Posts Tagged ‘weight gain’

The Number 1 Reason People Fail to Build Muscle…

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

So many people try and fail to build muscle, the most common reason why is so simple to correct. More often than not if someone isn’t putting any muscle, or in fact any weight of any kind, it is simply because they aren’t eating enough.

If you are not consuming enough calories (or energy to put it another way), you will not build any new muscle. You need to be in a state of overfeeding for your body to produce new muscle growth. The amount you need to overfeed by varies from person to person, and can vary anywhere from just over your maintenance level (this is the amount of calories you consume to stay at the same weight) to over 500 calories. It really is something that you need to experiment with to find out where you threshold lies.

If you are failing to gain muscle, this is the first thing you need to look at, are you eating enough calories?! No?! then eat more!After that if you are still struggling, then you should start to look at your nutrition, workout and if you are giving you muscles enough rest (this is when they grow, not in the gym!).

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Posted in Muscle Building Diet, Muscle Building Training, Muscle building | 2 Comments »

A Quick Tip for Fat Loss and Muscle Building

Monday, June 9th, 2008

Just a quick tip for you today…

For Success in both burning fat and building muscle there something that you must be doing. That something is body monitoring. By this I mean taking your bodyfat and weighing yourself on a weekly basis.

My advice to you is to weigh yourself at the same time of day each week, preferably first thing in the morning before you eat, to give the most accurate results. You should also weigh on the same day each week, so that you can follow your progress on a week by week basis. The same goes for taking bodyfat measurement, take it on the same time, the same day each week.

There are many methods for taking your bodyfat, some more accurate than others. The important thing is that you use the same method each time, this allows you to monitor your progress more accurately. Having an exact precise measurement is less important than having a consistant one. My preferred method is by using a set calipers. They are cheap and convient to use, and give a fairly accurate reading when used properly.

By taking your measurements every week you can then see if you are putting on muscle or just fat, or if you are losing muscle rather than fat. If you are staying the same weight, if you are lucky you may see that you are actually losing fat and gaining muscle rather than having no results (If this were the case I would be very jealous! It is only certain lucky people that achieve this.)

If you have a fat loss or muscle building goal, body monitoring is a must for success. Also keep a diary of your results, so you can reflect back and see how far you have come.  

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Food Planning for Fat Loss and Muscle Building

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

Are you trying to burn fat or put of some muscle? Are you happy that your workouts are good and you are getting enough rest, and yet frustratingly you are still not getting the results you are after? I guarantee that with most people the problem comes is in your diet.

Larry Scott, the first Mr. Olympia, remarked in 1965 “Bodybuilding is 90% nutrition”, and he was right! Nutrition is the key to success not just for bodybuilders, but for anyone trying to get in shape. To see great results, you really need to tighten up on your nutrition.

With alot of people it doesn’t come down to the fact that they don’t know what they should be eating, it is more that they are guessing what they do actually eat, I can hold my hand up and admit that I have done this in this past.  If you try to estimate your calories, you can find yourself eating far more or less than you actually need. As for your nutiriton ratios, you stand no chance if you are trying to guess them.

The key is to plan. I find that the best way is to spend a little bit of time sitting down and working out a few days worth of menus. If you have a full day’s worth of food written in front of you , it will make things alot easier.

Another good method is to split up your daily allowances into your six meals equally, and then sit down and write out a number of different meals that you could have throughthe day. If you make sure each meal has the same calories and nutrition ratios, you could pick from various meal combinations through the day to keep variation in your diet, and to stop you getting bored eating the same things day in day out. Also prepare your meals as much as possible the day before, this will ensure that you are making sure the next days eating is as easy as possible.

It is also a good idea to keep a food diary. I know it sounds a bit daft, but if you write down what you eat each day you will eventually be able to what works well for you and what doesn’t.

Remember nutrition willbe the difference between little or no results, and great results. So try and get in the habit of planning your meals, and keep a food diary each day, it really is worth the extra effort. 

