You can muscle up next year after all the holiday food with some of these simple tips. Before I mention them I wanted to let you know about some cardio boosters. Cardio boosters are a way to jump your energy levels and place your brain into thinking you can work out longer. I’ll give you an example: A cup of coffee or anything containing high levels of caffeine can reduce your brains perception on how hard you think you have trained. The high levels of caffeine (Note I have not mentioned Lucozade Sport with Caffeine Boost – I find it the worst taste and I can never finish it, the Lemon Plus one) act as stimulant that interferes with the part of your brain that is responsible for dealing with pain – The University of Illinois in the US say’s that the caffeine can give you this energy boost resulting in you training for longer without mentally and physically taking note. Another cardio booster is having a warm shower before your morning training sessions – not only because it’s like -100c outside (Manchester) – but having a hot shower gets your blood pumping to your muscles and priming them for action and doubling as an effective warm-up ahead of early-morning sessions, helping you avoid strains and tweaks. Take a read of our “4 steps to go from skinny to biggy”..

#1 Go easy on the cardio

I can tell you know that your six-pack will only come out of hiding when you have reduced your body fat down to around ten per cent, but this doesn’t mean you should spend hours pounding the pavement. In order to put muscle on you need to consume more calories than you burn, so that means keep your cardio sessions brief. Having short breaks between your weight sets will work your cardiovascular system and your muscles.

#2 Stick to complex moves

You need to keep to Isolation movement, such as biceps curls and calf raises. They are great for building up your muscular endurance. The fact is however is that these exercises won’t build mass in the same was as squats, deadlifts and bench presses do. These compound moves involve more than one muscle group which means they’ll shock shock your body, flooding it with good ol’ testosterone and leading to greater sizes gains – everywhere.

#3 Keeping sets short

Cranking out hundreds of reps will fatigue your muscles but it won’t make them grow back bigger. Stick to low-rep sets with heavy weights to overload the muscles, fatigue them faster and force them to grow stronger.

Someone told me (at the gym where I go) that they heard the more hardcore lifters mention that you should stick to low rep building – start on the shoulder press at 10kg and do 15 reps. Then go up the next weight, 15kg and do 15 reps, then go up to 20kg and do 15 reps – just keeping adding the weight on as you go on each rep and at each session.

#4 Eat up

The average man needs around 2,500 calories a day just to maintain his weight, so you should take on 500 more calories to put on muscle – naturally speaking this doesn’t mean eating more calorie-dense foods (junk food). You can get high quality protein from eggs, fish, nuts and lean meat, all of which make these the best source for muscle-building grub. You should aim for 1.6g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight every day – you should also take it an hour before you workout and 20 minutes after your workout.

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