This winter, many of you are thinking about performing a
muscle-building
cycle to reshape your physique. However, unless you have a plan, you’re not going to have anything to
show for all your hard work come spring. Before jumping right into an
intense
weight-lifting workout, it’s a
good idea to take three weeks to prepare your body for what’s to come. Keep in mind
that your goal when you prep your body for winter muscle-building is not to get leaner and
add definition, but to build a foundation from which you will work off of. You will start
to notice more muscularity toward the very end of these three weeks and then, to a larger
extent, once you move onto your full-fledged muscle-building program. Here
are the steps to take to prep your body for winter-muscle building.
Take three full days off
If you have been going to the gym recently, you should immediately take three days off
before beginning. Once you get into an intense muscle-building workout program, the stress
load on the muscles will be incredibly high, so it’s important that you start with a
clean slate. During these three days off, do your best to avoid
cardio training as well to really give both the muscles and central nervous
system a complete rest. If you haven’t been working out previously, you
can use this time to get into the gym and do some light cardio activity, which will help
get the body used to the vigorous movement again.
Assess your current food intake and your muscle-building diet intake
During your three days off from the gym, you should do some research of the various
calorie contents of the foods you’ve been eating and figure out exactly what your
diet looks like. If you’ve been maintaining your weight, this will give
you a fairly accurate indication of how many calories your body burns each day and how
many more you will need to start adding lean muscle mass on top of that. If
you’ve been on a fat-loss diet, over the next three days your goal is to bring your
calories back up to maintenance intake. If you don’t know what this is, use the
general guideline of 15 calories per pound of body weight. Keep in mind that factors such
as height and age influence this, so you should also use a reference more tailored to
you.
We have 3 more tips to help you prep your body for winter muscle
building…
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