For certain types of athletic activities, lean muscle will serve you much better than bulk. As a rule, lean muscle moves faster and is much more flexible than bulky muscle, which will give you the edge in sports that require agility and speed.
Building lean muscle requires that you incorporate some different techniques from bulk muscle building workouts.
The following tips are a few of the ways in which you can accentuate the building of your lean muscle mass:
Trade Out Strength Training with Cardio Training and Stretching
Although you still need strength training for all sports, you can build leaner muscle by also taking days for pure cardio and stretching after every workout.
Stretching literally stretches your muscles so that they become longer. This flexibility exercise will help even out the muscle and make it leaner over time.
More Reps, Lighter Weights
If you want to build leaner muscle, then you do not need to perform heavy lifting as you would if you were strength training. You should go for three set workouts in which you can perform 8 to 12 reps.
Do Not Perform Weightlifting Exercises to Failure
If you are trying to build lean muscle, you do not have to go all the way to failure in your repetitions. What is necessary is that you get a good burn and that you continue this exercise for extended period of time.
This will help build the endurance in your muscles which will help build lean muscle mass instead of bulk.
Keep the Protein Coming
Building lean muscle does not mean that you fall back on the protein diet or supplements. You still need protein to help prepare your muscles after workouts.
As for your diet, you should also take in more energy building foods and supplements like fruits, breads and other foods with carbohydrates.
You will need this energy for the extended workouts that you will be performing in order to build your lean muscle.
Overall, building lean muscle takes a much longer time than building bulky muscle, and you need the energy to coincide with this increase in activity.
Work Out More Often
In order to build lean muscle, you must keep your muscle under stress for extended periods of time. This means that you must work out 5 to 7 days a week instead of 3 to 5 as you would if you were performing exercise routines for strength training specifically.
Overall, lean muscle is a much healthier type of muscle than the bulky muscle that seems to be so sexy these days. It is also a much more useful type of muscle.
Building lean muscle will increase your overall health and help you in many types of sports that bulky athletes cannot even hope to compete in.
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