training while sick means your body will have less energy for recovery and repair, making your workout less productive.
This makes training when you’re sick a lose-lose scenario.
In most cases, it’s better to rest when you feel unwell so you recover faster and avoid unproductive workouts. Return to the gym when you feel better, and your body can cope with the demands of your training.
Related: The Hierarchy of Successful Hypertrophy Training
How to Avoid Needing Unplanned Rest Days
Unplanned and extra rest days are sometimes unavoidable. We all have days where, for inexplicable reasons, our energy levels are low, and a workout will only make things worse. Taking a day off is sometimes the smart thing to do!
However, if you often feel the need to skip training, something in your workout schedule, diet, or lifestyle is probably out of whack. Fixing any problems could mean needing fewer unplanned rest days, making your training more productive in the process.
Reduce your need to take extra rest days with the following tips and strategies:
1. Include planned rest days in your program
You can’t expect to work out every day and not become fatigued. And yet, many people can be found in the gym seven days a week. Training every day is NOT a sign of commitment or toughness. Instead, it’s an indicator that you don’t understand how exercise affects your body, and how it needs to rest and recover to adapt.
Avoid this problem by programming rest days into your schedule. Two or three rest days per week should suffice.
You don’t have to be sedentary on your rest days; light physical movement, e.g., easy walking or stretching, can be very restorative. However, you should avoid doing tiring activities.
2. Periodize your training
The best workouts build up to a performance/volume/intensity peak and then ease off for a while before building back up again. This is called periodization. In contrast, many exercisers train with 100% intensity all the time and then wonder why they burn out!
Plan your workouts in blocks, called macrocycles in periodization. Each block builds on the one that preceded it. Then, after a few weeks of very intense training, enjoy a brief deload (detailed below) and then ramp up again.
This three-steps-forward-one-step-back approach to training can help ward off overtraining and minimize the need for unplanned days off.
3. Deload from time to time
Deloads are planned periods of low-intensity or low-duration training. They typically follow a training peak, where intensity and volume were very high.
A deload allows you to rest and recover while maintaining your current fitness and strength. In fact, you may even see improvements in performance during a deload as any residual fatigue disappears.
Structured strength training programs often include deloads, such as one easy week in four. The main concept behind deloading is to take time off voluntarily before you are forced to. In almost every case, regular short deloads are better than training without a break and being forced to take a long time off because of overtraining or overuse injuries.
4. Make sleep a priority
While recovery starts the moment your workout finishes, things really speed up when you are asleep. With nothing much else to do, your body can put more energy into tissue repair and muscle growth while you’re pushing out the zzzs.
While you can survive on less than 7-9 hours of sleep per night, chronic under sleeping can significantly impact your energy and motivation for exercise.
Getting the optimal amount of sleep means your mental and physical batteries will always be fully charged. Prioritize getting enough sleep, and you won’t need to take so many unplanned rest days.
Related: 10 Best Natural Aids for Better Sleep
5. Consume more nutritious food
Food contains energy, which is measured in calories. However, your body needs more than calories to function at its best; it also needs vitamins, minerals, and a host of other nutrients that are only present in clean, natural foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
Many lifters like the If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) or flexible diet, which means they can eat almost anything provided it helps them hit their calorie, protein, carbs, and fat targets for the day.
However, eating a lot of junk food means your diet will be nutritionally poor, which can affect energy and your ability to recover between workouts.
Reduce your need for extra days off by building your meals and snacks around nutritious whole foods. You can still enjoy nutritionally-poor treats from time to time, but consuming more healthy foods will, in turn, make you healthier. After all, you are what you eat!
6. Understand the impact of psychological stress on your energy levels
It’s not only physical exercise that can drain your energy levels – psychological stress does, too. Arguments with your boss, an unpleasant working environment, financial worries, and familial conflicts can all leave you feeling frazzled.
Piling a long or intense workout onto all this stress can make things worse, driving you ever closer to needing to take unplanned days off training.
If you feel emotionally burnt out, dial back on your workouts to give yourself more chance to recover. Exercise IS an excellent stress buster, but too much can make matters worse.
Respect the effect of psychological stress on your energy levels and make allowances in your workouts.
FAQs
Do you have a question about rest days or recovery in general? That’s okay because we’ve got the answers!
1. If I’m tired, can’t I just take a pre-workout or an espresso to rev myself up for training?
Caffeine and the energizing ingredients in pre-workouts do a great job of increasing your short-term energy and focus. However, they don’t address the cause of fatigue, which is usually too much training and too little recovery. In fact, they can make things worse by allowing you to train when you should probably be resting, thus deepening your “energy debt.”
The occasional use of caffeine and pre-workouts is seldom harmful. But, if you use them to power you through a workout when your body is telling you to take a day off, they could cause more harm than good. In many cases, a rest day will do more for your progress than a workout.
2. How can I tell if I really need a day off or if I’m being lazy?
Just because you don’t feel like training doesn’t mean you should take a rest day. Taking time off when you really should be in the gym is a sign of laziness.
If you feel you need a day off, don’t just rely on your emotions. Instead, consider things that you can see or measure.
For example, biomarkers like your resting heart rate and grip strength provide quantifiable indicators that you may benefit from a rest day. They are directly influenced by your condition and level of fatigue. Or, you could start your workout and see how you feel. Poor performance early on is a good indicator that you should take it easy or take the day off.
We all have days when we don’t feel like training, but, in some cases, this has nothing to do with our physical state and is purely mental. In these cases, you’ll probably feel better after a workout.
3. What can I do at the gym if I’m having an off day?
One of the downsides of using your warm-up or workout to determine if you need a rest day is they involve going to the gym and training! So, what should you do if you realize that you’re having an off day?
Here are a few ideas:
Stretch instead of lift.
Do some easy (zone two) cardio.
Use less weight, and do fewer sets and reps.
Learn some new exercises.
Have a sauna or steam bath.
Go for an easy swim.
Pack up and go home!
4. Can you cure overtraining with more food and sleep?
While sleep and good nutrition can go a long way to preventing overtraining, it is still possible to outpace your ability to recover and end up plateauing or regressing.
Advancing age, training too hard and too often, emotional stress, activities outside of the gym, your job, and numerous other factors can make it harder to fully recover from exercise, even if you sleep and eat well.
Sleep and food will go a long way toward preventing overtraining, but they are just two factors you need to consider.
5. What’s the best way to measure my resting heart rate?
There are several ways to measure your resting heart rate or RHR. Arguably the easiest is to use a smartwatch with an infrared sensor. Next easiest would be to use a chest strap heart rate monitor. Both of these give you a live heart rate reading.
However, if you don’t have access to these tools, you can just take your pulse.
There are several pulse sites throughout the body, but two of the most accessible are the radial pulse on the outside/underside of your wrist, just below your thumb, and your carotid pulse on the side of your neck, just below your jaw.
Place your first two fingers on either of these points and press gently. Then, when you can feel your pulse, count the number of beats in 60 seconds. Relax and breathe normally to get the most accurate reading.
Compare your result to your average RHR. If it is 5-10 beats or 10% higher than your usual resting heart rate, you may benefit from a rest day.
Closing Thoughts
Needing an unplanned rest day is not a sign of laziness. In fact, you might need an extra rest day because you’ve been very un-lazy lately and have trained harder or longer than usual. Training through fatigue invariably makes matters worse and could even lead to overtraining. In many cases, you can nip problems in the bud by taking an unscheduled rest day.
