Having trouble building muscle?

You were going to the gym regularly for months and have not been able to deliver any poundage? If you answered yes to any question, it is time to go back and make some plans. Building muscle is not rocket science. There are four main factors that will mean the difference between building muscle and staying lean. You have to ask these four questions.

My diet is ideal for building muscle?

It's time to leave the "3 meals a day" mentality. If you want to win (or lose) weight you need to feed your body as a whole food, six times a day. This means that the division of large meals and eat every three hours. This is not only good for your metabolism, but your body with food, rather than storing them as fat.

The six meals a day should consist mainly of complex carbohydrates and proteins. You should aim for at least thirty grams of protein per meal. Include foods rich in protein from lean meat, poultry, fish, egg whites, cheese and dairy products. Complex carbohydrates are rice, bread and potatoes. Stay away from foods high in salt and sugar

I use supplements, and when I get them?

If you can afford to use supplements. All three are considered as the basis of proteins, carbohydrates and creatine. The supplementation of whey protein is the quickest way to deliver quality protein known to the muscles. Thus, it is particularly effective after shaking your workouts when your body is like the protein for muscle re-growth.

There are three key moments that supplements should be taken. From early morning, after his training and before bedtime. If your diet is zero, it is not necessary at any time. Do not use supplements to replace meals. Supplements are supplements, not replacements for food.

I am training hard and not smart?

The biggest mistake the new lifters make is thinking that the more exercise the more you receive. This could not be further from the truth! Two basic rules you should remember when it comes to weight training. Firstly, the quality is better than quantity. Second, compound exercises are the kings of building muscle.

Compound exercises require at least two sets of movements. Large compound exercises are the squat, bench press, wide grip pull up and seated row. These movements recruit many more fibers of the muscles used to move the weight. This means that more muscle groups are worked, the task is more difficult, the growth potential is much greater.

In general, you should do three exercises that are an exercise in isolation. For example, back / biceps exercise could be a great grip pull ups, seated row, bent over row and standing Bicep curl. You may think that this is not enough for their work biceps? Wrong. His biceps are worked heavily in all these exercises, biceps curl just finishes them.

The duration of the training sessions should not exceed one hour. And you only need to train a muscle group once a week. This means a part of the routine that you simply need to be three days a week. In fact, most professional bodybuilders only train four times a week. Remember quality not quantity.

I get enough rest and recovery time?

When you are training muscle building, which is breaking. The reason I searched for "pumps" when you're in academia, because it is your muscle tissue is swollen and damaged. Your muscles actually grow when you are resting. Thus, in simple terms, there is no rest equals muscle growth.

So easy when you're not working. Facility in the cardiovascular system. And be sure to get much sleep. Sleep is the number of the agency for a time to build muscles. This is also why it is important to eat before bedtime, so your body has the fuel to repair muscle in your sleep.

Simple huh?

This can be seen that, despite what you read in magazines or on the web about building muscle, it is surprisingly simple.

The 3 Core Muscle Building Exercises You Should Be Doing

When it comes to building muscles I like to keep things simple. It's easy to get caught in the hype of hot new products and exercises that promise to be the next best thing to build muscles. These exercises in imagination and use of long products "scientific like" words and explanations to demonstrate that work to build more muscle.

In this article, I will get back to basics. I'll show you three exercises muscle building can not afford not to do and why you should do them. These three exercises are the foundation for building muscle and are essential for any training program.

You may find it hard to believe, but with these three exercises alone you can pack a serious amount of muscle. I refer to these exercises as the "core" of any good program. When you start planning my suitability for a client program that always start with these three basic exercises and build the program around him.

3 core muscle building exercises:

Squatting
The occupation is the biggest exercise for packing serious poundage. No argument about that. Occupation is essentially an exercise in creation of the leg. Starting the year with a bar of rest between his shoulders up. After bending the knees and hips to lower the bar down until thighs are almost parallel to the ground. And then push the bar back to starting position.

The main muscle groups pulled squat action are the quadriceps, hamstrings and gluten. Secondary muscle groups include the lower back, adductors and, to some extent your shoulder muscles. As you can see many muscle groups are recruited for this exercise that the exercise more muscle and greater potential builder.

