Posts Tagged ‘bodybuilding’

Benefits And Precautions Of Protein Supplements

Bodybuilding is something that has caught the imagination of those people who are interested in a lean and muscular body. The idea of a muscular midriff, six or eight pack abs and a set of muscular biceps is attractive to many. A well proportioned body helps to increase confidence in people and improve their performance in their private as well as professional lives.

A number of websites that promote bodybuilding have come up. These websites promise solutions that provide effective results in terms of weight loss and muscle gain. The solutions in many cases are based on protein supplements. Protein supplements consist of whey protein, casein protein, glutamine or egg and soy based protein. These formulations are palatable and are readily absorbed by the body.

Protein supplements benefit the body by helping the body to repair itself between workouts and to reduce overall calorie intake. These substances also build muscle mass. Are these substances safe? How does one use these substances? These are questions that will naturally come to mind.

Nutritional supplements based on protein should be used in a proper manner. The dosage, duration and type of protein that is to be used should be decided only after professional consultation. As is the case with any drug, nutritional supplements may cause more harm than good, if not used in a proper manner.

After having consulted a professional who is knowledgeable about the use of sports nutrition, you should look for a reliable brand of the nutritional supplement that you want to use. If for instance you want to use glutamine based supplements read about the optimum nutrition glutamine powder. Select a brand after careful study of the brand’s reputation.

Using protein supplements is safe, as long as you go about doing so in the right way. Used judiciously, protein supplements can help you in your efforts towards losing body weight and building muscle.

2 Rules of Muscle building

There are a huge amount of muscle building programs out there. However if you want to gain some serious muscle, then clearly you will want to use a muscle building program that will get you there in the shortest time possible.

The general rule in life is that the more of something that you do, the better you will get at it. The theory is that practice will get you better results. But the opposite applies for most of us, we need to train less.

I know that you read about all these bodybuilding programs in the magazines that tell you how the professionals train 5 or 6 times a week. When we see there huge muscles we think if we follow their advice, we will get the same results.

The thing is this is not always the case. Bodybuilders are totally different from you and me. They have superior genetics compared to the rest of us. This means that their abilities to recover from intense training is far greater than the rest of us. Don’t think that we can use their methods of training.

You need to accept this situation before you can start to gain muscle the correct way. Most people that train with weights in order to put some muscles on their bodies train far too much. Don’t make this mistake, cut the training down now.

You will  be able to see some pretty impressive results in muscle gain, in around 8 weeks, if you follow 2 simple rules.

Rule 1. Don’t overdo the amount of weight you train with. Don’t worry about how heavy the weight is. As long as it is challenging for you, then you are doing ok. Your training should consist of exercises that hit larger muscle groups. These are exercises that target the most muscle through using 1 exercise. For example, the squat.

Rule 2. Don’t train more than a couple of times a week. Get it into your head this is the best way for you to train. Training hard not only impacts your muscles, it has an impact on everything else as well. Yout nervous system may not have recovered, even if your muscles have.

If your nervous system has not recovered, giving it further punishment through training, means it will be hard to cope. You need the rest to make the muscle appear. When you’ve finished your training session have 3 days break. Or even 2 days. Your body will let you know how it’s feeling.

I know that a lot of trainee’s will try this method for a week, and slowly crawl back into their old habits. The fact is that if you have been using particular bodybuilding programs which haven’t worked, then something is wrong. You need to do something different to get different results.

How to Build Strong Muscles

Because you are going to a gym regularly, you think you’ve done enough and you should already see the expected results. As a matter of fact, you don’t even know what you want. If weight is your current problem, you must learn how to turn into muscles. A personal trainer can only target your problems if he knows where to start. You must decide if you want to develop muscles or loose weight, because the two concepts are different. Trying to lose extra pounds will not necessarily strengthen your muscles if you don’t do it right.

If someone wants to go to a gym, he should consider at first all the possible things he might be experiencing.

1.Weight loss

If you are a beginner, make first a training program with constant flow of 10 exercises executed one after the other. You can take small brakes between series and then repeat the series again, for a few times.

You should try to make two exercises in each series for each muscle group in the body.