However, this doesn’t give you a license to take days off whenever you want. Missing more workouts than you complete will severely hamper your progress. Remember, the most important factor for training success is and always will be consistency. Consistency IS king!
That said, sometimes, the best way to win a war is by retreating and regrouping so you can come back stronger. Use the information in this article to determine if you really need a rest day or if you are just being lazy.
Rest Time for Hypertrophy: How Long Between Sets for Maximal Muscle Growth?
Hypertrophy training programs are typically built around a range of variables. These include training frequency and split, exercise selection, rep range, number of sets per exercise and muscle group, and recovery time between sets.
In most cases, program writers put a lot of thought into things like the training split and exercise selection but very little into how much rest time you should take between sets. Some don’t even mention it, leaving you to fill in this missing piece of information yourself.
This is unfortunate because not only is the length of your interset rest a variable you can manipulate, but it may also have a direct impact on the effectiveness of your program.
In this article, we investigate how the rest time between sets can affect your progress and if there is an optimal rest time for building muscle.
Rest Time for Hypertrophy – The Standard Recommendation
While a lot of exercisers just rest as long as needed between sets, the standard recommendation interset rest period for hypertrophy training is 30-90 seconds. So, for example, if you do a set of bench presses, you would rest 30-90 seconds before beginning your next set.
Some lifters favor the short end of this scale (30-60 seconds), while others prefer slightly longer rests (60-90 seconds). Oftentimes, rest periods are modified depending on the exercise performed, e.g., less rest between sets of isolation exercises and longer rests for compound exercises.
Regardless of the exact duration, 30-90 seconds has worked for thousands of bodybuilders. It’s just long enough for levels of lactic acid to subside and to catch your breath. However, it’s not so long that your muscles recover fully, so each set will be more demanding than the one preceding it.
Resting from 30 to 90 seconds between sets will give you a good pump and burn, producing the mechanical and metabolic stress that is necessary for building muscle. However, while 30 to 90-second interset rests undoubtedly work, there are disadvantages too.
These include:
Accumulated fatigue
With incomplete rests between sets, your set-by-set rep count will probably decrease, reducing the quality and amount of work you can perform. This may have a negative effect on workout productivity.
For example:
Set 1 – 12 reps
Set 2 – 9 reps
Set 3 – 7 reps
Alternatively, if you want your reps to remain more or less constant, you may have to reduce the weight as you get tired or hold back on your first few sets so you are less fatigued. Both of these strategies could make your workout less effective.
Cardiovascular overload
While hypertrophy training is generally anaerobic, a strenuous set of most compound exercises can leave you out of breath with your heart racing. Even if you are in good shape, you may find that when it’s time to do your next set, you are still out of breath, which limits how many reps you can do.
In short, your heart and lungs fatigue before your muscles. Doing fewer reps because you are out of breath will significantly undermine the effectiveness of your workout.
Needless to say, this effect is generally strongest with leg exercises as they demand the most oxygen and energy. This is one of the reasons that leg workouts are so hard (and daunting!).
The “rush factor”
Training with short interset rests means you have very little time between sets to gather your thoughts, get psyched up, change weights, grab a drink, update your workout diary, or do any of the other things that can help make your workout more productive. You may even start your next set before you feel ready and perform poorly as a result.
There is more to building muscle than just rushing through your workout. Successful hypertrophy training involves training smart, too. Short rests between sets definitely make for an intense workout. However, evidence suggests that longer rests may be more effective for building muscle.
Summary:
While 30-90 seconds is the traditional interset rest time for bodybuilding, it’s not without disadvantages, such as accumulating muscular and cardiovascular fatigue. However, given how many people have successfully used short rests to build muscle, it’s clear that it works.
In Support of Longer Rests for Hypertrophy
It’s generally accepted that longer rests (three minutes or more) are best for developing maximal strength. For example, maximum strength training typically involves lifting heavy weights (85%+ of your one-repetition maximum) for low reps (1-5 per set).
Low-rep, heavy-weight training creates less cardiovascular fatigue and minimal lactic acid compared to bodybuilding training. This suggests that shorter rests should work.
However, this type of training has a massive impact on the central nervous system, or CNS for short. The CNS controls how much force you can generate and needs to fully recover before you can lift the same load again.
This recovery takes time, and three minutes is considered the minimum rest period between sets of heavy lifts. Some exercisers rest five or more minutes between sets of very heavy strength training, even if their set only takes a few seconds to complete.
Longer rests for hypertrophy training
A growing number of studies and meta-analyses (a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies) suggest that more extended rest periods may result in more significant muscle growth and aren’t just for building strength (1).
Longer interset rests (3 to 5 minutes) allow you to lift heavier weights, creating more mechanical tension, and do more reps with that heavier weight, which is linked to greater hypertrophy.
This is expressed as your training volume, which is:
Reps x Weight x Sets
A higher overall training volume is usually associated with an increased adaptive response.
In addition, lifting big weights also builds more strength, making future workouts more productive, as you’ll be able to train even heavier.
Also, resting for three vs. one minute may lower the overall workout RPE or rating of perceived exertion, which is how hard you feel you are working (2). A high RPE is usually associated with feelings of fatigue and reduced motivation. In contrast, if your RPE is lower, you will be inclined to train harder and longer, leading to a more stimulating workout.
On the downside, resting more will make your workouts longer. This may be a problem if you are already pressed for time and struggle to fit training into an already-packed schedule.
Summary:
Longer rest periods allow you to do more reps with heavier loads, increasing training volume. Combined with a lower workout RPE, this should make your workouts more effective for hypertrophy, albeit only marginally. However, it’ll also make your workouts longer, which may be a drawback for some people.
How to Use This Information
While 30 to 90-second rests between sets undeniably work, there may be advantages to taking longer breaks. Resting for three vs. one minute could allow you to lift more weight or do more reps. It may also make your workout feel more manageable.
But how do you put this information into practice? And do you really need to overhaul your entire workout and double all your rest periods?
Probably not.
In fact, longer rest periods are probably best used with big, heavy, tiring compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses, and weighted pull-ups. After all, these are the most demanding and the most productive exercises.
For these exercises, longer rests are entirely appropriate and will ensure you reap all of the hypertrophic benefits they can deliver
In contrast, most isolation exercises are much less demanding and far easier to recover from, e.g., leg extensions, biceps curls, and lateral raises. As such, shorter rests are more applicable for these exercises.
So, using this information, a leg workout could end up looking something like this:
#
Exercise
Sets
Reps
Recovery
1
Squats
4
6-8
3 minutes
2
Romanian deadlift
4
6-8
3 minutes
3
Leg press
3
8-12
2 minutes
4
Leg extension
3
12-15
90 seconds
5
Leg curl
3
12-15
90 seconds
6
Calf raise
3
15-20
60 seconds
The rest periods get shorter as the exercises get easier, i.e., use fewer muscles or move from a high cardiovascular demand to a lower cardiovascular demand. You can apply this rationale to all body parts where you go from heavy compound to light isolation exercises.
Rest Time for Hypertrophy – FAQs
Do you have a question about how long to rest between sets for muscle growth? No problem, because we’ve got the answers!
