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Posts Tagged ‘build muscle mass’

So, how much can you bench? It is one of the most frequently asked questions around the country by gym enthusiasts. In fact the amount you can bench is a great yardstick for over all strength and is probably the best way to gain muscle mass on your upper body and therefore the exercise has reached almost mythical status. So here we shall outline three great tips that will really help you improve your maximum bench press.

1) Do Drop Sets. These are fantastic in giving you a real burn and really forcing your muscles into new muscle growth. To do these simply perform your bench-press exercise as you normally would and when you can not do any more simply take off a weight disc and do as many more as you can. Then lower the weight yet again and do as many more as you can. Keep stripping the bar in this manner until there is very little weight left or until your muscles are not able to perform any more. This is one method that is very intense and will leave you feeling very sore for a number of days to come. Ensure that your protein intake remains at a high level in order to aid you in building the muscle back stronger.

2) Cease training your chest. Rather train the triceps by themselves for a change. By doing so you can focus on strengthening your tricep muscle a great deal more. Once you have done this for 3-4 weeks go back to your benchpress and I can you will more than likely beat your previous best. This is because your chest will have had a really good rest period to completely recover from lots of previous training session and also your triceps will now be stronger. As your triceps do a great deal of the work along with your chest muscles when benchpressing it stands to reason that you will be able to press more.

3) 10 sets of 10 repetitions. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a fan of this method and was the first person to bring it to real prominence. Basically you benchpress as much weight as you can possibly cope with for ten repetitions and then do another ten reps. Repeat this until you have done ten sets of ten reps. You will have to reduce the weight gradually but allow yourself two to three minutes rest between sets. The reason for doing this is to try and give your pecs some new varied stimulus to trigger muscle growth. Again expect to be sore for a week after this workout but also expect to increase your benchpress when you do return to bench pressing again. This is perhaps the fastest way to gain muscle on your chest if done correctly nd is great no no nonsense muscle building.

OK, I hope you found that useful so why not go ahead and give those tips a try in your next pecs workout.

Maybe you have experienced this before whereby you have decided to improve your health and fitness and in the first instance you feel really motivated. Maybe you sat and watched an inspiring film that prompted you to do something, perhaps a friend of yours you hadn’t seen for a while turned up having lost a lot of weight or having gained a good deal of muscle mass or perhaps you were simply fed up of feeling unhealthy. Whatever the reason you started exercising and continued to do so for a few weeks.

However after a while your motivation decreased, you got busy at work, you got tired of making the effort or the results weren’t as good as you’d hoped for and you unconsciously quit your healthy exercise lifestyle. If that all sounds familiar then here are a few easy ways to help regain and sustain your motivation for a healthier lifestyle: 

Try setting an enjoyable goal. For example, consider planning out a mountain biking/kayaking/hiking trip in an amazing area of the earth like the the Canadian Rockies, The Andes or The Alps. Immediately then you have an exciting rewarding and motivating goal to target. You should try to be in the best physical shape possible so that you may enjoy your trip as much as possible. If your trip is in 5 montsh time then you can plan a realistic schedule with your fitness goals in mind.

Optin to take part in a local area event. Is there a local fun run, half marathon or something else similar, I’ll bet there is, gte online and find out. Work towards one of these events as a goal to aim for. consider telling a friend of yours so they can come and support you on the actual day and support you in the mean time. 

Take up a sport or hobby, this doesn’t have to be an ultra serious thing just a light hearted game of soccer or hockey at the weekends but it gives you an easy and enjoyable way to monitor your fitness levels. Of course the initial couple of sessions may be very taxing but you will soon notice an improvement and start to look and feel better.

Visualise. Ok this might sound a bit odd at first but try and find a bit of time each day to sit and visualise in your minds eye exactly how you wish to feel and look. Doing this sends a powerful mesage to your sub conscious about what decisions you should be making during your day. Keep doing this and your behaviour will automatically alter to reflect your goals and lead you towards your visualised goals. This works by the way, nearly all top sportsmen use this in some form or other.