Like all basic fitness exercises, you should make the squat the first exercise you do on your leg training day. What is the biggest exercise you want your legs to be fresh and ready. If muscle building is your goal, the goal of Representatives on 8 / 12 on the squat. Because he was a good lift heavyweights warm is vital. The profession is very stressful for the lower body, especially the knees, for 5-10 minutes on the treadmill and some lights Squats first recommended.

Bank News
The Bank of pressure is the king of exercises to build upper body. For years, the bench press was used to measure the force of an elevator. How many times have you asked "how much you bench?" I bet you never asked, or how much you can do chin ups squat.

It is a simple exercise, but very powerful that targets the entire chest (pectorals), front shoulders (deltoids) and triceps. To perform a bench press must lie on his back on a flat bench, grasp the bar at slightly wider than the jaws and press the bar down to your chest.

The bench press is the largest manufacturer of the upper body, allowing you to move much weight as possible. This is his weight advantage over the press. With the help of a spotter you can also push up to lift heavy weights. There are other advanced techniques, such as bench press board presses, bench press negatives and chain presses. See our link below for more details.

Excellent adhesion Chin up
If you are only going to do an exercise to return to work independently. The large grip chin is the ultimate test of a power to weight lifters. This muscle building exercise is very demanding on the body.

The large grip chin up primarily hits the lats, but also the goals of the entire upper back, biceps and forearms. To perform this exercise, you need a chin up bar or chin up assist machine. Keep the bar in a high-grip (wider than shoulder) is confronted with his palms out of his body. It begins in a "hanging" position with arms fully extended. Pull until you can get your chin over the bar and lower back to starting position.

Most people will not be able to make great grip chin ups without some lat / back training first. You can use the assisted chin up machine or lat pull down machine to strengthen your lats before attempting wide grip chin ups. This is the most demanding back exercise you can do it is to be the first exercise in your session.

By doing these exercises should be

As mentioned earlier in this article, these exercises are the biggest muscle builders and also the imposition of the majority of your body for what should be done early in his training for maximum benefit. I recommend that you make up to 5 games each year and change the way these games every week. For example, in the first week you pyramid of assemblies, the second week you pyramid down and the third week of three sets. This prevents the muscles get used to your routine. Good luck packing on some serious pounds!

Instantly Increase Your Strength On Every Back Exercise

Do you want a quick, simple and instant way to increase the amount of weight you can lift on virtually every back exercise you perform? Sound too good to be true? I speak the truth, my friend, and the reality is that if you aren’t utilizing this basic piece of gym equipment you’re missing out on some serious muscle size and strength gains. What tool am I talking about?

A pair of lifting straps!

This is such a basic and highly effective piece of equipment yet so many people neglect to use them. For those of you who are unaware, these are basically a set of thick straps made of extremely strong material that are placed around your wrists and then wrapped around the barbell, dumbbell or cable attachment. The purpose of lifting straps is to “eliminate” your grip from the equation by forming a secure connection between your wrist and the weight. If you use these straps properly you can basically hold onto the bar and perform your exercises while expending almost no energy from your forearms.

Why is this so valuable?

Picture this scenario…You’re performing a set of deadlifts (arguably the most powerful muscle-building exercise known to man) with the goal of performing 8 reps. You psych yourself up, grip the weight and clear the bar from the ground. The set is going well, but by the time you reach rep number 5, the strain on your grip is so great that you can no longer hold onto the bar. You’re forced to stop the set because your forearms reached muscular failure.

What exactly happened here?

Well, you gave yourself an amazing forearm workout! Congratulations! Unfortunately you severely limited the amount of muscle stimulation you could achieve on your back, shoulders, legs, and just about every other muscle in your body that the deadlift targets in the process. This is not a good thing!

Lifting straps completely eliminate this problem by making sure that you reach muscular failure in the major muscle groups that you are intending to target rather than on your forearms and grip. They can be used effectively for almost every back exercise or any other lift where the grip is of concern.