1. So, how long should I rest between sets for hypertrophy?
Conceivably, you can rest anywhere from 30 seconds to 3-5 minutes between sets and build muscle. Shorter rests mean more metabolic stress, while longer rests allow you to lift heavier weights and do more reps.
According to science, longer rest periods are somewhat better for hypertrophy than short rests, but both can work.
So, try short (30-60 seconds), moderate (90 seconds to two minutes), and long (three minutes plus) rests and see which you prefer. Alternatively, adjust your rest period to the difficulty of the exercise you are performing and take advantage of the benefits of short and long rest periods.
2. Long rests between sets make my workout too long; got any solutions?
The biggest drawback to resting three minutes or more between sets is how much longer your workout will become. For example, it could add 30 minutes or more to your training session, which may be impractical.
One way around this is a method I call “lazy supersets.” Unlike regular supersets, where you move quickly from one exercise to the next, with lazy supersets, you transition more slowly, so one exercise will not affect your performance of the next but still makes good use of your recovery time.
For example, let’s say you’re training back and chest. For lazy supersets, do one set of bench presses, rest 60-90 seconds, and then do a set of pull-ups. Rest another 60-90 seconds and return to the bench press.
Using this method, you can rest for 3-4 minutes between sets without being completely idle and wasting so much time.
3. How much better are long rests than short rests for hypertrophy?
Studies suggest that the benefit of long vs. short rests is “statistically significant,” which means they can put a numerical value to it. However, in actuality, the benefits are pretty small, so it could be argued that there are more important things you should focus on, like exercise selection, training proximity to failure, eating right, and getting enough sleep.
So, if you like resting 30-90 seconds between sets and you’re happy with your progress, there is no need to change your approach. If you ARE missing out on any gains, it won’t be by much.
However, if you are training hard and consistently, eating right, and sleeping and recovering like a boss, longer interset rests may optimize your workouts, making each one as productive as possible (3).
Resting three instead of one minute means more downtime between sets. Here are a few things you can do during your longer rests:
Stretching
Pre-hab/rehab of other muscle groups
Short bouts of cardio (e.g., 30 to 40 seconds of jump rope)
Warming up for your next exercise
A set of a non-competing exercise, e.g., calves or core
Update your training diary
However, you should still keep track of your rest periods so you don’t get distracted. This is NOT the time to start updating your social media status or watching YouTube videos. Instead, stay focused on training. After all, that’s what you are there to do.
5. What is the best way to control my rest periods?
There are several methods you can use to control how long you rest between sets. Firstly, you could simply time yourself. Start your stopwatch (on your phone or wristwatch) as soon as you finish your last rep, and then start your next set three minutes later.
Or, if you only have access to a regular watch or clock, you can use the add-on method. Look at the time when you finish your set and add on however many minutes you need to rest. Do your next set at that time. For example, if your set ends at 17.00 and 45 seconds, and you want to rest for three minutes, start your next set at 17.03 and 45 seconds.
Finally, you can use a variation of EMOM, which stands for every minute on the minute. For example, let’s say your set takes an average of 40 seconds to complete, and you want to rest for three minutes between efforts.
Simply set a repeating alarm to sound every three minutes and 40 seconds. Start each set when you hear the beep; your rest periods should be roughly three minutes every time.
6. I like taking short rests between sets; do I really need to switch to longer interset breaks?
Most training methods have been studied scientifically. While some have been found to be better than others, the differences are often so small that it doesn’t really matter which one you do. The best one often comes down to personal preference.
For example, the benefits of doing three vs. one set, training to failure vs. close to failure, doing five vs. 15 reps per set, and full-body vs. split routines.
All of these methods produce similar results. Instead, what matters most is training consistency, and that usually hinges on enjoyment. Even the best program in the world won’t produce work if you don’t like it and, therefore, don’t do it.
So, while long rests may be slightly better for building muscle, if you prefer shorter rest periods between sets, then that’s the type of training you should stick to.
That said, don’t dismiss a type of training without trying it. Something that looks wrong on paper could be the missing training link you’ve been searching for.
So, give longer rests a try, but feel free to go back to shorter rests if that’s what you prefer. Be your own experiment, and build your workouts around what you enjoy and what works best for you.
Rest Time for Hypertrophy – Closing Thoughts
Many lifters feel guilty when they rest more than a minute or so between sets. They think they’re being lazy if they aren’t sweating, panting, and hustling from one set to the next.
However, research suggests that slowing down and taking more time between could allow you to train harder and heavier than shorter rests. This may help build muscle faster and will also enhance strength gains.
On the downside, longer rests invariably mean longer workouts, which may be problematic for busy lifters who already struggle to find the time to train.
So, don’t get too hung up on your rest periods. 30 to 90 seconds has been the go-to rest time for generations of bodybuilders. And if it worked for them, it’ll work for you too. But if you want to squeeze every last drop of productivity from your workouts, rests of three minutes or more could help.
References:
Grgic J, Lazinica B, Mikulic P, Krieger JW, Schoenfeld BJ. The effects of short versus long inter-set rest intervals in resistance training on measures of muscle hypertrophy: A systematic review. Eur J Sport Sci. 2017 Sep;17(8):983-993. doi: 10.1080/17461391.2017.1340524. Epub 2017 Jun 22. PMID: 28641044. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28641044/
Senna, Gilmar W.; Willardson, Jeffrey M.; Scudese, Estevão; Simão, Roberto; Queiroz, Cristiano; Avelar, Raoni; Martin Dantas, Estélio H.. Effect of Different Interset Rest Intervals on Performance of Single and Multijoint Exercises With Near-Maximal Loads. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 30(3):p 710-716, March 2016. | DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000001142 https://journals.lww.com
Schoenfeld BJ, Pope ZK, Benik FM, Hester GM, Sellers J, Nooner JL, Schnaiter JA, Bond-Williams KE, Carter AS, Ross CL, Just BL, Henselmans M, Krieger JW. Longer Interset Rest Periods Enhance Muscle Strength and Hypertrophy in Resistance-Trained Men. J Strength Cond Res. 2016 Jul;30(7):1805-12. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000001272. PMID: 26605807. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26605807/
Phil Heath ‘Optimizing Health’ w/Recovery & Medications: ‘It’s Putting Me in The Best Position to Win’
Bodybuilding legend Phil Heath has maintained a muscle-bound physique since stepping away from the stage in 2020. In a recent Instagram reel, Heath shared that his training frequency increased and his medication intake has put him in ‘the best position to win’ moving forward.
“Optimizing your health goes a long way. The goal is to leave life changing and lifelong lasting effects.” Phil Heath shared.
Heath commanded the biggest stages in the sport with authority, having claimed a total of seven consecutive Mr. Olympia titles (2011-2017). At that time, ‘The Gift’ proved to be an incredible force in the Men’s Open class, where he regularly pushed contenders like his arch-rival Kai Greene, the late Shawn Rhoden, and German standout Dennis Wolf.
Late last year, the 2023 Masters Olympia contest was revived and again added to the IFBB Pro League bodybuilding schedule. After an 11-year absence, the show will return August 25-27 in Cluj Napoca, Romania. While fans had hoped for Heath or Jay Cutler’s return, they have both publicly shot down the idea.
In a Voice of Bodybuilding appearance with Bob Cicherillo, Heath underlined that $1 million cash would incentivize his comeback. Considering Heath’s age and record of accomplishments, he believes fans would have called him out if he decided to compete at 2023 Masters Olympia. Nevertheless, Heath’s focus is on health and longevity while he’s away from the stage.