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Posted in Fat Loss Diet, Muscle Building Diet, Muscle building, fat loss | No Comments »

Inspiring Fat Loss Story…

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

Hi everyone,

I thought I’d point you towards some elses blog today, mainly for motivational purposes. This guy has possibly been in alot worse shape than you may be in right now, and he has managed to turn things around for himself. This guy really is a great example of what you can achieve if you put your mind to it. Click here to have a look at what I mean.

 Once you have read his story, think about his achievements and then think what it is possible for you to achieve yourself. Now get to work with your diet and training! If you are new to my blog, and interested in fat loss and muscle building, why not scroll through some of my past posts. There you will find tips and advice on how to get going, stick around as there will be a lot more to come…

 Eat smart and train hard. That way you will achieve great things.

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Nutrition Ratios: A Good Starting Point

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

If you are trying to lose some body fat or gain muscle, your nutrition ratios can have a huge effect on your success. What I mean by nutrition ratios is basically how much protein, carbohydrates and fat make up the calories that you are eating.

Unfortunately there are many different views on this and many different ratios that you can use. For example you could use a 40:40:20 which means 50% of your total calorie intake would be from carbohydrates, 30% from protein and 20% from fat. The ideal ratio to use depends  on your goal, be it fat loss or muscle building, and it also varies from person to person.

You should remember that each of these nutrients don’t have the same amount of calories, they are as follows:-

  • 1 gram of protein = 4 calories
  • 1 gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories
  • 1 gram of fat = 9 calories

As a beginner trying to achieve fat loss or muscle gain, rather than trying to work out your requirements exactly you should just try and get roughly in the right area. My advice is to spread your calorie intake over six meals a day, and to make sure that you eat both carbohydrates and protein with each meal. This will give you a good starting point, and as you get more experienced you can adjust as you feel necessary. If you are trying to lose fat you might find that you need to drop your carb intake, or if you are trying to gain muscle you may need to increase your protein intake. A good figure to aim for with protein if you are trying tolose fat or build muscle is about 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass.

You should also make sure that you are getting at least 15-20% of your calories from good fat, the unsaturated fats, avoiding saturated fat and especially trans fatty acids.

Give that a try and you should start to see some good results!

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Don’t Try to Copy Bodybuilders Muscle Building Techniques!

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

Those of you out there who are relatively new to the whole muscle building thing, or who have trained for years but never really achieved any great results, the best piece of advice that I will give you is this… DON’T TRY TO COPY BODYBUILDERS!

People who want to put on some serious muscle often look to the people who seemingly have already achieved what you are aiming for, copying their routines and their diets, hoping to get the same results. What you need to know is that  these huge bodybuilders are genetically gifted and the the majority of them are drug enhanced.

High volume workouts are popular with some bodybuilders, where they perform set after set of each exercise on each muscle group, causing large amounts of damage to your muscle fibres. The more damage you do, the longer it takes for your muscles to repair and recover. Bodybuilders who do this type of training do tend to train each muscle group only once a week, but even so without amazing genetics or help from drugs, this will more than likely be too much for a normal persons body. It will lead to over training, which will have negative results including possible muscle loss. Stay away from these high volume training routines, leave them to the drug enhanced bodybuilders!

Another technique that is used by bodybuilders for building muscle, is to split their year into a bulking phase and a cutting phase. During a bulking phase some bodybuilders will over eat massively, far more than they need to and keep it up for months at a time. They will put on muscle, but also by the end they will have ALOT of fat as well. Then during their cutting phase, because they have alot of fat to get rid of they have to restrict their calories massively for a long period. Now if me, you or any other person with an average physique and no help from drugs tried to do this, it would go as follows. We would first bulk up gaining a fair amount of muscle and also alot of fat over several months, then we would come to the cutting phase. Now we would restrict our calories and end up losing the fat that we had gained (if we were lucky!), but also the muscle that we had gained, bringing us back to where we started or worse! A good way to tackle this is to set yourself limits on your bodyfat. For example if you were currently 10% bodyfat, you would go on a bulking or muscle building phase until we reached our 12% bodyfat limit, then we would start a cutting or fat loss phase until we hit our lower limit, which could be your original 10% or even less. As we would have added much fat in the muscle building phase, we wouldn’t have to restrict our calories as much and therefore would be able to avoid eating away at our new muscle. You can keep running through this cycle until you have reached your goals. Try and limit each phase two twelve weeks, even if you don’t hit your limits. This will keep your body guessing, and prevent you from hitting a plateau.

