Steps that will help you build quality muscle mass.
Often times, we strive for something that we want to achieve, mostly everyone has a desire goal that they are willing to fight for and work hard to succeed. Throughout my years in the Fitness Industry, I've noticed that the most common goal we share is building quality muscle mass. Including myself, that was my "ultimate goal" when I was on the quest of transforming my physique from the "scrawny look" to a cut and well define physique. In this short blog, I will discuss steps that will help you pack  on muscle while staying lean...the healthy way.

MIND & BODY CONNECTION
I believe that the mind & body connection en route to your fitness goals plays a big role. It's not easy, but not impossible having to follow a program that demands so much out of you, such as determination, consistency and patience. Like everything in life, good things comes to those who wait. You have to stay positive and enjoy the process of transforming your physique and knowing that results won't come overnight or the following week, but they will eventually with time. Also, keep in mind that if you don't see yourself "changing" it's because you see yourself everyday, but when you see someone who hasn't seen you in a while, they will notice the changes you have made throughout the weeks or months of training. Not to mention, your shirts will fit differently.  As your muscles size up, so too will your T shirts...that's one indicator that you're making progress!

WEIGHT MANAGEMENT & METHODS OF TRAINING
When it comes to your training, it is important to keep in mind to always have work out alternatives that you could implement into your routines, remember that shocking your body with new work outs will help you and prevent you from plateauing. The human body has the tendency to remember what you do for a certain period of time. Challenge yourself daily and make your works fun and effective.

Method # 1 - Heavy Weight: My number one piece of advice is: DO NOT sacrifice your form to lift heavy, because as I usually say...Weight is just a number. Focusing on your techinique is key in order to avoid injuries and to execute the exercise properly. In this case, to build muscle mass, you have to lift heavy in order to activate your muscle fibers to grow. The rep range in this method should be between 8-12 reps and 5 sets. With each set, you are required to increase the weight and have a target rep range that you should focus on achieving.

TARGET REP RANGE EXAMPLE:
FIRST SET: 12 reps.  SECOND SET: 10-12 reps. THIRD SET: 8-10 reps. FOURTH SET: 6-8 reps. FITH SET: 6-8 reps.

Method # 2 - Drop Sets: This is another great method to implement into your routine.  It will help you build muscle, stamina and muscle endurance. This type of work out consits of doing a particular exercise with a certain weight, then immediatly dropping to a lower weight and proceeding with the same exercise. You can do up to 3 drop sets for maximum results. The rep range may vary when doing this work out, usually it's best sticking to a selected number of reps for all the drop sets, focusing on 10 clean reps is good enough, the key it's to fatigue the muscle and that will stimulate the growth.

Method # 3 - Super Sets: Supersetting is a great work out method that will keep your visits to the gym short and fun and will quickly help you BUILD muscle, but a lot of intensity will be required from you to get through this type of training, as it will help you to perform more work in less time while building quality muscle mass. Super sets usually consists of doing 2 or 3 exercises one after another.  For example, if you're doing chest press, right after you should be moving to incline press. The rep range stays the same as I mentioned earlier and no rest in between.

I hope you all have enjoyed my first blog here at STATUS Fitness Magazine. My Goal is to help, motivate and inspire you all to live a healthier lifestyle and produce quality content that will be valuable and helpful throughout your Fitness Journey.

I Breath and Live Health & Fitness.

Best,
John Carter
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