Gain Muscle Strength Through Body Building Exercises

If you are considering adding some bulk to a thinner frame, and you wish to accomplish this through varied methods it takes some creative thinking on different ideas to start with. Because of this it is necessary for you to know the various advantages that bodybuilding in general has to offer.

Body Building Exercises Defined

Deciding what body building exercises to use can be somewhat challenging due to the fact that there are so many variations available. However, once you figure out which body parts you want to work on you can narrow down your choices quickly.

Numerous up and coming body builders are of the mindset that the only real way to build muscles on their arms is to lift weights. This is not exactly the case, since lifting weights is certainly a beneficial body building exercise, it is not a good idea for beginners to do that prior to getting some arm strength through other ways.

Specifically, an ideal exercise to build the back of your arms (triceps) is pushups. Depending on the physical condition of a person prior to starting exercise pushups may be difficult to do, but pushups are an excellent way to begin and at the same time it reduces the chance of injury.

Gradual Increases

Start with just a few pushups, and as soon as you feel your the muscles in your upper arm begin to burn, stop.

If you are not in shape it is wise to start with only two sets of 15 repetitions each. Some even advise starting with as little as 10 repetitions. Gradually you will you will gain strength in the back of your arms. Pushups also have a strengthening effect on your shoulders due to the movement of the exercise and because you are supporting your upper body weight with this exercise.

For strengthening and building your legs the exercises of squats and leg lunges are an effective option. For those just starting out it will tend to be uncomfortable until your body becomes accustomed to it.

For those who are looking for more information on the numerous exercises that can be utilized to build up your body, you can go to your local gym to sign up for a membership and enlist the help of a personal trainer.

Another avenue to get more information is to go onto the internet for advice on the various exercises for beginners. With the right research, you are certain to find some beneficial body building exercises.

Does Aerobic Exercise Cause Muscle Wasting?

This is a claim you hear often, especially among bodybuilders, but also among some personal trainers. The most extreme version is “aerobics makes you fat”, the reasoning being that it leads to loss of muscle, which lowers your metabolism, causing you to gain fat because you’re now eating too much for your slow metabolism.

These types of claims are based on some truth, as we’ll see, but are highly exaggerated. Your muscles are not going to waste away to nothing because you run half an hour per day.

There are some mechanisms by which aerobic exercise can interfere with muscle growth or cause actual muscle loss. The first is that concurrent aerobic exercise and strength training lead to competing adaptations in muscles. For example, steady state aerobics leads to endurance adaptations such as increased mitochondria (aerobic energy factories) and aerobic enzymes in the muscle cells, while strength training can lead to hypertrophy, or growth in muscle fibers.

The bottom line is that doing both of these activities has been shown to cut muscle growth about in half compared to just doing strength training [Docherty, 2001; Gordon, 1967]. For those of us that are doing strength training for fitness this is not a big deal, it just means it will take longer to build up muscle mass. But for bodybuilders it’s interfering with proficiency in their specialty. So many bodybuilders will minimize aerobics or take measures to reduce the intereference.

I think this is where the seed of this “muscle wasting” idea was first planted. But note that aerobics in these studies has been shown to reduce the rate of muscle growth, which is a far cry from causing muscle loss. Interestingly, the opposite interference does not seem to occur: adding strength training does not interfere with cardio improvements. Many of us that are into aerobic training will supplement it with upper body strength work, and there’s no problem with concurrent training in that case.

There is another way that cardio can interfere with strength training, and that can be by just taking up too much time. I remember a time when I was trying to lose weight so I did about 90 minutes a day of cardio. I tried to do a token amount of resistance training but had little time and was worn out anyway. I had much more success when I cut back to a more reasonable hour per day and left more time to lift.

There are a couple of mechanisms by which excessive aerobics can lead to actual muscle loss, however, due to overtraining and/or poor nutrition. Too much aerobics can lead to increased production of catabolic hormones like cortisol (often referred to as a “stress hormone”), which can subsequently cause breakdown of muscle tissue.

But aerobics in moderate amounts is a relaxing activity, which leads to a net decrease in cortisol. Only excessive amounts of aerobic activity leads to elevated cortisol levels in the bloodstream after the activity is complete.

A study which specifically examined how much aerobic exercise is needed found that cortisol elevations did not occur when running for 40 or 80 minutes, but only occurred in runs of two hours [Tremblay, 2005]. Ironically, high volume resistance training can cause the same effect [Stone, 1998], but I’ve never heard anyone being warned not to lift because it causes your muscles to waste away!

The other mechanism is that if your body does not have enough blood glucose, it can manufacture it by breaking down protein. If not enough protein is available from food, it will get it from muscle tissue [Berning, 1998]. Again this is only likely if you’re training excessively, or undernourished.

The most obvious example of this is “hitting the wall” in the marathon or cyclists “bonking” on long rides. You can get irritable and have impaired judgement as the brain, which can only run on glucose, is not getting enough fuel.

I’ve experienced both of these and they’re no fun. I don’t know if my body broke down muscle for fuel but afterwards it sure felt like my muscles had been broken down, or at least beat up. But both times this occurred to me after about 3 hours of exercise without taking in any fuel.

