Tag Archive | "muscle building"

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Which Body Building Routines Are Right For You?

Posted on 17 November 2009 by Personal Fitness

Exercise and body building routines will have every person respond individually to the workout. Some of the major aspects that will affect muscle growth are your current strength level, ability to heal or recover, body type and genetics. Furthermore if you are a beginner you should keep in mind that your workout should never be the same as an advanced or pro body builder. You could risk injuries and overtraining if you jump right into an advanced body building routine, and could end up wanting to give up completely.

Body Building Tips

You should set your goal and objective for body building to be reasonable and realistic. Everyone experience body changes and improvements in their physique during the first few months. However, your growth and progress will begin to slow down as you reach intermediate level. To keep progressing you might need to follow better planned body building routines and a more specific diet.

In order to avoid overtraining you should keep your body building routines short but intense, lasting no more than 30 to 45 minutes for each session. You should allow aproximately 48 hours to recover between each workout, this means you should have no more than 3 or 4 workout days each week. Giving your body enough time to rest is just as important as working out for muscle building.

Focus on Compound Movements

Compound movements are defined as exercises that target different muscle groups at the same time. Compound exercises are different from isolation exercises in that they target several muscles at once.

Most experts recommend that beginners start out with light free weights to gain a sense of balance and proper execution of the exercises. Dumbbells and barbells should be the core of your workouts.

Recommended exercises

The squat is one of the most important exercises for beginners as well as advanced body builders. I can do wonders for your body and is completely safe if done right. The muscle groups involved include the core muscles, abdominals, lower back, the traps, glutes, quads or thighs, hamstrings and parts of the calves. 2 sets of 12 to 15 repetitions is a good starting point.

Another important compound exercise to implement as part of your body building routines is the bech press. It effectively hits the chest, shoulders or deltoids, triceps and some parts of the forearms and rib cage. Do 2 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions.

Next is the bent-over row which is easiest to do using a barbell, this targets the entire back, rear deltoids, biceps and some parts of the forearms. Also here do 2 sets with 10 – 12 repetitions.

Other important exercises are the barbell or dumbbell curl, lying triceps extension and the military press. For each of these 3 exercises, again do 2 sets with 10 – 12 repetitions.

It would be a good idea to add ab crunches to the above exercises, do 2 sets of 12 – 15 repetitions.

Additional Tips

Do some warm-up exercises for 5 to 10 minutes before doing any lifting. A short jog on the threadmill is sufficient. To prepare the muscles and get the feel for the movement of an exercise, you should do a light warm-up set before each exercise. Finish you workout session with some stretching for 10 minutes.

Only use weights that aren’t heavier than you can complete each set using correct form. Using to heavy weights and bad form can easily cause injury or overtraining. In addition to your body building routines, to keep track of your progress you should definitely keep a training journal. And as your strength develops you can slowly add more weight to the exercises.

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The Best Workout for Strength Training

Posted on 17 November 2009 by Personal Fitness

All muscles consist of various types of muscle fibers.  To build strength, all types of muscle fibers should be worked during a training session.  For some specific exercise combinations that use all types of muscle fiber, read about a workout here.  The two primary muscle fiber categories are fast twitch – both Type A and Type B – and slow twitch.  Nearly all of muscles consist of about half fast twitch and half slow twitch fibers.  A training program that works the entire muscle – both fiber types – builds more muscle.

Fast twitch muscle fibers work anaerobically – they are used when you need short bursts of strength or speed.  They use energy available within your body.  Fast twitch muscle fibers fatigue faster than slow twitch fibers because the fast twitch nerve cells fire faster.  Sprinters produce a lot of power for a very short time, using a lot of fast twitch muscles to do it.

Fast twitch Type A muscle fibers are intermediate fibers and use both aerobic and anaerobic energy.  These muscle fibers are used for activities that are relatively short, but not at full speed.  Type B fast twitch muscle fibers use only anaerobic metabolism.  They fatigue fast because they contract the fastest of all the muscle fibers.  These muscle fibers are used when you require a high performance rush of energy. 

