In an earlier article, we concluded that muscles must be worked to failure if an adequate hypertrophic response is to occur. Whether this involves one or more sets is irrelevant as in either scenario the muscles must be worked to failure and beyond. This causes significant microscopic damage to the muscle tissues and it is during the period of recovery that protein synthesis undertakes the repair process that results in bigger muscle fibers.
But how long does this process take and when is it safe to expose those same muscles to further intensive exercise? Scientific studies suggest that muscle fiber degradation takes approximately five to seven days to repair and recover. Any further exposure of the affected muscle to the intensive activity will interfere with the recovery process and actually prevent it from achieving maximum growth. However, using the muscle to assist in exercising other body parts or even taking part in the low-intensity aerobic exercise will not prevent recovery.
It follows therefore that each muscle group should be trained intensively only once each week in order to allow full recovery. This can be achieved by incorporating a split training regime that allows you to work out several times each week but still exercise each muscle group intensively only once every seven days.
Standing Barbell Curl exercise for Biceps(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
You can only build muscle tissue if you can generate progressively stronger muscular contractions, so this calls for an emphasis on finding ways to increase exercise intensity. This should not be confused with exercise duration as maximum training intensity will actually shorten the time needed to achieve maximal muscular growth.
In an earlier article, I outlined the ways in which you can intensify your training. Here we'll focus on the role that forced repetitions have to play in intensifying the training effect.
When you reach the point of muscular failure it is impossible to manage one more complete repetition of any exercise, at least not without losing form or correct technique. There is, however, one way in which you can increase the intensity even further and that is by completing one or more forced repetitions with the help of an experienced training partner.
The best way to achieve this is by keeping the same weights on the bar and have your training partner do no more than is necessary to allow you to complete up the three extra repetitions with good lifting form.
Beginning bodybuilders should avoid forced reps until they have learned good lifting techniques and have prepared their muscles for the stresses involved in this particular approach. Intermediate lifters should consider adding forced reps to one exercise in the pre-exhaust sequence. Advanced bodybuilders can utilize forced reps based on their own needs and judgement.
In the world of bodybuilding, the dietary loss supplement weight controversy is huge. If you are serious about bodybuilding, this is an issue that you cannot avoid - especially if you have body fat. So, what is the deal with the dietary loss supplement weight controversy?
In recent years, many weight loss dietary supplements have been pulled off of store shelves by the FDA. It seems that they have horrendous side effects, such as heart attacks, strokes, and liver damage. But weight loss is still important in the bodybuilding world, so what should you do?
You should use the most miraculous bodybuilding supplement known to man - creatine. Creatine has an incredible number of benefits, it is safe, and it is highly recommended by doctors, scientists, and bodybuilding experts - and even weight loss experts these days.
It is amazing that there are still so many different dietary loss supplement weight products out there being used by bodybuilders - most of which do not work, and others of which are absolutely dangerous - when we have creatine which is highly approved of, incredibly effective, easily affordable, and simply proven to work.
Creatine occurs naturally in the body, and it consists of three amino acids, which include Methionine, Arginine, and Glycine. Once in the liver, these three amino acids are combined, and they produce creatine.
What scientists have found is that when you have plenty of creatine in your system, your muscles use more adenosine triphosphate during exercise. This is important because this is what gives the muscles energy to perform the exercises that you are doing. The more creatine you have in your system, the more ATP you have, and the more exercises you can do.
Creatine is so effective in the process of building muscles that it has been deemed the legal steroid - even though it isn't actually a steroid. Creatine is perfectly safe, and it does not change your estrogen or testosterone levels in any way.
In terms of weight loss, creatine is effective in that it has been proven to burn off excess fat while building lean muscle mass. This happens very easily. The idea is to absolutely drench your muscles with creatine, by taking a creatine supplement. This, in turn, will attract water to those muscles. When this happens, the muscles must expand, which makes them bigger.
