How Can I Build A Champion Physique?

There are three foundations to building a champion physique - nutrition, exercise and rest.

Nutrition

With respect to nutrition you need to tailor make your eating habits different from those who are mesomorphs and endomorphs who have an easy time building muscle. Your primarily goal is to build as much muscle mass in the least amount of time. That's why it's crucial to have good eating habits. I prefer to use the term eating habits in place of diet since most people refer to a diet as being short term. Eating habits are for life. Important nutrients include carbs, protein and fats. Eaten in the right ratios will maximise your muscle gains. The ratio for carbs, protein and fats should be 50:30:20 or 50% carbs, 30% protein and 20% fats.

Exercise

With respect to exercise you need to focus on getting stronger and maximising muscular hypertrophy. This can be achieved by focusing on compound exercises which recruit several muscle groups as opposed to isolation exercises which recruit single muscle groups. Compound exercises for the lower body include barbell squats, deadlifts and lunges. For the upper body they include pullups, chinups, pushups, dips, pull-downs and bench presses.

For maximum muscular hypertrophy the repetition range should be from 6 to 12 repetitions, the set range from 2 to 4 sets for each exercise. When you do resistance exercises you actually cause microtrauma to your muscle tissues. Once you recover your body will synthesize protein to repair the microtrauma by expanding the thickness of the muscle fibre.

Rest

A lot of people overlook rest as they may think it does not contribute much to building muscle. In fact nothing can be further from the truth. You actually build muscle and lose fat while you're sleeping as opposed to exercising. Hormones such as melatonin, human growth hormone (HGH) and insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1) are released when you rest. These hormones help repair and remove toxins from your body. These hormones are regulated by the hypothalamus and are released between 11pm and 1am in accordance to your circadian rhythm. That's why it is important to have 8 hours of sleep. You should preferably go to bed before 10pm.

With all this information in hand it can be quite daunting to put it into motion. One program I highly recommend which has a comprehensive step-by-step exercise and eating guide is Vince DelMonte's No-Nonsense Muscle Building.