Very often, a lifter (we won’t call him a bodybuilder at 5 foot 10, 157 pounds) will be seen in the gym bouncing from cable station to nautilus machine station, slamming out set after set of high-repetition pumping set. He’ll claim that he’s engorging his muscle fibers with blood (which admittedly is a key and integral part of the muscle building process). Time will pass. He’ll continue with his designer workout gear and protein shake timing exactly 12 minutes after his workout, and he’ll continue with his high intensity isolation movements, specifically targeting each muscle group with light, light weight and plenty of reps.

And a year later, two years later, five years later… he isn’t going to look that much different at all!

If you want to be big, you have to lift big. It is that simple! You can walk into any gym in America and point to a man bench pressing 315 pounds for repetitions or squatting 405 pounds for reps. It is an absolute certainty that this man is carrying some serious muscle. Even if he is a powerlifter and smoother than a baby whale’s bottom – he can surely diet down anytime he pleases and crush the competition with the thick sheen of muscle that lies beneath the adipose tissue.

Muscle is heavy, strong and durable. It is not created by pumping away at high speeds in the gym. All that kind of movement does is bring blood into the area and deliver a nasty lactic acid buildup. Rather, new muscle is created when existing muscle fibers are torn during the process of a brutal and heavy workout, in which the lifter moves a ton of weight using the right kinds of exercises. These would include bench press, military press, barbell rowing, deadlifts, squats, and barbell curls. These compound movements target multiple muscle groups in the body with each repetition, which results in plenty of torn muscle fibers. You follow up each tough workout with a protein shake of the whey variety, which shuttles the amino acids vital for muscle recovery within minutes.

Repeat this process (lift heavy, then use protein shake for recovery) and your muscle strength will increase. When that happens, you will grow new muscle. The two processes are directly intertwined and always will be. For lifters, this is a lesson that often goes unnoticed. However, it is also important to remember that isolation exercises shouldn’t just be thrown out of the window either! They do serve a vital part in the role of shaping and refining / defining your muscle groups which have just been built up using your standard brutal lifting techniques! Keep it simple by focusing upon two heavy compound movements (3 to 4 sets of each) for your initial muscle strength and size training. Then you can return to being that cable guy, jumping from machine to machine in the pursuit of that blood rush goodness. As long as you effectively stimulate new muscle strength (and growth!) you can pump away!

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