the public are researching and discovering the best muscle building techniques that are applicable for them.

The muscular system is the system responsible for giving the body its shape and frame. It is composed of millions of muscle fibers which when grouped together will make up the various muscle types. Muscles depend on protein for their growth and maturation.

Caloric intake from carbohydrates and fats is also essential in building bigger muscle mass. This intake depends on an individual\’s body mass. It should be high as possible averaging about 3000-6000 calories per day. The diet should be well balanced and should be healthy as well. Your body burns your caloric stores during your exercise or even in doing just simple activities of daily living.

Aside from a well balanced diet, you should also establish a routine physical workout. The training includes spending few days in a gym each week.

Each training session must not exceed an hour or so due to the risk of overtraining. Exerting too much pressure on your workout can deteriorate and tear your muscle strands. Start from simple exercises only and then pursue to a more vigorous task if you feel like it. Bench press, leg press, and weight lifting are some examples of these exercises. Not everyone is able to achieve the results they want. Some people have muscles that recover much more slowly from workouts compared to others, which is the reason behind why they are not able to see muscle growth early on.

Overtraining causes sore muscles. Sore muscles indicate muscle growth but it is advisable not to continuously train muscles that are sore. Provide time for rest and allow soreness heal. Rest in between workouts gives your muscles a chance to grow.

As stated earlier, your body also needs an essential rest besides training hard. Sleeping stimulates the pituitary gland in order to release growth hormones. There is a famous saying “muscles grow while you sleep”.

Resting is as essential as dieting and physical training. It is recommended to not force too hard in exercising. Few acknowledge the fact that sleeping for six to eight hours will benefit you a lot and is considered as the best muscle building strategy.

Training for muscle growth also includes the superset system. This training involves the use of three or four different types of exercise for the same muscle. This will also give you an ultimate pump in the muscle belly and an increase in muscle size and strength will be achieved with repetitive training sessions. However, do not favor a single body part when working out as this can cause muscular imbalances.

I\’m sure you would agree it would be odd to have a big upper body and skinny legs or vice versa? That\’s an example of muscular imbalance. It is therefore necessary to balance not only your diet but your muscle training as well. Achieving proper muscular balance involves paying attention to the muscle which lacks mass or leanness.

Cardiovascular exercise is an important activity before or after workout. It helps in obtaining a maximum heart function thus providing good blood circulation which in turn contributes enough oxygen needed for your vigorous exercise. Cardio is best performed for a minimum of once a week to a maximum of once every two weeks.

However executing cardio more often than this is exhausting and can take away the quality of your muscle gains resulting in a much smaller muscle size which is certainly not what you are trying to accomplish. Cardiovascular exercise is usually done in the early morning more often than not before breakfast.

Falling in trenches during the muscle building process is expected. It is advisable to control your impatience when working out. Lack of patience is the biggest and most common hindrance of novices or even the hard gainers. Their eagerness to gain muscle mass early on only hurts them.

Patience is the only key to success. You should also keep in mind that consistency, discipline, knowledge and determination will also help you in achieving your goal.

Training load in bodybuilding is defined as the frequency, intensity and type of movement involved in a regimen. Natural bodybuilding methods, which simply involve weights and symmetrical body movements offer the best results for any fitness endeavor.

The bodybuilding lifestyle is decidedly for everyone. Men and women alike can engage in bodybuilding with little or no bad effects. As long as the correct methods are observed and the right measures are in place, no injury will take place.

Some myths

Before the discussion of training loads, some pervasive myths need to be addressed. The first myth is that bodybuilding is only for men, and has detrimental effects to women.

Depending on one’s cultural outlook, bodybuilding in itself is a gender-neutral activity. It is simply one of many ways to lose weight and gain muscle mass. It is physically and physiologically beneficial to all, not just men.

Another myth is that bodybuilding harms children, or teenagers. Again, depending on the type of cultural outlook you have, the answer to this will be variable. But from the perspective of medical science, as long as proper training methods are used, no injury would befall teenagers.

The main problem with teenagers or the younger people engaged in bodybuilding is that often, the back is strained unnecessarily by overtraining.

Overtraining and the lack of proper guidance

Overtraining often results from the lack of proper guidance by the proper personnel. The acquisition of a proper trainer or mentor for any physical regimen should be the responsibility of the child’s parent.

Injury will befall anyone if the body is forced to do asymmetrical exercises and carry weights far beyond the capacity of the skeletal muscles.

Teenagers and veteran trainers are equal when it comes to injury, because bones and skeletal muscles have their biological limits. The shearing strain that is applied to joints is also part of the potentially dangerous region of bodybuilding.