Involve family, friends and even your pet dog. Getting more people involved makes it less likely for you to get bored and lose motivation. You are a great deal less likely to be lazy and be inactive at home if your mates are phoning and texting you to get you to go to join them.

Educate yourself. Be curious find out about how to build muscle up, find out how to get a 6 pack, find out how to shed pounds, find out what muscle building nutrition you need for no nonsense muscle building and so on. By growing your knowledge you are quite probably going to improve the rate that your fitness levels will increase which will then serve to increase your motivation more.

Don’t compare yourself to others. No matter who you are there is always going to be someone bigger stronger fitter, leaner sexier or whatever. Acknowledge this fact and realise that we all travel through this life process each from our own different perspectives. Pay more attention to how you feel than to anything else, if you feel good then you are likely getting healthier.

So, with those tips in mind go hit the gym and do whatever it is that you enjoy doing to keep fit, build lean muscle mass or whatever else you want to do, you can do it, just keep it fun. The following is highly recommended for lean muslc growth burn the fat build the muscle book.

Depending on where you look there is a lot of great information out there on how to build muscle up. However here are a few tips that you may not have come across before yet are extremely powerful. Here they are:

Try drinking green tea. This can inhibit the enzyme that inhibits nor-epinephrine which mean that you should experience increased levels of this muscle building metabolic hormone which can also help in fat loss too. what’s more it is also stacked full with anti oxidants that can aid a great deal with post workout recovery and general health.

Eat healthy fats. These are essential for correct functioning of many parts of the human body like the brain, heart, production of energy and the regulation of hormones too. Great sources of this are: oily fish, natural peanut butter, avocado,  and oily dressings.

Ingest casein protein. This specific protein is digested by the body very slowly and is therefore released in to the body gradually. This is great news if you consume it just before retiring to bed as your body can then use it to build muscle up whilst you sleep.

Ingest 20 to 30 grams of whey protein first thing. As soon as you arise drink a whey protein shake. This will put a stop to the catabolic state of your body that you may have been in during your sleep and give you a good start on hitting your protein target for the day.

Try using dropsets for those bodyparts that you have difficulty making grow. This technique is very intense and can be used to stimulate growth effectively in any weaker areas that you struggle to grow. Firstly, complete your set as you would normally and when you have pushed out your final rep lower the weight by around 20 percent and perform more reps, then decrease the weight once again and do more reps. Continue repeating this process as many times as you can bear but the next day you are likely to experience significant muscle soreness and a tremendous burn at the time.

Drink water. Do not underestimate the benefits of reaming well hydrated during the day. water is critical for many reactions in the body especially muscle building ones.

Keep educating yourself. There are a great deal of different methods to stimulating muscle growth. try different things and fidn out what works best for your body and leave the rest.

So, by applying some of the above weight gain tips you should be able to build up muscle even faster than before. If you wanto to look lean and ripped we highly recommend the following burn the fat build the muscle ebook. Good luck.

Spending hours in the gym to build muscle up and not making progress? Brilliant news! There is a good chance that you are not making incredible gains for just one simple reason. Just this simple knowledge can help increase your power to build muscle up. For a lot of people this little known truth can easily help them build muscle up fast.

So what is the secret? A new miracle pill or something?

No certainly not. It has been ignored by many a bodybuilder though it has been known about for a long time.

Exactly what is cortisol?

Cortisol is a hormone released by the body steadily throughout the day and is produced in response to stress such as weight lifting. Levels of cortisol decrease steadily througout the day so are lowest in the evening.

What is its role exactly?

Well, it actually improves short term memory, helps detoxify the liver and aids in regulating the blodds sugar levels. However it can raise blood pressure and decrease bone density if your cortisol levels get too high, however this would be unusual. However it will decrease muscle mass as it promotes the use of muscle as energy and not fat. this is the reason that workouts should be under an hour long. After this they will actually be inhibiting their progress not speeding it up!

