One of my long-term goals has always been to increase my muscle mass. However, with my hectic schedule and long hours – as you will probably know – it’s hard to make time for your fitness regime.
This is just a matter of planning though, the bigger problem is next.
Being a Personal Trainer and Fitness Director
One of the harder parts of being a fitness trainer is that your body adapts quickly to lots of different exercises, which means that training gets easy much more quickly – this is also true if you’re working out more than 4 times a week.
However, in order to keep the growth and adaptation you need to keep finding new ways of pushing physical boundaries.
You also have to find new ways of stimulating your muscles to grow and develop, or they will simply stop.
Keeping the stimulus high is not as simple as it sounds though.
The Big Mistake
One of the mistakes a lot of people think about when putting on muscle mass is all that all you need to do is lift big weights. If only it was that easy!
If this was true then getting big would be easy and all the guys and some of the girls (girls want to be big sometimes too) would be massive.
Part of developing your muscles is to get them to build up the contraction and tension within the muscles.
Again this is not as easy as it sounds, as building tension and contraction within your muscles requires not strength but control and concentration. And to do it under load requires even more of both than a lot of people have.
Why I Chose MI40X
This is one of the reasons I choose the Mi40x that has been developed by Ben Pakulski, a former world champion bodybuilder. What really impressed me though about Ben is that he knows his stuff and he’s not your average meat-head body builder.
The Mi40x is a complete training system that incorporates diet, training supplements and lifestyle factors that are all keyed to improve your physique and pack muscle on, in a very short period of time. The way it does this is to first teach you how to build the tension and keep control of your movements.
The first part of the programme is what is known as a primer phase.
This part is designed to get your muscles ready for what is going to happen to them over the next several weeks, as well as to educate you on the correct techniques for each exercise.
My Experience of The Programme
Day 1 – Back, Biceps & Shoulders
Ouch!
Wow, all I can say is that I haven’t felt like a pumpkin in ages. Every muscle feels like it’s going to explode. My biceps feel so pumped up right now that I’m actually struggling getting my vest off so I can have a shower.
Day 2 – Chest & Triceps
Today’s workout was more ouch. As if my arms didn’t get pumped up enough yesterday.
MI40X is an interesting programme. The beauty of it is you don’t need to use anywhere near as much weight as you normally do, and you can’t use as much weight as normal: it’s not that you don’t need to it’s that you just simply can’t.
Day 3 – Legs
OMFG! My legs and quads hurt! I’ve just realised something: I feels like I’ve never, ever trained my legs before after that 4th set of lunges. I actually thought I was going to need a wheel chair to get around and a stair lift.
Day 4 – Rest Day
This is just what I needed.
It’s time to load up on nutrition. Sometimes, it’s good to overload your body with extra calories, especially when trying to put on muscle and when you’ve been training really hard.
Day 5 – Back, Biceps & Shoulders (again)
The programme has changed now and it’s more strength orientated, but with still a massive concentration on getting as many muscle fibres to pump up as possible.
Day 6 – Chest & Triceps
I think I’m getting used to this somehow, but that could just be that I like working my chest and triceps.
Day 7 – Leg Day No. 2
I was still left feeling like I was walking like John Wayne after my second leg day this week. I’m just glad I’ve got lots of walking to do later on today so that I’ll get rid of some of this lactic acid I’ve built up.
After The First Week
As I mentioned at the start, this was only the primer week for the actual programme.
If this is anything compared to what the rest of the programme then I’m going to be ‘dead’ by the end of it.
MI40X Nutrition & Supplement Advice
The other thing I like about mi40x is that the nutritional recommendations and supplement suggestions change at each phase of the programme.
This makes sense to me: if you’re trying to elicit one response in the body then you want a certain amount of nutrients to back you up, but if you want to elicit a different response then you probably need something else to help.
Important note: I’m not talking about steroids here. If you want to get yourself going in the morning then you might want a coffee, but if you want to calm your body down then having a camomile tea helps you better, rather than something that’s full of caffeine. Taking supplements means adding things to your diet that will help you.
Biosignature Assessment & Performance
Before I started this fitness programme I assessed my Biosignature (see this video on Biosignature Assessment and how it can help you) and I also took some before photos.
Pictures of before and after training are really important. If you don’t look back at where you started then how can you tell how far you have come? A personal tip for anyone reading this is get that camera (or phone) out and start taking those before and after photos.
There are a lot more videos on my YouTube fitness channel, so make sure you subscribe to it to get the updates. I’ll be putting some more about me and my Mi40x training so you will see me soon!