Strength and training load

According to John Downing, a sports medicine researcher:

“While frequency of training is important, many consider training

intensity, or workload, the single most important factor in the development of strength (Fleck, 1994). The assumption

underlying this premise, however, is that the training load is manageable.”

“Beginners are taught to start with low intensities and high repetitions to allow for neuromuscular accommodation to the training process, minimization of delayed-onset muscle soreness, and reduction of the likelihood of injury (Downing, 1997)”

Intensities

There are three levels of intensities for any type of physical workout. The first intensity is the low intensity workout, which involves less time and fewer movements.

The second level is the middle intensity, which is considered adequate and the optimum level for bodybuilding. Anything beyond this is used in alternative means of building muscle, such as rapid-fire bodybuilding.

Rapid-fire bodybuilding has been found to be dangerous because muscles are prone to tearing when faced with incredible amounts of stress.

Downing warns us that:

“Many weight trainers, especially novices, use too much weight in their training program and consequently predispose themselves to excess fatigue, frustration, failure to reach their goal, and injury.”

This is a claim you hear often, especially among bodybuilders, but also among some personal trainers. The most extreme version is “aerobics makes you fat”, the reasoning being that it leads to loss of muscle, which lowers your metabolism, causing you to gain fat because you’re now eating too much for your slow metabolism.

These types of claims are based on some truth, as we’ll see, but are highly exaggerated. Your muscles are not going to waste away to nothing because you run half an hour per day.

There are some mechanisms by which aerobic exercise can interfere with muscle growth or cause actual muscle loss. The first is that concurrent aerobic exercise and strength training lead to competing adaptations in muscles. For example, steady state aerobics leads to endurance adaptations such as increased mitochondria (aerobic energy factories) and aerobic enzymes in the muscle cells, while strength training can lead to hypertrophy, or growth in muscle fibers.

The bottom line is that doing both of these activities has been shown to cut muscle growth about in half compared to just doing strength training [Docherty, 2001; Gordon, 1967]. For those of us that are doing strength training for fitness this is not a big deal, it just means it will take longer to build up muscle mass. But for bodybuilders it’s interfering with proficiency in their specialty. So many bodybuilders will minimize aerobics or take measures to reduce the intereference.

I think this is where the seed of this “muscle wasting” idea was first planted. But note that aerobics in these studies has been shown to reduce the rate of muscle growth, which is a far cry from causing muscle loss. Interestingly, the opposite interference does not seem to occur: adding strength training does not interfere with cardio improvements. Many of us that are into aerobic training will supplement it with upper body strength work, and there’s no problem with concurrent training in that case.

There is another way that cardio can interfere with strength training, and that can be by just taking up too much time. I remember a time when I was trying to lose weight so I did about 90 minutes a day of cardio. I tried to do a token amount of resistance training but had little time and was worn out anyway. I had much more success when I cut back to a more reasonable hour per day and left more time to lift.

There are a couple of mechanisms by which excessive aerobics can lead to actual muscle loss, however, due to overtraining and/or poor nutrition. Too much aerobics can lead to increased production of catabolic hormones like cortisol (often referred to as a “stress hormone”), which can subsequently cause breakdown of muscle tissue.

But aerobics in moderate amounts is a relaxing activity, which leads to a net decrease in cortisol. Only excessive amounts of aerobic activity leads to elevated cortisol levels in the bloodstream after the activity is complete.

A study which specifically examined how much aerobic exercise is needed found that cortisol elevations did not occur when running for 40 or 80 minutes, but only occurred in runs of two hours [Tremblay, 2005]. Ironically, high volume resistance training can cause the same effect [Stone, 1998], but I’ve never heard anyone being warned not to lift because it causes your muscles to waste away!

The other mechanism is that if your body does not have enough blood glucose, it can manufacture it by breaking down protein. If not enough protein is available from food, it will get it from muscle tissue [Berning, 1998]. Again this is only likely if you’re training excessively, or undernourished.

The most obvious example of this is “hitting the wall” in the marathon or cyclists “bonking” on long rides. You can get irritable and have impaired judgement as the brain, which can only run on glucose, is not getting enough fuel.

I’ve experienced both of these and they’re no fun. I don’t know if my body broke down muscle for fuel but afterwards it sure felt like my muscles had been broken down, or at least beat up. But both times this occurred to me after about 3 hours of exercise without taking in any fuel.

On the other hand, many people that are into aerobics, thinking of carbs as fuel, will bump up their consumption of bad carbs like white flour products or sugary drinks or “power bars” which are basically glorified candy bars. This can lead to an unhealthy lifestyle of poor nutrition justified by overtraining.