Here are a few guidelines to ensure that you are not wasting your time trying to build muscle up:

1) limit your cardio workouts, too much cardio causes the body to release cortisol which as explained is not what we need.

2) Attempt to restrict your caffeine intake as this also makes cortisol levels increase.

3) Keep your workouts down to one hour in the gym. Stay foccussed, consider wearing headphones if this helps.

4) Take it easy and relax because cortisol is produced as a response to stress.

5) Eat small regular meals because infrequent meals make the body think it is starving and will thus try and use uneccesary muscle for energy before using fat reserves by releasing more cortisol.

6) Sleep. This is when your cortisol levels are lowest and your muscle building hormones highest so aim for 8 hours if possible.

With those no nonsense muscle building tips in mind you should be able to give your workouts a great boost now you know how to gain weight fast more efficiently.

Muscle building nutrition is actually very simple and is a major factor in your bodybuilding success. However many people seem to get confused when they are putting together a muscle building diet. For that reason here is a simple and easy to understand and implement set of guidelines that anyone can use to build muscle up. Here they are:

1) Eat 5-7 small meals each day. This give your muscle a constant supply of energy and lowers tha chances of your body retaining food a fat. Steer away from the 3 square meals a day mentality. This is definitly one of the most important weight gain tips going.

2) Every meal needs to contain at least 30 grams of protein and also a lot of quality carbohydrate. carbs are easily found in rice, potatoes and bread. Red meats, egg whites, tuna and milk are superb sources of protein.

3) Supplement your diet. The most basic supplement required is a protein supplement that ought to be consumed immediately after training and before sleeping.

4) Simple carbohydrates (sugars) need to be avoided. although they provide an immediate boost of energy this will drop off very soon leaving you flat. It can upset your insulin metabolism and also increase that chances of fat storage.

5) Veer away from foods high in salt and fats. Good fats from olive oil, peanut butter and fish are good for you and should be in your diet but bad fast from vegetable oil butter and animal fats need to be avoided like the plague, that rules out junk food too!

6) Consume a pre-workout meal. This should take the form of a good size portion of carbohydrates, protein and a hydrating liquid about an hour before your session. this will provide ample energy for your workout and also ensure that protein is there instantly for your muscle growth and repair.

7) Take an after workout supplement or meal. At this time your muscle needs both the energy from carbs and the protein the most as the have just been broken down. A whey protein shake is ideal for this. Target at least 40 grams of protein to be consumed at this time.

Take on board lots of water. This is by far the most important nutrient in the body. The chemical reactions in the body are all dependent upon this and so is the quality of your muscle tissue.

And lastly ensure that you are eating more than enough calories. To build muscle you have to take in an excess amount of calories than you burn off. You are not going to add a shred of muscle if you do not consume enough calories. So now you know how to get bigger muscles know excuses go do it!

There are hundreds of different exercises you can do with free weights and resistance machines or with just your body weight to build up muscles. You should include mainly multi-joint compound exercises in your workout as they build muscle fastest. The time proven and most effective are: shoulder presses, bench press, pull ups, dead lifts, squats and rows.

Whilst they are very effective your body needs to be constantly challenged in new and different ways if your goal is building lean muscle mass. These following exercises work astonishingly well and are yet for some reason often overlooked. From time to time try and include these exercises in your workouts. new reasons for your muscles to grow and the prevention of boredom setting in are achieved by adding variation to your workouts.

For skinny calve muscles have a go at skipping with a jump rope, donkey raises and running on the beach to trigger muscle growth. You will get a real burn in your calves and get good growth from running on sand and or from skipping using a jump rope. because the muscles in your calves are normally made use of in activities that are largely endurance based such as walking they often grow more when stimulated using higher rep ranges. Donkey raises are when you place your toes on the edge of a 3-4 inch high block bend over to 90 degrees at the waist and rest your hands on a bard or bench at that height. A training partner or two then jump on to your back and you raise your body up and down by flexing your calf muscles. stabiliser muscles all around the calve have to be used in order to perform these correctly making them more difficult.

