Building Lean Muscle Mass: Little Known Exercises That Work
There are hundreds of different exercises you can do with free weights and resistance machines or with just your body weight to build muscle mass. You should include mainly multi-joint compound exercises in your workout as they build muscle fastest. The time proven classic mass builders are: bench press, pull ups, dead lifts, squats, shoulder presses 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. For some reason theses following exercises are often overlooked which is surprising as they are real mass builders. For variety every now and then try and include them in to your routines. Variety provides new stimulus for your muscles to grow and prevents you from getting bored.
why not try using a jump rope and skipping, running on the beach or donkey raises for stimulating muscle growth. Running on the sand is very taxing and the bouncing motion in skipping will provide a real burn. 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. This exercise is more difficult than the usual machine calve exercises as you have to use stabiliser muscles to keep you steady whilst performing them.
When was the last time you hit your chest muscles with dips? The entire chest region and triceps can be hit by doing dips. Many older gyms have installed parallel bars for when this exercise was really popular in the past. Often a v shape is formed which provides scope for different grips. This enables you to train a specific part of your chest muscle or tricep muscle really well.
Try performing stiff legged deadlifts to nail your hamstrings. This exercise is really effective for the hamstrings yet used very little. Simply do deadlifts but you legs have to remain straight throughout meaning you bend at the waist and keep a straight back to lift the barbell or dumbbell. Maintain control of the weight by keeping it close to your legs whilst raising it and be warned that this exercise can leave your hamstrings very sore the next day.
Experiment with hammer curls for bicep growth! These are the same as regular dumb bell curls only you keep the palm of your hand facing in towards the body throughout. This directs much stress on to an inner bicep muscle giving it both thickness and size throughout and is named the brachialis muscle, the exercise also hits the main bicep muscle too.Stand with your back against the corner of a wall whilst curling to prevent yourself from swinging the bar.
Can you remember that last time you did lunges or indeed saw anyone else doing them? These are particularly good for giving your quads mass and shape. With a dumb bell in either hand take a good stride straight ahead and then bend both knees down to around 90 degress, step backwards returning to the start position and repeat on the other side. A great option if you do not want to squat.
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 group of classic exercises in your thoughts change your routine around a bit to build more lean muscle mass.
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