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Posts Tagged ‘how to build muscle’

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.

Buying a gym membership, training each muscle group once a week and injesting a couple of protein shakes is unfortunately not the way to cut the mustard if you want to get ripped.

This article is aimed so you can learn some very simple steps on how to get ripped.

Two techniques well known throughout the industry for getting muscle gain are squatting and dead lifting. Unbelievably, these two core workout work around 75% of your muscle groups. In this percentage, your shoulders, triceps, traps, calves and hamstrings are the major groups included. These exercises have massive benefits to your overall muscle mass and of course body size by themselves. You have to hold to them to see the results.

To learn how to get ripped, more do you need to know?

Just one point to consider for these two exercises. For overall muscle growth, both these exercises are beneficial because they have a high level of intensity that will produce a greater amount of hormonal growth. Obviously, the effect of this is bigger and more buffed muscles.

Hormone spikes are likely in this exercises which results in major muscle growth over your entire body , which is important if you are skinny and struggling to gain muscle. Give the deadlift or squat a go and you will value what am talking about. It is certain that after every three heavy sets of 8, you will stand up and feel it everywhere in your upperbody.

Be honest when recording your rest periods!

When you were at the gym most recently, did you become aware if there was anyone using a stopwatch?

It is not common for weight trainers to time themselves between sets which is interesting as this is so crucial and valuable in building muscle successfully.

It is recommended you take smaller rest periods of around a minute if you are training for muscle mass as it is a general rule of thumb. If you have longer recovery periods between sets, you are not giving your metabolic system a good workout which is a serious factor in muscle building.

If you do not monitor your rest periods, you will not recognize if you are getting stronger.

Please think about the following example.

If you are bench pressing additional this week than you were lifting last week, and if your rest time was exactly 50 seconds between sets. Congratulations and good effort is what i would say. Obviously, you have progressed with significant improvement. Lets switch this week to. Instead of 30 seconds rest, lets make it 60 seconds rest between sets. The muscle mass improvement will be noticeably less impressive if you have a shorter period of rest time between sets for your muscles to recuperate. Something to think about for sure as you learn how to get ripped fast.

I trust you have enjoyed this editorial on how to get ripped and utilise the important lessons which you can apply today. To learn more on how to get ripped read the report on the No Nonsense Program.

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.

 It is a well known fact nowadays that to build muscle diet is a key component that will determine whether you are successful or not. Regardless of how hard you train you won’t grow muscles unless you have good muscle building nutrition. So just briefly we’ll go over a few simple rules to follow for a superb ‘build muscle diet’ and then we’ll uncover some of the best foods for building muscle mass.

Ok, quick guidelines for a diet to build muscle:

1) Eat 5-7 meals per day. This will enable you to easily consume the amount of calories you need in order to grow. {It will mean that your body has high energy levels throughout the entire day}. 

2) Divide your meals up in to approximate portions of 50% carbohydrate, 30% protein and the remainder can come from fats.

3) Eat about an hour half to two hours prior to your workout and eat immediately or at least within an hour after your workout. Your post workout meal may indeed be a meal replacement powder but it must be high in protein. taking a energy drink or eating a snack before retiring to bed is a good idea also as this means your body will have enough calories to support growth throughout the night. After waking eat as soon as possible as your muscles will be low on energy at this time.

4) If you can afford it take supplements. You may wish to experiment with: essential fatty acids, creatine, whey protein and multi-vitamin pills. Supplements can be added to your diet if you wish to build muscle even more easily.

5) Drink water, little and often. water is critical to many reactions in the body. They occur much more easily in the presence of ample supplies of water. Muscle growth won’t happen without water. You will be left feeling bloated and full if you drink massive amounts of water at once.

Alright, so we have go the basic covered. Now then for muscle building purposes what food is good. Here are some great foods for your to try:

Protein is needed for growth and repair of muscles. Naturally this is very important for those wishing to pack on mass.Fantastic sources of protein include: Cheese, Egg Whites, Turkey Breast, Salmon, Lean Beef, Chicken Breast, Tuna Cottage Whey Protein.

Carbohydrate helps support the bodies muscle growth and is the bodies supply of energy for day to day activities and workouts.In your diet to aid muscle growth and provide energy try to include the following foods: Brown Rice, Baked Potatoes, Whole Wheat Pasta, Sweet Potatoes, Bagels, Oatmeal, Fat Free Yogurt and Beans.

Build muscle diets often neglect to mention that fats are important too. Certain metabolic functions need to be sustained by different types of fat. For fats that build muscle try to include in your diet: Avocado, Olive Oil, Nuts, Flax Seed Oil, Natural Peanut Butter and Fish Oil

Vitamins and minerals play a wide variety of roles in all of the important reactions in the body including muscle growth. Great source of vitamins and minerals are: Broccoli, Cauliflower, Asparagus, Green Beans, Peas, Carrots and Spinach.

