ActiveArnold Schwarzenegger shares his top two techniques for building muscleAnd it doesn’t require lifting more weight.When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

ActiveArnold Schwarzenegger shares his top two techniques for building muscleAnd it doesn’t require lifting more weight.When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

And it doesn’t require lifting more weight.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Getty)

Arnold Schwarzenegger

(Image credit: Getty)

If your goal is to build muscle, who better to take note from than Arnold Schwarsenneger himself? The retired bodybuilder was (and, still is) a source of inspiration to those looking to gain size and strength. But if you’ve been pumping thedumbbellsand are stillstruggling to build muscle, listen up, as Arnie’s shared two techniques that will help you do just that and, you may be surprised to hear, it doesn’t involve lifting more weight.

We know muscle growth isn’t an overnight process, it takes time, consistent training and hitting every muscle group at least two times a week. While studies have shown lots of different styles of training can help grow muscle, what’s known as ‘hypertrophy’ training (where you lift moderate weight for a high number of reps) is the most effective when it comes to increasing the overall size of them.

Arnold Schwarzenegger two top techniques to build muscle

Here are his two top techniques:

#1:The 4-1-1 method

‘The what?’, you say. This is all about the tempo in which you lift the weights and it’s one of Arnie’s favourites. Here’s how you do it:

#2:The pause

As you’ve probably guessed, ‘the pause’ (also known as a ‘static hold’) is where you hold at the bottom of your exercise for a number of seconds, for example, three instead of one. What does this do? “This removes all momentum and puts your muscles in a position where, on most exercises, they will be the weakest and forces you to generate force from a dead stop. This can help activate more muscle fibres,” says Arnold. It’s also thought to create better ‘mind-muscle connection’, where you’re really thinking about the muscles that you’re using, which can help activate them more.

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If you found these two techniques helpful, then you may want to implement them intoArnold’s full body dumbbell workoutthat you can do at home, or into thisexercise he used to sculpt his back.

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