2. Allowing muscles to develop

Most men are recommended exercises which permit them to proceed with about 8 repetitions in each series. The classical fitness recommendations include in this case the making of a series, then a longer brake for about a minute, and only after you finish a series move to a different muscular type.

If you have more experience, you can try the supersets. You can, under these circumstances, pair two groups of muscles and work on them into each series. Usually, the first exercise will include a composed move witch will imply more muscles, and the second one will be an exercise that will insolate a sole muscular group. You can choose to find a helping program like burn the fat program to assist you with your excercises.

3. Developing strength

There is no unknown secret here: only heavy weights, few repetitions (3-5 of each series). Since the exercises sets are harder and require more effort, the brakes between them should be of about 4 minutes.

It doesn’t mean that all exercises made must be like this. You can start with few repetitions for the main moves, then do more repetitions with smaller fitness weights. The less solicitant exercises will require smaller breaks between them, just like in the above situations.

About The Abdominal Muscle Building Product

Body builders worry most about the abdominal region of their body. There are many good reasons for this, some of which are as follows, the abdominal area of the body is the one area the majority of people have trouble losing the weight. Having toned abdominal muscles are most envied by other people and it can be important to have this muscle definition especially for body builders.

A structured muscle building exercise and training routine centered on the abdominal area is the key to both muscle gain and weight loss respectively. Some people start to get disheartened when they do not see results even after a lot of time with a good exercise routine. This can be a frustrating experience when you are trying so hard and putting in everything you have into the routine. The best thing to do is to take plenty of time and put lots of effort into reviewing all your available options and then to compare those that are of the best possible quality. This will then hopefully lead you to finding the best body building product for you and your needs.

There is some confusion amongst people wanting abdominal bodybuilding program as there have been many misleading advertisements on such products tha say they can do things they simply are unable to do. They tend to claim that they can target the abdominal area by spot reducing fat in the abs. This however is impossible as the body will reduce fat at the same rate all over your body, or it will spot reduce fat in areas based on the code in your genetical profile. These products cannot simply spot reduce fat in the area they say they will as it is in your genes where the fat will more than likely be reduced. This of course does not mean that all the body building product available on the market designed to target the abs are not beneficial.

A body building product is there to help and aid the specific training of a certain area of the body. Where the abdominal area is concerned it will help tighten the muscles and also tone them. A normal stomach crunch or sit up can be difficult for some people to perform effectively and can help up injuring the person trying to do them. Where as if that person used a stomach crunch exercise machine that helped them perform them properly, this is where a body building product can come in handy.

If you spend all your time focusing on your abdominal area with a body building product, this can be extremely beneficial to the user. However it is important to take into account that you will need to still exercise other areas of the body otherwise you will not reduce your overall body weight and fat.

By using both diet and exercise, you will eventually get the results you are looking for, if you use body building products as well then you may get there a little bit quicker, as you will more than likely be doing the exercises in the correct manner.

How to Build Strong Muscles

You’ve paid a fitness subscription, you go to a gym almost daily and still you are already bored with waiting for results to appear. But the truth is that you have no idea what you’re after. You would like to be muscular, but not overweight. A personal trainer can only target your problems if he knows where to start. If you are overweight, you must focus on weight loosing programs. If you don’t know if you want to get rid of the pounds you’ve gained over the years or you want to transform them in muscles, then you will need some help deciding.

When a man usually goes to a fitness facility, he has in mind the following objectives:

1.Burning the fat

For beginners, the best possible choice are the constant exercises which can be executed in series of 10 or more, one after the other. You can take small brakes between series and then repeat the series again, for a few times.

You should try to make two exercises in each series for each muscle group in the body.

2. Developing muscular tissue

Most men are recommended exercises which permit them to proceed with about 8 repetitions in each series. In this case, the series are focused on muscle groups, meaning that you will have to focus each series on a single muscle pair, and after you’ve finished it you can take a break and move on to the next muscle group you wish to enhance.

Experienced men can try to make a superset. You can, under these circumstances, pair two groups of muscles and work on them into each series. People usually use a starting exercise that needs to put in function more than two muscles, and then continue with one that only targets one muscle type. You can choose to find a helping program like burn the fat book to assist you with your excercises.

