Glow

Posts Tagged ‘how to build muscle’

‘Why am I not getting any bigger?’ is one of the most often questions asked globally from bodybuilders. After all you are training hard, with good muscle building nutrition in your diet, yet your gains are still minimal. Your motivation can be dramatically reduced by the sense of frustration after months of effort. So precisely what is the answer? Well, there are a few likely causes, see if any of these ring a bell with you, together they show you how to build muscle up:

1) Are you eating enough? Under eaters could be the real name for many hardgainers. As this really is a massive cause of lack of muscle mass. In bodybuilding the key to weight gain is eating, lots and often! Eating every two hours is a good guideline and will enable you to take on board as many calories as possible. Make sure you snack lots on food such as: dried fruit and nuts, yoghurt, cottage cheese,  cereal and milk, protein bars, fresh fruit, and protein shakes, etc

2) Are you getting enough protein? To build muscle mass fast you should aim for 1.Each day you should get per pound of body weight 5 grams of protein. Superb source of protein for muscle building are: chicken, fish, turkey as well as dairy products. You need the excess calories in order to grow so don’t be overly worried about purchasing the low fat type. of course you require decent quality calories but you can do a ripping stage at a later date to remove excess body fat. Taking whey protein shakes  is another great way to get on board quality protein, purchase the big 5 pound tubs to get the most for your money.

3) Have your routines become unproductive? If you can dictate out loud your session off the cuff then that likely means you have been using the same workout for a decent length of time already. Lots of variety is required in order to keep your muscles growing. Trying playing around with things like drop sets, partials, negatives, aided lifts and such like. You can even just reverse the order of your routine and see what difference that makes, how about 10 sets of 10 reps to failure on just one major exercise such as the bench press (get ready to be sore!) how about taking a week off from your session to allow your body to completely recover. As you can see there are endless variations, make sure you use them.

4) Are you managing to take enough rest? Did you ever see anyone walk into a fitness centre workout and then come out having put on half a stone of muscle? Never. Clearly then you build muscle mass when you are at home and not when you are lifting barbells. You will certainly be limiting your muscle growth if you are not getting enough rest time. If anything you ought to be giving yourself too much time to grow rather than too little. Try reducing your workouts to working out once muscle group per week. Also reducing the number of sets per body part, how about a maximum of 3-5 really intense sets per body part per workout. Why not try them yourself, you might be pleasantly suprised by your progress!

5) Is your water intake high enough? You will limit your progress if you don’t get an adequate supply of water. To build muscle mass copious amount of water is required. Carry a bottle with you in the car and never stop drinking from it.

So the initial question: ‘Why am I not getting bigger?’as you now know has potentially many answers. Answer with extreme honesty the above questions and if you need to make a few changes then do so. If you are not hitting just one of the above guidelines then you may possibly have found the probelm underlying your limited growth. If there are more than one of these points that your bodybuilding lifestyle does not meet then urgent change is required. Of course there are heaps of other reasons why you might not be growing but the above are the usual culprits. Now go pump some iron and start growing!

One common question often asked is: “Do I need to go to join a gym in order to workout and build muscle?. The answer to that question is a resounding ‘no’. Positives and negatives exist for training at home or in a fitness centre. You can easily build muscle home.

Working out in a regular gym allows you access to all sorts of new and different types of equipment, you can get professional advice easily as well, plus it is likely to be much safer. However training in a gym can be annoying sometimes if you have to wait for a particular piece of equipment or the other gym users are sat around gossipping and not really interested in getting big.

There a lot of good points out hoe workouts: minimal very low cost, zero travelling time, train without a shirt if that’s what you like to do, you get to play your own tunes, there will never be any waiting for equipment and you can get to scream at the bar and no one will think you are mad.

The negatives are the intial outlay of money at that is required to purchase the equipment although this will likely last a for ages and can be sold again second hand, you may also incur the wrath of your housemates/partner if you use up too much room.

Working-out at home allows you to build muscle mass at your convenience and if you go by the following how to build muscles fast at home guidelines you should not have a problem working-out at home:

1)Find a suitably large space, such as a garage, basement or spare room. The floor needs should be firm and strong making a ground floor a better option. A bonus would be a well ventilated area. If it is a garage make sure it is fully water-proof so your equipment does not get rusty.

