Posts Tagged ‘bodybuilding’
If you’re just starting to body build, it is important to note that the two most important things is a proper diet and correct execution of compound exercises. I can’t stress this enough, and to work up in weight incrementally.
You can probably lift more than the weight you should begin with, but the key is to do the exercises consistently.
For true body building success, you must stick to the program and not over-train; beginners should be disciplined and not be disappointed with the lack of immediate results.
Building and strengthening the muscles requires compound exercises, by the time you have a acquired the muscle power that you want, then you can start performing isolation exercises.
Compound exercises are ones in which at least two joints are used to do the exercise movement, so for chest & triceps, you’ll want to do DIPS or BENCH PRESS, for lats and biceps you’ll want to do PULLUPS or LAT BAR PULL DOWN, for legs… it’s SQUATS and then DEADLIFT (which also hits your lower back).
For your shoulder & triceps, you’ll wan to do MILITARY PRESS, CLEAN & JERKS or SQUAT PRESSES.
CALF WORK, because of the unique nature of that muscle group, requires the intensity of CALF RAISES & DONKEY PRESSES which only work one joint, so they tend to be an isolation exercise.
Repetitions and sets must also be considered after laying down the plans for the structure of the exercises.
It’s suggested that beginning bodybuilders, for the first two weeks do light weights and high reps to get your muscles primed for the growth phase, so you want to start with 1 or 2 sets and work your way up to 4 or 5 sets of 12 to 15 reps (this includes your warm-up sets).
Then you’ll want to swap out exercises, so if you’ve been doing WEIGHTED DIPS it’s time for BENCH PRESS, and you’ll want to raise the weight maybe 15 or 20% and do less sets and less reps (say 2 or 3 sets of 6 to 8 reps), stay on this course for two weeks, then it’s it time to bring the weight back down and do 4 or 5 sets of 10 to 12 reps for one week, then you can jump up in weight from the heavy phase, but do less reps and sets.
The key element here is to a) switch up the routine so your body has to constantly adapt b) build strength and mass by alternating what intensity of weights you pump. What it adds up to is better calorie burns, stamina and strength through one heavy set of exercises per week partnered with light yet repetitive exercises for the remaining days of the week.
Once you’ve been on the compound exercise cycle for about 6 weeks, you can start to slowly work in isolation exercises, these are exercises that use one joint to move the weight.
For example, do the barbell or PREACHER CURL, instead DUMBBELL CURLS. You want to do the FRENCH PRESS instead of ONE-ARM TRICEP PRESSES, LEG EXTENSIONS instead of LEG PRESSES, and so on. After getting the form and structure that you want, adapting more unusual exercises won’t be a problem. Although it’s nearly impossible to do “spot work,” you can eke out specific gains by alternating your routine and the reps/sets combinations.
For instance, when doing EZ-BAR BICEP CURLS, instead of doing 4 or 5 sets of 12 to 15 reps, do two sets of 21s; 21s for BICEP CURLS are when you do 7 reps of vertical to 90 degrees, then 7 reps of 90 degrees to the full contraction, and then finally 7 reps of the full motion… all without a break. That’s a burn that you won’t forget, and it’s a great way to shock you muscles if you’ve reach a plateau.
Your perseverance to stay on the program would be the most important key to achieve the body improvements that you want regardless of how hard it may be at the start.
Also, getting more than enough rest and eating right, actually eating more than ever have before.
Your diet is the most important thing whether you’re first starting out or a seasoned pro. The right diet will play a major part in your improvement; however a bad diet will undermine the effects of the workout.
Let me leave you with one more thought. Top trainers strongly believe that bodyweight exercises are requirements before advancing to weigh lifting.
For that reason, you may want to start out doing bodyweight exercises.
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 watched an inspiring film that prompted you to take action, perhaps a friend of yours you hadn’t seen for a while turned up having lost a lot of weight or having gained significant muscle mass or perhaps you were just fed up of feeling lethargic and unfit. 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 exotic tough area of the globe like the Himalayas,The Andes or The Alps. With this trip in mind you really have a goal to aim for. 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.
Enter a local event. Get online and seek out a local fun run, marathon or other similar such event, I bet there is plenty. Target one of these events as a goal to aim for. Inform a close friend of yours about your future intentions so they can act as a buddy and provide encouragement to you and come to support you on the day.