There is a way people who do a lot of cardio can end up protein deficient: endurance exercise increases the demand for protein. You’ve probably heard that cardio is fueled by a mixture of carbs and fat, depending on the intensity level, but there’s a small bit of protein in the mix, too. Protein is also needed to repair any tissue damage caused by the exercise [Noakes, 2004].

Strength trainers are well aware that they need more protein, but people who do cardio often are not. In addition, since many who do cardio are trying to lose weight, they’re probably cutting back on calories at the same time, which if you do it by just reducing portion size can decrease protein intake. The typical recommendation for protein is 0.25-0.45 grams per pound of body weight, but endurance athletes can require more like 0.55 to 0.65 grams per pound [Sharkey, 2001].

So don’t overtrain and don’t underreat, and don’t eat junk. Follow common sense procedures like easy day/hard day, don’t do hours per day of cardio, and don’t try to lose more than about a pound of weight per week. Make sure you’re doing a balance of cardio and resistance training, and your muscles will be just fine.

References

-Berning, J, “Energy Intake, Diet, and Muscle Wasting”, in in Overtraining in Sport, Kreider, R, Fry, A, and O’Toole, M, eds, Human Kinetics, 1998.

-Noakes, T, Lore of Running, Human Kinetics, 2002.

-Sharkey, B, Fitness and Health, Human Kinetics, 2001.

-Stone, M, and Fry, A, “Increased Training Volume in Strength/Power Athletes”, in Overtraining in Sport, Kreider, R, Fry, A, and O’Toole, M, eds, Human Kinetics, 1998.

-Tremblay, M, Copeland J, and Van Helder, W, “Influence Of Exercise Duration On Post-exercise Steroid Hormone Responses In Trained Males”, Eur J Appl Physiol, 94(5-6):505-13, 2005.

The Principle of Overload asserts that you must gradually and systematically increase your fitness training load.  Overloading causes changes within your muscles as a direct result of the type of training you perform.  Because your body gets used to working out at a particular level, you must progressively increase your work load in order to continue to improve.

To apply the Principle of Overload to fitness programs, you can adjust some combination of intensity (how hard), frequency (how often), duration (how long), recovery (how much rest), and volume (total work) to achieve your desired results.  It is most important that you gradually increase your work load with a regimen of training activities that targets your goals.

Training at an intensity that varies between 60%-100% of your maximum effort is a guideline for how hard to work.   Planned training cycles that include light, moderate, and heavy periods offer variation within an adequate range of intensity.  Periodically testing your maximum efforts provides a basis for how much and in which ways you should increase training loads.

For cardio workouts, how hard you work is based on your maximum predicted heart rate.  The Karvonen formula or a calculator can estimate your target heart rate zone in beats per minute. As your body adapts to training at any particular level, you will have to work harder to stay within the zone.  You can pick up your pace, increase distance or time, or decrease rest time between training bouts in order to continue to make gains.

For strength, lift weights at 60-100% of your single maximum repetition (1 RM) for specific lifts (e.g., squat, bench press).  However, if you are not conditioned, testing 1 RM is not advisable nor is it feasible for all exercises.  One RM calculators offer a safer way to estimate the weight you can lift for a single repetition.

Another method to progressively overload for strength is to perform 10-15 repetitions of an exercise. Increase the weight load when you can complete 15 reps using good form through the full of motion.   Do not increase weight loads more than 10% per week.

What happens if you do not work hard enough?  You will make limited gains, progress more slowly, or simply maintain your fitness level.

What happens if you work too hard?  Your progress can be compromised if your training intensity is too high.  It is not necessary to work out until you are exhausted every day.  In time, you could experience the effects of overtraining.

The Recovery Principle and the Variation Principle work in concert with the Overload Principle.  To allow adequate recovery time, train 5-6 days per week for endurance and 3-4 days per week for strength. To prevent overtraining and to experience more rapid improvements, vary your workouts during each phase of training within a range that targets your goals.

How does the saying, No pain, no gain apply? Learn to distinguish between the “pain” of working hard and the “pain” of injuries. Overloading will result in normal training effects.  Muscles will burn or become sore and stiff.  You can continue to work through these effects of training. But you should work around muscle strains, joint sprains, and other structural injuries to allow them to heal.

The Overload Principle is a useful training tool, but your body’s response to your total training load supersedes general training guidelines. You can make good training decisions by listening to your body and trusting your instincts about how to apply training principles.

Sources

Fleck, S.J. & Kraemer, W.J. (1996). Periodization breakthrough! Ronkonkoma, NY: Advanced Research Press.

