Massive Muscles 1.0

Persistence – This means getting yourself out to the gym, or over to that workout bench in your garage, every workout day. No exceptions. You should take your three-times-a-week appointment with your muscles as seriously as you would a meeting with your boss or a rendezvous with your significant other. Once you skip a day, it becomes easier to miss the next … and the next and the next.

Consistency — This means performing your weight training exercises correctly and fully at every session. Merely putting in an appearance at the gym won’t do much for you if you allow yourself too many slack days when you sleepwalk through your workout, or start dropping some of your sets or repetitions because you "just don’t feel like it." The sure way to progress steadily toward your muscle building goals is to engage every ounce of mind, body and willpower, from the beginning to the end of your workout slot.

Lifting Smart — This means learning as much as you can about your muscles and then concentrating on the weight lifting exercises that will build or sculpt the parts of your body you are most interested in developing, without neglecting the other parts.

"Lifting smart" also means varying your exercises from one workout session to another whenever it makes sense. For example, one exercise will work a muscle in one direction–direction "A" –while another one will work the same muscle in the opposite direction–direction "B." Usually, the smartest approach in such a case is to alternate the exercises. Instead of performing both of them during the same workout, do "A" on Monday, "B" on Wednesday, "A" again on Friday," then "B" on the following Monday, an so on.

The main lesson I hope you take from all this is that the quality of your commitment to improving your body is more important than the particular number of minutes or hours you allot to it. That’s what a good weight training schedule is really all about.