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. The first few sessions you will feel the strain but over the course of a few weeks you will get noticeably 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. Performing this projects strong messages to your sub conscious mind as regards what decisions you ought to be making throughout your day. Repeat this daily and continuously and your behaviour will naturally alter itself and begin to take you towards your goals automatically. This technique is proven to work and used by many top athletes.
Involve family, friends and even your pet dog. The more that you get involved the less likely you are to throw the towel in and quit. 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.
Teach yourself more. 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 increasing your knowledge you are more likely to succeed and more likely to reach your goal quicker aswell and therefore more likely to stay motivated.
Make sure that you do not make comparisons of yourself with others. It doesn’t matter who you are there will aways be someone fitter, sexier, stronger or whatever than you. Accept this fact and realise that you all go through this process of life from your own differing 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.
Weightlifting has it’s own equipments for workouts and routines like other sports and activities. One is the weightlifting belt…
The efficiency of weightlifting belts is definitely subject to controversies, and opinions about safety remain very divided. The main criticism against weightlifting belts is that they allow athletes to lift more than they should thus reducing the safety of the exercises. Another criticism against belts is that they back muscles responsible for body stability and the gripping muscles of the forearms don’t get the same stimulation and lose during training. In some other people’s opinion, weightlifting belts promote better stability and protection against various training risks. Normally, weightlifting belts have been designed to support the back effort and reduce the risk of damaging the spinal cord while exercising.
Pros claim that it’s a good habit to wear weightlifting belts particularly in competitions, although the equipment is widely available and used by amateurs too. By the support provided to the back, the spine remains in a good posture and no damage occurs at the level of the soft tissues; there is however a problem. The long term and short term impact of wearing weightlifting belts is pretty serious. These equipment items can increase the intra-abdominal pressure beyond accepted levels. Yes, the intestinal muscles are indeed protected against injuries, but you could develop hypertension because of the tightness of the belt.
The weightlifting belts are available in various designs, allowing adjustments to the pressure level and the body height. The weightlifting belts designed for power lifting are more special than the rest as they have to provide a superior kind of protection. Usually made of leather, such belts are braced by neoprene. You may find out which belt fits you best by talking to a fitness expert who can recommend an item to match your physiognomy and your training objectives. Besides leather and neoprene, weightlifting belts are also made of nylon or cotton, and may be padded or not padded. As for the sizes available, they range from XS and S to XL and XXL.
Besides safety, weightlifting belts do very little to improve the athletes’ performance. And despite the common belief that they help one train better, studies debunk this myth. Research conducted at the Albany Medical Center, N.Y., revealed almost no difference between the group of weightlifters who wore belts and the group who didn’t. Even without the much emphasized back protection provided by the belt, the back muscles have better chances of developing and increasing in strength. Even so, wearing weightlifting belts helps amateurs a lot, on the one condition that they not be worn extensively.
We will discuss some bodybuilding myths. While it is good to take advice from others, you should be careful where you get your advice from. There are new sites coming online related to building muscle all the time and you need to understand that some of the advice is flat out wrong. We will go over four myths so that you will stay on track with your goals of how to build muscle fast.
Myth – Bodybuilding will make you slow. Years ago bodybuilders were looked at as muscle bound. Packing on some muscle can cause you to be quicker. When you are moving your body and running and jumping, your muscles are involved. Your muscles will supply more force, the stronger they are.
Myth – Getting a pump is what builds muscle. This feeling of pumped up is when the muscles get filled with blood. You actually look and feel bigger. This feeling and the way you look after you workout does not mean that you stimulated your muscles to grow. Lifting more weight or more reps than you did in your previous workout is how to gain muscle mass.
Myth – Perfect form is always important. Good technique is important but not to the point of being crazy about it. Don’t be a machine and think you have to move exactly like you saw in a body building book. Don’t be afraid to use a bit of momentum. For example, if you are doing barbell curls, some books will have you stand so straight it is ridiculous. It is not natural. Think of what is natural for your body. It is not natural to stand straight and look ahead while curling a weight. I little body momentum is fine and actually helpful to not injuring yourself.