So remember to ignore what the huge drug enhanced bodybuilders are doing, because it seems to work for them doesn’t mean it will work for you.

  

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Progressive Overload for Muscle Gain

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Progressive overload is a must for anyone who wants to gain size or strength. So what do I mean by progressive overload? Progressive overload simple means continuously increasing the amount of stress you put on your muscles each time you workout over a period of time.

There are several ways you can do this. Firstly you every workout you could increase the weight on each exercise that you are doing. Add perhaps 5lbs on your previous workouts lifting weight. Secondly you could try and complete more repetitions than you did on your previous workout. Finally you could add extra sets to your workout, increasing the volume.

This progressive overload is the key to muscle gain. Every time you exercise your muscles, the stress you put on them actually damages the fibres within the muscle. These fibres then repair themselves stronger and thicker, so the next time they have to complete the task that damaged them, they will be able to do it with the damage. Now if you increase the stress they are put on each time, they will continue to repair stronger and thicker each time (providing you are giving them enough rest and feeding them enough proper nutrition!). 

That’s the basic theory behind progressive resistance, put in very simple terms anyway!

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Posted in Muscle Building Training, Muscle building | 2 Comments »

The Big Three for Muscle Growth

Friday, March 7th, 2008

There are three exercises which are widely regarded as must do exercises to have in your workout when aiming to build muscle. What are these? See below…..

  • Number one on  the list is the good old bench press. The number one exercise for your chest, bar none. This compound exercise is great for putting on size on your chest. The chest is one of the most impressive areas of the body when toned and built to a good size.
  • The second on the list is the barbell squat. A very demanding exercise, both mentally and physically. Mainly targets the legs, but also strengthens all of the core (lower back and abs) . The results that can be achieved by this movement are amazing. 
  • Lastly is the deadlift. This is an exercise that is great for building a strong back. Care must be taken when performing this exercise, as the risk of injury is high if form is bad.

These are three great exercises that you should consider introducing into your workout routine, as excellent gains in muscle size and strength can be made.

The deadlift and the barbell squat can be tough on your body. If you are unable to perform any of these, perhaps due to an old injury or general discomfort. Dont worry, all is not lost. There are alternatives that can produce great results to.

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Posted in Muscle Building Training | 3 Comments »

Key Points for Muscle Growth

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

If you are training to build lean muscle, and are seeing little or no results. I have created a list of key points below that you should be doing in your training and diet.

  •  Lifting heavyweights – Fairly obvious one, but you really need to be pushing yourself for muscle growth. You should be aiming for 3 to 4 sets (plus warm up sets) of 6 to 8 reps.
  • Train to failure – On the last rep of the last set on each exercise you should keep going till you fail. In other words you can’t complete anymore reps at all. This is where you will get the greatest gains.
  • Progressive resistance – Make sure you continually progress with your training, every workout try and push out an extra rep or a heavier weight than you did in your last workout.
  • Rest – I’ve recently posted about the importance of rest for muscle growth. If you don’t give your muscles enough chance to repair and recover,you will end up over training. This will halt or even start to reverse any gains.
  • Complete every workout - Don’t get into the habit of missing training sessions because your not in the mood, or finishing them early because you’re tired. For continuous progress train regularly and train hard! 
  • Eat, eat and eat! – Can’t stress this enough. If you are not consuming enough calories you won’t get bigger! This doesn’t mean that you should be eating any junk you can get your hands on. Eat good quality food. Make sure you are getting plenty of good proteins from chicken, fish, lean beef steak and egg whites. Ensure that you have plenty of energy by eating good quality carbs, found in brown rice, wholemeal pasta and potatoes. Also you want to be get enough good fats found in fish and nuts.
  •  Sleep – When you’re a sleep your muscles repair and grow. Try to get 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night.

Implement all these things into your training, diet and lifestyle and you should start seeing positive results.

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Posted in Muscle Building Diet, Muscle Building Training, Muscle building | 1 Comment »