Building healthy muscles has a number of benefits, including improved co-ordination, increased metabolism, and injury prevention. However, building muscle really depends on the types of exercise you choose.
What is the best exercise for building muscle? The truth is that there is no single answer. It all depends on what your fitness goals happen to be.
The first thing you should do is to think about your desired outcome. Do you want to get stronger or do you want improved endurance? Of course, it is possible to want both – and many people do. Different workouts will have different outcomes when it comes to building muscle. Here is a look at what you should keep in mind.
Getting stronger
Did you know that when you work out, you are actually stressing – even damaging – your muscle fibres? To some, this fact might sound like a reason to avoid working out in the first place, but nothing could be further from the truth. When you work out, your muscle fibres produce force, which results in this so-called damage. Afterward, your body sets off a series of biochemical reactions that actually cause more muscle fibres to grow. This is how you build and strengthen muscle.
The best way to build strong muscles is to follow a classic workout that focuses on weight training and repetition. However, you need to go beyond the traditional eight or ten reps. In many cases, people fail to really challenge themselves during their workouts, which results in very little progress. Instead, you should be exercising a group of muscles until those muscles are fatigued because that fatigue is when your body begins building muscle. However, if you are not sure if you are working out correctly or enough, it is a good idea to consult with an athletic trainer.
Improving endurance
Lots of people do not realise that improving your physical endurance is not achieved in the same way as building strength. While strength-building exercises tend to focus on the number of sets and repetitions you do, endurance-improving workouts focus on time. Endurance-based workouts usually do not even involve weights, and when they do, they are minimal.
To improve your endurance, you will want to focus on workout routines in which you complete a number of walking lunges or holding a particular posture, like in Yoga, for a fixed amount of time.
You probably will not bulk up with these types of exercises, but you will notice that your endurance and stamina improve over time.
Just remember that no matter what type of exercise you are doing, you want to make sure that you maintain your form. This will ensure that you are not using the wrong muscle groups during the workout!
