Fastest Way To Build Muscle

We get it. Life is busy. You’re pulled in many directions. Between work, family, friends and chores, who has time to spend hours in the gym every day? But putting up with a weaker version of yourself doesn’t do you any favors either. What you need is a way to maximize your muscle strength in the shortest time possible. Here’s how…

Focus on Negative Training

Yes, negative sounds bad. However, in this case, negative is very good! Weight training is all about lifting and lowering. Most people think about the lift, where you might form a bicep curl and the muscle is shortened. Negative training focuses on the lowering instead. You’re still applying tension, but the muscle is lengthened beautifully when you lower the weight with control. With gravity on your side, you can actually lower more weight than you can lift. That greater load means a more efficient workout and faster results – aka more work, less time. In fact, you will only come in twice a week for a 30-minute, personal training session with your fitness coach. Yes, only one hour in the gym per week!

Negative training works and strengthens the entire joint structure, increasing range of motion too. That’s why more post-surgical physical therapists use this same method. Muscles become stronger and more stable, which benefits the bones, ligaments, tendons and cartilage surrounding them. The exclusive, Swedish-built X-Force Body machines harness the body’s strength building capabilities like no other. They feature a unique tilting weight stack technology to make the downward phase of each lift much more efficient. It automatically adjusts to create 40% more resistance. 

Did you know that negative training revs up your hormones and body chemistry to speed up muscle building while also shrinking fat? According to author and exercise expert Ellington Darden, PhD, “Focused negative exercise, the kind that occurs when you first do the slow lowering of a push-up, can cause microscopic (muscle) tears, which ignite the protein-synthesis process.” He cites a 2009 study by Marc Roig, PhD, who said that “negative training was significantly more effective in increasing muscular size and strength than positive training.” 

Sleep More

Believe it or not, your X-Force Body coach will encourage you to sleep more to speed up muscle building. According to Dr. Darden, 90% of the muscle built after working out occurs during sleep. Your body uses this time of rest to repair and regenerate your muscles. Even the National Sleep Foundation agrees that this could be the secret to building stronger muscles faster. While you sleep, the body’s natural hormones go to work. The pituitary gland releases essential muscle-building hormones, including the anti-aging powerhouse human growth hormone (HGH). 

If that’s not enough incentive to get more shuteye tonight, research shows that the reverse is also true: Inadequate sleep can interfere with your body’s ability to recover and even lose weight. A study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that sleeping les than six hours per night triggers a hormone called ghrelin that stimulates hunger as it simultaneously depresses the hormone leptin that makes your stomach feel empty. (See, it’s not all willpower.) 

Snack Throughout The Day

The X-Force Body meal plan has three snacks built-in every day so you can look forward to eating every 2.5 to 3 hours. The basic idea behind eating six times a day is to keep your engine powered with a consistent amount of energy. This will activate your body’s fat-burning power and blast away stored brown fat. Plus, it will keep your blood sugar level even – no spikes. The secret is a carbohydrate-rich plan built around a proven formula of 50% carbs, 25% fat and 25% protein. Your body needs carbs to build muscle and provide fuel so complex carbohydrates are imperative to your daily calorie intake.

That’s it! More intense muscle exertion, more sleep and more carbs. It translates into significant strength gains and fat loss in less time. Give it a try and you’ll see results that previously required hours and hours of workouts.

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