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Posts Tagged ‘building lean muscle mass’

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.

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.