If you want to build lots of muscle but at the same time want the energy and mobility of athletes, it is possible to achieve both. You can be athletic and muscular at the same time. You don’t have to choose one of them. Let’s find out how you can achieve that.

Movement is essential

If you want to achieve an athletic body, movement is very important for you. Instead of focusing too much on building strength, you need to focus more on the movements. Even if you are very strong but you cannot move efficiently, you will not be able to perform at your highest level at high performance training or games. You will need to include jumps, sprints, throws, hops and reactive movements if you want to achieve an athletic body. Sprinting is very important because it will work on your fast twitch muscles and that is the crucial element of your training to remain athletic. So, include sprint and change of direction drills in your workout.

Progressive overload

Progressive overload will help you to achieve both an athletic body and more muscles. If you want to build lean muscle and strength, you will need to focus on squats, cleans, presses, lunges and pulls. But you will need to progressively overload the body. So, keep adding more weight, reduce the rest period and increase your training volume. Keep pushing your body so that your abilities grow gradually.

Avoid isolation

The typical bodybuilder exercises are isolation exercises. For example, lateral raises, bicep curls and other exercises. These isolation exercises are not good enough for you when you want to achieve both muscle and athleticism. If you have less amount of time, you will need to focus on two things-building strength and explosiveness. Once you become stronger, you can include isolation exercises if necessary. However, do not focus completely on isolation exercises because they will not help you in your goal of building more muscles and getting an athletic body.

Build more strength

If you want both muscle and next the body, you will need to focus on absolute and relative strength. Try to build more of these strengths. Relative strength is the amount of strength relative to body size. It means your ability to control or move your body through space. Absolute strength is the maximum amount of force that a person can exert. If you have higher body weight and if you have a big size, your absolute strength is likely to be greater.

You need to increase your relative strength because that will improve your ability to generate force. It is important for you because you want to have more muscle and a good-looking body along with the ability to perform. If you want high performance gains, you will need both absolute strength and relative strength. Working on these two strengths will also activate your nervous system, which will in turn increase muscle fiber recruitment and speed of rate coding. With increased muscle fiber recruitment, the number of muscle fibers being recruited will increase. With increased speed of rate coding, the speed at which your body can send electrical signals to the muscles will increase.

Will result in greater adaptation and improvement in workout performance. You will have more lean muscles. When you build your strength base, besides increasing your lean muscles, it will also boost your endurance, reduce body fat and will increase strength.

Perseverance

Since it will need time and lots of hard work, without perseverance, it will be very difficult for you to achieve an athletic looking body with lots of muscles.

References

1. The Athletic-aesthetic Physique
2. Sport nutrition for young athletes
3. Equity in Athletics