Archive for the ‘Fitness’ Category

3 Strength Training Principles

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

by Caleb Lee

Strength training is a skill. Basically, everyone is walking around with a “V8 engine” (their musculature) but only firing on “4 cylinders” - no one is actually using their muscles to their fullest potential.

Your body actually keeps you from using all the strength of your muscles, as a safey mechanism. Your strength generally does not exceed 30% of your tendon structural strength. For instance, when people are electricuted their muscles often contract so hard that they break their bone structures.

For this reason, you can become A LOT stronger by learning how to “fire” more of your muscles and get them to tighten harder with more tension… if you just stick to these three rules for all-out strength training:

Rule #1: Focus On A Few Full Body Exercises

If you want your entire body to be on top form, just give attention to a limited full body exercises. Therefore, you should do it all as one unit. As well as you will find ideal hormone stimulation by training your whole body by way of this. Squats, Deadlifts, Overhead Press, and the Bench Press are perfect.

Rule #2: Focus on High Resistance

To build strength your lifts must be done with high resistance. This is done by lifting heavy weights (or doing bodyweight exercises with unfavorable weight distribution and poor leverage) and by maximally contracting (tensing) your muscles as you lift.

The purpose is to gain extra muscle fibers by:

1. Tightening up every muscle as firmly as possible during the course of the workout and…

2. At the same time sustaining high tension lifting the weight as rapid as possible.

Rule No. 3: Give Attention To Multiple Sets of Low Reps

Because strength is a skill you can’t practice “sloppily”. Practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. So you must practice being strong. Each rep must be done as perfectly as possible (according to the above guidelines). Keep the reps low so you can stay mentally focused. Also, this will keep you from getting fatigued and getting sloppy. Avoid muscle failure.

In other words, you should learn to lift weighty stuff as possible. While remaining invigorated as possible.

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How to Increase Muscle Mass, Basic Techniques

Monday, November 10th, 2008

by Ricardo d Argence

You will have better luck building your muscles if you begin as young as possible. Until you can grasp the meanings of water, food and supplements in your daily consumption, it is better to keep your bodybuilding lifestyle minimal. The best thing to do is to begin your workout as early in the morning as possible in order to jump start your metabolism while building muscle and burning fat during the entire day which will produce even more muscle mass.

Commit to ignoring marketing ploys and comparing the appearance of other bodybuiders to yours when focusing on your own endeavors. It is imperative that you understand how or why you are doing what you do to build muscle mass.

On the other hand, changing your routine too often will not cause the right stimualtion of muscles. The body takes time to adapt to change. This means that if you wish to change or grow you muscles, you will need to do something over and over. Building and keeping muscle requires plenty of time, patience and regular repetition of workouts. Muscle growth tends to stall and plateau with the same workout, so you have to alter your routine slightly if you want to see continued growth.

Look for a weight-training regimine that makes you workout good and be loyal to it. When you notice it is becoming non-effective change it. Shift to another routine after gaining from first.

To achieve you’re goals you’ll only have to rely on the basics. With the countless number of workout programs, supplements, pills, training methods and theories out there it would be prudent to be skeptical of these claims. Keep yourself focused and motivated by using healthy and straightforward values. Are supplements really necessary? Absolutely-that is, if you want all the essential nutrients and vitamins your body requires. If you are a bodybuilder you need to consume protein, creatine and various multivitamins. They aid in recovering from your intense daily workouts.

It is important to learn how to exercise, which means learning the benefit of compound movements, which will help muscle grow fast. Isolate your movements, it will help with the response of hormones, endurance, and quick muscle building quicker than heavy lifting. Meaning sensibly heavy enough for you to achieve results. As you continue to work out, you will be able to slowly increase the weight you use.

Attending to your body by keeping close tabs on your diet will help you to attain top results. Make sure you do not diet incorrectly to hinder the long term growth of your muscles. People can actually lose some of their muscle mass through not following a good diet plan. For every pound of total body weight you lose, you lose 60% muscle and 40% fat. Do not starve your body of what it needs. Keep in mind that you should alternate the days you perform cardiovascular workouts in your training routine, and that these workouts will burn calories.

Don’t forget that you need rest and time to recover from exercise-related inflammation and promote muscle building for the long run.

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Do’s and Dont’s of Muscle Building for Beginners

Friday, October 31st, 2008

by Ricardo d Argence

There are many techniques and routines that you can use to build your muscle mass, if indeed you perform them properly while paying attention to your daily food and water intake. Of course, you also have to make sure that you are taking proper care of yourself and you muscles by resting and recovering from all your hard work. However, there are also many other issues that you should not do, as these things can cause your body harm or provide you with an unwanted unbalance in your physique.

Always have a plan for your bodybuilding workout. Begin by equipping yourself with an adequate notebook and a trustworthy pen. Keep this training journal handy and up to date. While writing down where you’re at now, write down your goals for the future, and how you’re going to get there.

Make sure to clearly outline your workout to fulfill your strategy.