Aerobic metabolism is used by slow twitch muscle fibers.  These fibers contract slower and do not create a lot of strength, but they are also slow to fatigue so they can work much longer than fast twitch muscles.  Energy for these muscles is provided by oxygen rich blood transported to them through the many capillaries throughout the fibers.  The slow twitch muscle fiber is used for medium to low intensity exercises that can be completed over a long period of time.  Marathon running, bike riding several miles or hiking use slow twitch muscle fibers.

 If you want your muscles to work at their peak during any type of exercise you choose to do, your strength workout should work all types of muscle fibers.  You can find reviews of programs that adhere to this principal at Turbulence Training Review and No Nonsense Muscle Building Review.   There are a lot of programs out there, but next I’ll give you some ideas on how to train each muscle type – you could easily make up your own program.

The completely anaerobic Type B fast twitch muscle fibers can be trained with exercises that require maximum effort for a very short time.  Sprint at full speed or lift a weight that you can only do one repetition to fatigue.  Type A fast twitch muscles are worked when you lower the strength required and increase the time – run fast for 20 – 30 minutes or lift a weight that allows you to complete 6 – 10 repetitions to fatigue.  Training for endurance trains slow twitch muscles.  Lift weights small enough that you can complete 3 sets of 6 – 10 repetitions, run longer or swim a lot of laps.  This training will take more time than training for fast twitch muscle fibers, but it is necessary to do this training also to build the entire muscle and get the maximum strength you are looking for.

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How To Stay Motivated To Reach your Fitness Goals

Posted on 14 August 2009 by Personal Fitness

Perhaps you have been through this type of thing before where by you have decided to improve your health and fitness and in the beginning you felt 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,what about planning out a mountain biking/kayaking/hiking holiday in an exotic tough part of the world such as the Himalayas,The Alps or The Candadian Rockies. With this trip in mind you really have a goal to aim for. You will need to be in good physical health in order to enjoy your trip to the fullest. 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. I bet there are plenty of local events that you can get involved with simply have a look on line. 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. Although this may sound a little strange at first, find a piece of time every day to see in your imagination precisely what you want to do, be and look like. Carrying this out trigger powerful signals to be sent to your sub conscious mind that are about your everyday decisions and day to day actions. Continue to do this and your behaviour will begin to modify itself naturally to lead you towards your goals. 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 far less likely to be lazy and stay at home if your friends are calling and texting you to get you to join them.

Learn more. Be curious find out about building lean muscle mass, find out how to get a 6 pack, find out how to shed pounds, find out what muscle building nutrition you need for lean muscle building and so on. By growing your knowledge you are quite probably going to improve the speed of your fitness improvement which in turn will serve to enhance your motivation.

Make sure that you do not make comparisons of yourself with others. I don’t care who exactly you are there is aways going to be people fitter, sexier, more muscular or whatever than you are. Acknowledge this fact and realise that we all travel through this life process each from our own different perspectives. Only make comparisons with your self and your own progress by taking measurements such as bodyfat percentage but the most important thing is that you feel good about what your doing and yourself this is a much better indicator of your improvement in health.

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.

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Home Muscle Building

Posted on 07 August 2009 by Personal Fitness

Tired of driving to the gym?  Well with the right advice, working out and building muscle at home can be convenient and produce great results.You can ensure success if the right steps are taken, in a home work out as opposed to a gym membership.

Building muscle at home can and should be easy as long as you have motivation and dedication, and put in the hard work needed for the results you’re looking for.

Although most people think exercise comes first when building muscle, the truth is you need to start eating healthy before you begin working out. When you have a good diet plan in place and you’re eating only healthy foods, it’s time to start focusing on finding the right exercises for your plan to build muscle at home.

Before you start working out, buy the right equipment for your home.The proper weights and accompanying equipment makes home muscle building much safer and more effective.The risk for injury is greater if the right amount of weight for specific exercise is incorrect. 