3. Becoming strong

There is no unknown secret here: only heavy weights, few repetitions (3-5 of each series). In these cases the pauses between series will be longer, of about 3 to 4 minutes.

Still you don’t have to do each exercise this way. You could choose for a combined exercise type, that uses both small and heavy fitness weights, and alternate them. The less solicitant exercises will require smaller breaks between them, just like in the above situations.

How To Boost Your Bench Press And Build Muscle Mass Fast

Everyone knows to build muscle up one of the best exercises for the upper body is the bench press. One of the first questions you are likely to be asked by another bodybuilder is ‘how much can you bench press?’. Of course i ti probably not the best measure of total body strength it does naturally have a very macho feel to it and of course is very impressive. So lets cut to the chase and find out how to build muscle now and get a bigger bench press:

Grow your triceps. As musch as two thirds of the entire muscle mass on your arms comes from the tricep muscle. It may well be that under-developed triceps are restricting your bench press progress. The best exercises to build muscle mass on your triceps are using barbells and dumbells: close grip bench-presses and skull crushers. Isolation exercises are not as good as they isolate the muscle completely. They will certainly help improve your bench press.

Try training your triceps separately. Usually bodybuilding programs recommend that you train the chest in the same session as the triceps. Try training them on their own for a change. Doing so means you can hit them when they are completely fresh and really rip them to pieces and trigger muscle growth. Do this over a period of a few weeks and then go back and see how many more weight discs you can press.

Variety. have you been following the same routine for a number of weeks or months? time to vary it up. After the same workout has been gone through several times it will be difficult to keep stimulating growth with it as your muscles grow used to it. Keep changing things, they can be subtle changes like altering the grip width or reversing the order of your routine or they can be larger changes like doing super sets, compound sets and so on, these will give you a real pump by the way.

Make sure you are not doing too much! While with most things in life more is better, in muscle building this is not quite true. If you overtrain your chest muscles then it can find it hard to recover and grow more. Instead of focussing on quantity, focus on technique and intensity. A short intense workout is much more effective than a long drawn out one.

Quality rest. Your muscles don’t grow in the fitnes centre! Their growing time is when they are resting. If you don’t allow enough time to rest then you simply won’t grow. Of course do not workout again when your muscles are still, a fair rule of thumb is to limit yourself to 6-9 sets each workout for each muscle group, any more and you may be at risk overtraining.

Take a break from training. If you hit a training plateau then consider taking a complete break. let your body fully recover, get rid of all the niggles aches and pains and then comeback fresh a week or two later with renewed energy and motivation.

Push your chest muscle harder by doing negatives on the weight bench. Negatives are when you get the help from two spotters to intially help you press the weight up but who the allow you to take the weight completely to lower it. We do this because you can actually lower more weight than you can lift. So if we can get the body used to lowering more weight this will help you get stronger for the lifting/effort phase. The lowering/negative phase also stimulates more muscle growth than the effort phase.

Do a diet review. Are you consuming around 6 meals a day with at least 1 gram of protein for each pound of bodyweight that you have? If you are not then it is quite possible that you are restricting your gains by not adopting fully a muscle building diet. Each meal should be roughly 50% carbohydrate, 30% protein and the rest made-up of fats. Take supplements if you have the money to, things like: whey protein, essential fatty acids and multi-vitamins.

Focus on your technique. Are you pressing correctly. Bad technique can move the focus away from the chest muscles and put you at a greater risk of getting injured. Ensure you are not moving your feet up off the floor and that your hands are not grasping the bar too closely together, these are two easy and often made errors.

By following the guidelines above you will be giving yourself the best chance to build muscle mass on your chest fast. Just do it!

How To Build Muscle Mass Using The Power Of Your Mind

Normally bodybuilding articles talk about how to build muscle up, diet, training workouts, muscle building nutrition and so on, however whilst these are all really important there is one things slightly different I would like to introduce to you and your muscle building armoury. It is known as the reticular activating system (RAV).