The main argument against lifting straps is the idea that they are a “crutch” and will negatively affect the development of grip strength and forearm size. Let’s get real here. What would you prefer, greater muscle mass and strength in your lats and upper back (and just about every other muscle group on your body) or greater ability to crack open a jar of pickles? Take your pick.

The positive effect that lifting straps will have on your overall muscle mass and strength gains will far outweigh any negative effect that they have on your forearms and grip. Besides, you can easily incorporate specific forearm movements into your routine to develop your grip strength and forearm size. If you aren’t using lifting straps already, get on it! You can find them at almost any store that sells sports or fitness equipment or you can order them online. They sell for about 10 or 15 bucks and are well worth the price!

Rock Hard Abs! Do You Have What it Takes?

If your abs look good, your whole body looks good. Having Big arms and chest is one thing but having rock hard defined abs is so another.

Everyone knows that nothing turns heads like a defined full set of abs. And hey, chicks love em. What more needs to be said.


Contrary to popular belief, the abs or Rectus Abdominis is really only one muscle. It stretches from the top of your pelvis up to your ribcage. The "six-pack" as it is called is merely sections of this one muscle.

Dispelling the Ab Myths:

The action of any muscle is simply to contract. And as you can't contract half your bicep or quad, it makes sense that you cannot contract half your abs as well. Therefore the myths about "upper ab" and "lower ab" training are total nonsense. I'm not discounting those training methods but the simple fact is that if you can't see your lower abs, it just means you've got fat covering them, not that you need to work them harder.

Say goodbye to hanging knee-raises, straight-leg raises, and any other type of leg raises for building your abs. They simply don't work. The primary role of your abs is to stabilize your body. When you raise your leg for example, your hip flexors pull on your spine and arch it forward/downward. Your abs stabilize this action by resisting and essentially keeping your back from breaking. Take note that this is the static action of the abs. It doesn't build or strengthen. Leg raising exercises only feel like they are effectively working your abs because of the repeated strain and exhaustion of your muscle producing catabolic, lactic acid build up. Search for "lactic acid" at http://www.muscle-body.com for more information.

What Really Works:

What does strengthen your abs is what strengthens any other muscle in your body. Contraction! In this case - Decreasing the distance between your rib cage and your pelvis.

So we come back to the good old sit-up. But there are a few things to keep in mind.

Firstly, forget about the cool all-the-way-up sit-ups you see in the movies. Your abs are fully contracted when your shoulders are about 5 to 6 inches off the ground. So don't bother trying to impress or outperform someone by touching your elbows to your knees. It does nothing for you. Crunches as they are sometimes called are the way to go.

Secondly, don't wedge your feet under something to help you get up. You don't need to do this if you are doing crunches properly anyway. Your legs should be at 90 degrees to each other and your knees at 45 degrees to your waist. If you need to, use something to press your heels back against to stabilize yourself. This way you will use your hamstrings instead of your hip flexors which will keep the focus on your abs.

Thirdly, keep your hands lightly held against the side of your head or crossed on your chest. Don't clasp them together behind your head or neck. If you do you will be tempted to pull with your hands to get the last few reps out, which will put unnecessary strain on this fragile part of the spine.

Alternative:

Another good exercise for abs is kneeling crunches. You will need special equipment to perform this exercise. This is where you kneel and contract your abs so that your upper body arches forward/downward. You hold a rope attached to a pulley with weights for extra resistance. Most gyms will have a rope attachment to the triceps pull down to perform this exercise. The idea is to lock your arms against your upper body so that you pull down only with your abs and not your arms.

Ab Training Devices:

In 2 words - Forget it.

You don't need them. Most of them do nothing for you. Building muscle is hard and it hurts. Most of these devices are designed to take the pressure off your body making the exercise seem easy and con you into thinking you are really targeting your muscles. Don't believe the hype. Ab training is definitely hard work but definitely worth it's reward.

The Secret:


The difficulty in obtaining great abs is not so much building the muscle. It's cutting enough fat from your body for them to show. You probably know by now that spot-reduction of fat simply doesn't work here. In order to show those abs you need overall fat loss.