Posts Tagged ‘build muscle mass’

How Many Meals A Day Should A Hardgainer Eat?

Monday, January 11th, 2010

As you have already gotten past the headline you probably know what a hardgainer is. If you are not aware of the term that basically it kind be defined as some one who has immense difficulty putting on weight in the form of fat or muscle! Often this is said to be caused by that person having a fast metabolism.

Metabolism or metabolic rate is the speed at which your body burns up calories through the natural reactions in the body. If your metabolic rate is very slow then it is easy to gain fat tissue as you are not using up as many calories at rest as someone who has a higher metabolic rate.

For muscle building purposes we should be trying to take on a large amount of extra calories that are available to build muscle mass, however this is difficult for hardgainers as they are constantly using up calories at a high speed even at rest. So, what actions can hardgainers take to overcome this? Here is our how to build muscle quickly guide for hardgainers:

1) Keep the cardio workouts to a minimum. Aerobic workouts will clearly consume calories during the exercise but will also increase your metabolic rate so that you continue to burn off calories at a faster speed even when resting. You do not want this as you are trying to create surplus calories.

2) Eat for two! You need to consume lots of calories. You can try to do this by simply increasing your portions two fold from that which you would normally eat. Purchase over sized bowls, which will stop you from forgetting this.

3) Eat 5-7 meals every single day. This is critical to build up muscle or even to burn belly fat. Your body can only absorb a certain amount of nutrients at anyone sitting so spreading out the meals is also a good thing and ensures that your body is never waiting for its next meal. Eating 2-3 meals per day is claimed to slow down the bodies metabolism which is true but this doesn’t mean it is something that hardgainers sould do. Why? Because your body goes into starvation mode releasing certain chemicals that are counter productive to muscle building especially for hardgainers.

4) Take supplements. Take advantage of some of the excellent meal replacement powders and protein shakes that are available. These include extremely high amounts of exactly the correct ingredients you require. Excellent moments to consume them are immediately post training and immediately prior to training a this is when your body needs them the most.

5)Quit doing exercises such as concentration curls and any other isolation exercises and just do the classic, large multi-joint exercises. Your sessions need to involve: dead lifts, pull ups, squats and bench presses. These are the easiest and fastest exercises that will build muscles mass fast in the correct places.

6) Quit doing so many sets. Growth can be stimulated in only 40 minute sessions consisting of only 3 sets for each body part and as few as 10 sets a session. More is generally worse for hardgainers! Stimulate growth then leave the gym as soon as possible and asve your calories for supporting muscle growth.

7) Consume plenty of water. it is very important for the reactions within the body so don’t skip over this one. Consume liquids regularly.

There we go, give those muscle building tips a try. Be persistent with these for a couple of months before your judge them. Just go for it? I hope you found our how to build muscle up tips useful.

An Explosive Way To Build Muscle Up Faster

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Spending hours in the gym to build muscle up and not making progress? Brilliant news! There is every chance that there is just one reason stopping your from masive gains. Once acknowledged and dealth with properly this knowledge can boost your progress a great deal. For most begiiner bodybuilders and some intermediate trainers this is a little known secret that will help them immensly.

So what exactly is this well kept secret? A new amazing routine or something?

No certainly not. It has been ignored by many a bodybuilder though it has been known about for a long time.

What precisely is cortisol?

Produced in response to stress placed on the body cortisol is a hormone released by the body throughout the day. Levels of cortisol drop slightly from their peak in the morning.

What exactly does it do?

Well it increases short term memory, helps rid the liver of toxins and helps regulate blood sugar levels. However it can raise blood pressure and decrease bone density if your cortisol levels get too high, however this would be unusual. However it will decrease muscle mass as it promotes the use of muscle as energy and not fat. This is the primary reason why training sessions should be less than one hour duration. After this they will be doing more harm than good!

Here are a few guidelines to ensure that you are not wasting your time trying to build muscle up:

1) limit your cardio workouts, too much cardio causes the body to release cortisol which as explained is not what we need.

2) Attempt to restrict your caffeine intake as this also makes cortisol levels increase.

3) Make sure your workouts take less than an hour. wear headphones if this helps you to stay focussed.

4) Chill out an take it easy as cortisol is produced in response to stres.

5) Consume small frequent meals as infrequent meals make the body assume it is starving and will thus try and use muscle mass as a form of energy before it makes use of fat reserves by releasing more cortisol.

6) Sleep. This is when your cortisol levels are lowest and your muscle building hormones highest so aim for 8 hours if possible.

With those no nonsense muscle building tips in mind you should be able to give your workouts a great boost now you know how to gain weight fast more efficiently.

 

3 Quick Tips For A Bigger Bench Press

Friday, December 18th, 2009

So, how much can you bench? It is gym enthusiasts favourite question to ask all around the globe. In fact the amount you can bench is a great yardstick for over all strength and is probably the best way to gain muscle mass on your upper body and therefore the exercise has reached almost mythical status. So here we will outline three great tips for increasing your bench press.

1) Perform Drop Sets. These are great for providing your chest muscle with new and unique stimulus to grow. To do these simply perform your bench-press exercise as you normally would and when you can not do any more simply take off a weight disc and do as many more as you can. Then take off even more weight and bang out as many more reps as you can physically do. Keep stripping the bar in this manner until there is very little weight left or until your muscles are not able to perform any more. This is one method that is very intense and will leave you feeling very sore for a number of days to come. Make sure your protein intake is high to help build the muscles back stronger for the next few days.

2) Cease training your chest. Rather train the triceps by themselves for a change. By doing as suggested you can indeed really focus on increasing the strength of your triceps. Once you have done this for 3-4 weeks go back to your benchpress and I can you will more than likely beat your previous best. This is because your chest will have had a really good rest period to completely recover from lots of previous training session and also your triceps will now be stronger. It stands to reason that by increasing your triceps strength you will be able to bench more as they take considerable strain when doing regular benchpressing.

3) Do ten sets each consisting of ten repetitions. This is one more intense and tough technique, indeed Arnold Schwarzenegger was a big fan of this technique. Basically you press as much weight as you can for ten repetitions and then perform another set of ten reps. Continue doing this until you have done ten sets consisting of ten reps each. You will have to reduce the weight gradually but allow yourself two to three minutes rest between sets. The point of this is to provide your muscle withe some really unique stimuli for growth. Again expect to be sore for a week after this workout but also expect to increase your benchpress when you do return to bench pressing again. This is perhaps the fastest way to gain muscle on your chest if done correctly nd is great no no nonsense muscle building.

OK, I hope you found that useful so why not go ahead and give those tips a try in your next pecs workout.