Phil Heath ‘Feeling Fresh,’ Talks Achieving ‘Peak Performance with Recovery & Medications
Even though he no longer trains seven days a week, Heath has retained adequate muscle mass thanks to ‘right types of medications.’
“Even without me training seven days a week, I’ve been able to maintain good muscle mass and that’s because I’ve done things the right way throughout my career. But I’ve made sure I was able to apply the right type of medications for my goals and I am in the gym a little bit more now and I will be more in the upcoming weeks and my body feels really really fresh.”
In addition, Heath stressed that recovery, modalities, and medications are keys to optimizing peak performance and health.
“I know that with Transcend they’re putting me in the best position to win. That’s what I always preached my entire career, you have to train smart, you have to train hard, you have to have fun, but you have to have the recovery, modalities, and the medications to help you stay at your peak performance,” said Phil Heath.
RELATED: Best Speed Up Recovery After Training
Phil’s predecessor, Jay Cutler, has teased a Heath comeback on a number of occasions. According to Jay, Heath could ‘do some damage’ at this year’s Mr. Olympia show. Assuming Heath entered this contest, he would face off against two of his teammates – Derek Lunsford and champion Hadi Choopan, who are both led by the legend’s former coach Hany Rambod.
One of the last time fans heard from Heath, he offered a definitive answer on whether he would make a play at the upcoming 2023 Olympia competition. While he continues to make improvements to his build at 255 pounds, Heath ruled out the possibility of competing later this year in a previous Instagram post.
Phil Heath’s continued dedication to health and fitness puts him in the best position possible to compete at a high level, whether he returns to bodybuilding or not.
RELATED: ‘It’s a 3-Headed Monster’: Phil Heath Reveals His Top Picks for 2023 Mr. Olympia
Published: 23 May, 2023 | 6:55 PM EDT
The Ultimate Guide To Natural Bodybuilding: Best Training and Diet Tips
“Natty for life” is arguably the most popular catchphrase amongst fitness enthusiasts. Ironically, “natty for life” is often used as a hashtag by bodybuilders that are guilty of using gear. But why are so many bodybuilders keen on coming off as natural?
Many people consider steroid use as a form of cheating. It is believed that folks on juice have it much easier than their natural counterparts. Whether this assumption is true is out of the scope of this article. However, you can rest assured that you will gain much more praise and recognition if you have built a diced physique without using performance-enhancing drugs.
Furthermore, unlike the governing bodies of most sports, such as Olympic weightlifting, American football, or fencing, the leading bodybuilding organization, the IFBB Pro League, does not enforce drug testing. As pro bodybuilders are not required to take doping tests, they can take anything under the sun to build a blockbuster physique.
If you aspire to compete in bodybuilding shows, knowing that most famous folks in the sport are using gear puts you at a significant disadvantage. Drug use is not limited to professional bodybuilders; many people start their first steroid cycle in hopes of breaking through on social media.
In this article, we dive deep into natural bodybuilding, the difference between being a natty and a juiced-up bodybuilder, the scope of natural bodybuilders in the IFBB Pro League, and the best training and nutrition tips for building your dream physique. We also cover the 14 best natural bodybuilders that are excellent role models for aspiring natural bodybuilders.
Before we get to the meat of this article, we must clarify that this article is not about dissing bodybuilders who use gear. We are the first to admit using PEDs requires significant dedication and commitment.
What is Natural Bodybuilding?
Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler, Phil Heath, Kai Greene, and Flex Wheeler are some of the greatest bodybuilders of all time. However, these legends share one thing in common — they are not natural bodybuilders.
So, what is natural bodybuilding?
Simply put, natural bodybuilding involves building a muscular, balanced, symmetrical, and diced physique without using drugs. Conversely, enhanced bodybuilders use synthetic hormones that imitate the male sex hormone, testosterone, to help with the growth and repair of muscle tissue.
The sport of natural bodybuilding has evolved tremendously over the last couple of decades. We now have multiple natural bodybuilding organizations that promote several natty bodybuilding shows throughout the year.
These natural bodybuilding organizations conduct several tests and have varying guidelines on what their athletes can and cannot take.
Natural bodybuilders are generally smaller than enhanced athletes who use PEDs, such as HGH (human growth hormone), testosterone, Trenbolone, and deca, which results in significant structural changes in the human body. The Open division bodybuilders of the untested bodybuilding leagues are substantially bigger and heavier than their drug-tested counterparts.
Owing to the popularity of the IFBB Pro Mr. Olympia contest, the International Natural Bodybuilding Association and Professional Natural Bodybuilding Association (INBA/PNBA) started the Natural Olympia contest in 1998, which aims to crown the best natural bodybuilder in the world. Since then, the Natural Olympia has become the premiere bodybuilding contest for the natties.
However, we will go as far as to say that the chances of a natural bodybuilder beating an enhanced athlete in a no-holds-barred contest are as bright as a black hole in outer space.
Note: Fitness Volt doesn’t condone the use of performance-enhancing drugs. This article is for informative purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice to diagnose, prevent, or treat health problems. If you’re suffering from a health issue, are pregnant, or are under 18 years old, you should consult your physician before starting any new supplement, nutrition, or fitness routine.
Natural Bodybuilding Federations
The following organizations are the most popular in the natural bodybuilding space:
International Natural Bodybuilding Association and Professional Natural Bodybuilding Association (INBA/PNBA)
World Natural Bodybuilding Federation (WNBF)
American Natural Bodybuilding Federation (ANBF)
Most of these drug-free bodybuilding federations use the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) guidelines that include 10 years drug-free of prescription/pharmaceutical hormones on the WADA banned substance list and two years free of over-the-counter hormones, pro-hormones, or banned substances listed or their chemical counterparts.
A natural bodybuilding federation can use blood, urine, and polygraph tests to check its athletes for drug use. These tests are done randomly throughout the year. Plus, most federations conduct drug tests on random bodybuilders before a competition.
Interestingly, most of these federations have the same bodybuilding divisions as the IFBB Pro League, including the Open, Men’s Physique, Classic Physique for the men, and the Open, Bikini, Physique, Fitness, and Wellness categories for the ladies.
The PNBA Elite World Tour and the Natural Olympia are the biggest competitions for natural bodybuilders. Although the biggest, these are nowhere close to the biggest untested competition.
In 2021, the total prize pool for the Natural Olympia was $65,000, and most division winners pocketed $1,000. On the other hand, the IFBB Pro League Mr. Olympia in 2022 had a $1.6 million prize pool, and the Mr. Olympia champ Hadi Choopan took home $400,000.
Considering this, you could think of natural bodybuilding as a hobby, whereas you could make a decent living competing in untested bodybuilding competitions.
Can natural bodybuilders become IFBB Pro athletes?
The IFBB Pro League is the world’s numero uno pro bodybuilding organization. Only IFBB Pro League bodybuilders are allowed to compete in the coveted Mr. Olympia competition, which is the biggest bodybuilding contest in the world.
Many people believe that no athlete can turn pro in the IFBB Pro League without using gear. However, this isn’t true.