When was the last time you did dips for your chest muscles? A classic mass builder for the chest muscle is dips which are an awesome workout for triceps too. Many older gyms have two long bars that run parallel to eachother for exactly this. Often they form a v shape which allows you to use different grips. This enables you to train a specific part of your chest muscle or tricep muscle really well.

Try hitting your hamstrings with stiff legged deadlifts. This hamstring exercise is awesome yet seldom seen. The motion is the same as deadlifts but you must maintain straight legs throughout by bending at the waist, keeping a straight back and lifting the barbell upwards. Keep control of the weight by ensuring that it is close to your legs whilst raising it and be warned that this exercise can make your hamstrings very sore for the following day.

Experiment with hammer curls for bicep growth! The pal of your hand is kept facing in towards your body at all times, this is the only difference from regular curls. This places great stress on the inner bicep muscle that gives it thickness and size throughout called the brachialis muscle whilst also still developing the main bicep too.Stand with your back against the corner of a wall whilst curling to prevent yourself from swinging the bar.

When was the last time you noticed anyone hitting their quads with lunges in the weights room? These are great for providing mass and shap for the quad muscles. With a pair of dumb belss in your hands take a decent stride forwardsand bend both knees down to 90 degress step backwards and repeat with the other leg. Am awesome alternative to regular squats.

For developing muscle definition and for a great cardio workout how about trying boxing padwork great for the upper body or uphill sprints for your legs or hitting an exercise bike for uphill intervals after a leg workout. That is a real killer of a mass builder!

With those few exercises in mind go ahead and mix your program up a bit for more muscle mass.

Everyone knows to build muscle up one of the best exercises for the upper body is the bench press. As always certainly one of the questions near the top of bodybuilders lists is: how much can you bench press?’. Of course i is probably not the best measurement of total all round body strength it does naturally have a very macho feel to it and of course is very impressive. So lets cut to the chase and find out how to build muscle now and get a bigger bench press:

Grow your triceps. As much as two thirds of the complete muscle mass on your arms is made up of the tricep muscle. it is more than likely that weak tris are restricting your bench press progress. The best exercises to build muscle mass on your triceps are using barbells and dumbells: close grip bench-presses and skull crushers. Isolation exercises are not as good as they isolate the muscle completely. They can certainly aid in increasing your benchpress.

Why not experiment by doing a seperate session for your triceps alone. Usually bodybuilding programs recommend that you train the chest in the same session as the triceps. Try training them on their own for a change. Doing so means you can hit them when they are completely fresh and really rip them to pieces and trigger muscle growth. Do this over a period of weeks and then go back and see how many more kilograms you can press.

Variety. have you been doing the same old routine for months on end? time to change it up then. After your muscles have done the same workout a few times, they have already adapted to it and therefore the need to grow has been removed. Keep changing things, they can be subtle changes like altering the grip width or reversing the order of your routine or they can be larger changes like doing super sets, compound sets and so on, these will give you a real pump by the way.

Make sure you are not doing too much! While with most things in life more is better, in muscle building this is not quite true. Overtraining your chest muscles means it takes longer for them to recover and develop. Always focus on technique and intensity above quantity. A short intense workout is much more effective than a long drawn out one.

Good rest periods. Muscles are not about to grow whilst you are working out! Their growing time is when they are resting. You won’t grow if you don’t allow enough time to grow. Of course, never train when your muscles are sore and a good guideline is only do 6-9 sets each session for the chest, more than this risks over training.

Take some time-off. Try taking a break if you reach a training plateau. let your body fully recover, get rid of all the niggles aches and pains and then comeback fresh a week or two later with renewed energy and motivation.

Give your chest a more intense workout by doing negatives. Negatives are when you get the help from two spotters to intially aid you to press the weight upwards but who then let you take the full weight and lower it by yourself under control. This is done because people are able to lower more than they can lift. Therefore if we are able to make the body lower more weight it is probable that this will aid us for the lifting phase too. The negative portion of the lift is proven to develop more muscle growth than the effort phase.