Bigger muscles require more energy than smaller muscles. When they cannot find that excess energy anywhere else, the muscles will start using stored body fat for energy. Note that exercise is still required; however this is incredibly beneficial for bodybuilders, and in recent years has settled the great dietary loss supplement weight controversy.
The more work you put into something, the better results you will achieve. This has always been a widely accepted truth that applies to many areas of life. The harder you study, the better grades you will achieve. The more time you spend fine-tuning your athletic skills, the better athlete you will become. The longer you spend learning to play an instrument, the better musician you will become. Therefore, it only makes sense that the more time you spend in the gym, the stronger and more muscular your physique will become, correct? Contrary to what you might think, the answer to this question is a gigantic, definite, absolute no! It is in this area of bodybuilding that conventional wisdom goes straight out the window, down the street and around the corner.
I know what you might be asking yourself…
“What? Spending less time in the gym will actually make me bigger and stronger?”
Yes! It really will, and when we examine the muscle-growth process from its most basic roots, it becomes quite clear why this is the case.
Every single process that occurs within the human body is centered around keeping you alive and healthy. Through thousands of years of evolution, the human body has become quite a fine-tuned organism that can adapt well to the specific conditions that are placed upon it. We become uncomfortable when we are hungry or thirsty, we acquire a suntan when high amounts of UV rays are present, we build calluses to protect our skin, etc. So what happens when we break down muscle tissue in the gym? If you answered something to the effect of "the muscles get bigger and stronger", then congratulations! You are absolutely correct. By battling against resistance beyond the muscle's present capacity we have posed a threat to the musculature. The body recognizes this as potentially harmful and as a natural adaptive response, the muscles will hypertrophy (increase in size) to protect the body against this threat. As we consistently increase the resistance from week to week the body will continue to adapt and grow.
Sound simple? Ultimately it is, but the most important thing to realize in relation to all of this is that the muscles can only grow bigger and stronger if they are provided with sufficient recovery time. Without the proper recovery time, the muscle growth process simply cannot take place.
Your goal in the gym should be to train with the minimum amount of volume needed to yield an adaptive response. Once you have pushed your muscles beyond their present capacity and have triggered your thousand-year-old evolutionary alarm system, you have done your job. Any further stress to the body will simply increase your recovery time, weaken the immune system and send your body into catabolic overdrive.
Most people train way too often and with far more sets than they really need to. High-intensity weight training is much more stressful to the body than most people think. The majority of people structure their workout programs in a manner that actually hinders their gains and prevents them from making the progress that they deserve. Here are 3 basic guidelines that you should follow if you want to achieve maximum gains:
1) Train no more than 3 days per week.
2) Do not let your workouts last for longer than 1 hour.
3) Perform 5-8 sets for large muscle groups (chest, back, thighs) and 2-4 sets for smaller muscle groups (shoulders, biceps, triceps, calves, abs).
Take all sets to the point of muscular failure and focus on progressing in either weight or reps each week. If you truly train hard and are consistent, training more often or any longer than this will be counterproductive to your gains!
Bodybuilder and model Sagi Kalev
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Build arm muscle is one of the most common goals of aspiring bodybuilders. There is no shortage of advice, either in books or on the internet, telling you how to do this. Here in this article, we will show you how to genuinely build arm muscle.
Tip 1
Train sensibly. Many people who are trying to build arm muscle make the mistake of over training. It is easily done, as the arms are used in so many different bodybuilding disciplines. One good way of ensuring you don't over stress your arms is to leave them until the very end of your workout routine.
Tip 2
If you want to build arm muscle effectively, you will want every single rep you perform to be as effective as possible. The goal is to get as many muscle fibers involved as you can. If you can bring as many muscle fibers as you can into play, you will not only develop stronger muscles, they will be more even and have a better tone.
