5 Principles You Must Understand About Cranking Up Testosterone Levels To ignite your muscle gains through the room you must learn the rules to skyrocketing your testosterone levels through the roof.  This month we’ll be returning to one of my favorite anabolic targets: high volume training combined with multijoint training.

Why is testosterone so important? Consider it the ultimate male hormone responsible for everything about getting big and feeling like a man. Testosterone is the primary factor behind muscle growth, fat loss, strength, sex drive, aggressiveness and maintaining a competitive edge.

Unfortunately our bodies are in a “death-match” with our testosterone levels and we can begin to fall prey of low testosterone levels in our mid 30s and 40s. If you don’t follow the training rules below and the nutrition and lifestyle rules, I’ll share later, then you’ll accelerate your rate of losing muscle, hair, memory, sex drive, sex appeal and sex!

The good news is that this “leakage” of T levels as you age can be reversed and maximized naturally – with this months weight training guidelines, nutrition and lifestyle strategies.

The secret is knowing which rules and lifting styles will best drive testosterone levels higher and fortunately science has the answer. Research shows that T levels increase quickly when you lift heavy with lots of sets, target multiple bodyparts per workouts, rely on multiijoint exercises and achieve short rest periods between sets. Consider this month’s Phase your “magical-supplement” that boosts hormone levels without therapy and drugs.

Principle #1: Train Heavy Start off by training with a load that you can only do around 5 reps. This weight will be 85% of your one repetition max.  The key is to not go so heavy that you get an aneurysm but to keep the majority of the workout around your 10-rep max.  Research shows that fast and explosive style lifting has little or no change in T levels.

Principle #2: Stick With Multijoint Exercises This ties into Principle No. 1, which demands you to lift heavy and keep you in check. Using multijoint movements lets you hit the bulk of the muscle fibers so you’ll experience a greater response in T levels.

Principle #3: Pair Up The Small Groups With Big Muscle Groups Each Workout Studies show that pairing up big muscle groups like squats, benches and rows increase T levels more than doing tricep pressdowns, bicep curls and ab crunches, even though your intensity output is the same. One study showed when men did a bicep workout only, their T levels did not budge. But when they trained legs in the same workout, their T levels went up 40%.  Small muscle groups should always be paired with at least one large muscle groups to give T levels a boost.

Principle #4: Crank Up The Volume Research studies showed that workouts that achieve closer to 100 reps per workout have a great influence on T levels rather than workouts that only achieve 30-50 reps per workouts.  The key is that the working load is around 75% of 1RM.

Principle #5: Rest Less When you start extending your rest periods into “happy hour” with your buddies and trying to get the phone number of the cute front desk girl, your T levels may suffer along with your muscle gains. Research studies show that once your rest periods extend beyond 60-seconds, T levels began to sink.  This month you’ll keep your rest periods at 60-seconds max, which will provide plenty of time to recover, still lift heavy and use multijoint movements without dampering your T levels.

The Sun And Testosterone! This tip comes from the old-school bodybuilders from the 60’s and 70’s. Check it out:

The sun’s ultraviolet rays stimulate the production of luetenizing hormone, which in turn stimulates the production of testosterone.  This isn’t new news, however. It’s more like forgotten news in the bodybuilding world. You can find studies from the 30s and 40s that demonstrate that moderate ultraviolet radiation can have a very positive impact on testosterone production and physical conditioning. And it wasn’t even news then, ancient athletic training regimens (Roman gladiators, Greek Olympians) often included sunbathing with the belief that the sun fed the muscles. Turns out that they were onto something.  Ever see Pumping Iron with Arnold?  He rested in the sun between workouts!

So why don’t you hear of it? Two reasons: One, there is no profit in it. And two, the reason that you’re undoubtedly thinking of, the sun has been villanized by the medical community. We’ve been told to avoid it at all costs, wear protective clothing or at least slop on excessive sun protection lotion.

All of this to protect ourselves against skin cancer. Skin cancer, however, has continued to increase right along with the sales of sunscreens. Greater increases have been noted in urban areas where people spend more time indoors than in rural areas where people are outside much more often.

And recent studies have shown that moderate sun exposure can actually decrease your