The RAV works alongside the visual parts of our brain and directs our attention to certain things that our sub conscious has programmed into it, to be important to achieve our goals. The everyday actions, sights, sounds,preferences and so on that we experience daily are all due to our sub conscious thought process that is always running.

Neuroscientists have now proven the vaildity of positive thinking and the law of attraction through various skeptic proof experiments. If you do not know what the law of attraction is it is basically the premise that ‘what you think about, you bring about’ or ‘thoughts become things’. Now in the past this was thought of as being a bit to new agey for the majority of people however there is an increasing acceptance of this mental approach worldwide.

Now it doesn’t really matter if you adopt the neuro-scientists point of view about it or the new age approach to this as it will still work. So by programming our subconscious we are able to activate our RAV which in turn will lead us to take the correct steps towards our goals as we will simply be noticing and identifying these things more. Some people will come across strange co-incidences that will help there progress which is not uncommon and often gives this ‘law of attraction’ an unearthly feel whereas the truth is those things were probably there waiting to be found all along!

So how can a bodybuilder make use of this? Well think about your current thought patterns. Precisely what is it that you are running through your mind on a daily basis. Are they thoughts such as ‘losing weight is impossible for me’ or ‘My muscles won’t grow’ for if they are then that is precisely what your RAV system is selecting for you to notice and take action upon on a day to day basis. It is therefore your sub conscious thought patterns that you need to change to positive muscle building patterns such as: ‘muscle gains come quickly and easily’ or ‘I am getting ripped fast’ and so on.

How can you alter these patterns? Here are a couple of things to try:

1)       Visualisation: first you need to set aside 5 minutes or so each day to do this. Simply close your eyes and picture your body in as much detail as you can exactly what you want it too look like. Huge guns, ripped 6 pack and so on, be as clear as possible and hold that vision with belief that you look like that already.’

2)       Speak out aloud clearly and confidently simple statements like: I am extremely fit and healthy, I am huge and muscular, I am growing more and more each day and so on.

Go through these everyday. Normally it takes up to 30 days for this new way of thinking to bed in. Following that, keep doing them in order to continually reaffirm your new beliefs and thought programming.

If you doubt that this is effective then I suggest that you take a look at a few sportsmens autobiographies or sports studies books, I gaurantee that you will find these processes talked about in depth, especially visualisation which is an awesomely effective technique that deserves daily usage!

Ok with these positive thoughts and feelings in mind, go build muscle mass!

History of the Body Building Nutritional Supplement

People often ridicule what they do not fully understand, therefore certain products sometimes do not gain any respect. The lack of respect can come from people who have no knowledge of the subject in question. When the newspaper, radio, tv and other forms of media get hold of this misinformation on a certain subject it can help form the opinions and of others, even before they have tried the subject in hand themselves.

There is a history behind the natural bodybuilding nutritional supplement. It is not fully understood why there is so skepticism behind the protein bar where the body building nutritional supplement is concerned. However if you look at the general history of food and eating habits in the USA, you start to be able to piece together the reason why there is a misguided mistrust where the protein bars and the essential bodybuilding supplement products are concerned.

There was a revelation in the 1960’s and the 1970’s of processed food. This then proceeded to change the way we all ate and this was not a change for the better in any case. Every now and again a new amazing product would come on the shelves telling people it did something that it didn't, a product pretending to be something it certainly was not. One of these products that has helped the reputation of the protein bar was a drink called 'Tang'. This drink and the protein bars have been linked as similar products, which in fact they are not.

'Tang' was marketed as a very healthy, orange powdered drink and with celebrity endorsements such as the famous Buzz Aldrin, sales went literally through the roof. ‘Tang’ was actually used by the astronauts when they flew on space missions. This also helped the sales shoot up and keep going. However unfortunately for ‘Tang’, it was found to be a processed drink that was full of nothing but sugar and had no such nutritional value that it claimed it had. Sales started to plummet back to earth with a bump. Since this was classed as a nutritional supplement in sorts, then it gave the rest of the actual nutritional supplements a bad name and a bad reputation.

Remember though that there are some protein bars that are actually full of sugar, these must be avoided at all costs, unless you want to gain weight at a rapid rate. So take care when choosing a protein bar and a bodybuilding supplement and make sure your going for a low sugar variety.