Hoeger, W.W.K & Hoeger, S.A. (2006). Principles and labs for fitness and wellness. (8th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth.

Martens, R. (2004). Successful coaching (3rd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

McArdle, W.D., Katch, F.I., & Katch, V.L. (2000). Essentials of exercise physiology (2nd ed.). Baltimore: Lippincott, Williams, & Wilkins.

Powers, S.K., Dodd, S.L., & Noland, V.J. (2006). Total fitness and wellness (4th ed.). San Francisco: Pearson Education.

You have been exercising and training regularly at your local gym for a couple of months now. At the beginning, you may have lost some weight, gain some muscle tone, strength and feeling wonderful after every exercise session, but you do not experience those wonderful moments anymore. Your results are now dismal at best or worse, you are not getting the results that you wanted anymore.

You stayed on a healthy diet, supplemented with vitamins and minerals, but somehow you always feel tired and exhausted nowadays. Your enthusiasm for your workout sessions seemed to have waned. You even feel irritable and all stressed up. What is happening?

You know something? If you find yourself dreading your exercise sessions or dragging yourself through the day, you may be pushing yourself too hard. These are the symptoms of overtraining. Training plateau is your body’s way of crying out for rest. It is time to now take a rest and recharge your body.

When it comes to getting a good physical shape, most people expect too much too soon. They would usually push themselves too hard at the beginning in order to get faster results. But what happens then? They feel tired, exhausted, easily irritated and so become depressed and lose the desire and enthusiasm for the activities they used to enjoy. Isn’t that such a waste?

Overtraining happens when the physical stress of training is not balanced by adequate rest and nutrition to allow the body recuperate and repair itself. Overtraining is defined as “untreated overreaching that result in chronic decreases in performance and impaired ability to train” by the The Unites States Olympic Committee (USOC) and the American College of Sports Medicine.

In medical term, the overtraining syndrome is classified as a neuro-endocrine disorder where the normal fine balance in the interaction between nervous and hormonal systems is disturbed and the body is so tired that it now has a decreased ability to repair itself during rest.

So if you are consistently push your limits without giving your body a chance to recover, your entire engine may just suffer a major break down. This is because most of us think that if a little exercise can do wonders for your body, more exercise must be even better. That is why we tend to put all the energy into every workout and push ourselves expecting to reach the set goals sooner. Some of us will even hit the gym almost everyday for hours at a time. This is wrong! More is not better in this game.

It is true that in order to make improvements, you will need to challenge yourself out of your comfort zone. That means that you may want to squat heavier or run more miles than you did the month before. Progression is the way you can make improvements towards your cherished goals. The only problem is that your body adapts to the same routine and stops responding. This is the dreaded plateau every athletic fear. Hence there should be a delicate balance between exercise and rest.

Exercising is great for your body, mind and soul, however if you start feeling tired, fatigued and irritated, then you may be creating a very unfavorable physical internal environment. Physiologically, repetitive training alters your hormone levels, weakens immunity and triggers emotional instability wreaking havoc on your mind and body.

Insomnia, elevated resting heart rate, lack of appetite, feeling unmotivated, low libido and a lack of progress are all symptoms of overtraining.

The first thing most people do which leads to overtraining is performing too many sets of different exercises in their workouts. From what I have observed in the gym, most people do between 20 -30 sets per workout.

Have you asked yourself is it necessary to do so many sets? Did you find out how many sets you must do to get the optimum results? What are you trying to accomplish by doing so many sets? Do the extra sets make your muscle stronger and bigger? Are they getting you leaner and more muscular? Are they helping you to recruit more motor units? Are you stretching the fascia and inducing hyperplasia?

If you are really training hard, it is very difficult for most people to perform so many sets and still be able to recover. So reduce you sets.

The next mistake is that people train too long and too often in the gym. Intensive workouts should never exceed an hour. When you begin training, your anabolic hormones are immediately elevated. After a while they will reach a peak and then start to decline.

They eventually return to normal baseline and if you keep training beyond that point, they will dip down to below normal levels. This is when cortisol, which is a stress hormone that eats muscle and stores body fat is produced more abundantly. This is bad news if you want to gain bigger muscles and lose body fat.

You also get over trained by training too often. You must know that training does not stress just the muscles but the entire body including your nervous system. If your nervous system has not recovered, you cannot train again. You can try, but you will not make any progress at all and will just dig yourself deeper into the overtraining phenomenon. If you are training five or six days per week, you are probably overtraining.