Double check your diet. Are you consuming around 6 meals a day with at least 1 gram of protein for each pound of bodyweight that you have? If you are not then it is possible that you are limiting your gains by not following a muscle building diet strictly enough. In each meal try to get the proportions of them to be 50% carbohydrate, 30% protein and the rest can be made up of fats. Take supplements if you can afford to like whey protein, essential fatty acids and multi-vitamins.

Focus on your technique. Are you pressing correctly. Bad technique can move the focus away from the chest muscles and put you at a greater risk of getting injured. Check that you are not constantly moving your feet up off the floor and that your grip is not too narrow or too broad, these are two mistakes that are easy to make.

By following the guidelines above you should be able to answer the question of how to get a big chest and you will be giving yourself the best chance to build up muscle on your chest fast. Go get em!

Ok great, so you have decided now is the time in your life that you would like to pack on some muscle mass. Whether it is because you want to look good at the beach or you have just watched another ‘Rocky’ movie or you want to perform better in your chosen sport. So obviously you are aware that you are going to have to life weights. However you may not be aware of what to eat to build muscle and of the correct muscle building nutrition. This short guide will show you precisely what to consume but intially we’ll walk through a few of the basic ground rules for a sensible muscle building diet.

Firstly to build muscle, eat more often. Try to consume 5-7 mini meals each day. This is due to the fact that excess calories are required in order for your body to support muscle gains. You will not be able to build any muscle mass if your body is running short on calories. 5-7 meals per day will allow you to take on more food comfortabley without eating too much at anyone sitting.

Secondly, you will need to cut out a lot of the junk food that you are probably eating at the moment. Go hands up, we are all guilty of having the odd meal of junk food and it is these which need to be replaced with quailty muscle building nutrition.

Thirdly, you are going to have to consume more water than you did before. Ensure that you have a bottle of water near you throughout the day to sip from. nearly all of the bodies reactions need H2O to some extent and of course it is required for muscle building reactions too.

Fourthly, divide your meals up so that they contain roughly the following portions of protein, carbohydrate and fat. Try to make them equal to 50% carbohydrate, 30% protein and 20% fat.

Fifthly, you need to learn what foods you should be eating for muscle growth. Here is a start to illustrate what some of the best muscle building foods are:

For protein: turkey, chicken, fish and shellfish, eggs, red meats, dairy products. These are terrific sources of quality protein so include them in your daily meals as often as possible. However caution is advised as these foods are high in saturated fat so it would be sensible to mix them with the following foods that supply protein but with a great deal less fat: egg whites, lean meats like poultry and fish, non-fat or low-fat milk and dairy products, lean cuts of red meat, turkey breast,and skinless chicken breast.

For carbohydrates and long term release energy: bread, brown rice, oatmeal, bagel, pasta cereals and potatoes. For instant hits of energy take on board: fruits such as grapes, bananas, apple, raisins, orange and sports drinks.

The fat portion of your meals will come naturally from the above foods. Also make sure you include plentiful lefy green vegetables which are packed full of vital vitmains and minerals. If you have spare cash for supplements then shoot for a decent multi-vitamin, whey protein, essential fatty acids and possibly creatine.

Lastly a few words of advice as regards when to eat your meals. To build muscle eat within one hour of finishing your workout, before bed and immediately on rising. If you wish to pack on muscle mass then these are very important times. With the above muscle building diet guidelines in place then you are in an excellent position to start building muscle mass fast.

A typical dilemma for any active sportsmen who lifts weights and wants to gain muscle mass is that they know there goal to build muscle up conflicts with the fact that they do a lot of cardio-vascular work. How can someone like this doing a muscle building routine build muscle fastest whilst still doing cardio, indeed is it even possible?