Tip 3
The correct extension of the weight is critical, but control is equally important, throughout the whole of the lift. The strongest determining factor here is the weight itself, so don't defeat yourself by using a weight which is too heavy. In order to make your exercises as effective as you can, make sure the lift is executed as quickly as possible, while you still have the weight under control. As you release the weight, try to do so as slowly as comfortably possible. If you can make this downward phase take at least two seconds, you will be burning a lot more fat.
Tip 4
One point which is often overlooked by beginning arm muscle builders is that there is more than one group of muscles, and you need to work them in a balanced way to achieve optimum results. So many bodybuilders who have not taken enough time to learn the craft properly concentrate solely on biceps, which will lead to an unnatural and uneven development, and may even lead to injury. Make sure you learn how to develop your triceps in harmony with your biceps, for optimum results. Don't risk the pain of a torn ligament!
If you have been struggling to gain results from your arm muscle exercises, take the advice of this article on board, and start seeing some real benefits. Check out the links below to discover some more valuable resources.
There is bodybuilding and there is serious bodybuilding. Serious bodybuilding encompasses training sessions, competitions, and strict regimens of diet and supplements. People that seriously build their body have bulging biceps, titan triceps and glutes of steel. Serious bodybuilders take what they do extremely serious and every part of their mind body and spirit participates in activities that promote elements that solely benefit their ultimate goal.
Ultimate goals can vary within the total realm of bodybuilding. There can be intermediate, moderate, and totally serious participation in bodybuilding. There are guidelines for women and guidelines for men, with each guide being helpful in different parts of the bodybuilding scene.
Supplements, vitamins, and protein drinks are a large part of the bodybuilding lifestyle. And it is a lifestyle. When you are serious about bodybuilding you create a lifestyle where by you eat differently than other people, you exercise in a more dedicated fashion than other people and you also include resting your body and recovering your body from the old ways far more than other people.
What exercises and how much is totally up to you as an individual. The level of weight training and the amount of time you spend under the weights is again a personal decision. However with serious bodybuilding there are serious consequences to being a slacker. You have to be committed to a daily routine that includes all aspects of bodybuilding success in order to see results.
Diet can’t be neglected when bodybuilding is a goal. Choosing foods that fill the natural needs of your body and being disciplined to steer clear of foods that are wasteful or harmful is a key step in any type of bodybuilding regimen. Sometimes that takes a person on a personal pathway they have never forged before, but hopefully there will be a knowledge learned on this path that will carry mind body and spirit throughout the rest of life.
Rest and recovery is key to a embarking into a bodybuilding lifestyle. Getting the proper rest for your mind and body should not have to be explained. Yet there are people out there who neglect the idea that getting correct amount of sleep improves the activities of your day. The time you need in order to feel consistently rested may vary from that of your spouse, siblings, or friends.
Recovering from pushing your self too far, recovering from old habits that resurface, and recovering from a bodybuilding competition are part of the recovery process that generates happiness in life.
People who don’t understand serious bodybuilding may have predisposed ideas about steroids and general unhealthful practices in order to gain recognition as an over bulked, under brained champion. When the opposite is true.
In this article I want to compare traditional long, slow cardio with interval training for fat loss. From a fat loss standpoint, the more calories you burn, the better. Let's see how good long, slow cardio and interval training are at burning calories.
Robert Cheeke, an American bodybuilder. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Long, slow cardio burns more calories during training, but interval training burns more calories overall (during and after training), because it makes you burn calories between training sessions since your body must recover from the intense bout. It's "hard" on your body. Winner: interval training.
Long, slow cardio won't help you gain muscle mass. On the other hand, interval training makes you gain muscle mass, because to sprint or bike like crazy you need to push on the pedal really hard. This builds muscle (think of a sprinter). Since the more muscle you have, the higher is your resting metabolic rate, interval training makes you burn more calories all day, every day. Winner: interval training.
Another benefit of interval training is that it takes much less time (about 30 minutes per session). Winner: interval training.