So if you are not seeing results and is suffering from overtraining symptoms, give yourself a 2 to 4 week break from exercising and let your body recover fully before you hit the gym again. Don’t be surprised that when you are back, your muscles will be shocked into new growth and the fat starts melting away again.

Let me tell you a quick story, twenty years ago I was very influenced by the bodybuilders and the training systems of the day. Hitting the weights five or six times a week, splitting upper and lower body workouts and working out twice a day was seen as normal.

Every set was taken to positive failure, with three or more forced reps on top of that and if that wasn’t enough I would throw in a few negative reps to top it off. This type of training would leave me totally exhausted and render me sore for days after every session.

The constant battering to my body lowered my immune system and I would always be sick or injured. I would take time off training and then go back to it again, all the time gaining nothing in size or strength.

Can you imagine years and years of hard work like this all for nothing. The sad reality is that I still see it going on around me now? The cold hard facts are that over 80% of the regular trainees in your gym are overtraining. That’s right, 80%, disturbing isn’t it?

Traditional training techniques like volume training are ineffective and downright dangerous, having been passed down from the previous training generations and unquestionably followed at all costs.

The only people making any progress on these systems are the so called ‘bodybuilding stars’ who have superb genetics (about 2% of the general population) and are taking massive amounts of steroids (very expensive and dangerous).

So please don’t fall into the same overtraining trap as many others have, if you haven’t made any gains for a long time now and maybe suffer from one or more of the symptoms found below stop!! Stop wasting your time and effort for nothing.

* Reoccurring colds and sickness

* Sore joints and muscles

* Unwillingness to go to the gym to train.

* Loss of appetite

* Insomnia

* Chronic fatigue

Put a stop to overtraining by understanding that the two main components of strength training are the intensity of the exercise and the recovery after the exercise.

Infrequent, short, high intensity weight training sessions, followed by the required amount of time to recover and become stronger is what is needed to increase functional muscle size and stop overtraining.

Have a look at some scientific principles found below and practice them in the gym and you will be on the road to greater gains in muscle size without the problem of overtraining.

Limited Energy Level

A strength-training program should be short and simple; you only have a limited amount of energy per training session.

Scientific studies reveal that blood sugar levels (energy) start to deplete after 30 mins, so exercise selection and the time taken to perform them is crucial.

What you should be aiming for is stimulating as many muscle fibres in the shortest period of time available, leaving the gym and going home to grow.

To do this, you will have to perform high intensity workouts consisting of multijoint, compound movements in the shortest amount of time so that blood sugar levels don’t deplete.

Progressive Overload

Progressive Overload is the main exercise principle you need to be aware of in order to get the results that you’re after with strength training.

The three most important points are:

* Complete your exercise with perfect technique

* Push to total failure when doing a set

* Overload the weight on the bar progressively.

Basically this means that when the body is stressed by high intensity training beyond its normal demands, the body will adapt to these new demands of improved strength.

Once your muscles have adapted to a particular weight then it’ll be time to overload them further (add more weight, speed, repetitions). You’ll need to keep on repeating this process of overload and adaptation if you want to become stronger.

Training Frequency

The sad reality is that the popular high volume type of training techniques that you find in bodybuilding books and magazines (and used by the stars) are irrelevant to the majority of the population and has a high failure rate.

What is good for the latest bodybuilding star is probably not good for you. Everybody has different genetics; most of us have poor genetics and are not taking steroids like the stars.

The only way the majority of us can make any gains at all is to perform short intense workouts followed by long periods of rest so that you don’t over train.

Over Compensation

Many studies at universities, conducted around the world have shown clearly that recuperation from strength training requires far more rest time than previously thought.

Infrequent, short, high intensity weight training sessions, followed by the required amount of time to recover and become stronger is necessary for you to increase your functional muscle.

Here’s what you need to do – allow your body enough recuperation time for over compensation to take place, so that the muscles can adjust to their new strength and growth.

Exercise selection for intensity

I can’t stress enough of how exercise selection is absolutely crucial. There are only a few exercises that you really need to perform. These exercises consist of multi-joint movements.

These particular exercises are far superior to that of isolation exercises (working 1 muscle group at a time) because you are required to use more muscles from every muscle group.

Make no mistake about it by following these principles you will not only develop greater muscle size but also banish overtraining for good.

 

The desire to build a better body unites all bodybuilding enthusiasts, but for most of us, the gains come too slow. So we look for shortcuts. In this article we are going to dive into 5 of the most common workout “shortcuts” that people take.

Shortcut # 1 – Training More Often

A lot of times aspiring bodybuilders think they are not training enough and fall into the more is better mentality. After all more workouts must mean more muscle, Right?

