Showing posts with label muscle building. Show all posts
Showing posts with label muscle building. Show all posts

Sunday, 7 October 2012

The Best Nutrition Plan To Gain Muscle Mass


If you want to gain muscle and build up a strong muscular body you must include a good nutrition plan in your program. Working out hard and neglecting the nutritional needs of your body won't make you get any good bodybuilding results. When eating to gain muscle your aim should be to supply your body with the right amount of calories and the right nutrients it needs for building lean muscle mass.

Caloric Surplus

One fundamental requirement of a diet plan to gain muscle is making sure your body gets more calories (energy in food) than the amount you're burning through working out and other physical activities. There are different variables that'll affect exactly how much calories a person needs for gaining weight and building muscle, but the main point is you must be eating more calories than your body is using up.

Nutritious Foods

Another important factor of a muscle building diet that you must pay attention to is proper nutritional supply in correct proportions. You need protein, carbohydrates and some good fat to make up your muscle building diet.  In respect to proportion, your diet should comprise of approximately 50% protein, 30% carbohydrates, and 20% fat. Protein and carbohydrates should be supplied to your body consistently in adequacy so your body can grow bigger.

Carbohydrates 

The body uses carbohydrates for energy, and muscle cells are also filled with glycogen, which is the storage form of carbohydrate. You need to eat complex carbohydrates because they are slowly broken down into energy and used up by the body. Sources of complex carbohydrates include whole wheat flour products, brown rice, oats, quinoa and vegetables. Simple carbohydrates such as energy drinks, soda and fruit juices should not make up a large portion of your total carbs intake because they provide instantly usable energy that gets used up too quickly during exercise, and they also contain a very low nutritional value. These type of carbs are considered to be empty calories. The best time to consume simple carbohydrates is during or right after your workout.

Protein 

Proteins are actually the building blocks of muscles. You need an adequate supply of protein to get bigger muscles. To build or repair tissue including that of muscle, the body needs all of the essential amino acids that comes from protein. That's the reason it's highly important to include sufficient protein in your diet to gain muscle. Some ideal protein foods to eat to gain muscle are Eggs, Chicken, Turkey, Fish, Cottage cheese, Yogurt, Milk and Protein Shakes milk

Fats

Fats should also be included in your diet for gaining muscle because the right fats helps in the production of testosterone and many other different biological functions in the body. There are good fats and bad fats, meaning that some fats are good for your body and others are not. The idea is to include some good fats which is the unsaturated fats in your muscle gaining diet to help in anabolic growth. Sources of good unsaturated fat include vegetable oils and cod-liver oil.

Eat Enough But Keep Fat Gain Under Control 

Finally, another factor that needs to be given attention when eating to gain muscle is avoiding gaining an excessive amount of fat. Why minimize fat gain? It's the goal of everyone who're into fitness to keep fat off their body including bodybuilders, because fat is unhealthy and it takes away muscle visibility or definition. It also takes a lot of effort and time to burn stored fat, so avoiding storing as much fat as you can is a win. The same calories that's so essential for building muscle mass can also be stored as fat if they're not used up enough after they're consumed. Again, quantity of required calories may vary based on each individual's specific condition. The ideal approach is to aim for an intake that's good enough to build quality muscle from your workout without much excess to be stored as fat. One basic step you can take to reduce fat gain is cutting back on calories when you're fattening up too much.

Thursday, 4 October 2012

How To Gain Muscle - The Main Steps You Need To Take


This is a guide to help the many people who want to gain muscle, but don't know exactly where to start, as well as, the numerous people who're already trying to gain muscle but are getting no results. One must clearly be aware that building up muscle mass is hard work, and it can even be very frustrating when you have to deal with circumstances that makes gaining muscle more difficult than it should. I often times feel the frustration coming from guys in fitness forums and websites who've been making efforts endlessly, but still have a reason to ask: how do I gain muscle? Clearly they haven't been doing what is required properly to get impressive muscle building results, and therefore need advice on the right approach to take that'll help them improve.