On the other hand, interval training is too hard for beginners. If you're a beginner, stick to slow jogging first for two weeks, and then experiment with increasing the pace for 5 minutes and walking for the next 5 minutes. Once that becomes easy, shorten the work interval and increase its speed. Winner: long, slow cardio.
Overall, if you're fit, interval training is best. But since it's very hard on the body, no one (even elite runners) does it more than twice per week. So, to lose fat quickly, your best bet is a combination of interval training (1-2 times per week) and long, slow cardio (2-3 times per week). Plus it brings variety to your training, which is good. Winner: both.
To sum up, if you want to maximize fat loss, I suggest you do interval training alone on the days you do it, and that you do some weight lifting and then long, slow cardio on the other days you train.
This being said, the specifics of interval training can get tricky. Hopefully I can share with you the method I prefer later. Athletes and smart trainers use interval training: you also should.
Extremepullup performing a muscle-up - a variant on the standard pull-up. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In these days of
health crazes and the numerous types of advice
on diet and lifestyles it is wise
to sit back and research what you want
to do and have the most efficient way
possible to get it done. A half hour of aerobic training a couple times a week
just isn’t going to cut it to keep you healthy through your lifetime. As we age out routines and bodies change and
require different strategies to stay healthy.
It has been
recommended by the medical experts on training Americans, ALL of them, men and women, should strength train
at least twice a week to work all the
major muscles as well as doing some aerobic activity. Adults 65 and older
should strength train with less weight and more repetitions two to three times
a week.
The public is
finally seeing to build muscle you don’t need to have big equipment and gyms or
even a trainer. Just some common sense and a good diet will do a lot to build
muscle and maintain health. The things that building muscle can do for you are give you an improved body, better immune
system for fighting off illnesses and a faster metabolism so fat burning is
easier .
It is said that without
proper use and exercise we can possibly lose only 5 to 7 pounds of muscle per
decade! And since we gain fat as we get
older this is a recipe for disaster in the making. And we know that besides
building muscle, strength training is a help in adding bone density and
potentially prevent osteoporosis. We
should all do some strength training to just keep ahead of getting out of
condition and making life worse as we get older.
Building muscle is
good at any age as long as you start according to your condition now and don’t
over do it. Muscle building that
involves the whole body such as squats, bicep curls and bench presses are the
best to do as they burn more calories and involve big groups of muscles.
You should alter
your program every month and a half or so to avoid boredom and the plateaus in
muscle building that happen. And don’t forget your cardio workouts. These are
important for building the most important muscle, your heart! As with any new exercise, if you are a
beginner start slowly to begin to build muscle if you aren’t used to the work out
you can hurt yourself trying to lift too much.
Keeping your
muscles toned isn’t necessarily about continually lifting heavier weights. It
is the way you lift and how many reps you do that work to build muscle and
maintain it. And don’t forget your nutrition! Plenty of protein, fruit and vegetables at
every meal is what you need. Watch that
fat! You don’t need nearly as much as you might think even for serious body
building.
Drinking plenty of
water it is essential for life and all body processes. Eat foods in as natural a state as possible:
raw or steamed for veggies. Please cook the meat, however! Men and women can
follow these same guidelines for their muscle building and cardio fitness
though the number of calories and the workout length may need to vary as it
does between individuals anyway. If you
are older, don’t stop if you are in training now, it is the best thing you can
do for the rest of your life! If you
follow a good diet along with a routine you should have results with you
building muscle and re toning what is already there. If you are a beginner,
start slowly and in no time you will be healthier and feel much better about
yourself as you build muscle and your health!
You can only build muscle if your body is in the correct anabolic balance to allow growth to take place. Intensive exercise is clearly an important part of the muscle building process but achieving the maximum muscle mass depends on putting the building blocks in place. This is achieved through sound nutritional practices so you need to be aware of the following anabolic enhancing principles:
1. Protein is the basic raw material needed to build muscle. Protein supplies the amino acids that the body uses to repair and build muscle following intensive exercise. Aim to consume 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight each day from food like beef, fish, poultry, eggs, milk and whey. Spread the load over at least six meals to derive the optimum benefit and avoid overloading the liver.
