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Posts Tagged ‘muscle gain’

Female Bodybuilding, Common Women’s Mistakes

How to do build beautiful female muscle? Many might say muscle is built by weight training, but that’s only part of the equation. The answer is weight training with the proper intensity, right form, and training just enough to stimulate growth.

Once you know the six common mistakes women body builders make, you will be pleased at how you can adjust your own training program to increase muscle gain.

1. Not challenging oneself is the biggest muscle building mistake I witness. Granted, some women train hard, but few challenge themselves each training session. Muscle growth occurs when maximal force is applied using progressive overload.

2. A popular training mistake is failing to use heavy compound exercises. In such exercising where all the muscles and joints of a certain area are expected to work together and execute the movement,it is called a compound exercise, because here the exercise is a multi joint one. Compound exercises are the backbone to any muscle building program. Training programs that lack compound exercises do not promote muscle growth.

3. Lack of consistency is the third muscle growth error I witness. You are not going to build muscle by working out haphazardly. You have to set a scheduled plan and follow it with full force.

4. Failure to give a program enough time to prove itself is another common error. If you want your muscle building program to give you results, you have to be patient. If you want to ensure muscle building success, log your workouts so you can visually see the progression, and be sure that you are challenging your muscles every workout.

5. Expecting overnight changes is a very common female bodybuilding error. You can make changes, but they are not going to appear overnight. When you see well-developed built ladies, they worked hard for that physique. They didn’t just pick up a weight and eat right and have that body overnight. Such well built physiques followed the proper training principals and avoided these common female bodybuilding mistakes.

6. Another common female bodybuilding error is training too often. Don’t say you are not guilty of it because everyone has trained too much at one time or another.

Endless sets and reps every day in the gym are not needed for weight training for muscle growth as required for weight training marathon. Too much training will inhibit the building of your muscles.

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Body Building Supplements, Creating your Own Weight Gainer

If you are involved with bodybuilding in any way, you more than likely already know that weight gainers can be quite expensive. In that respect, if you intend trying to gain weight then perhaps it would be worth your while if you considered making your own. The most important thing is; you need to understand the nutritional information with regards to what exactly you need in order to gain weight.

Weight gainers are usually purchased at nutrition and supplement stores. They usually have a picture of a bodybuilder or an arm full of muscle mass. Weight gainers are designed to help you gain a lot of weight so you can have the muscle mass you desire.

However, you need to bear in mind that not all weight gainers are suitable for everyone. For example, if you’re really thin then it’s necessary for you to first add meat to your bones before attempting to add muscle mass. On the other hand, a bodybuilder for the most part already has the weight they want and only use weight gainers in order to increase their muscle mass.

If you want to save a bit of money and make your own weight gainer you can. It is easy to do and most likely best for your body type anyway. One of the most important things to consider is protein.

Some weight gainers have a higher quality than others and you want to get the best you can. Isolate whey powder typically has the best ranking while plain whey powder ranks lower. Soy is even lower than the two. This is in terms of the quality of the protein.

Casein is for example an extremely high quality protein which you should seriously consider adding to your weight gainer. Casein is well known for being digested slowly rather than rapidly.

The most crucial thing you need to break down and look at when you design your own weight gainer is the carbohydrate breakdown. The primary source of your carbs need to come directly from maltodextrin. This will help you refill muscle glycogen stores most efficiently.

You need to avoid weight gainers which contain large amounts of sugars or fructose. In fact, sugar content should be as low as possible or else you could find yourself suffering from fatigue, headaches, and on many occasions, even a severe bout of the shakes.

The best thing you can do as someone who wants to save money that needs to gain weight quickly is to make a weight gainer at home on your own. This is a really easy process you can do.

In order to do so, you’ll need to blend together the finest protein and maltodextrin. Both of these can be sourced and purchase from the vast majority of shops selling a range of nutritional supplements. Furthermore, raw oats which can be found in most grocery stores are ideal for mixing with shakes. This is essentially because oats do a great job at slowing down the rate at which carbohydrates are burnt. This of course means that the shake lasts longer because you’re adding more calories to the drink.