Ronnie Coleman
Your genetics play a massive role in how far you can take your physique without using PEDs. The eight-time Mr. Olympia champion, Ronnie Coleman, turned pro in 1991. The 1964-born bodybuilder claims to have competed natural until the age of 30. He had taken 15th at the 1994 Olympia, his second O appearance.
Although not everyone is born with Big Ron’s genetics and work ethic, he proves that you can reach the top of the sport while staying natural.
If this wasn’t enough, the three-time Bikini Olympia champ, Ashley Kaltwasser, is the winningest IFBB Pro competitor. At the time of writing, she has 37 pro show wins to her name, which is seven more than the 2008 Mr. Olympia champ Dexter Jackson, who leads the men with 29 pro show wins. Kaltwasser claims to be a life-long natural bodybuilder.
Testing Problems With Natural Bodybuilding Federations
Doping tests can be expensive, and the natural bodybuilding federations must pay for them to get all their athletes tested. However, here lies a big problem. Competitive bodybuilding is not a mainstream sport. Plus, natural bodybuilding is a niche within a niche, meaning the money is tight for most of these natural federations.
Some of these federations rely on cheap doping tests, which often return incorrect results. An athlete who wants to appeal his test results must pay for the doping tests, which increases his competition budget. Plus, most of these natural bodybuilding federations charge their members a yearly doping test fee.
On the other hand, untested organizations like the IFBB Pro League don’t have to deal with doping tests, saving their athletes a lot of money and headache. With that said, enhanced athletes usually spend more on their gear in a month than natty athletes spend on their tests in a couple of years.
Furthermore, doping tests face a perennial problem. Athletes find ways to cheat the system. Cheating on drug tests is not isolated to bodybuilding. Many elite weightlifters, golfers, cyclists, and footballers have never failed their drug tests despite being on juice for years. People who are willing to do anything to be number one at what they do find ways to cheat a doping test.
Natural bodybuilding federations take their doping tests very seriously. The INBA/PNBA has a “Hall of Shame” section on their website that features bodybuilders that claim to be natty but have failed a drug test.
Diet Tips For Natural Bodybuilding
Enhanced and natty bodybuilders start with similar diets, training, and recovery programs. The main difference in their physiques is caused by drug use. As an enhanced athlete starts using gear, he experiences an uptick in his body weight due to increased muscle mass and strength, which requires him to eat more and lift heavier to sustain his gains. This cycle keeps bodybuilders hooked to steroids.
Calorie Goals
Your calorie goals will depend on your current physique, gender, genetics, age, height, activity levels, and goal physique. Use our convenient calorie calculator to determine your daily caloric goals.
Folks looking to build muscle mass should enter a caloric surplus (eat more calories than they burn in a day), whereas bodybuilders trying to lose weight should be on a calorie-deficit diet (burn more calories than they consume).
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), adding 500-1,000 to your daily calorie intake can result in gaining 1-2 pounds weekly. Conversely, cutting the same amount from your daily diet can help you lose 1-2 pounds a week. [1]
Macronutrient Goals
After arriving at a daily calorie goal, you must break it down into an appropriate macronutrient (carbohydrates, protein, and fats) split.
The macronutrient split for most natural bodybuilders lies in the following ranges:
Carbohydrates: 35% to 60%
Protein: 30% to 45%
Fats: 10% to 30%
Bodybuilding consists of three phases — bulking, cutting, and maintenance. Your macronutrient split will change depending on the phase you are in. However, one thing remains consistent throughout the three phases for natural bodybuilders; they are always on a high-protein diet.
You must analyze your transformation progress weekly to ensure you are on the correct path. Add more calories to your diet if you’re unsatisfied with your bulking progress. On the flip side, cut more calories from your diet and do more cardio if you’re not shedding body weight fast enough. Arriving at the right daily calorie intake goal and macronutrient split can take some trial and error, and you must get comfortable trying new things.
Supplements
Recovery is often overlooked in a bodybuilding regimen. Most anabolic steroids, also known as super supplements, speed up your recovery, which helps the enhanced athlete get ready for their next workout relatively quickly. However, natural bodybuilders must emphasize their diet and recovery program to ensure optimal recovery.
Supplements are an excellent tool for natural bodybuilders to fill the nutrition voids in their diet. Whey protein supplements can help repair and rebuild stronger muscles, whereas a mass gainer supp can make adding more size easier. Creatine, BCAAs, pre-workouts, and glutamine supplements can also help boost your results.
You must also ensure you meet your daily micronutrient needs for overall physical development and better health, well-being, and functionality. Add a multivitamin supp to your daily routine if you cannot meet your micronutrient goals through real food.
Although supplements are a great way to meet your macro and micronutrient needs, you shouldn’t be over-reliant on them. Focus on achieving your nutrition needs through nutrient-dense whole foods.
Natural bodybuilders with competitive aspirations must check the banned substance list of their chosen bodybuilding federation to ensure the ingredients in their favorite supplements will not get them banned for life.
Training Tips For Natural Bodybuilding
There is no one-fits-all training program for bodybuilders. What works for your training partner might not work for you. You should follow a personalized training regimen that focuses on bringing up your lagging muscle groups and polishing your strengths.
Your training program will depend on your starting and goal physique. Your trainer might also change your training volume, intensity, and frequency depending on how you respond to an exercise regimen.
Here are some of the best training tips to help natty bodybuilders get the best bang for their buck:
Perform 3-5 sets and 8-12 reps of an exercise with 70-85% of your one-rep max to induce hypertrophy. [2]
Train your lagging muscle groups up to twice a week.
Limit your rest duration between sets to 60-120 seconds to maintain a high training intensity.
The eccentric (lowering) motion is just as important as the concentric (lifting) movement. Plus, focus on squeezing the life out of your muscles at the static contraction at the top.
Change your rep tempo to challenge your muscles.
Use advanced training principles like super sets, drop sets, and intra-set stretching to progressively overload your muscles.
Wait at least 48 hours before training the same muscle group again.
Switch your hand grip when possible to train your muscles from different angles and ensure overall development.
Avoid lifting too heavy close to a competition to limit your risk of injury.
Find a training partner that can push you to do your best in the weight room.
Hiring a nutritionist and personal trainer can help speed up your transformation progress and save you significant time, energy, effort, and money. Seek a certified professional’s help if you can afford it; it will pay dividends in the long run. Plus, it can help you build a solid foundation and considerably reduce your risk of injury in the gym.
14 Best Natural Bodybuilders
Most bodybuilders are on the fence about revealing their enhanced status. This trend was arguably started by the legendary Joe Weider, who barred bodybuilders competing in the IFBB from disclosing their drug use. However, things are changing for the better, as more pro bodybuilders are taking to social media and podcasts and sharing their drug cycles.
In this article, we have included bodybuilders from the whole gamut of the sport — we have athletes that compete in drug-tested bodybuilding competitions, social media stars, and athletes that compete in untested leagues.
Remember, there is no sure way to tell if an athlete has been a lifelong natural bodybuilder. In this list, we have included bodybuilders that have never failed a doping test. However, it could mean two things; first, these athletes have some of the best genetics in the world and have never used gear, or these folks are really good at gaming a drug test; you be the judge.
Without further ado, here are the 14 best natural bodybuilders:
Ron Williams
With 250 competition wins under his belt, Williams is the winningest natural bodybuilder of all time. His balanced, proportioned, and chiseled physique would make anyone question his natty status. However, Williams has never failed a drug test, making him one of the most genetically gifted natural bodybuilders ever.
