Try And Spice Things Up A Bit With This Tip

At www.building-muscle101.com, we try and provide as much free, and useful information as we can. As the owner, I try and draw on as much personal experience as I can in order to provide you, the reader with quality advice and techniques.

Let me be clear about this, I'm no doctor, personal trainer, or body builder (although I was one for a brief period of time).

I've been weight training for over 20 years and I know my way around a weight room. With that in mind, I'd like to give you a simple weight training tip to help you develop more muscle mass.

I first witnessed this movement while I was training at a gym in Toronto, Canada. At the time, I used to train around 6:30 PM and at that time, there was a body builder who happened to be training at around this time. For the longest time, he was using the same routine to maintain his muscle mass.

Then one day, he stopped and only started doing olympic style movements, in particular, the olympic clean and press. At first he started with 135 pounds, after two weeks, he went up to 185 pounds, after two weeks he was using 225 pounds until he was up to 295 pounds. By the time he got to 295 pounds, his upper torso was humungous! He was already well developed but nothing like this.

I asked him why he decided to change and he said "why not?" From what I gathered from more conversations with him was that all the olympic lifters he knew had huge quads, shoulders and traps. He decided to give it a shot for two weeks, but that turned into 4 weeks, which turned into 15 weeks. I couldn't argue with the results.

I had to give it a shot. The results? I still do that movement today whenever I want to boost my shoulder development. This is a pure power movement that is done for one thing - to build strength and muscle mass. By doing the clean and press, you work your whole body - The legs, the back, the biceps, the triceps, and shoulders. This is damn near the most perfect exercise you can do for building bulk and power.

If you want a break from what your doing and need a change, give this exercise a shot. It's a tough exercise but well worth it. Here's an illustration of how to do it: (courtesy of Body building.com )

The only thing missing from this picture is that you have to push the weight up to lock out position, once you get it to shoulder level. The clean and press can be done in conjunction with your current weight trainign program or done on it's own. I suggest you do it on it's own because to do it properly, it is time consuming.

A proper clean and press workout can take up to an hour. When I do this workout, I'll do it twice per week and on it's own. The two days I do them are Monday and Thursday leaving the other days as rest days. My workout looked something like this:

Treadmill for 10 minutes:
Stretching for 10 minutes:
Warm up: 1 x 15:
Set one: 1 x 6 repetitions
Set two: 1 x 6 repetitions
Set three: 1 x 6 repetitions
Set four: 1 x 4 repetitions
Set five: 1 x 4 repetitions

I was also resting about 3 minutes in between each set. Each set used progressive weights so by the time I got to my last set, I was nearing 80% of my maximum weight. Try this workout for 4 weeks to see how you like it. This workout is something very different than your normal weight training routine but know to only a few, one of the most effective strength builders out there.

All the best,

Blake