November 16, 2009

Muscle Mass Building Workout and Intensity

When you are doing muscle building workouts, it is inevitable that you will reach some sort of plateau. We will discuss some training methods that can help you break past these plateaus. One thing bodybuilders want is to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible when training a body part. You need to train at certain intensity in order to do this.

Let’s go over some ways to increase your intensity:

Increase the weight lifted. Gradually increasing the weight you are using in a given exercise will help in building bigger muscles. This is probably the most important tip you will learn for muscle weight gain.

Try different exercises. This can stimulate muscle fibers that were not being stimulated before. If you do a flat bench press, change to incline. If you are doing barbell curls change to dumbbell curls.

Change the rest time between sets. Resting less will help you have more intensity. When resting less, you might give up some strength. Also try resting more so you can be fresher and lift heavier.

Perform supersets. This will cause your strength to be less than best but it is a form of increasing intensity. Do difference exercises back to back without rest.

Partial reps. Once you are finished doing your full reps, you can try and do only part of the rep. As with any high intensity training, use sparingly. Doing too much of this can cause fatigue and can be counter productive.

There are other high intensity techniques. If you want fast muscle gain, you must first want to concentrate on the amount of weight you are lifting. Strive to increase this weight as often as you can while maintaining good form. That is the key. As you get stronger, you will get bigger. Increase the weight or the reps. Once you reach 8 reps, try increasing the weight and then try for 5 reps with the new weight.

Besides training, you will need to get the proper rest and eat to feed your muscle growth.

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November 13, 2009

Starting off as a Body Builder

The most important thing in body building for starters is to carry out compound exercises using the right form doubled with the right diet. 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.

Patience and self control are very important aspects to get results even though you are just starting with the program; don’t lose hope when you don’t see immediate results.

Compound exercises are just the start, wherein you will develop and reinforce the muscles, afterward comes the isolation exercises which you will perform after acquiring substantial strength.

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.

After determining the scheme of your workouts, you would then need to plan how many repetitions and sets are required for the whole program.

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 this adds up to is one set of heavy exercises per week with other days comprised of light yet repetitive actions that would best burn fat while increasing your power and stamina.
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. If you want to move on to more interesting workouts, then you can do so right after acquiring the physique you were aiming for. 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.

Remember that the discipline to continue with the project – even though it already proves to be too hard – is the most necessary ingredient in the body building venture.

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. As said by some of the finest coaches, bodyweight exercises are a prerequisite of weight lifting.

For that reason, you may want to start out doing bodyweight exercises.

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October 29, 2009

How to Build Muscle Quickly

The question of building muscle quickly seems to come up all the time, due in part by our “get it now mentality”. There are ways to help speed up your muscle growth but it will depend on your desire,your genetics and your weightlifting program. There are those that seem to be able to increase their musculature rather quickly and then there are those that are what we call the hard gainers. Your genetic makeup will determine ultimately how big you can get however there are plenty of ways you can still build muscle mass and increase your overall strength. A high quality diet must be eaten everyday and has to include a good source of high quality protein. Using free weights versus using machines, and making sure that you get the right amount of rest before you workout the same body part again.

Follow this list of 5 important points to reach your bodybuilding goals.

Begin To Gain Muscle Quickly

1. Nutrition
High quality meals must be consumed in small increments. 5 to 6 smaller meals eaten throughout the day would be ideal. Each meal should have a good balance of protein, carbohydrates and fat. This is important to maintain the proper blood glucose levels that will make you feel energetic and give you enough energy to supercharge your workouts. The protein you take in each day should be roughly equal to one gram per one pound of lean muscle mass. You have to limit your protein intake for any one sitting because our bodies can only use 25 to 30 grams of protein at any one time. Much more and it will just be a waste.

2.Protein
Using a protein supplement that has the proper amount of the essential amino acids is the best way to make sure you are getting the correct amount of protein. Even if you are eating a well balanced diet of meat, fish and chicken these don’t necessarily have the right amount and quantity of amino acids. You must increase the amount of fruits and vegetables that you eat everyday. Vegetables are easily assimilated and provide many of the important amino acids.

3. Free Weights
Weight training using free weights is a perfect way to build muscle quickly. The size and strength of your muscles is directly related to the stress you put on your muscles. Your muscles will grow stronger and bigger as you increase the weight you are lifting because your body must adapt to the added stimulus. You can build your overall musculature by adding free weights to your program because you are using the smaller muscles that help you to balance the weight you are lifting.

4. Workout without weights
Body weight exercises is a perfect way to compliment your weight training program. You are once again using many of the ancillary muscles to help stabilize and help perform each movement. Make sure to include push ups, pull ups and leg raises to add extra strength and muscle growth. This exercise regime will help give you great definition, endurance and strength.

5. The Importance of Rest
Please understand that you don’t get bigger while you are working out. Your muscles get bigger when you are resting. Get plenty of rest and avoid over training. When we lift weights we are actually breaking down the muscles at the smallest level and we must have the right amount of rest to allow these muscle fibers to repair themselves and get bigger. If you don’t remember anything else you must remember this one thing.

If you use these tips and and give them serious consideration you will be able to start building muscle quickly.

I hope you enjoyed this article on how to build muscle quickly. I also did a review of a very high quality product you might want to take a look at here: The Truth About Building Muscle And for more great ideas on building muscle and getting ripped you will also want to visit Rocko’s site, you can see it here: Rocko’s Guide To Building Muscle Quickly

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