How do body builders like Arnold Schwarzenegger isolate & grow each muscle on their body?
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Building muscle is a very simple concept. Our bodies are adapted to making just enough muscle to fulfill our needs because muscle is calorically expensive to maintain. An animal with a lot of muscle will need to eat a lot of food, and starvation is a major danger for animals in the wild. Our bodies are constantly searching for the sweet spot of “just enough” muscle and it figures this out by how we use them.
If we want to increase our muscle mass we need to use the muscles, working them hard enough that it indicates our bodies need to grow more. Strain them as close to their limit as possible and the body will react by growing more muscle and increasing their size. “Isolating” muscles depends on performing exercises that mainly use that muscle; lifting a weight by curling your arm for example is going to work your biceps and not the muscles in your legs, so if all you do is curls your legs aren’t going to bulk up.
Finally the reality is that body builders like Arnold take things like steroids and human growth hormone to induce their body into growing muscle beyond even what simple lifting can achieve. Those kinds of supplements are much more complicated, dangerous, and even illegal.
They lift heavy circles up and down like 8-10 times. When they can lift the circle more than that with ease, they use a heavier circle. Rinse and repeat.
There are two types of bodybuilder. The ones who take steroids. And the other ones are liars.
Most bodybuilders are roided up. That’s how they have these disproportionate muscles.
I build a overall decently muscular body with just the very basic and simple movements: deadlifts, squats, bench press, rows, overhead press and chin ups. Perhaps some calf raises if those are stubborn.
There really is no need for overcomplicated routines that “attack the biceps from 17 angles”
Simply put it was a 3 stage process.
It begins with lifting weights that focused solely on specific muscle groups. Bench press for chest and triceps. Curls for biceps. Etc etc
Next was proper diet, nutrition, sleep, etc.
Last was a lot a steroids.
Most people spend 8+ hours working. Body builders at his level are working out as their job. When you have 3-4+ hours to work out, take steroids, eat right and have abundant time to recover and avoid stress, you can become a freaky mass monster. And genetics.
Ignoring the effects of steroids, I will address how to isolate muscles. There are two kinds of exercises: compounds and isolation exercises. Something like a bench press, barbell squat, deadlift is a compound exercise. You work multiple muscles at once. For the bench press, you work your chest, shoulders, and triceps. However, something like a bicep curl, tricep extension, or shoulder press are isolation exercises,. They only target one muscle.
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