I was recently in the gym with fitness guru Vince DelMonte , for a mid-week workout. It’s not often someone gets to sweat and grunt along side a fitness professional (a very busy one at that) so motivation that day was a non-issue. On the agenda today? Building muscle, period .

Now most of us think we can build or gain muscle by training each body part once per week, slamming back some protein shakes, and eating enough chicken and tuna to grow feathers and gills. Unfortunately, it ain’t that easy.

During this particular workout, there were no cameras, no notebooks, and no quitting. Next time we’re planning on filming the workout for funzies so you can really see me get put into the hurt.

You can find the same workout we did on this day from Vince’s No Nonsense Muscle Building Program.

During this session, I re-learned three important strategies when it comes to building muscle :

1. Compound Exercises

What is going to isolate more muscle fibers? A bench press or cable cross over? A military press or lateral raise? A chin up or bicep curl? A dip or tricep kickback? If you ever hope to get big muscles than compound lifts are not optional, they are mandatory . Stick to squats, leg presses, deadlifts, bench preses, barbell rows, pull ups, chin ups, over head presses, and dips. No fancy footwork or positions required; just the basics.

If all you do is concentrate on building your body’s smallest muscles (arms and calves, please stand up) then you will end up with exactly what you focus on – small muscles!

2. Squats and Deadlifts

Squatting and Deadlifting are known as two of the Big Three exercises that are responsible for power and mass muscle building . Consider these two animal exercises the kings of the jungle! Without them, you do not have a chance of survival. These two exercises alone, work out about 80% of your entire musculature , including your traps, shoulders, arms, back, gluts, hams, calves and core muscles.

Not to mention the degree of intensity, squats and dead lifts force your body to release greater volumes of growth hormone , which results in bigger muscles all over your body. This spillover effect results in strength gains in all you other lifts which translates into a more muscular you! Squatting and dead lifting are especially critical for hard gainers because of the hormonal spikes affecting the entire body.

Check out Vinny doing squats and deadlifts in the video below:

3. Measuring Your Rest Periods

When was the last time you were in the gym and you watched the average guy time his recovery with a stop watch? Stop watches are not just for endurance athletes but should be used by every person who is serious about building big muscles.

Generally, the closer you lift to your one rep max, the longer the rest period and the higher the number of reps, the shorter the rest period . This is a crucial variable, which is often overlooked, yet will determine whether you create the correct training response.

For example, if you are training for maximal strength which requires at least 3-5 minutes rest between sets and you are only taking 2 minutes, you are not giving your nervous system adequate time to recover . If you are training for muscle size which requires shorter 30-90 second style recoveries but are checking out the cute girl on the treadmill letting your rest periods carry over these ranges, you are not working hard enough.

Lastly, how do you know if you are truly stronger if you do not monitor your rest period? For example, let’s say last week you bench pressed 135 pounds for four sets of ten. This week you bench pressed 145 pounds for four sets of ten. Assuming the rest period was identical for both workouts, this is a tremendous improvement and a measurable sign of improvement! However, what if you took an extra minute or two between each set on the recent workout? This means that you did not actually become stronger. You just had a longer rest period!

Next time out, Vince and I are going to tackle a workout from his highly successful program titled Your Six-Pack Quest .

The program comes with more bonuses than I can count (see our full Six Pack Review ), including the fat loss virtual training, ten- 84 day meal plans that accommodate for any body type, and over 15 hours of video footage of Vince in the gym showing you each and every exercise and workout personally.

If you’re more interested in Building Rock Solid Muscle, check out Vince’s  #1 Muscle building program on the internet. Click Here To Build Muscle!