To help prevent you from missing scheduled workouts keep a journal and calendar of your training. It’s very important never fail to your scheduled workouts when you are a bodybuilder. Keeping a diet plan and recording your measurements will help you track your progress when it comes to keeping up with your diet.

You may want to include your diet plan in your training journal or you may wish to keep another journal especially for your diet. Your diet is vital when you want to burn fat and build muscles, so make sure you are consuming what you should when you should to achieve your desired results. Remember you cannot starve yourself and build muscle.

There are various bodybuilding products available on the market. You should know to not buy into the marketing hype as most likely the claims are bogus. It is best stick with tried and proven methods to reach your intended goal. Otherwise, you may just be wasting your time and your money.

Challenging yourself everyday with techniques will help you grow muscles, however when you are not experiencing continual growth you should consider other options. Your muscle growth will plateau if you are doing the same things every week, as it satisfies the effort you put into it. By adding just a bit more weight each time, You can push yourself to surpass previous workouts.

You also need the proper amount of rest and recovery. Get plenty of restful sleep to recover from muscle inflammation and soreness by resting more often.

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Secrets to Natural Bodybuilding, Alcohol Kills Your Muscle Gain

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

by Ricardo d Argence

Alcohol really affects the muscle growth process and in the next few lines I am going to tell you why.

Too much alcohol will almost definitely have a significant negative impact on your muscle-building results. Alcohol is far more harmful than most people think, and it’s very important that you understand how this drug is affecting your progress.

It negatively affects protein synthesis. Protein is made by the joining of amino acids to form complete proteins. The problem becomes obvious when you realize that your muscles, which are composed of mostly protein, work less when alcohol is consumed in large amounts.

Alcohol reduces the amount of testosterone in the body and raises the body’s estrogen level. Testosterone is the most important muscle-building hormone in your body. However much a person lifts weights, their testosterone levels limit their peak muscle mass. Higher free testosterone levels will help you burn fat and build huge muscles.

Alcohol causes dehydration. The kidneys must filter very large amounts of water in order to break down the alcohol, and this can result in severe dehydration within the body. Water plays an absolutely crucial role in the muscle-building process, and being even slightly dehydrated is a recipe for disaster. The muscles alone are comprised of 70% water.

Significant vitamins such as A, C, B, Calcium and several others are depleted quickly when you drink alcohol. Natural supplements keep your bodies running correctly and much of this is related to muscular development and maintaining such.

Alcohol can actually be quite fattening with its 7 empty calories per gram. Drinking can also mess with the Kreb’s Cycle, which is critical to burning more fat.

Alcohol consumption affects the quality of your sleep, more so when you consume the alcohol during the hours you normally sleep. Obviously, a good night’s sleep each night is crucial to the development of muscle mass. You must also get in enough rest and recovery or your efforts will be thwarted.

It’s important to have fun in life, but too much fun can lead to problems. If you’re serious about achieving significant muscle-building results, you definitely need to monitor your intake of alcohol and make sure that you are consuming it in moderation.

Don’t be afraid to go out and have a good time once in a while, just make sure to keep your drinking nights infrequent and properly nourish yourself to lessen its effects.

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Ways To Improve Your Muscle Gain

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

by Jason Storm

There are a lot of people that are using a lot of their time to work out and still are not able to get the body they are desiring. Others have found a way that works alright but still have the feeling that it could be better. If you fit into one of these groups - read on.

There are definitely ways to go about your time at the gym that will make the results come much easier. In this article I will examine some of the things you can do to get the muscle gain you are looking for.

There are a lot of mistakes that people do that make them work much harder than they need to. The most common are: -To not use weights that are enough heavy -To do more reps than they should -To spend to long hours at the gym -To not let the muscles rest long enough in between their work outs

First of all, the weights. They should be heavy. Make sure that you wouldn’t be able to make one more lift after your last rep, this is how heavy they should be. If this is not the case your body will not be triggered to produce much more muscle tissue and you will not be able to see your muscles grow.

Using light weight often lead to people making tons of reps instead, feeling that it is easy and thinking that if they lift 50 times they will see more gain. This is not the best way to work out. To do fewer reps with heavy weights will give you the best results. For most muscle groups 3 sets of 6-8 reps is a good number and make sure that the resting time between your sets are less than 1 minute. Remember fewer reps means that you have made your muscles work out the best.

Some people think that the more time they spend at the gym, the more muscles they will gain. This is simply not true. The energy that’s stored in your body in form of carbohydrates lasts for no longer than 45 minutes while working out. After that, you body might use the protein in your muscles to get the energy it needs to be able to perform. Make it a habit to spend only 30-45 minutes each session.

You also want to make sure that you let each muscle group you have been working out rest for 2 days until you work them again. This ensures that they will be able to build up the muscle tissue properly.

These few things are basic knowledge that is important to have when you want to gain muscles properly. This builds a stable base and from there you can experiment with different exercises and find the ones that works best for you.

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