By Davide Marongiu, personal trainer

 I get a lot of questions when I come across clients who are looking to build muscle mass, shape themselves or, more often than not, “tone up”.

The truth I have found during all these years as a personal trainer and a fitness model is that not one rule is true when it comes to weight lifting in terms of number of reps, sets, programs etc. You’ll be surprised, though, to notice how important the sole concept of your muscles being kept under the right amount of tension is. 

Ideally every exercise should place a certain stress, intensity and “burn” on the targeted muscle and often we forget to properly address the effort towards that particular muscle when we execute the movement. Men know how much our own ego steps in the way when we are doing, for example, bench press exercises or bicep curls. But as an experienced lifter I ask you to put your egos aside for once, do not lift an insane amount of weight and really focus on how much active contraction (“pump”) you are getting in the targeted muscle. This is usually achievable at a lower load than you were used to lift before. In a short time you will notice increased density in your muscles, which will help the sculpting and your overall proportions.

I constantly stress the importance of time under tension to my clients as an effective way to go past plateaus and train in complete safety.