2. Carbohydrates are needed to energize the muscle building process. Carbohydrates stimulate the release of insulin which pushes the amino acids into muscle cells to begin the process of repair. The body uses carbohydrates as a source of energy - consume too little and the body will steal protein that would otherwise be used for repairing and building muscle. Aim to consume 1.5 to 2 grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight each day from foods like potatoes, pasta, rice, vegetables and whole wheat bread.
3. Boost your calories. Unless your main aim is to reduce fat you need a positive caloric balance if you want to build muscle. Make sure that your daily calorie intake is 10% higher than your energy expenditure for daily maintenance and that the calories are acquired from a diet characterized by a ratio of 50% carbohydrates, 40% proteins and 10% fat.
4. Get plenty of rest both in terms of adequate rest days between training sessions and sufficient sleep. Your muscles won't grow if you don't build adequate recovery time into your training program. Similarly, you can only optimize your body's levels of testosterone and growth hormone if you spend enough time sleeping.
5. Consume quality supplements to support a sound nutritious diet. For most people it should be enough to add whey protein, creatine and l-glutamine to your daily diet.
6. Don't overdo the aerobic exercise. Your aim is to increase muscle mass therefore you don't want to burn excessive calories that could be utilized for bulking up.
7. Drink plenty of water. Failure to drink sufficient quantities of water will lead to dehydration and adversely affect your muscle mass. Don't forget that muscle is 70% water so a generous intake will maintain muscle volume and help growth.
Bodybuilding involves hard work and commitment if you expect to see any real and lasting results. It's important that you use the correct combination of these two things. Here are some simple rules to follow to avoid common mistakes often made by overzealous bodybuilders that can hinder your progress.
Training
too long is not going to give you better results. You shouldn't be putting
more than 60 to 75 minutes in at the gym. There is a fine line between an
intense workout and overdoing it. Just because a 30 minute workout brings
good results doesn't mean doubling it will give twice the results. It will
result in sore and tired muscles, which can hinder your progress.
Not
training hard enough can be just as ineffective as overtraining. In order
for your muscles to develop, they need stimulation and stimulation comes
from pushing them to the point where they can't do any more repetitions.
Watch
your diet. The old myth about eating everything in sight to beef up your
body really is just a myth. The key is to eat a well balanced nutritional
diet at all times.
Get
plenty of rest. If you expect your body to perform for you, it needs to be
fully rested and ready to go to work. The right amount of sleep for a
bodybuilder is at least 8 hours.
Stick
to your basic exercises. It takes time for your body to build muscles and
you can't "jump the gun" to bigger exercises without getting the
basics out of the way.
Stay
motivated. While it may be easy to become frustrated when you're not
getting the results you want in the time you'd hoped, losing motivation
will only slow you down more. Know what you want and be willing to work
for it.
Set
goals with timelines. It's so easy to allow ourselves to fall into a comfortable
routine. Routines are great, but with bodybuilding, you need to have goals
so you have something to work towards. Each time you advance to a new
exercise, you should have a certain goal in mind.
Always
be competitive. This doesn't mean that you should strive to be the best in
the gym, but a good competition will keep you motivated while providing
you with goals. Even if it's just yourself you're competing with, you need
competition. If there is a competition coming up soon, work towards
getting ready for that event.
Don't
skip workouts. You need to be consistent with your exercise routines. Everyone
will skip a workout here and there, but repeated missed workouts will hurt
you mentally as well as physically.
Set
big goals. Always go for the moon is my motto. Always strive to be better
than you are so you don't get set in your ways.
fibers.
each muscle group intensively only once every seven days.