Well often you will read that in order to build muscles fastest you should keep cardio workouts to a minimum. This is said because cardio training session do two major things that could possible restrict muscle building, namely: 1) burn heaps of calories 2) increase the rate of your metabolism. These two things both add weight to the problem of consuming enough calories. This takes us to the question of exactly what amount of calories should I therefore be taking on?

Well, to maintain weight each day you must eat enough calories to cover the energy expenditures of your body as if it were at rest (this is known as the basal metabolic rate), then consume enough extra calories to cover the exercise that you will do. Each day you need to eat a further 500 calories if you wish to build muscle mass.

Is it possible to work this number out?

Yes, one way to do this is using the Katch-McArdle formula (BMR based on lean body weight). Here it is:

Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 X wt in kg) + (5 X ht in cm) – (6.8 X age in years)

Women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 X wght in kgs) + (1.8 X hght in cm) – (4.7 X age in years)

Once you have gotten this figure you should then multiply it by one of the following to allow for your daily activity levels:

Sedentary = BMR X 1.2 (desk job, little or no exercise)
Lightly active = BMR X 1.375 (sports/light exercise 1-3 days/wk)
Mod. active = BMR X 1.55 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk)
Very active equals BMR X 1.725 (sports 6-7 days/hard exercise/wk)
Extr. active = BMR X 1.{9 (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job or 2X day training, i}.e marathon, contest etc

So, should you be doing cardio and weights frequently then you should multiply this by at least 1.725. Your daily energy needs will be safely covered by this amount. This total then needs to changed according to your specific goals. A further 500 calories a day need to be added if your goal is indeed to gain muscle mass.

So, if the number you reach is for example 3000 calories then that would equate to 6 meals a day of 500 calories. Each meal would then be made up of 62 grams of carbohydrate, 37 grams of protein and 11 grams of fat. This is calculated as so because one gram of fat equals 9 calories as opposed to one gram of protein or carbohydrate which is worth 4 grams.

Correct muscle building nutrition and working out your calorie needs like this is what is going to ensure you build muscles fastest, not any miracle new exercise!

Just before I tackle the main purpose of this article which is to show how to build muscle vegetarian style I will briefly outline the different types of vegetarians. Vegans do not eat dairy products or any other animal by products,  pesco-vegetarians will eat fish and dairy products and lacto-ovo vegetarians will drink milk and eat eggs but won’t eat meat. There are a few more sub categories but that is enough detail for the purposes of this article.

Why consider being vegetarian?

Due to the nature of the food that vegetarians avoid they are at a significantly reduced risk of the following: hypertension, cancers, coronary artery disease, and diabetes mellitus. As you may agree the reasons for changing to be vegetarian are compelling indeed and that is before we even begin to discuss the idealistic side of things such as being less cruel to animals, saving food for starving others, conserving the rainforest, becoming more friendly to the enviroment and such like.

Alright then, as regards protein where am I going to get sufficient muscle building supplies from?

Well, suprisingly the answer is extremely simple. Soy actually has more protein in it than beef and it is a complete protein which contains all of the eight essential amino acids. Soy is easy to get you hands on in forms such as: seitan, miso, tempeh, textured soy protein, soy milk and of course tofu. These can all be included in a variety of tasty recipes and dishes. Decent amounts of amino acids and proteins can also be found in rice, beans, seeds, legumes, nuts and even in vegetables.

Alright so that is protein deficiency crossed off the myth list now how about vitamins and minerals like: zinc, vitamin D, calcium, iron and vitamin B12?

Well, supplements should be taken by vegans for this. Vitamin B 12 is found easily in dairy products making this no cause for concern for other types of vegetarians. A good meal replacement powder will see that you get adequate amounts of the other. Of course however many minerals and vitamins are easily available in the form of leafy green vegetables and fruit that you should not overlook if you wish to build muscle up vegetarian style. 

So, overall there are many health benefits to being a vegetarian and being a vegetarian need not prevent you from achieving your bodybuilding goals. As ever planning is the key and this is just as important for meat eating bodybuilders too. With the above guidelines in mind go ahead and build muscle vegetarian style!!