Here are some of his achievements:
7-time Mr. Natural Olympia
7-time Mr. Natural Universe
7-time Natural World
Hall of Fame Inductee (2008): International Natural Bodybuilding Association
Donte Franklin
If you think natural bodybuilders cannot have mountain-like biceps, Franklin is here to prove you wrong. The 6-foot natural bodybuilder manages to grow and improve his physique every year, making him one of the most consistent nattys in the business.
Franklin likes to train hard and heavy, qualities he attributes as the secret to his incredible physique.
Paul Krueger
Krueger is one of the most dominant natural bodybuilders. He won the coveted Natural Olympia title in 2021, only a few weeks after getting his pro card. Notably, Krueger competed as an amateur bodybuilder for 25 years before turning pro and disrupting the upper echelons of the natural bodybuilding circuit.
Brandon Lirio
If you are a fan of the golden era aesthetics, you will love Lirio. He possesses excellent muscle mass, symmetry, balance, well-defined lines, and conditioning. Lirio is a three-time Natural Olympia champion and two-time Mr. Universe champion. He has also been inducted into the PNBA Pro Hall of Famer.
Derek Joe
Joe won the Natural Olympia Men’s Classic Physique division in his freshman year at the contest. The Classic Physique Natural Olympia champ has high expectations from himself. He nearly quit competitive bodybuilding after placing second at his debut amateur bodybuilding show in 2020. If it weren’t for the encouragement from his friends and family, Joe would never have competed at the 2021 Natural Olympia.
Steve Cook
Cook is one of the most famous fitness athletes and an OG bodybuilding YouTuber. He has appeared in numerous print and online publications and has a sizeable social media following. Cook claims to be a natural bodybuilder and has competed in the Men’s Physique division at the IFBB Mr. Olympia. His best placing was a fifth-place finish at the 2014 Mr. Olympia.
Mike Thurston
Thurston has an incredibly chiseled physique that would give his enhanced counterparts a run for their money. His washboard abs and perfectly-crafted pecs are the benchmarks for many natural bodybuilders.
Simeon Panda
Panda is one of the strongest and most popular bodybuilders on this list. The Brit was named one of the world’s top ten fitness influencers by Forbes and has over 8 million Instagram followers.
Ulisses Jr.
Ulisses Jr. is among the most famous Instagram fitness athletes. He is a must-follow on the photo and video-sharing app if you are always short on ab training ideas. The natural bodybuilder’s eight-pack abs are a symbol of his discipline, dedication, and commitment. Ulisses Jr. is among the few fitness social media celebs who have won multiple bodybuilding titles.
Lazar Angelov
If you are a fitness enthusiast, you already know about Angelov. His trademark beard, chest tattoo, and chiseled physique appear on several posters on gym walls across the globe.
Jeff Seid
Seid’s wide shoulders, narrow waist, and picture-perfect V-taper made him the youngest IFBB Pro bodybuilder of all time. The natural bodybuilder started training at the age of 12 and was an All-American wrestling champion before switching to bodybuilding.
Rob Riches
Riches has an incredibly shredded physique. The natural bodybuilder started lifting at the age of 15 after he fractured his shoulder in a mountain bike race; he has never looked back since. The British bodybuilder has competed in the BNBF, Musclemania, UKBFF, and NPA, all natty bodybuilding federations.
Ashley Kaltwasser
PED use is as widespread among female pro bodybuilders as men. Kaltwasser is the most successful natty female pro bodybuilder competing in the IFBB Pro League. She is famous for staying in incredible shape throughout the year.
Mike O’Hearn
We will get a lot of flak for this, as Mike O’Hearn is one of the most controversial nattys in the sport. However, The Titan has won the Mr. Natural Universe title four times and has never failed a drug test. Furthermore, O’Hearn was inducted into the INBA/PNBA Hall of Fame class of 2011, which is a solid endorsement of his natty status.
The American Gladiators star is also one of the strongest natural bodybuilders. He coined the term ‘powerbodybuilding’ for his unique training regimen that combines lifting super heavy weights while staying in a hypertrophy-inducing rep range.
10 Ways To Tell a Natty Bodyuilber From a Fake Natty
Every guy that is bigger than you is on the juice. No, I am just kidding. However, this is a great way to stroke your ego.
Before we get into the difference between natural bodybuilders and bodybuilders on gear, we must point out that although these things will apply to most people, there are some genetically gifted natty bodybuilder outliers who can give an average juiced-up bro a run for their money.
Here are a few tell-tale signs of a bodybuilder on steroids:
Extended Gut
An extended gut is a dead giveaway of a steroid user. HGH is usually responsible for causing a bloated gut among steroid users. Contrary to what most people think, steroids cannot spot increase a particular muscle group, like your chest or arms. When you take a PED, it acts on all your muscles, including your stomach and heart.
Extended guts due to steroid abuse hamper a bodybuilder’s physique aesthetics. They are also why untested bodybuilding contests received significant backlash between 2010-2016, including from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who pushed for rewarding more proportionate and aesthetically-appealing physiques.
Superhuman Muscle Mass
One of the first differences you’ll notice between a natty bodybuilder and a bodybuilder using gear is that the natural athlete has a much more achievable physique. On the other hand, enhanced bodybuilders have muscles you didn’t know existed. If a bodybuilder has a superhero physique with unexplainable proportions and conditioning, chances are he is on steroids.
Strength
Certain drugs, such as Tren and Dianabol, can make you super strong. If you notice a person lifting 1.5-2 times heavier than usual within a few weeks or has grown a crazy amount in a short period, he has probably started a cycle. Furthermore, social media influencers who lift crazy weights for an insane number of reps, for example, a 450-pound squat for 10 reps, are probably on juice.
Conditioning and Vascularity
Many enhanced pro bodybuilders use diuretics to achieve crisp conditioning. These PEDs drain water from your system, which helps improve your muscle definition and vascularity. If you encounter a bodybuilder with paper-thin skin, he is probably on steroids. Further, don’t let the jacked bro at your gym tell you that his roadmap-like forearm vascularity is because of their insane forearm training routine. The dude is probably on EQ.
Hair Loss
Most pro bodybuilders are neither bald by choice nor is it a fashion statement. Many steroids cause hair loss. If a person with a full head of hair starts experiencing a receding hairline while building a significant amount of muscle mass, strength, and conditioning, it is a sign he has started a steroid cycle.
Roid Rage
Many steroids can cause severe mood swings. Dianabol and Tren are especially infamous for causing short tempers. Bodybuilders on gear usually have a short fuse. The extent of anger usually depends on a person’s steroid tolerance and its dose.
Syringe Marks
Although steroids come in various forms, including oral and injectable, most pro bodybuilders prefer injecting their drugs as it delivers better and quicker results and minimizes wastage. Nonetheless, frequent injections can leave syringe marks on your body. Many bodybuilders like to use injections on body parts that are usually covered, like their glutes.
Acne
You are effectively altering your natural hormones by injecting steroids into your body. Many enhanced bodybuilders tend to experience acne, especially on their backs, while on a cycle. Notably, food allergies can also cause acne in natural athletes.
