When it comes to building mass, Full Body Workout for Mass is a key strategy that many bodybuilders often overlook. In addition, machines are an underutilized tool within the fitness community. Understanding the importance of both is crucial. It’s worth noting that our muscles thrive when subjected to tension. By incorporating stress through various means such as barbells, dumbbells, and machines, we can effectively stimulate muscle growth. While each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, both free weights and machines play significant roles in achieving your mass-building goals.
The fact remains, though, that your body will build muscle if you keep doing more work over time. Moreover, if you’ve been doing the same free weight exercises for several months, the training will get stale, and even if you’re overtraining your muscles, the amount of muscle you’ll build depends on the amount of work you’re doing. Switching from free weights to a machine variation for a few months will help rebuild that adaptive proclivity when you get too efficient at a particular movement.
So now that we’ve established the validity of using machines as part of your training, let’s look at formulating a full-body workout using just machines. Movement patterns and muscles are all the same, so you can adjust them as you need. It’s just an example of a full-body structure that you can adjust. Exercises can be determined by your equipment and your preferences.
Exercise 1: Chest press machine
This is a horizontal pressing movement that targets the entire chest as well as other pushing muscles such as the anterior deltoids and the triceps. In this example, as well as in all the others in this workout, you should choose a weight that you can use for 12 repetitions with one rep left in your tank. For a total of four sets, you will have to perform this exercise. You can spice things up a bit by performing two drop sets to complete failure for the last set.
A good rule of thumb would be to rest between sets for 60 to 90 seconds and 2-3 minutes between exercises. There should be no pauses at the top or bottom of each rep if it is performed explosively with a controlled eccentric and without pauses between sets. In other words, one second on the way up and two or three seconds on the way down. Sounds simple enough right? Let’s give the chest a break and move on to the next exercise.
Exercise 2: Smith Machine Squat
As the body descends downwards, the hips and knees break horizontally at the same time as the knees do. As a result of this parallel squat, the hip break will be horizontally aligned with the knee break. By using a wide variety of bars, dumbbells, and machines, you can do the squat movement with either a single leg or both legs. The squat is a more comprehensive understanding of the movement, which allows for more inclusive exercises. If you don’t have a Smith machine or don’t want to do one-leg squats, presses, or hacks, or simply don’t want to, a squat machine is a great option.
Exercise 3: Leg Curls
We will begin by crushing the quads with a squat movement before we target the hamstrings with a seated leg curl. It is important to keep your body locked in for this variation, and you will only break your knees since you are seated. The hamstrings are stretched further, so it may be more effective if you do not have access to a seated leg curl. However, if you do not have access to one, you can do the lying leg curl. For the next compound exercise, let’s move back to the upper body.
Exercise 4: Lat pulldowns
We’re going to do a lat pulldown as our primary pulling movement. It’s a vertical pull that emphasizes the lats but also trains the back as a whole. A Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research study examined different grips on lat pulldowns, a V-bar with neutral hands, an underhand pulldown like a chin-up, an overhand pulldown like a pull-up, and an overhand behind-the-back pulldown.
When you pronate in front of your body, your lats get the most activation. If you’re wondering what grip to use, research suggests a medium grip is better than a narrow or wide grip. This is because the eccentric portion of the exercise activates more. If you want to change things up, try a horizontal pull instead of this vertical pull. This is more of a row than a pulldown. With the horizontal pull, you’ll focus more on your mid-upper back, while still engaging your lats.
Exercise 5: Wide grip upright row on the Smith machine
There is no doubt that the upright row is a great exercise for primarily targeting the traps. However, because of the degree of shoulder abduction, the upright row can also be very effective for targeting the mid-delts as well. The key is to raise the bar only up to 90 degrees with your elbows slightly below. As a result, we included this exercise since it targets both the traps as well as the mid-delts to a significant extent. Research has shown that the wider you go, the more the focus shifts from the biceps to the mid-delts while going too narrow will result in excessive internal rotation and may result in shoulder impingement as a result. Apart from that, the amount of abduction does not change at all.
If you use a narrower grip, you’ll just put more strain on the traps, involve the biceps a bit more, and you’ll also risk injury. Instead, go a bit wider. The width should be just wide enough that at the top you can have about 90 degrees of elbow flexion. In addition to being able to load it more heavily, biomechanics means it targets the mid-delts. The tension shifts to the rear delts if you go any wider than this. If you don’t have access to a Smith machine or just want an alternative, try the machine lateral raise. It’s a good idea to include an exercise that loads horizontal abduction since the mid-delts are otherwise understimulated.
Exercise 6: Standing calf raises
There are two main muscles in the calves: the soleus and the gastrocnemius. The gastrocnemius crosses the knee and ankle, but the soleus only crosses the ankle. You can’t create as much tension with the gastrocnemius in seated calf raises, so the soleus takes over. Unfortunately, the soleus isn’t very big and doesn’t contribute to calf size when you do them. Trying a standing variation with your legs straight is the best way to grow your calves. This will make sure you’re working the gastrocnemius, which is the muscle responsible for calf size. Plus, because the gastrocnemius is more active during this movement overload, it’s easier to do.
If you’re looking for a Full Body Workout for Mass, incorporating a leg press machine can be a fantastic alternative to a standing calf raise machine. Even without access to specialized equipment, you can still engage in a simple yet powerful full-body exercise routine solely using machines. While it’s important to include free weights in your training regimen for functional strength, incorporating dedicated periods of machine training can be highly beneficial. It allows you to explore diverse training methods and stimuli, kickstarting your muscle growth in a unique and effective manner.
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