In order for one to build up impressive amounts of muscle mass you must stick to performing required procedures properly to have optimal effect on the body. This includes tweaking your program to be most appropriate for your specific body type and potential for muscle gain. This is crucial because it'll make the difference between gaining significant amounts of muscle mass in a matter of months and not gaining any noticeable muscles at all despite trying year after year.

The following are the main steps you need to take to gain muscle, and it's important to note that everyone trying to gain muscle will need to take those steps but there'll be variables that will affect each individual's results differently.


Eat Enough Food In Correct Proportions

You need to consume enough calories everyday when you're training to gain muscle. At this point you should be eating a quantity of food daily that'll allow you to achieve a caloric surplus.

The exact quantity of daily calories to be consumed will vary based on each persons specific circumstances such as body type, training history, body fat level etc. Some people may be able to gain muscle without eating much more than they normally eat. On the other hand, some people will need to double or even triple their normal intake to make it possible to gain muscle.

It's important to also make sure your diet for gaining muscle is properly balanced and nourishing. You diet should comprise of all the various food types but in their correct proportion that's most suitable for gaining quality muscle with minimal fat gain. Avoiding gaining fat is another factor you need to pay attention to in muscle building. You want to eat and train to gain significant amounts of muscles and reduce fat. Your diet will play a crucial role in controlling fat gain.

Weight Train For Muscular Hypertrophy

Training with weights is that critical aspect of gaining muscle. You must perform this correctly otherwise, I'll put it simple, you won't gain muscle to accomplish the transformation you want. The key to effectively gain muscle from your weight training is to use a set and rep scheme that'll allow you to achieve maximum hypertrophy of the muscle groups you want to build. Hypertrophy of the muscle basically means making the muscle grow bigger in size. Some people might have the idea that lifting weights in any way will build muscle. this is not correct, if it's bigger you want to get you have to lift correctly to increase muscle size. There is a way of training that'll increase mainly muscle strength and muscle efficiency but not necessarily muscle size.

When you're aiming to gain muscle to get bigger you must train for progressive resistance. This means lifting heavier weights or a higher volume of reps and sets in each workout session than the one before to consistently break down muscle tissues as you continue to train. The concept is that when the muscle repairs itself, it will overcompensate and increase in size and strength. Over time, the worked muscles will become noticeably bigger. Apart from lifting heavy, breaking down the muscle to a great degree also involves training with a high volume of sets and reps, minimizing rest periods between sets and lifting to failure (point where you can't perform another rep) in every set you perform. On average, a workout of 8-12 reps per exercise and 6-9 sets per muscle group is good for stimulating the muscles for significant growth. You want to keep your workouts under 45 minutes to avoid releasing the wrong hormones that could hinder your progress .

You also need to perform the correct exercises in your workout for the most effectiveness and efficiency in causing development of your body. The best way to train is to use a combination of both compound and isolation exercises correctly. A compound exercise involves rotary movement of multiple joints and isolation exercise involve rotary movement around one joint. Compound exercises are crucial for muscle gain. They will work many muscle groups together in the same set and create great muscle stimulation. Squats, deadlifts and bench pressing are examples of essential compound exercises. You also need to perform isolation exercises such as biceps curls or triceps extensions for maximizing the stimulation of individual muscle groups that the compound exercises could not hit hard enough to induce sufficient muscle fibers tear.

Give Your Muscle Sufficient Rest For Recovery 

When it comes to gaining muscle, training with weights hard in a workout to completely fatigue a muscle group is good, but training the muscles too regular is not. It's crucial to give the muscles time to rest. It is during rest your muscles repair and grow. So you must avoid working out the same muscle groups everyday because this will just hinder your progress. It is generally required for a muscle that got fatigued to a great extent to get at least 72 hours to properly recover. That's the reason a muscle building workout routine should be designed in a way that different muscle groups get worked on different days allowing sufficient time for soared muscles to completely recover.

Use Cardio Accordingly

Cardiovascular exercise such as running, cycling and walking does nothing for gaining muscle but they'll burn fat to help you get lean. The idea is to use cardio with discretion because doing it inappropriately can hinder muscle gain.