Myth – You must feel the burn. This lactic acid inside your muscles causes this burning sensation. Higher reps will give you this burn as opposed to lower reps. Keep your reps in the range from 5-7 for best muscle gains. Forget the pump and concentrate on lifting heavier when doing your bodybuilding workouts.
As stated in my previous article, there are different ways to build muscle fast. You have to ask yourself some questions. How often do you want to go to the gym? How hard (intense) do you want to train when you are there. If you do not want to go to failure, then you probably do not want to follow a high intensity routine. In this routine you would lift the weight until you can not do any more reps. it’s not easy and requires a great deal of will power.
When training with high intensity, you will need a lot of time to recover. Maybe a few days to a week or more per body part. If you really enjoy going to the gym and do not want to push yourself and train high intensity, you might want to try another routine,. One where you can not go to failure and save a little bit for the next workout which might be a few days later.
I prefer high intensity and I believe it is the fastest way to gain muscle but not the only way. And there are so many hours in the day. Why spend too long in the gym and too long training each body part. Hit each body part once a week and hit them hard. Then rest and eat. Go to failure on each set or close to failure and do not do more than a couple of sets per exercise and a couple of sets per body part.
So remember, if you train with high intensity, train only for a short period of time and not too often. Get the rest and nutrition you need to recover and grow. Train, eat, rest, and grow is the formula to build bigger muscle.
There are many ways to skin a cat as they say. There are also many ways on how to build muscle fast. The issue is which is the fastest and which way develops usable strength while also building muscle.
For those of us who are trying to pack on some muscle in the quickest way possible, high intensity training is a tried and true form of bodybuilding training.
Our goal is to lift the most weights, while doing relatively low to medium reps, resting and getting the proper nutrition. Don’t do too many sets and exercises. Train each body part about once per week and get plenty of rest and the proper nutrition while lifting heavy on the basics exercises. Exercises like the bench press, dips, squats, dead lifts and bicep curls.
Train your chest with triceps and shoulders and your back with biceps. Basically, separate your pushing and pulling movements to different days. This is because you do not want to overwork your muscles. If you are bench pressing one day and then you work your triceps a couple of days later, your triceps might get overworked. This is because they were already worked while doing bench presses.
I believe dead lifts are a great upper body exercise that also hits the legs. Some like me, have trouble dead lifting, due to back issues. There is another way. Stand inside a trap bar to do deadlights. It is easier on my back and it might be on yours as well. I believe more and more lifters are coming back to this bar as it is a more natural feeling. At least for some of us.
Try doing only one or two sets for each exercise and only one or two exercises per body part. You might be surprised that this abbreviated training works wonders. Learn more about how to build muscle fast .
It is quite common to see adverts for ab cruncher machines on television or in magazines, but do they work? The answer to that is yes and no. Let me explain further what I mean by this. This is the key on how to get ripped abs. These appliances exercise and work the layers of abdominal muscles. Different aspects of the abdominal muscles can worked by these machines. The plan is that these appliances will stimulate the abdominal muscles to get bigger. Using these machines alone is unlikely to produce a set of lean, rippling abs. The reason for this is that in order to get ripped abs you need to remove that layer of fat tissue that overlays the abs. Programs such as vince delmonte training work on these principles.
Using these machines alone will not remove of this layer of fat focally over the abs. Performing many sit ups will not burn this fat off for the same reason. The only way to do this is by reducing calorie intake and burning excess calories, therefore losing fat all over the body.
One of the best ways to burn calories is to add aerobic exercises into your exercise plan and to perform exercises that use the large muscles of the body such as the quads. The quadriceps is the big muscles that lies at the top, on the front of the thigh. Squats exercises exercise these muscles. As they are big they produce a lot of thermal energy and burn a lot of calories and so are particularly good for losing weight. An additional benefit to exercising these muscles is that they enhance the manufacture of the body’s growth hormone production. Thisincreases muscle growth which helps with abs growth. The most commonly performed aerobic exercises arerowing, running and cycling. For fat burning it is better to do these exercises over a long period of time. If you want to keep a perfect steady, fat burning pace, then going on the machines at the gym will help.