Gyno
Gynecomastia, also known as gyno, is a breast tissue swelling in men that is mostly caused by excessive production of estrogen or prolactin as a result of anabolic drug use. Synthetic testosterone is the primary cause of gyno in men as it can cause a testosterone and estrogen imbalance. [3]
Next Read: Gyno in Bodybuilding: The Ultimate Guide
Competing in Tested Federations
This one is a no-brainer. Fake nattys do not come near a tested competition. People who use multiple steroids throughout the year have a hard time stopping drug use or using steroid masks without compromising their physique.
With that said, untested bodybuilding competitions are more popular among fans than tested ones. It is arguably because people love to witness the mass monsters pushing the limits of the human body. However, natural bodybuilding is slowly and steadily building a cult following.
Advantages and Drawbacks of Natural Bodybuilding
Here are the pros and cons of natural bodybuilding:
Advantages
Improve Physique Aesthetics and Strength: Most people start lifting weights to improve their physique aesthetics. Natural and enhanced bodybuilding can improve your strength and muscle mass and boost your self-image and confidence.
Pride: If building muscle naturally wasn’t so appealing, the natty vs. fake natty debate would not exist. Natural bodybuilding is a testament to an individual’s grit, determination, consistency, and patience.
Longevity: This is arguably the biggest and most important difference between natural and enhanced bodybuilding. Using PEDs can cause irreversible damage and lead to chronic health conditions, whereas natural bodybuilding improves your overall health and well-being.
Boosts Testosterone Levels: Natural strength training can enhance testosterone production in men, boosting their strength, muscle mass, and overall health. Conversely, enhanced athletes inject synthetic test into their bodies, which can stop natural test production in their bodies. [4]
Know Your Limits: This one is a blessing in disguise. Most people start their first cycle with a single drug. However, the desire to look better pushes them to do multiple drugs simultaneously. It doesn’t end here. Some people also inject oils such as synthol into their muscles to make them look bigger, which can cost them a limb and even their life!
Disadvantages
Bigorexia: Whether you are an enhanced or natural bodybuilder, you will likely struggle with bigorexia. Folks dealing with bigorexia believe they are small and skinny, despite being typically or even unusually muscular. Bigorexia is one of the biggest reasons why many natural bodybuilders jump ships and make peace with drugs. However, the irony is these folks still cannot get rid of bigorexia after beginning their cycles.
Lack of Fame and Money: Natural bodybuilding is a cult within a cult sport. The prize money from winning some of the biggest natural bodybuilding shows is not enough to pay the monthly bills for most bodybuilders. Since it is such a small sport, even the best bodybuilders in the natural bodybuilding space have menial clout.
Comparisons: Tell someone you are a natural bodybuilder, and they will instantly compare you to some of the best enhanced bodybuilders. You must be prepared to explain the difference between natty and enhanced bodybuilding every time you meet someone new.
With all said and done, if you do not aspire to compete at the biggest competition in the pro bodybuilding circuit or have no plans to make a living out of your bodybuilding career, staying natural is hands down the better approach. Don’t get us wrong; natural bodybuilders can make considerable gains and compete in bodybuilding shows. However, the fame and compensation aren’t close to what untested athletes enjoy.
Being consistent with your diet, training, and recovery program will put you in the top 1% of the world and help you achieve your dream physique. Plus, if you have the genetics and talent, there is nothing stopping you from becoming a social media sensation and building a fitness empire.
Wrapping Up
Natural bodybuilding involves building your best physique without using anabolic steroids. Although natty bodybuilders can not build as big or conditioned a physique as top-tier enhanced athletes, testing your natural limits before going down the dark path is always advised.
While it might not be possible to win the coveted Mr. Olympia title while staying natural, you can absolutely build a Greek god-like physique without using a syringe. This article gives you the best diet and training tips for building a jacked natural physique. We have also covered the 14 best natural bodybuilders that are the role models of natty and enhanced athletes alike. So, what are you waiting for? Eat your chicken breast, take your vitamins, train, and you will never go wrong, brother. Best of luck!
References
Swerdloff RS, Ng JCM. Gynecomastia: Etiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment. [Updated 2023 Jan 6]. In: Feingold KR, Anawalt B, Blackman MR, et al., editors. Endotext [Internet]. South Dartmouth (MA): MDText.com, Inc.; 2000-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279105/
Krzysztofik M, Wilk M, Wojdała G, Gołaś A. Maximizing Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review of Advanced Resistance Training Techniques and Methods. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Dec 4;16(24):4897. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16244897. PMID: 31817252; PMCID: PMC6950543.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021). Losing Weight. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/losing_weight/index.html
Vingren JL, Kraemer WJ, Ratamess NA, Anderson JM, Volek JS, Maresh CM. Testosterone physiology in resistance exercise and training: the up-stream regulatory elements. Sports Med. 2010 Dec 1;40(12):1037-53. doi: 10.2165/11536910-000000000-00000. PMID: 21058750.
Calves Stretch Guide: How-To, Calves Anatomy, Benefits, and Variations
Whether you like it or not, stretching is part of the body’s necessary maintenance routine. It alleviates stress, keeps our muscles and surrounding tissues healthy, prevents avoidable injuries, and allows us to move every day, even in our older years. Tight muscles are a problem, and today we want to focus on the calves stretch. These rear-facing lower leg muscles are both key performance and postural muscles that take a lot of abuse. Or not, for the average couch potato. Doesn’t matter, both are good candidates for regular stretching.
This guide demonstrates the very best calf stretches to improve your range of motion, alleviate and prevent common foot problems, and stop injuries due to high-intensity activities.
Muscles Involved During Calves Stretch
Let’s talk about what makes up these smaller leg muscles, and how they work.
Calves
Slapped on the posterior lower leg and threaded through the knee and ankle joints, the calf muscle fibers are divided into two heads – gastrocnemius, and soleus. The former is the larger, more visible, and also the stronger calf, while the soleus is a longer, and flatter muscle underneath the gastrocnemius.
The gastrocnemius and soleus fuse together at the lower leg to form what’s known as the achilles tendon, which connects the calves to the heel.
What do the calves do for us?
When you flex a muscle, it’s performing the function in which it was designed. For the calves, that is plantarflexion of the foot and ankle. We do this when pressing the gas pedal in a car, or when standing on our tiptoes to reach something above us.
Consequently, calves are heavily involved in physical performance, contributing to explosive movements like running and jumping. Calves, especially the soleus, is important for helping us to stand upright.
And because the calves are so active, we need to give them adequate stretching to keep them mobile, flexible, and strong enough to endure what we put them through.
How To Do The Calves Stretch
A calf stretch done wrong can be less forgiving than stretches for other muscle groups. That’s because the ankle and foot area, while strong, can easily be overstressed. So we’re going to show you a basic calf stretch from a step, but also consider the variations offered too.
Before stretching any muscle, it’s best to warm up with light intensity technique to drive blood in the area, and make it more pliable. Otherwise, stretching a cold muscle could cause harm. A few minutes of running in place, or a brisk walk are sufficient, according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.
Note: We only recommend this stretch for people with healthy ankles, and feet, and good balance, and coordination. Jumping straight into a deep calf stretch using your body weight, with incorrect form, can stress everything from the achilles tendon, to the ankle, and even the fascia tissue in your feet.
Also, make sure to use a stable, safe object to do calves stretches, like a staircase, doorstep, cement platform, bench, etc.
Steps
Step up on a raised platform with both legs. You can hold onto an object for balance, and to have better control over the stretch and prevent injuries.
