Awesome Exercises For Building Lean Muscle Mass
There are hundreds of different exercises you can do with free weights and resistance machines or with just your body weight to build up muscles. You should include mainly multi-joint compound exercises in your workout as they build muscle fastest. The time proven and most effective are: shoulder presses, bench press, pull ups, dead lifts, squats and rows.
Whilst they are very effective your body needs to be constantly challenged in new and different ways if your goal is building lean muscle mass. These following exercises work astonishingly well and are yet for some reason often overlooked. From time to time try and include these exercises in your workouts. new reasons for your muscles to grow and the prevention of boredom setting in are achieved by adding variation to your workouts.
For skinny calve muscles have a go at skipping with a jump rope, donkey raises and running on the beach to trigger muscle growth. You will get a real burn in your calves and get good growth from running on sand and or from skipping using a jump rope. because the muscles in your calves are normally made use of in activities that are largely endurance based such as walking they often grow more when stimulated using higher rep ranges. Donkey raises are when you place your toes on the edge of a 3-4 inch high block bend over to 90 degrees at the waist and rest your hands on a bard or bench at that height. A training partner or two then jump on to your back and you raise your body up and down by flexing your calf muscles. stabiliser muscles all around the calve have to be used in order to perform these correctly making them more difficult.
When was the last time you did dips for your chest muscles? A classic mass builder for the chest muscle is dips which are an awesome workout for triceps too. Many older gyms have two long bars that run parallel to eachother for exactly this. Often they form a v shape which allows you to use different grips. This enables you to train a specific part of your chest muscle or tricep muscle really well.
Try hitting your hamstrings with stiff legged deadlifts. This hamstring exercise is awesome yet seldom seen. The motion is the same as deadlifts but you must maintain straight legs throughout by bending at the waist, keeping a straight back and lifting the barbell upwards. Keep control of the weight by ensuring that it is close to your legs whilst raising it and be warned that this exercise can make your hamstrings very sore for the following day.
Experiment with hammer curls for bicep growth! The pal of your hand is kept facing in towards your body at all times, this is the only difference from regular curls. This places great stress on the inner bicep muscle that gives it thickness and size throughout called the brachialis muscle whilst also still developing the main bicep too.Stand with your back against the corner of a wall whilst curling to prevent yourself from swinging the bar.
When was the last time you noticed anyone hitting their quads with lunges in the weights room? These are great for providing mass and shap for the quad muscles. With a pair of dumb belss in your hands take a decent stride forwardsand bend both knees down to 90 degress step backwards and repeat with the other leg. Am awesome alternative to regular squats.
For developing muscle definition and for a great cardio workout how about trying boxing padwork great for the upper body or uphill sprints for your legs or hitting an exercise bike for uphill intervals after a leg workout. That is a real killer of a mass builder!
With those few exercises in mind go ahead and mix your program up a bit for more muscle mass.