So these ab cruncher machines will help you get a visible set of abdominal muscles but not by using them in isolation. You will need to combine them with fat busting aerobic exercises. Great ab development can be seen in as little as twelve weeks if you apply this advice consistently.
We will discuss some common mistakes in bodybuilding concerning diet. We will discuss what to do about these mistakes.
Not giving one diet enough time – Don’t expect to change your diet and then make great gains in a matter of a week. It can take 3 weeks for your body to get used to your new diet. Think of your diet as helping your bodybuilding workouts, not a means to an end in itself. Meaning, if you have a perfect diet, that alone won’t do it. The laws of muscle building still apply. You will have to lift weight and recover before your muscles will grow. And this takes time. So don’t keep on changing your diet because you are not getting quick results.
Not counting calories – This applies most to those competing in bodybuilding. If this is your real job or you just want to be the best you can be when competing, then you must track everything. This includes tracking your food intake. Carbs, fats and proteins. You might not be meeting your bodybuilding goals because you are not eating the right amount of carbs, fat or protein.
Relying on supplements too much – Supplements are just that. They supplement your diet and it is your training, diet and with rest, which will give you your success for packing on muscle.
Inconsistent eating – You need to be consistent in how often and how much you eat. Stick to your plan and don’t alter it. Missing meals is going to hurt your goal of muscle growth. You made the plan for a reason, now stick with it.
Judging success by your Scale – If you are trying to trim down your fat, don’t just rely on the scale. Scales are deceiving as you can lose muscle and think you are on the right track or gain muscle mass and think you did not lose fat.
When starting out in your muscle building workouts, you will want to find a good routine fit for you. So what will work best for you? Lets look at ways you can tell if a routine will work and work for you.
First, you want to make sure that whatever routine you might follow, it has gotten results for those that have subscribed to its teachings.
You need a routine that is progressive in its training advice. Meaning, you want to keep progressively overloading your muscles with heavier weight as you get stronger.
Recovering between workouts is something that is very important and should not be pushed aside. Your body needs to recover so it can be ready to lift heavy for the next workout. The routine you are looking at should mention rest as a necessary factor of gaining muscle. Your muscles actually grow when they are resting.
Is the routine right for you specifically? Maybe because of health reasons a routine that is considered high intensity might be too much for you to handle. If you are someone that does not want to go to the max in your training, then high intensity training is not be for you.
Although high intensity training is the fastest way for muscle mass building, you might not be willing to take your mind to the limit and go to failure at each workout. It might be too much stress for you. The good thing though, is that you can go to the gym less often with high intensity training.
There are routines that call for more volume in their training program. These routines have you lifting lighter weights for more sets and reps. Now someone else might find this taxing on them as they have to concentrate for longer periods of time in their training. So find what works best for you, not only physically but mentally.
Why would your muscles stop growing when you are still doing muscle building workouts. Let’s look at some reasons that your muscles do not continue to grow and what you can do to reverse this.
Intense body building training breaks down your muscles. You might be training harder than you should be or more often than you should be. Train each body part once or twice per week only.
You need proper rest in order to have your muscles grow. Sleep is when your muscles grow bigger. Lack of sleep can negate your hard workouts and make them useless.
The same applies to how long you are training. Don’t spend more than 1 hour in the gym working out. That is one hour total for the day, not per body part. Your level of Cortisol increases after 45 minutes. This is a hormone that has been known to kill muscle cells.
Besides being unhealthy, drinking can cause your muscles to break down.
By not changing your bodybuilding schedule, your body can get used to your workouts and stop growing. Change up the order of the exercises or change to different exercises every couple of months.
When you want to gain muscle fast, your goal is to increase the weight gradually that you lift. Or increase the reps you do. Not doing this could affect your results negatively.
Eating enough protein is important to your muscle growth. Many state that 1 gram of protein is enough per bodyweight when trying to pack on size. Protein shakes and bars will help if you can not eat enough.
These reason listed above can be responsible for your lack of muscle weight gain. In the right circumstances, your body will grow but you need to make sure you are training properly, eating properly and getting enough rest.
You don’t have to be a fanatic about this unless this is your full time job. Living to eat enough protein and training hard every workout regardless of how you feel may not be something you want to do but follow this as best you can to get bigger in the fastest possible time.