As with most health related issues, consult your physician before starting a home work out program.  In one visit, you can learn how to safely use your weights at home and what is required to shed body fat safely and in the fastest time possible.  A physician can also diagnose any health conditions you should be aware of before you begin working out, and recommend certain lifts you should avoid. 

Remember the pros and cons of weight machines and free weights when it comes time to buy equipment.  Free weights don’t restrict movement like machines, and most likely will take up less space in your home.When considering which weights to buy, always consider quality and durability. 

Envision the weights in the space you have allotted to work out in.  Do you have somewhere to store them when you’re not working out?   If your home is already short on space, avoid buying a large set of weights or machines and instead look for more economical choices.As they generally require less space than machines, free weights can also be purchased in weight combinations ready to use with several exercises.  Buying the right weights will make muscle building at home easier and more efficient from the start.

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Natural Muscle Building Guide

Posted on 30 July 2009 by Personal Fitness

Here you will learn how important is natural muscle building instead of going on the “bad side” using steroids and other supplements to help yourself gaining muscles in a really fast time. You need to know that, if you follow this basic steps you will get same results and your health will only improve.

If you are not competing in bodybuilding competitions you do not need to take steroids because you will cause only bad things to your body and health. You can obtain same effects following the ideal nutrition and weekly muscle building workouts and also taking some of the very basic supplements, like Whey.

When it comes to nutrition which feeds your muscles, you need to know some basic things. Nutrition is more important than workout, so you need to follow both if you want to see results. In natural muscle building you need to eat 6 times per day. You need to eat proteins like meat and low carbohydrates or fat, usually in a ratio of 50:50:20. Junk food is one of the things that will slow your results because you will get fat over your muscles which will cause them to look fat.

The best supplements are Whey and Fat Burners. You don't need any other supplements, they will not help you if you do not follow given nutrition program and workout program. So first try to follow both and then use supplements. Use whey after every daily workout and Fat Burners usually are taken half hour before you go running.

Here is some workout tips, you need to go in GYM around 3-5 times per week. Usually on each workout day you work on two muscle categories from chest, legs, shoulders, biceps, triceps, back… For each muscle category you should do specific exercises, daily you should do 4 different exercises with 3-4 routines of 10-6 reps to gain maximum results. Keep pumping your muscles and do not lose the concentration during the exercises.

You will see that if you follow this very basic tips for natural muscle building you will see results in weeks time because you will change your nutrition program and also workout program which will cause muscle building. Are you ready for that challenge?

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Combination Training for Muscle Building

Posted on 26 July 2009 by Personal Fitness

If you took it upon yourself to ask a few different professional or amateur body builders what exactly makes up their training sessions and  what their workouts consist of, for each person you ask, you will receive different answers. There is no perfect training session and work out that works amazingly for everyone. With that information put aside, you may want and need to consider some kind of combination training for your bodybuilding program to be fully successful.

The fact of the matter is that you will not be able to stick completly to one specific train program and expect to see any kind of decent results. You will of course get to a certain point, and if you keep up with the program that you have decided on will keep your body maintained, but you will never actually progress any further. At the end of the day, to get anywhere with natural bodybuilding, especially if you want to be a professional body builder, progression is key to everything. Why not try to mix your train schedules   up every two or three weeks. For instance, you could do ten sets of ten reps one week and then the following week, you could try to do five sets of five reps, with more intensive exercises. Maybe the week after that, you could actually do three sets of three reps, with even more intensive exercises. After this you could start from the beginning or keep switching and changing.

Try to make sure that you take the boredom out of your training periods and your work outs as this can affect your moods and your effectiveness in your training. Along with weight training, you will also need a decent cardio workout. Cardio is anything that gets the heart pumping more than it normally does, and actually keeps it pumping faster for at least 30 minutes at a time. This should ideally be done three times a week, at the very least and not really any more than that to avoid over training. On the other hand if you do the same cardio routine over and over, you will eventually get bored and lose motivation.

