Articles
The Best Beginner Arm Workout
Do beginners even need an arm workout? Think of programs like Starting Strength and StrongLifts 5×5. Neither of them have any arm exercises, let alone a dedicated Arm Day. That can cause your arms to lag behind the rest of your muscles.
It’s also common for beginners to jump into advanced bodybuilding routines that aren’t very good for novices. The training splits are needlessly complicated, the arm workouts are total overkill, and the routines still aren’t ideal for building bigger arms.
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The Best Arm Day Workout for Building Muscle
Arm Day is an entire workout routine focused purely on arm exercises. It’s what allows the Bro Split to stimulate more arm growth than almost any other workout routine.
Arm Days are simple in theory. Arm muscles aren’t hard to train. But you still need a fruitful combination of exercises. If you’re doing more than one type of biceps curl or triceps extension, you’d best have a good reason for it. We’ll explore those reasons.
You also need to watch out for putting too much stress on your elbow joints. It’s common for barbell curls, skull crushers, and overhead triceps extensions to hit the elbows pretty hard. We’ll teach you how to navigate those perilous waters.
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Is Lifting Weights Good for Burning Fat?
Most of us can grit our teeth, go on a diet, and lose some fat. Most popular diets, ranging from keto to veganism, really do succeed at helping people lose weight (study, study). The problem is that motivation ebbs and flows.
When you finish a successful diet, you’re still the same person you were before. You still have the same appetite—the same stomach. The difference is you’re carrying less weight and burning fewer calories. That can make it extremely difficult to stay lean.
That’s where weightlifting comes in. A good workout can burn 200–400 calories, and that helps, but you can burn more calories by walking, jogging, or rucking. That isn’t why it’s valuable.
A pound of muscle burns around 6 calories per day at rest, but you also need to carry it around with you, causing it to burn closer to 12 calories per day. If you can gain 20 pounds of muscle, that’s an extra 240 calories burned without needing to do any extra exercise. If you build enough muscle while losing fat, you can eat the same amount of food you were eating before without regaining fat. That helps, but it’s still not the most important part.
The main reason lifting weights is so powerful is that when you inevitably start to regain weight, you’ll build muscle instead of storing fat. Your metabolism will increase as you build that muscle. You’ll eventually settle at a weight that’s easier to maintain.
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The Best Hypertrophy Exercises
Different exercises are designed for different goals. Powerlifters use the squat, bench, and deadlift to demonstrate their maximal strength. Olympic weightlifters use the snatch and clean-and-jerk to demonstrate their explosive power. And bodybuilders use hypertrophy exercises to stimulate muscle growth.
However, hypertrophy training is for more than just bodybuilders. Bigger muscles are stronger muscles, so anyone interested in being bigger, stronger, faster, healthier, or better looking will go through phases of hypertrophy training to gain more muscle mass.
This article is about the best exercises for stimulating muscle growth. It’s up to you what you decide to use those muscles for.
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Back Day: The Best Back & Biceps Workout for Building Muscle
Back Day is designed to bulk up your back. It’s part of a Bro Split, so it’s a workout that emphasizes building muscle and improving aesthetics.
Your back isn’t just one muscle group. There are dozens of overlapping muscles, all with slightly different functions, yet all equally eager to grow. We’ll show you how to stimulate all of them.
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Rep Max Calculator
This calculator uses the Epley formula to estimate your one-rep max (1RM). From there, we can predict your rep maxes, calculating how much weight you can lift for 1–30 reps.
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Do You Need 1 Gram of Protein Per Pound Per Day?
Most bodybuilders try to eat about 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. Muscle is made out of protein, they say. If you want to maximize your rate of muscle growth, you need to eat plenty of protein.
Do you really need to eat that much protein? What happens if you don’t?
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The Hypertrophy Training Guide: How to Lift for Muscle Size
Hypertrophy training is designed specifically for stimulating muscle growth. It’s by far the best style of training for building muscle. Bodybuilders use it to build more aesthetic physiques. Powerlifters use it to build bigger muscles with greater strength potential. When Marco was coaching professional and Olympic athletes, he’d use it to help them gain functional muscle mass.
Hypertrophy training can’t be bent into the shape of any muscle-building goal. You can use it to get bigger, look better, gain strength, improve your athletic performance, or improve your health.
In this guide, we’ll teach you the main principles of building muscle, then how to min-max every variable of your workout routine, including how often to work out, which exercises to focus on, how many reps and sets to do, how hard to train, and how long to rest. By the end, you’ll know exactly how to train for muscle growth.
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How to Do Lying Dumbbell Biceps Curls
The lying biceps curl is a variation of the dumbbell curl. The difference is that it works your biceps through a deeper range of motion, challenging your biceps under a greater stretch, thus stimulating more muscle growth.
I’ll teach you how to do them, then explain why they’re so powerful. The research is fascinating. And just wait until you try them. You’ll feel the difference right away.
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The Best 4-Day Workout Splits for Building Muscle
4-day workout splits are my favourite for intermediate lifters. 3-day splits are almost always better for beginners, but once you get to an intermediate level, adding a fourth day makes your workouts easier and stimulates more muscle growth.
When Marco was coaching professional and Olympic athletes, he would put them on 4-day splits during their offseason to help them bulk up. These people had the highest-performing bodies in the world, and they would lift 4 days per week.
You’ve got a few options. You could do a bodybuilder’s “Bro Split,” an athlete’s Upper/Lower Split, or you could try a slightly more unusual approach I’ve been using for the past 4 years with clients.
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