Fitness From the Pro

The past few days I’ve been talking about changing up your workouts either by changing the exercise or completely using a different training style.  These recommendations will assist you if you want to build lean muscle. Today, I have another suggestion for you, change the order of your exercises.  That’s right, vary your exercises.

Generally, we suggest that you work your larger muscle groups first, legs, chest, back…etc.  However, to build lean muscle, try working the smaller muscles first.  For instance, triceps are the assisting muscle group when you are working on your chest.  The idea here, would be to work the triceps and fatigue them.  When you go ahead and work on the chest, the triceps will be fatigued and you will recruit more of the pectoral muscles to work harder when doing a bench press.  Yeah, it will feel harder, but that is the point…build lean muscle!!

How about changing the exercise order by the progress made from your last workout session.  Here’s an example, if you worked your back and got extra repetitions, or increased your weight, that would be a successful session.  However, when working on the shoulders and there wasn’t any real progress made with an extra rep with the front or lateral raises, then work the shoulders ahead of back.  Another words, work the least progressed muscle part first down and work down to the body part with the most progression.

I hope the suggestions made here today help with your goal to build lean muscle.  Any time there is muscle confusion, that is a good thing for growth and results!