With those guidelines in mind you ought to be able to build some serious muscle mass. Remember that lots of calories are required by the body for both energy and to support the growth of enlarged muscle tissue and growth. You will not grow if you do not consume excess calories. OK now you know what to eat to gain muscle you should have no problems building muscle.

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!! 

When attempting to build muscle up it is surprisingly easy to sabotage your own progress and get carried away or to put yourself at risk unnecessarily. Sure it is great that you want to workout and build muscle up but at the same time one bad injury, one forgetful moment can put you out of action for months and with possible health and financial consequences. With this in mind the following guidelines are provided so that you can say away from such traumatic incidents. Here we go with our build muscle up safely guidelines:

1) Always check and double check you have put the barbell collars on before you start lifting. If one is even slightly lose it can unbalance the bar making one side heavier. The heavier side will drop down and the weight disc can slip further and drop off. If this happens the heavy side will force the light side to be thrown upwards. real damage could be caused to people or equipment as the barbell is flipped mercilessly through the air!

2) If you are doing one rep maximum lifts then do so with a spotter. This is someone who can jump in and lend a hand if you are struggling. The last thing you want to occur is to have yourself stuck weighted down by a heavy barbell, you may laugh but I’ve seen it happen.

3) If you are sick don’t train. Seems too obvious but I regularly see people who are clearly suffering from a high fever and cough splutter, there way through a training session. Most commonly the session produces no personal bests and the next few days are spent in recovering in bed. Exercise lowers the immune system for a while and if you are already feeling sick this is when the virus will capitalize on your weakness and take a hold of you more.

4) Use proper technique. If you perform exercises incorrectly like swinging barbells using your body’s momentum then you not only risk serious injury but you will also make little progress as you aren’t targeting the muscle group well enough. Always use strict form.

5) Don’t push it too much. It is very common when motivation is high especially for newbie’s that you want to lift weights as often as possible. This motivation is fine but working out everyday or even every second day will likely be too much for the majority of people unless a split routine is used. You will more than likely weaken your muscles if you do another training session before they have full recuperated from the last session.

6) Not eating properly. If you want to build muscle then you are going to have to consider muscle building nutrition as very important. You will be wasting your time in the gym if you are not taking on board enough calories to support muscle growth. During the day eat frequently high quality nutritional meals.

7) Boasting to you gym partner. Lifting too much weight and competing with friends can be great motivation but also can be a recipe for disaster. Trying to beat your own personal best scores is far more productive. Fill in a training log every workout so you can see exactly what your previous scores were and aim to beat those. This will be much more fruitful and reduce your risk of injury.

Warm up adequately. If you do not then your muscle are far more likely to tear and get damaged. This could possibly restrict your participation for months. It is very easy to do, 5-10 minutes aerobic work, a few stretching exercises and then a few warm up sets will be enough.

With those above guidelines in mind and with correct muscle building nutrition there is no reason why you should not workout to build muscle happily and safely where ever you train.

As we are all aware a good muscle building diet is critical to build muscle up. What is also important is the timing of your meals. Two hours before your workout is when I advise you to eat your meal.This should provide plentyof time to so that you don’t start your workout when you are bloated or still feeling full and sluggish.

Ideally this preworkout meal should be something that you are used to and that you know won’t make you feel heavy and bloated as you want to be at your best to give your all in the gym. Make sure it includes slow burning energy such as from rice or oatmeal and that you eat the protein part first. If you don’t eat protein first then you are putting yourself at risk of becoming tired. This happens because both the protein and carbohydrate cause the body to release certain chemicals that affect the brain. Protein stimulates the release of tyrosine which signals your brain to be alert and energetic as opposed to the carbohydrate which stimulates the release of tryptophan and instructs the brain to make you feel tired. Therefore always eat the protein first.

If you really want to know how to build muscles quickly then great advice is to drink a protein and carbohydrate shake about half an hour before you workout. This will give you a good boost of ebergy for your session. Ingredients should include whey protein, maltodextrin, wxymaize or dextrose. The total drink should have around 25 grams of protein and about forty grams of carbs. Doing this will increase your bodies insulin levels which is one of the bodies strongest muscle building hormones. Furthermore it will also cut down the amount of cortisol that is produced by your body which has a negative impact on muscle building.

Remember that spending time in the gym when you start your session already hungry and lethargic is not likely to make it a productive session. Always try to have fruit or meal replacement powders or bars handy should you not have time for a proper pre-workout meal.

As regards caffeine why not try get your hit from a nice antioxidant loaded green tea it provides less caffeine but is also a good deal better for you in many ways. Finally, don’t forget to keep taking on board the water, this is critical too. Ok bear those things in mind and you’ll be hitting the gym in peak mode for an awesome muscle stimulating workout which you will be able to grow from because you will have had the correct muscle building nutrition.