One of the best times to drink your weight gaining shake is after your workout. You can add more calories and have a higher fat intake. Your body will slowly digest the shake so you get the nutrients to the muscles over a longer period of time. Adding more fat can include things like peanut butter, nuts, oils, and more.

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Body Building Programs for Beginners

Are you moving poundages on your squat, deadlift, bench press, row (and every other major compound exercise) that all feel substantially heavy for your body? Are your clothes fitting significantly tighter? Are you generally beginning to gain a reputation as a muscular guy that people aspire to look like?

If the answer is not “yes” to all of the previous questions, then you really don’t need to be concerned about the insignificant details of your body.

If you’re still in your bodybuilding “youth” and don’t already have a considerable amount of muscle mass to show for your efforts, I would strongly suggest taking these types of questions and eliminating them from your mind until you do.

Why? It’s because diverting your focus onto these small and trivial issues will only serve to distract you from the most important and immediate task at hand. And what is the most important and immediate task a hand? It is to pack as much raw muscle size and strength onto your frame as humanly possible!

Don’t worry about matching your biceps to your triceps, and forget about matching your chest to your back. It’s simply not worth worrying about these issues until later on, after you’ve significantly thickened up your entire body.

If you have been training consistently for less than a year and are still a beginner then you should stop obsessing over details. You should rather focus your attention on the most pressing and fundamental problems. Move to a good weight training routine and be very determined to stick with it.

While lifting, continually add extra weight with as much effort and you can scrounge from deep within you and record every exercise you have performed. Finish the most difficult exercises and blast your way through the discomfort zones with energy.

Get yourself into the kitchen and pack in at least 5 or 6 properly balanced muscle building meals every day of the week, every week of the month and every month of the year.

To stay and feel healthy be sure to drink water, rest and take nutrition supplements. Expressed In Different Ways: PAY YOUR DUES FIRST!

If you plan to be in this for a long time (and you should be, as there are no temporary fixes to be had here), this will get you on the most efficient path. The best way in which to proceed is usually to begin with the basics and then get more detailed later.

You should bring this kind of mentality to your bodybuilding program. Developing your body is a progressive, step-by-step process: you shouldn’t try to fine-tune your physique without first developing adequate foundational muscle, just as you wouldn’t try to perform a guitar solo without first knowing the basic chords.

Building muscle is not rocket-science, but it is a task that requires consistent willpower and determination. And until you’ve been “in the trenches” and have earned yourself an impressive and muscular body. Stop over-analyzing. Get into the gym and train!

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Lose Fat While Building Muscle-Try Alpha Lipoic Acid for Weight Loss

Found inside each and every body cell, alpha lipoic acid is a sulfur-containing fatty acid. Much like vitamin C, it is effective as an antioxidant in water based tissues such as the blood, and yet as clihydrolipoic acid it also is effective in protecting fatty tissues and membranes, a role it shares with vitamin E and makes it unique. ALA is called the Universal Antioxidant because of its dual solubility.

Because it functions much like a B-vitamin, ALA helps convert food into energy. It contributes to invigorating mental and physical energy and a reduction in muscle fatigue. In addition to its antioxidant properties, ALA directs calories away from fat production and toward energy production, supports blood sugar levels already within the normal range and enhances the nervous and cardio-vascular systems.

Studies show that alpha-lipoic acid speeds the removal of glucose (sugar) from the blood, and drives it into muscle rather than fat cells. ALA is very popular with bodybuilders wanting to build muscle while losing fat. Insulin not only stimulates fat storage, it also inhibits the action of hormone sensitive lipase, the enzyme responsible for breaking down stored fat and preparing it for use as energy.

This means that supplementation with alpha-lipoic acid has the dual effect of increasing muscle size (in both the short- and long-term) while minimizing fat gain.

