Can anyone help me out by telling me the amount of time I should spend in a gym to gain muscle correctly. Also it would help if you could give me a good routine to go off of. Thanks..

Greg, at the top of this forum there is a sticky with all kinds of information for beginners. Have a look. Dan has designed some basic workouts and given ideas on how to proceed.

Nat

greg

Best way to build muscle is really to diet in such a way that you do not lose muscle mass. you'd be surprised just how much muscle you already have. I did my weight loss without any strenuous exercise, and now I'm gonna build here and there. Most of the muscle was down there, but was covered by fats. Now there is alot of definition and a good deal of muscle. I have more definition than when I was wrestling. the essentials at this point are light exercise of every muscle group you can find. Swimming is best suited for this type, besides stretching which should be done twice daily. Don't try to work off those pounds.

low carb dieting is known to result in significantly lower loss of muscle mass than other weight loss plans.

I see on many different sites it says you should only train two days a week because you have to not only let your body recover, but also your neurological system aswell. is there truth to that?

You only train specific muscle groups two or three times a week because they need to recover between workouts - how often you train depends on how you split your workouts. You can do upper body and lower body, you can train biceps, triceps and abs one day, hamstrings, quads and shoulders the next and so on. The important thing is not to work a sore muscle group and to be sure you take some time off so as not to overtrain.

It is generally agreed that the best way to build muscle is to work those muscles to failure - failure being that you are unable to perform one more repetition without breaking form. For a muscle to grow it must move something that causes it stress (micro tears). It is during the time inbetween the workouts that your muscle repairs and grows.

You can read more about working out and different kinds of splits here: http://www.exrx.net/Exercise.html

Nat

Sorry, greg...

I meant to say that the stretching should be done twice daily, not a workout, and not any sort of strenuous swimming.

LCer.

Yes. I have posted that the body has 4 different systems that get taxed during strenuous training, each with it's own recovery period. Some systems take hours to recover, some takes days to weeks (nervous system).

This is only a consideration after you have gotten past your beginner's gains, which usually last about the first 6 months after you begin to weight train. After that, all of your nerolgical adaptation has occurred, and you will have to take muscle immunization to exercise into consideration when planning your workouts.

An easy way to do this is to alternate your intensity during the week (heavy days/light days), or split each muscle group into two distinct workouts.

An example of this is say for back.

Workout for Back "A" would consist of pulling movements such as pull-ups, and pulldowns. Use 4 moves (variety of grips), 2 to 3 sets each.

Workout for Back "B" would consist of rowing moves such as bent over rows, cable rows, one-arm dumbbell rows, etc.

During week #1 of your workouts, use back "A"

During week #2 of your workouts, use back "B"

This will vary your intensity, and stress the different areas of you upper/mid back differently from week to week.