How to Get Lean Muscle: How to Gain 20 Pounds of Muscle in 6 Months

Too good to be true? If you think it is, don't even bother reading this article. However, if you have the drive to learn how to get lean muscle like the professional body builders do, you're about to learn of the three aspects you need to supercharge your muscles gains, no matter your body shape or size.

1. Heavy weights

When we're talking heavy, we usually mean weights that you can lift but probably can't lift long. It's logical, if you think about it. What happens when you do exercise that puts an unfamiliar amount of stress on a muscle group? You feel pain, right? What happens when you feel pain? Your muscles "swell up" and physically get bigger to better oppose that force so they feel less pain next time. So if you want to continually gain lean muscle, what must you do? So many men insist on using light weights to "tone". By all means, they can tone as much as they want, but they won't get any bigger.

2. Fast, short reps

A little bit of background knowledge is needed before I talk about this next point. A specific kind of pain is needed to maximize lean muscle gains. You can only get it by "training to failure" or getting "muscle overload". What is this and what characterizes it? If you've ever worked out and felt a cold, burning pain in your muscle, that's the beginning stages of muscle overload. It means that your muscles have reached their pain threshold. You might be able to physically lift more, but doing so would be overkill. Following on from the topic of pain in the previous point, training slowly with a heavy weight isn't training to failure. Training quickly is. The heavy weight will ensure that your muscle fibers have enough force on them to cause them to grow and exercising quickly will ensure your muscles train to failure.

3. Structured routine

This is the part where even many bodybuilders and professional weight-lifters fail. They understand the theory of gaining lean muscle. They know what kind of food to eat to fuel muscular growth. All they don't have is a structure that exploits all these muscle growing factors and maximizes muscular growth in the shortest amount of time. Who can blame them, really? Personal trainers charge a fortune to spill their work out structures with you and even then they may be of little help. Fitness magazines are even worse, but at least you know their agenda is to cram as many supplements down your throat in the most inconspicuous manner.

Having said this, there are muscle routines out there that a. teach you how to get lean muscle and b. give you a guideline/blueprint to work to, ensuring you reinforce what you learn by actively doing it. Before you go out and buy a new set of weights and try to push your muscles to muscle overload, make sure you have a muscle routine to work by. You can gain 20 pounds of lean muscle in 6 months, but you need some serious planning and work out structure.