Our bodies receive alpha-lipoic acid through dietary sources such as spinach and liver, but studies have shown that most daily food consumption does not contain enough alpha-lipoic acid to counter the damaging effects of free radicals, and many scientist recommend daily supplements containing alpha-lipoic acid.

Truly, ALA is one of those rare supplements that are cheap, accessible, and actually work. Fortunately, it is an outstanding supplement that really does help maintain muscle mass while facilitating weight loss.

Atkins (author of the famed Atkins diet) wrote. “Anyone who is overweight or follows a high carbohydrate diet risks developing an insulin disorder, so ALA is potentially useful to most of us”. Body builders, diabetics, and anyone dieting to lose weight will find alpha lipoic acid to be extremely beneficial.

One of the many benefits of ALA is that it enables you to stick to a diet because you don’t feel hungry all of the time. You probably know someone who has started a diet plan in January for their New Year’s resolution only to give up a few weeks later. Alpha Lipoic Acid has many benefits, and all types of people will benefit from taking ALA.

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Best Muscle Building Supplements, Facts You Should Know About Creatine

Creatine is not actually a drug, it is a natural substance that our bodies produce. It’s a combination of three amino acids: glycine, arginine and methionine. We can get creatine from our diets, mostly from animal products like meat or fish. Whatever creatine is stored is usually stored in our muscles.

It helps the body do so-called “explosive” high intensity and repetitive exercise. This means that you can get a better workout when you take creatine, and you’ll feel better after your workout too, since your muscles can cover much more quickly from fatigue. It helps reduce the accumulation of lactic acid after your workout, which will help you avoid muscle soreness after your workout.

Even though you can get creatine from your diet, taking supplements of creatine will give you larger amounts of it; taken within reason, this can help you exercise longer with less fatigue and soreness, and with faster recovery times so that you’ll recuperate for less time between workout sessions. This is especially helpful for bodybuilders or other athletes who wish to build muscle mass quickly by working out longer and harder.

How does it do this? A substance called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP for short, simply sits in your muscles waiting for you to need it. When you need it, it is provided quickly and instantaneously, which accounts for the “explosive” benefit it gives muscles, in that you can do very intense workouts almost instantaneously.

Creatine works because once it’s ingested, it becomes creatine phosphate. That creatine phosphate replenishes the ATP in the muscles by replacing the phosphate molecule that was used up by the muscles during the intensive phase of your workout. When that intensive physical activity happens, the ATP becomes ADP, adenosine diphosphate.

Through this, creatine can help you out quite a bit. It replenishes the phosphate molecule that you have managed to lose, and that way the ATP reserves in your body are ready to be used as needed. Creatine will allow you to work out longer than usual and give you much better results in your workout routine.

As with anything though, there are some disadvantages to using creatine, one of which is that water will be retained in your muscles. This means that if you want to keep your body hydrated and get water to other organs in your body, you will have to drink more water than usual when you are using a creatine supplement.

Your exercise routine will be maximized by using creatine and your muscles will be developed significantly faster. There will be reduced soreness, meaning a minimum cool down time between workouts.

However, it has some drawbacks. You will gain weight because you will be retaining water in your muscles. It’s not really a bad thing, just be prepared for higher numbers on the scale. In addition, if you’re not careful, you can experience dehydration and related side effects like nausea, vomiting or even seizures. Also, if you have kidney problems, you shouldn’t take creatine; it can place greater stress on your kidneys.

Diet is something that needs to be observed as well, and that is true also with creatine. Creatine isn’t a magic substance that will take care of everything, and as such you will need a good diet.

No amount of creatine is going to help you if you only subsist on junk food, so make sure that you eat complex carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables, and lean proteins to ensure that you get the most out of your workout.

Muscles need a place to start, and that’s why diet is so important. Make sure that your diet consists of adequate lean proteins like lean meats, fish, complex carbs, and lots of other things.

With these guidelines in place, creatine can certainly help you improve your workouts and therefore your muscle mass as long as it’s used properly.

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