It is not uncommon to find less experienced bodybuilders to start spending more and more time in the gym. Daily workouts become the norm and the length of those workouts gradually gets longer and longer. They usually think they are doing themselves good, and sometimes even brag about how they workout “everyday”.

Is there a better way?

Your body can only recover and grow so fast. Training a muscle again before you have fully recovered from your previous workout will lead to overtraining. Generally the most you can train a bodypart is twice per week and still recover and grow.

While there are some rare exceptions to this rule. You should limit yourself to working each bodypart at most twice per week and take at least 2 days off from weight training each week for optimal muscle gains.

Shortcut # 2 – Doing More Sets

Making the transition from a beginner, to intermediate, to an advanced lifter usually involves increasing your workout training volume to some extent. The better shape you are in physically, the higher your work capacity, and the more volume of training you can handle.

For example, a beginner workout may consist of 6 sets per bodypart. An intermediate workout may consist of 9 sets per bodypart. And an advanced workout may consist of 12 sets per bodypart. While this is all good general training advice, it breeds the “more is better” mentality. After all no one wants to be a newbie for long so they jack up the training volume too much, too soon.

Another problem with this train of thought is that if 12 sets per bodypart are good for an advanced lifter, will more sets be even better? How about 15 sets, or 20 sets, and beyond…?

Is there a better way?

Generally it takes at least 3 years of training to progress from the beginner, to the intermediate, and on to the advanced levels of training. Once you reach the advanced levels adding more sets and training volume beyond this is often counterproductive.

While there is no hard set rules for exactly how much training volume you should do, there are some general guidelines that you can follow. 9 sets per workout should be adequate for smaller muscle groups like biceps, triceps, calfs, and abs. And around 12 sets per workout will be enough for larger muscle groups like chest, back, and thighs.

Once you are at the advanced training level the key to more muscle growth is using progressive overload and by adding variety to your workouts. NOT from adding more training volume.

Shortcut # 3 – Training Less Often

The world of bodybuilding is full of extremes, for a lot of guys it is either all or none… there is no middle ground. So after learning about the negative impacts of training too often, as outlined above, many bodybuilders make a complete U-turn and go the opposite direction and drastically cut back on their workouts figuring that “less is more”.

Some experts have gone over the deep end with the fear of overtraining. Mike Mentzer and his Heavy Duty style workouts were one of the biggest influences of the “less is more” idea. Overall the basic principles of this workout were good because it implemented a solid plan of action, used progressive overload, monitored your progress, etc.

But one major flaw of the system was that if you weren’t making progress with your workouts it was automatically assumed that you were “overtraining”, so your workouts were cut back. Sometimes going to the point of working out once a week or less.

Is there a better way?

For some extremely hardgainers training less often (i.e. every second day) may be the best frequency for muscle gains. But most people will respond well to more frequent workouts (i.e. 2 days on, 1 day off).

There are no hard set in stone rules that work for everyone, but a general guideline of working out 4-5 times per week and training each bodypart twice per week is a good place to start. As you get more experienced you be able to find out exactly what your body responds the best to and customize your workouts to fit your specific needs.

Shortcut # 4 – Heavy Weights & Low Reps

One of the basic bodybuilding principles is a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle. So in order to get bigger, you need to get stronger. Progressive overload is the cornerstone of all successful workouts. You need to gradually increase the weights you are lifting over time in order to make progress.

During the early phases of a starting a workout program beginners can make fast gains because all training stimulus is new at this stage. And a lot of the initial strength gains come not only from increasing muscle strength, but also from improved lifting technique and better coordination.

But once you get past the initial beginners phase, your strength gains come more slowly. When this happens a lot of lifters will simply do fewer reps so they can continue to increase the weights.

For example, if I can lift 100 lbs. for 10 reps, maybe I could drop the reps to 8 and lift 120 lbs., or drop the reps to 6 and lift 140 lbs., etc… While this may work to some degree initially to get you growing again, there comes a point where it can back fire and bring your gains to a screeching halt.

Is there a better way?

Lifting heavier weights for lower reps increases your odds of getting an injury such as a muscle tear. When you are doing fewer then 5 reps per set you lose the mind muscle connection. The lift becomes an end in itself and no longer a means for building muscle. Lifting too heavy makes it harder to concentrate on the muscles you are working, your focus switches to simply moving the weight and not getting crushed under a heavy barbell.

For bodybuilding purposes try to stay within the 6-12 rep range. This is the “sweet spot” for keeping your muscles under tension long enough to stimulate growth, while still allowing relatively heavy weights to be lifted.