2) Permanently remove any easily damaged objects. Ample warning is provided byt youtube where a guy doing barbell curls unfortunately lets his barbell nudge his large fish tank with a barbell just a little too hard! humourous to view unless it is your tank. A permanent location will avoid problems like this, imagine putting a barbell through a plasma tv screen or dropping a weight disc on a laptop computer, not fun.

3)Get the following pieces of equipment as a minimum: a set of cast iron dumbells and barbells, a weight bench, squat stand, a mat and a pull-up bar. The choice of home gym equipment is very good so shop around a bit but place high importance the durability and strength of the equipment because it will take a lot of hammer over the next few years!

4) Set out a decent workout. The top muscle building exercises can all be done with that equipment. Bench-presses, pull-ups, squats, dead lifts are all must have multi-joint exercises which should be used followed by exercises such as: barbell curls, upright rows, shrugs, lunges, shoulder presses, lateral raises and bent over rows are also great to include.

5) Be aware of the dangers. You are likely to be working out out on your own, so avoid one rep maximum exercises unsupervised and get a friend to come over and assist if you wan to do some. Always make sure that all weight discs are securely fastened to the barbell. most weight benches let you insert a pin at the bottom of your lift when the barbell is at the height slightly above your chest, ensure you insert this as if you cannot make the lift it can take the pressure for you, do the same in the squat stand too.

So, by following the above ‘how to build muscle home guidelines’ you can have a great workout, build heaps of muscle mass and all in the convenience of your own home.

Everyone knows to build muscle up one of the best exercises for the upper body is the bench press. As always certainly one of the questions near the top of bodybuilders lists is: how much can you bench press?’. Whilst it may not be the best measure of overall strength it does have a certain macho feel to it and a big bench press is certainly very impressive. So lets cut to the chase and find out how to build muscle now and get a bigger bench press:

Grow your triceps. Up to two thirds of the muscle mass on your arms is made up the tricep muscle alone. it is possible that under developed triceps are limiting your bench press total. The best exercises to build muscle mass on your triceps are using barbells and dumbells: close grip bench-presses and skull crushers. Less effective are isolation type exercises such as tricep press downs. They can certainly aid in increasing your benchpress.

Why not try training your triceps individually by themselves. More often than not muscle building programs will suggest that you train the triceps along with the chest. Try training them on their own for a change. Doing this allows you to attack them when they are fresh and really concentrate and focus on hammering them to stimulate growth. Do this for a number of weeks and see how much more poundage you can press.

Variety. have you been doing the same old routine for months on end? time to mix it up then. After your muscles have done the same workout a few times, they have already adapted to it and therefore the need to grow has been removed. Keep changing things, they can be subtle changes like altering the grip width or reversing the order of your routine or they can be larger changes like doing super sets, compound sets and so on, these will give you a real pump by the way.

Make sure you are not doing too much! While with most things in life more is better, in muscle building this is not quite true. Too much training for your chest muscles means it takes longer for them to recover and develop. Always focus on technique and intensity above quantity. A short intense workout is much more effective than a long drawn out one.

Quality rest. Muscles are not about to grow whilst you are working out! At rest is when they grow. If you don’t give enough time for growing then you simply won’t grow. Of course do not return to the gym when your muscles are still sore and a fair guideline is to limit yourself to 6-9 sets each session for each muscle group, any more and you risk overtraining.

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

Push your chest muscle harder by doing negatives on the weight bench. Negatives are when two spotters (gym partners) help you press the weight up but then let you lower it under full control. We do this because you can actually lower more weight than you can lift. Therefore if we can manage to get the body lowering more weight it is likely that this will help us on the effort phase also. The negative portion of the lift is proven to develop more muscle growth than the effort phase.

Review your diet. Are you consuming around 6 meals a day with at least 1 gram of protein for each pound of bodyweight that you have? If you are not then it may well be the case that you are limiting your gains by not following a muscle building diet strictly enough. Each meal should be roughly 50% carbohydrate, 30% protein and the rest made-up of fats. Use supplements if you can such as whey protein, essential fatty acids and multi-vitamins.

Focus on your technique. Are you pressing correctly. Bad technique can move the focus away from the chest muscles and put you at a greater risk of getting injured. Ensure you are not moving your feet up off the floor and that your grip is not too narrow, these are two mistakes that are easy to make.

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