Now slide either foot back until the heel is hanging off the edge of the step, and keep the other, non-working foot where it is, flat on the platform.
Keeping the rear leg straight, slowly drop the heel down a few inches, while bending the front leg. You should feel a nice stretch in the calf of the back leg.
Hold for about 10-20 seconds, reset, and do it again a few more times.
Here’s a quick video example of the calves stretch from a platform.
Tips
Don’t lean your full weight onto the calf being stretched. The goal is to drop the heel, and use your body to control the resistance, only applying enough force to stretch the calves without feeling strain in the joints and foot.
You can use a thick book or yoga block, which will allow your heel to touch the floor, and reduce the force applied to your ankles and feet.
As you can see from the video example, keeping the non-working foot on the platform, rather stretching both calves at the same time allows you more control over how much force is applied to the stretch. Reducing your body weight load, and preventing overstressing the ankles and feet.
This Exercise:
Target Muscle Group: Gastrocnemius, soleus
Type: Stretch
Mechanics: Isolation
Equipment: Step
Difficulty: Beginner
Benefits of Calves Stretch
Stretching is something we should all be doing, and while the calves may be ignored compared to other muscles, they’re just as, if not more important because they bear our weight. Let’s discuss the benefits of stretching your calves frequently.
Keep performing
As explained in the muscles involved during calves stretch section, your calves are performance muscles. Sprinting, running long distances, and lifting heavy on your feet punishes the calves too. But calves also assist in the gait or walking cycle, and support standing posture. So keeping them healthy, functional, and able to fully contract is key to longevity, and staving off injuries because physical performance is very demanding on the lower body.
Speaking of injuries…
Prevent injuries
Tight calf muscles are most commonly caused by overuse or lots of physical activity. Although underuse, improper warmup, and other causes exist. But overuse without proper maintenance can run you into injuries from tightness that affects lower body function. So if you’re someone who runs and plays sports you should be stretching the calves regularly.
Not to mention, you may benefit from increased blood flow to a muscle, which could reduce muscle soreness. But it could also be what helps improve certain foot conditions…
Possibly improve common foot and lower leg issues
When you stretch the calves, you’re also stretching the foot. This is said to be one thing you can do to improve common foot conditions such as plantar fasciitis (affects the thick tissue connecting heel bone to toes causing pain and discomfort).
Another common stiff area in need of being stretched is the achilles tendon, especially when someone develops achilles tendinitis. This tendon is formed by the two calf muscles and helps connect to the heel bone. It’s also the largest tendon in the human body. Recruited during walking, running, jumping, etc, achilles tendon experiences a lot of wear. Tight calves can also affect the achilles tendon.
The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons recommends calf stretches to help alleviate minor achilles tendon issues.
Common Mistakes When Performing Calves Stretch
Bad calves stretch technique is dangerous and it can sideline you for a while, or cause ongoing issues in the ankle and foot. Follow these tips to help keep those problems in the rearview mirror.
Placing all your weight into the stretch
Unlike a calf raise exercise, you don’t actually want all your weight on the foot and ankle. In fact, this will force the calf muscles to contract in order to resist your body weight load. And it’s a lot of stress on the ankles and feet. It’s better to stretch one calf at a time, so you can use the stationary, non-working foot to help control the depth of stretch in the working calf. This is a much safer, and healthier way to stretch the calves.
Rushing the stretch
Due to the nature of a calves stretch, it’s not one you want to rush through, although the variation can make a big difference too. But we’re talking about the variation from a step or platform where the heel hangs off the edge and your weight is on the ankles, creating unequal force distribution.
Many people notice the same discomfort and pain when they do weighted calf raises too heavy, and too quickly. Drop the ankle, feel a little stretch, and don’t overdo it.
Being unbalanced
You don’t want to be unstable while doing calf stretches as the lack of control can be dangerous for the joints. It’s better to hold onto something for support if you cannot maintain balance without it.
Variations of The Calves Stretch
All calves stretch variations can be useful, and you may prefer one over the other. But we also included the following calves stretches that are unique in their own way, and, are top notch!
Runners stretch
Commonly called the runner’s stretch for obvious reasons, it’s a good technique for most people. It offers a solid, stable stretch with equal weight balance, and you can have more control, pushing as little or hard during the stretch.
Steps
Find a wall or similar, and place your palms against it, spaced roughly shoulder width apart, and elbows slightly bent. Stand with your feet far enough back, about 12 inches or so from the wall.
Now slide one foot back about 6-12 inches behind the other in a split stance, and keep both feet flat on the ground. Keep your toes pointed straight forward towards the wall.
Now push into the wall, and feel the stretch on the calf of the rear foot. Keep the front leg bent and the rear leg mostly extended.
Hold for 10-20 seconds, rest a few seconds, and do it two more times.
Switch your foot position, bringing the rear foot forward, and sliding the other one back. Repeat.
Pro tip: Bend both knees together to emphasize the stretch in your soleus calf muscle, which also benefits the achilles tendon.
Calf stretch on a slant board
A good choice for those with plantar fascitis, and other common foot issues, stretching the calf on a slant board creates equal weight distribution, it’s more stable, and allows you to better control the intensity of the stretch.
Steps
Step your heel at the base of the slant board and lie your foot flat against it with the toes pointing forward.
Move the other foot forward to increase the stretch in your calf.
Hold for 10-20 seconds, relax, and repeat a few more times, then switch legs.
Calf stretch sitting down with legs extended
If you want to stretch your calves with less resistance, in a more relaxed position, you can sit on the floor with legs extended, and use a belt, leash, or resistance band to pull against your toes, and stretch the calves.
Make sure to relax your ankle, and pull for a few seconds at a time. Lean into the stretch to include your hamstrings too.
Calf foam rolls
One way that you probably didn’t expect to loosen up the calves is using a foam roller. You’ll create healthier fascia, and calf muscles.
Steps
Sit on the floor and lay a foam roller where your legs will be. Extend both legs and rest your calves on the foam roller.
Now place your hands on the floor, and use your arms to lift your butt off the ground.
Use your arms to move your body forward and back, rolling the roller up and down your calves.
Roll for about a minute, rest, and do it again for another minute.
Pro tip: For a more intense calf massage, cross one leg over the other and repeat steps above.
FAQs
How many sets should I do? There’s no sure answer to this. It really depends on how much time you have, how many times per day you stretch a muscle, how long you’ve been stretching, and the length of each set or number of seconds you hold a stretch.
If stretching once a day, two-three sets x 20-30 second stretches should be plenty.
But you could also do more sets and shorter stretch durations. Find what works best for you, but try not to overdo it.
What is the most convenient calf stretch?Out of the many variations, we’d say the runner’s stretch is the simplest and most convenient. You don’t need any aids or tools, and it is safe on the joints and more supported with the feet flat on the ground, not stressing the ankles and feet.
Wrapping Up
It’s as simple as that. Warm up with a brisk walk, then get to stretching, or stretch your calves after your physical activities. You’ll ensure that your calves, ankles and feet stay up to health. Plus, calves stretching requires a very small time commitment, and no equipment (for some variations).
Just be sure to go slow, don’t force anything, and be consistent. These are key to effective stretching, and avoiding worse problems due to bad technique.
This guide is a detailed resource that explains and demonstrates proper calves stretching, with tips that you don’t want to skip over.