Shortcut # 5 – High Intensity Techniques

A lot of hardgainers think the key to making faster gains in the gym is to simply work harder. So they increase the intensity of their workouts with various advanced training techniques such as forced reps, super sets, drop sets, and so on… Thinking that the harder they push themselves, the better gains they’ll make.

Is there a better way?

For the average drug free lifter using advanced training techniques and pushing yourself to the limit will quickly lead to burnout, overtraining, and possibly injury.

A very common mistake that you can witness pretty much any day of the week in the gym is to see a couple of eager young lifters doing bench presses with WAAAYYY too much weight on the bar. One guy will be getting ready to bench while his trusty spotter is standing by ready to assist the lift. After getting psyched up the lifter plops down on the bench and takes the bar from the rack, he manages to struggle up 2-3 reps using piss poor form and every ounce of effort his body can muster. Then he gets his spotter to assist him with an addition 3-5 reps.

At the end of the set you wonder who worked the hardest, the guy benching or his buddy pulling the bar off his chest…?

Once you reach failure with an exercise you have stimulated the muscle. Doing more then this is often not only waste of time, but could potentially set you back in your training through risk of injury. Simply doing your sets to positive failure is intense enough to stimulate your muscles to grow.

After each workout record it in your training journal. Each workout strive to do better by lifting an extra 5 lbs. or doing an extra rep with the same weight. Using progressive overload like this will ensure that you constantly push yourself to make steady strength and muscle gains.

The Real Shortcut To Fast Muscle Growth

Gains in muscle and strength don’t come overnight. They take consistency over the long term. By taking things at a manageable pace and making small frequent improvements week after week with your workouts your muscle size will increase faster then you ever thought possible…

Inch by inch life’s a synch… Yard by yard life is hard…

From today I am embarking on a 30 days,body transformation trip.

 

 

I live hectic life full of manifold obligations and this occasionally forces me to deviate from my strict body composition standards

 

 

This is a fine chance to apply in detail what I preach.

 

 

The finest thing is that during this copious undertaking I will have the moral support of my readers.This is really a great push!A public commitment counts a lot!

 

 

If you need to lose 4-5 kilos of ugly fat,I urge you to join me!After 30 days you will be in the position to enjoy a much better body composition and a dintinctly higher muscle definition.

 

But the most important thing will be the triumph of your will power!

 

You are going to reap multiple profits!

 

 

Nutrition issues

 

 

Nutrition is always the biggest problem.People eat to satisfy their emotional rather than their biological needs. Mindless/emotional eating is our biggest obstacle!To overcome this danger we will need strong mental preparation!

 

 

-I will try to create a 10-15% caloric deficit.This means 10-15% less calories from my maintenance levels.

 

 

-I will divide my daily caloric intake into 6 meals of equivalent coloric value.This is crucial if I want to shed more fat and preserve my muscle mass.

 

 

Nutritional basis

 

 

-protein mega-3 eggs with their yolks,chicken and turkey breasts,sardines,a little tuna,cottage cheese,plain yoghurt etc.

 

 

-fats:cold pressed olive oil,avocados sardines,raw almonds and seeds

 

 

-carbs: raw,fibrous vegetables with lesser quantities of starchy vegetables,fruits ,legumes and unprocessed grains.

 

 

-30-35 gr water/kilo of body weight

 

 

-no alcohol

 

 

All foods should be unprocessed or minimally processed

 

 

 

Physical exercise

 

 

1. On all odd-numbered days I will do jogging for 60′. My target is to burn 800 cal/hour.This means that I will have to run at about 75- 80% of my MHR. To burn more calories while preserving my stamina I will strategically incorporate in my workout some interval training.

 

These days will be my active recovery days.

 

 

2. On days 2-6-10 etc. I will do weight training with dumbbells of a decent weight.Critical points of the workouts will be as follows:

 

 

*only compound,multijoint exercises such as:squats,lunges ,deadlifts,rows,presses,dips etc.

 

 

*only two-handed exercises

 

 

*decent loading with 8-10 repetitions

 

 

*circuit traning with only minimal breaks

 

 

*total duration:20′-30′(this is extremely tough but really transformative workout)

 

 

After the weight training session I will go on with some light jogging up to burning 800 cal.

 

 

3. On days 4-8-12 etc. I will perform the excellent workout described here:

 

 



FITNESS: THE BEST OUTDOOR WORKOUT EVER (1)

 

 

and then I will go on with light cardio up to burning -you guessed it!-800 cal.

 

 

This program will permit me to shed 1kg of fat per week while maintaining my muscle mass and will also protect me from the danger of overtraining/burnout.