Instead of running on the treadmill all the time and looking at the same four walls and all the same people in the gym, get out in the beautiful fresh air and run in the park or the street. Instead of using the exercise bike machine, find yourself a real bike and go for an actual bike ride, the exercise and the fresh air will do you the world of good. Take part in an aerobics class or a step class — yes, men do take these classes. If nothing else, get out and mow the lawn faster than usual and get your heart pumping. Go for a swim.

The key is to not become to settled in your exercise routines that you then end up losing interest, motivation and then stop progressing. Make sure that you are working with a trainer that understands that the workout program must change as your body changes.

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Workout For Your Upper Body

Posted on 20 July 2009 by Personal Fitness

Coming up with the right body building workout for your upper body is important. You must be able to know your limits and what you are able to do without hurting yourself. You must also know your body well enough to recognize when you can push yourself that extra bit to reach new limits in your workout.

When working out your upper body, there are several muscles to consider. There is the shoulders, back, chest, biceps and triceps. There are several different workouts you can do for each muscle allowing you to switch up your routine from time to time. So let’s get right into it.

You never want to lift the same muscle two days in a row. A great way to split this up is by lifting your back and chest one day and then your biceps, triceps and shoulders the next.

For your chest, you can do a flat bench press, incline bench press, decline bench press, flat bench dumbbell flyes, and much more. It is all about finding what suites you best.

When working out your back you may want to consider  lat machine pull downs, dead lifts, bent over rowing, shrugs and hyper extensions. It is important that you pay close attention to your form when working on your back. The smallest slip-up can have you out for weeks with a back injury.

The next day when you work on your shoulders, biceps and triceps, you may want to consider doing shrugs, a seated dumbbell press, side lateral raises and alternate front dumbbell raises for your shoulders.

As for your biceps, you can obviously do standing barbell curls, alternate dumbbell curls, incline dumbbell curls and preacher curls. A preacher curl involves you lifting a barbell on a preacher bench.

Then we are left with the triceps. For this muscle area you may want to do some triceps bench dips, standing cable press downs, overhead rope extensions and one arm dumbbell extensions.

Make sure that before you start any of the exercises mentioned within this article, that you fully understand how to execute them properly first. Using the incorrect technique can not only prevent you from building muscle, but it can also lead to serious injury as well.

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Proven Muscle Building Routines

Posted on 20 July 2009 by Personal Fitness

When it comes to muscle building, muscle building routines are really important for your faster progress and bigger muscles in less time. But before you follow this very basic routines advices you need to know something about nutrition.

Why? Because in bodybuilding sport nutrition is more important than workout. Usually during workout you burn your muscles, you hurt them and during the rest day if you have ideal nutrition you feed them to grow. Nutrition gives you 60% progress and workout 40% so follow this basic steps:

You need to eat 5-6 times per day . Smaller meals with high volume of proteins food like meat or pork, less carbs and fat, rice is really good. Eat vegetables and eggs and drink water. Muscles are made of proteins that is why they need proteins to grow, daily you need around 130-200g proteins so follow what you eat. A lot of carbs and fat will make your muscles look strange, you will not have shaped muscles because of that, so try to eat as less as possible food that is of carbs and fat.

Now that you know something about nutrition you can start with workout and muscle building routines that work the best. You need to follow workout 3-5 times per week, usually have a day off between workout days, so your muscles can rest and regenerate. On each workout day you work on two muscle categories like: chest, legs, triceps, biceps, shoulders and back.

Each muscle category needs to have its own specific exercises that consist of 3-4 routines which is enough. Usually the main exercises have 4 routines and advanced ones 3. Each routine has its own reps. If you want to gain bigger muscles faster and lose less fat you need to have 8 to 6 reps in each routine. If you want to first lose fat and then gain muscles do 12-8 reps in each routine.

Now you got muscle building routines covered with this basic tips and advices. We have still more advanced techniques to give you faster results and better details of routines in our muscle building techniques ebook.

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