‘Why am I not getting bigger?’ is one of the most frequently asked questions around the world by bodybuilders. After all you are training hard, with good muscle building nutrition in your diet, yet your gains are still minimal. Your motivation can be dramatically reduced by the sense of frustration after months of effort. So, what precisely is the answer? Well, there are a few likely causes, see if any of these ring a bell with you, together they show you how to build muscle up:

1) Are you eating lots? Under eaters could be the real name for many hardgainers. As this is a major reason for poor muscle growth. In bodybuilding the key to weight gain is eating, lots and often! Consuming food every two hours is a very useful guideline that will help you intake the required amount of calories. Make sure you snack lots on food such as: dried fruit and nuts, yoghurt, cottage cheese,  cereal and milk, protein bars, fresh fruit, and protein shakes, etc

2) Are you getting enough protein? To build muscle mass fast you should aim for 1.Each day you should get per pound of body weight 5 grams of protein. Awesome sources of protein are: chicken, fish, turkey as well as dairy products. As you want to bulk up do not by the low fat variety for every product you need the excess calories. of course you need quality calories but you can do a cutting stage at a later date to remove excess fat. A great way to take on board quality protein is to purchase the large tubs of whey protein.

3) Have your routines gone stale? If you can reel off your routine from the top of your head then that probably means you have been doing the same for thing for quite a while now. If you are not provoking your body to grow in new and different ways then it simply is not going to grow. What about really mixing things up with aided lifts, negatives, partials, super sets and so on. You could try 10 sets of 10 reps for any major exercise like squats, simply reverse your workout order, do more supersets (get ready to be sore!) or even allow yourself a week off from working out and let your body totally recover. Make use of the endless amount of variations that are possible.

4) Are getting enough rest? Did you ever see anyone walk into a fitness centre workout and then come out having put on half a stone of muscle? Never. Clearly then you build muscle mass when you are at home and not when you are lifting barbells. If you are not resting lots then you are limiting the amount of time available for the muscle to grow. If anything you want to give yourself extra time to grow not less. Try limiting your workouts to one muscle group per week. Also reducing the number of sets per body part, how about a maximum of 3-5 really intense sets per body part per workout. Why not try them yourself, you might be pleasantly suprised by your progress!

5) Are you consuming enough water? You will limit your progress if you don’t get an adequate supply of water. In order to grow, your muscles need copious amounts of water. Always keep a water bottle to hand and make use of it.

So the question we began with: “Why am I not growing quicker?’ as you can tell has many answers. Answer with extreme honesty the above questions and if you need to make a few changes then do so. If you are not satisfying just one of the above criteria then you have found the reason why you are not growing. Change is required if more than one of these points is not being addressed by your bodybuilding lifestyle. Of course there may well be other reasons why you might aren’t growing but they are are the usual suspects. Now go pump some iron and start growing!

As we are all aware a good muscle building diet is critical to build muscle up. What is also important is the timing of your meals. I recommend that you have a solid meal around 2 hours prior to your workout.This should provide plenty of time for digestion so that you don’t start your session when you are feeling bloated or full and lethargic.

In an ideal world this preworkout snack ought to be something that you are used to and that you know won’t make you feel heavy and bloated as you want to be feeling your best to give your all in the gym. You should try to include some slow burning energy such as oatmeal but make sure that you have some protein first. You are in danger of becoming tired if you eat the protein after the carbohydrate. This happens because both the protein and carbohydrate cause the body to release certain chemicals that affect the brain. Protein releases tyrosine which signals your brain to be alert and energetic whereas the carbohydrate triggers the release of tryptophan that tells the brain to become sleepy. Therefore always consume the carbohydrate last.

If you really want to know how to build muscles quickly then great advice is to drink a protein and carbohydrate shake about half an hour before you workout. This will really enhance your energy levels for your training session. Ingredients should include whey protein, maltodextrin, wxymaize or dextrose. Try to aim for 25 grams of protein and around 40 grams of carbohydrate. Doing this will boost your insulin levels which is one of the bodies most powerful muscle building hormones. What’s more it will also reduce the production of cortisol which has a negative affect on building muscle.

Remember that spending time in the gym when you start your session already hungry and lethargic is not likely to make it a productive session. Always try to keep fruit or meal replacement powders or bars to hand should you ever not have time for a proper solid pre-workout meal.

If you are a regular coffee drinker then try and switch your coffee for a green tea which contains less caffeine but has lots more health benefits. Lastly, remember to keep taking on water, this is critical too. Ok bear those things in mind and you’ll be hitting the gym in peak mode for an awesome muscle stimulating workout which you will be able to grow from because you will have had the correct muscle building nutrition.