 

 

Agreement:zero supplements, zero shortcuts Just strong mental preparation,self-discipline and hard work!

 

 

So what do you say?Are you in?

 

Chris Strogilis

Everybody should listen and learn “The 7 grand Daddy Laws” when they do weight training.

This is essential knowledge, for those who want to be effective and want positive gains in the gym. But also want to stay free of injuries, overtraining, etc.

Here is a little help, a little guideline that is absolutely perfect to use, when you evaluate the way you work out. Its called “The Seven granddaddy laws” and are 7 principles you can use as a guideline in your training, or the next time you read about a program you want to try out.

 

The 7 Grand Daddy Laws, is 7 principles that comes in play when doing weight training or for that matter any other sports as well.

There is a ton of training philosophies and working out systems on the market today, some are for people who want to loose weight, others are for those who want to gain muscles or strength, and others again is total useless.

Im sure you allready have your own way of working out, and your own system you are following. A system put together from the inspiration you have got from magazines, the big guy in your local gym, a friend, and from sources on the internet.

The big question is, are you satisfied? do you reach your goals? and have you asked questions about your own routines? What if you could do it even better, than you do now?

1 Principle of Individual differences

A tendency people have, when they start working out, is to copy, the “big guy” in the gym or the most fit girl on the treadmill, and expect to have the same results as they have been struggling for.

Unfortunetly that is not always whats going to happen, and after a period of time, they get more and more desperate, because of the lack of results.

Strength training, is not only a question about lifting weights, but also a learning in how to listen to your body. How to feel your body. And how to get most out of your genetic blueprint. We are all born with our differences, for some people, its very easy to build muscles, and for others very difficult. You can make a big step on the way, by listening to your own body, read some science, and not alway believe in Gym Science.

2 Overcompensation Principle

This is a very simple principle, but yet very important. Muscle fibers grow in size in response to training. An example is calluses in your hand, what happen if you use your hands a lot ? You get more calluses on your hands. the same goes for muscle fibers

3 Overload Principle

If you always have the same amount of weight and use the same amount of reps in your exercises, your improvement will stop according to your bodys adaption, and to the amount of stress you put to your body thru weight and reps.

To improve further you have to go beyond the point which your body already has adapted to.

One way is to add more and more weight for each time you work out, and thereby put more stress to your muscles and body.

This you can do, to a certain point, until your body cannot recuperative, and you will end up overtraining , or just get used to the stress.

At this point in your training, you should go to a split system, example, front and back, a 2 split. Later even a 3, 4 or 5 split. because your body will demand it to go even further. If you stay In the same training regimen, you will hit a plateau or being overtraining. other way to keep improving I will mention later in this article.

4 SAID Principle

Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. if you want to go for increased musclemass, you train for increased muscle mass, if you want endurance you go for indurance, or if you want to improve your cardiovascular system, you train your heart and lungs by doing cardio, not by doing heavy weights.

This principle tells you to train after what your goal is.

A general rule in weighttraining is 12-15 reps is more like indurance, 6-12 is muscle mass, and finally 1-6 is strength. Keep that in mind when you plan your work out,and remember to take principle number 1 into consideration as well.

5 Use/Disuse

Use or loose it, thats simple, if you train to a certain point, and stop training, you will by time loose all what you have been fighting for. an actually it goes faster than you think. But the good point is, that our muscles have a memory, so it does not take so much time to get back to it again.

Certain training systems as the HST systems uses this principle based on that the strength curve drops much fast than your mass curves. Which means after a break you train with less weight but you still have the same size.

6 Specificity Principle

This principle means you start out with fundamental training, basic work out, and by time you move on to more specific work out. We all have our weak muscles and spots. example you have been working out for 3 years and have develop great upper body, but your legs are behind. there for to reach your final goal, you have to specify and go more in depths with your leg training, and include some squats for example.

7 GAS Principle.

General Adaptation Syndrome

This principle states, that after a period of hard high intensity training, a period of low intensity training, or a complete rest period must occur, In order to recover your body.

This is very important in order for the muscles to heal and recover and to be fully strong and recovered for the next period of high hard intensity training.

There can be a little confusion because some tissues and cellular component, may not need any rest at all. But muscles especially when heavy weight training has occurred, need time to recovery, and you do not necessary go that heavy next time you work out.

A general misunderstanding of this principles is, if you then, only do a fullbody work out once a week. In that case your rest period is way to long, for you body to adapt to the amount of pressure you put on it.

These principles is a good guideline next time you plan your work out, keep them in mind and use them visely.