Posts Tagged ‘bodybuilding’

To supplement or not to supplement – that is the question on more bodybuilder’s lips than ever before. Are they safe? What works and what doesn’t?

Lets have a look at the basics.

There are various reasons why athletes may be interested in supplementation.

? Concern about getting adequate nutrients from our food supply.

? Suspicion of pharmaceuticals.

? Belief that diet alone will not achieve optimal nutrition

Supplements include the following:

? Vitamins
? Minerals
? Amino Acids
? Herbs

The concerning thing about supplements is that anything classified as a dietary supplement is not required to meet any FDA or other standards! Think about that! there are no regulations in place that guarantee the safety or purity of something sold as a supplement.

They are also not made to meet the similar safety requirements as prescription drugs or any other manufacturing standards. They are not required to meet product potency or purity ratings and are not required to prove the effectiveness of any health claim that is made.

Studies suggest that a number of supplements may deliver on advertising claims. However, trainees are spending large sums of money on products that have little or no proven usefulness.

Personally I find the use of supplements over rated and as with strength training, supplementation asks the same question “if a little is good then maybe more has to be better”

Supplementation and steroids started to proliferate when volume strength training became the training system of the day. Young strength trainees slaving in the gym for five to six days a week was seen as normal. All this without making any progress or putting on any size whatsoever.

They then turned to the latest supplement or steroid thinking that this is the magic bullet to put on that added muscle when all the time they were just plain “overtraining”

The cold hard facts are that the majority of the regular trainees in your gym are overtraining. The sad reality is that the type of training 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.

If more bodybuilders started using more infrequent, short, high intensity weight training sessions, followed by the required amount of time to recover and become stronger…
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The abdomen contains the muscles that most beginners struggle with because they take a long time to develop and need a low level of body fat to be seen. The abdominal muscle group consists of three main muscles:

1. Rectus abdominis – commonly known as the abs, this is a large flat muscle wall that runs from the lower chest to the pubic bone.

2. Obliquus abdominis – commonly known as the obliques, this muscle runs diagonally along the side of the mid-section from the lower ribcage to the pubic area. The internal obliques lie underneath the external obliques.

3. Transversus abdominis – this is a thin strip of muscle that runs horizontally across the abdomen.

You can target these muscles effectively by performing the following exercises:

1. Crunches – 3 sets of 15-20 reps. This exercise will work the upper abs.
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If you’re serious about making a solid commitment to a muscle-building program, you need to be very careful of who you take advice from. Bodybuilding and fitness is literally a multi-billion dollar industry with new websites popping up every single day. Many of the so-called “experts” out there really don’t have a clue of what they’re talking about and are only motivated by pushing expensive pills, powders and “miracle programs” on you that you don’t really need. If you don’t watch your step you may end up falling for some fatal muscle-building pitfalls that will literally destroy your gains and prevent you from ever achieving the impressive, muscular physique you desire. In this article I’m going to expose 4 very common muscle-building myths in order to keep you on the proper path to the mind-blowing muscle and strength gains you deserve.

Myth #1: In order to build muscle, you must achieve a “pump” during your workout. The greater the pump you achieve, the more muscle you will build.

For those of you who are just starting out, a “pump” is the feeling that you get as blood becomes trapped inside the muscle tissue when you train with weights. The muscles will swell up and leave your body feeling bigger, tighter, stronger and more powerful. While a pump does feel fantastic, it has very little, if anything to do with properly stimulating your muscles to grow. A pump is simply the result of increased bloodflow to the muscle tissue and is certainly not indicative of a successful workout. A successful workout should only be gauged by the concept of progression. If you were able to lift more weight or perform more reps than you did in the previous week, then you did your job.
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Summer is on the horizon, and the time has come to kick back and relax under the sun. It’s time for beach days, barbecues and pool parties, and for any serious weightlifter these activities also mean one thing: it’s time for the shirts to come off and to showcase that rock-solid physique they’ve been working on all year. No one wants to be walking around with a soft, smooth and flabby body, and for the next month or two, all of those serious lifters will be shifting into “get ripped” mode.

How do they usually go about this?

They lighten up the weights and perform higher reps.

This has always been a widely accepted method of “cutting down” and if you ask most trainers in the gym they’ll tell you that “heavy weights bulk up the muscle and lighter weights define the muscle”.

Do you want to know the reality behind the “light weight and high reps” method of obtaining a ripped and defined physique?

It is completely, totally and utterly DEAD WRONG.

It couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, there is no logical basis for this way of training whatsoever, and whoever dreamt up this downright ridiculous way of thinking has caused the vast majority of lifters to waste their time and impede their progress in the gym.

Let me clear this up once and for all: you CANNOT spot reduce. In other words, it is physically impossible to target fat loss from a specific area on your body. Performing bench presses with light resistance and high repetitions will not magically burn fat off of your chest or cause it to appear harder and more defined.

Every single time you wrap your hands around a barbell, dumbbell or cable, your goal is to stimulate as much muscle growth as you possibly can. There are no special, secret weightlifting exercises that will “define” your muscles or cause them to become more “ripped”.

Training with weights builds muscle mass, end of story.

So how exactly do you “define” a muscle?

The only way to “define” a muscle is by lowering your body fat level in order to make your muscles more visible. Body fat reduction can be achieved in two ways:

1) Modify your diet.

You should lower your overall caloric intake to around 15x your bodyweight and focus on consuming smaller meals more frequently throughout the day. This will keep your metabolism naturally raised at all times and will keep your body in a constant fat burning state. Limit your intake of saturated fats and simple sugars, and focus instead on consuming lean sources of protein and low glycemic carbohydrates. It is also very important to keep your water intake high at a level of around 0.6 ounces per pound of bodyweight.
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