Gain Muscles And Keep Fit

The key components of physical fitness are general fitness and specific fitness. The main goal of general fitness is to improve the general health conditions. Specific fitness seeks to improve the ability of the person to improve the performance of the person in a specific task or sport by enhancing the physical abilities of the person in that task or sport. Physical fitness has as its key components Body Composition, Cardiovascular Fitness, Strength Training, Flexibility Training, Muscular Endurance and General Skill Training. Sports such as strongman, bodybuilding, power lifting and weightlifting also have intensive physical fitness program as part of building up the body.

Bodybuilding requires physical fitness as part of its training. Bodybuilding focuses primarily on modifying the body by building up of the muscles. This is possible only through intensive muscle hypertrophy. Bodybuilding as a specific sport came into existence in the 19th century. It was Eugen Sandow who promoted bodybuilding as a sport. He was from Prussia of the present day Germany. He came to be called aptly as ‘The Father of Modern Bodybuilding’. Bodybuilding as a sport requires that the physique is exhibited publicly. Bodybuilding, along with gymnastics, became popular as a sport in 1950s and later years. Along with this, bodybuilding became a specialized field and a profession.

Elastic or hydraulic resistance and weights are key to bodybuilding as part of strength training. This is combined with adequate rest and specialized nutrition. There are also workouts to recuperate. The muscles and the repair of muscles require specialized diet. The Muscle Gaining Secrets is a body building program meant for athletes. Developed by Jason Ferruggia, the program is available as an e-book that can be bought and downloaded.

With increasing competition, anabolic steroids and various other chemical substances began to be used by body builders. These promoted the growth of extraordinary muscles. Such uses came about with the intense competition in these sports. Their use increased in the 1970s. The use of these substances did result in impressive muscles. There are also the health hazards associated with it. Besides, this was not fair to those competitors who did not use these substances. Production and the use of anabolic steroids were controlled and regulated by many countries by placing it under the category of controlled substances. These muscle enhancing substances have since been banned in sports. Doping tests to detect the presence of these substances in the blood and urine are now a regular part of sports.

Bodybuilding and Psychology

There is a lot more to natural bodybuilding than acheiving a perfect body. In reality body building can have psychological effects on the body builder as well. Body building is a sport where you are constantly being judged by your physical appearance, this in the normal world can be extremely harming to a person, especially if you feel you are being judged badly. So what could actually be more psychology damaging than that to anyone let alone a body builder. The fact is when you are in a competition, there is obviously only going to be one winner in the end. So what kind of effect can this have on anyone who does not come first.

There is something known as muscle dysmorphia, which can also be called and known as bigorexia. It can be an extremely  common psychological problem amongst many body builders. What it actually is, is feeling that no matter how big you are when you are working out and body building, you will still feel incredibly small, and you may even go as far to try and cover yourself up with clothing. There is the danger that the body builder could go as far as to resort to steroids to become bigger, even though there is actually no need.

Body building can become a serious obsession for many of the people involved, and no achievement you do becomes good enough. This is mainly because body builders are constantly graded on how they look, and they are always striving to make it better. Many of the body builders are never satisfied with how they look and keep working out and maybe taking steroids to make themselves feel better. This can become a serious and damaging condition for anyone. It cna end up being fatal in some cases and can be extremely dangerous for the body builder.

Body building is more than a sport, especially to the people participating, it is not just a sport to these people it becomes their lifestyle. In order to be successful, the body builder is always focused on their workouts, their essential bodybuilding supplements, and their nutrition and diet, sometimes forgetting everyone else around them. The body builders have very healthy bodies and are extremely fit physically, this does not contribute to a healthy mind and personal well being.

To try and combat the negative psychological effects of body building try and make sure that you are living a life outside of body building. If body building is the only thing that you can discuss with others, you may have a  serious problem. Seek counseling to ensure that you are staying on track as well.

Finally, you want to be a well-rounded human being — from a physical standpoint, as well as from a mental standpoint. The sport of bodybuilding, and the demands that go along with it, make it hard, but it is not totally impossible!