On the other hand, many people that are into aerobics, thinking of carbs as fuel, will bump up their consumption of bad carbs like white flour products or sugary drinks or “power bars” which are basically glorified candy bars. This can lead to an unhealthy lifestyle of poor nutrition justified by overtraining.

There is a way people who do a lot of cardio can end up protein deficient: endurance exercise increases the demand for protein. You’ve probably heard that cardio is fueled by a mixture of carbs and fat, depending on the intensity level, but there’s a small bit of protein in the mix, too. Protein is also needed to repair any tissue damage caused by the exercise [Noakes, 2004].

Strength trainers are well aware that they need more protein, but people who do cardio often are not. In addition, since many who do cardio are trying to lose weight, they’re probably cutting back on calories at the same time, which if you do it by just reducing portion size can decrease protein intake. The typical recommendation for protein is 0.25-0.45 grams per pound of body weight, but endurance athletes can require more like 0.55 to 0.65 grams per pound [Sharkey, 2001].

So don’t overtrain and don’t underreat, and don’t eat junk. Follow common sense procedures like easy day/hard day, don’t do hours per day of cardio, and don’t try to lose more than about a pound of weight per week. Make sure you’re doing a balance of cardio and resistance training, and your muscles will be just fine.

References

-Berning, J, “Energy Intake, Diet, and Muscle Wasting”, in in Overtraining in Sport, Kreider, R, Fry, A, and O’Toole, M, eds, Human Kinetics, 1998.

-Noakes, T, Lore of Running, Human Kinetics, 2002.

-Sharkey, B, Fitness and Health, Human Kinetics, 2001.

-Stone, M, and Fry, A, “Increased Training Volume in Strength/Power Athletes”, in Overtraining in Sport, Kreider, R, Fry, A, and O’Toole, M, eds, Human Kinetics, 1998.

-Tremblay, M, Copeland J, and Van Helder, W, “Influence Of Exercise Duration On Post-exercise Steroid Hormone Responses In Trained Males”, Eur J Appl Physiol, 94(5-6):505-13, 2005.

Body Building Workouts That Can Build Muscle Fast

There are known ways to form great muscles, but having a complete body building program is most popular. These common programs will work on your gaining weight primarily then head on to toning your muscles. Body building programs come with a complete set of steps to take in nutrition, weight training, supplementation, and avoiding injuries. The steps you need to take are quite easy and enjoyable to follow which form quite a routine. You only need to be careful about having a personal trainer. You have to make sure that he’s not a hoax and instead a certified professional trainer who won’t give you excess time for additional pay.

There are those who say that homemade is best made. It’s still applicable to losing weight and toning muscles. You can do the best muscle building techniques in the privacy of your home and still get the best results. It’s not necessary that you submit yourself to a grueling trainer and get stuck in a cramped gym environment. You can use common techniques like calisthenics. You can do push-ups, pull-ups and some crunches daily. You can do these with a couple of weight lifting, starting from an empty bar and progressing toward heavier weights. All of these are done in the privacy of your home where you can have peace of mind and comfort.

You will also develop endurance and well-formed muscles when you lift free weights rather than undergo machine exercises. You can use the heaviest weights to give you more stress, and the more stress you have, the more muscles you develop. You have to bear in mind though that dumbbells are not meant for major lifts but more on assistance exercises.

When you have a personal goal of looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s physique, you will have to start from scratch. You will have to start from scratch. Simple and compound exercises that target several muscle groups are perfect to begin with. When you have had a solid foundation you can shift and use isolation exercises. Now it should be self explanatory why this is step by step process.

One thing a person should remember when he wants to be a muscle builder is to have regular squats for leg training. He has to do it as frequently as 1.5 times his body weight. When he does the squat he should do it with his hips lower than his knees. Some people who like to form muscles are working for brawns more than health, but even so, there are reasons why body builders are called health enthusiasts. These people know it by heart that rest, balanced diet, sleep, and drinking enough fresh water are great help in muscle formation than sheer tedious physical exercise without the right sustenance.

The best muscle building technique so far is to gain weight by eating a lot. You might say that this is quite easy except that you will have to do this while taking a lot of protein-rich foods. Skipping breakfast is not allowed. Instead you can follow either of the 7 breakfast recipes to load up on some carbohydrates in the morning. The first and only commandment to remember in body building is persistence. When it feels like you are going to die if you lift those weights, just think of the rewards you will reap, going to the beach clad in your fabulous trunks with everyone drooling at you, for that taut body build.

Body Building Tips – Some Finer Points To Gaining Muscle Mass

Body Building concentrates on increasing the body muscles and the body mass. There are ten quick tips that can be followed to build the body mass. These tips help to increase the anabolism in the body and to create a positive nitrogen balance. Nitrogen balance can be increased by increasing the protein intake in the body. This helps in increasing the bodies’ natural metabolic process. The following are the tips:

1. The first tip that is to be followed is to emphasize the negative aspects of the body. By saying negative aspects we mean to attain a failure state in the body. The failure state may be complete, absolute or simply failure. This is achieved when working with dumbbells or any other weight. When the dumbbell is held in a position where the body contracts, tension is created in that area. This tension helps in causing muscle hypertrophy. This tip is an easy to do technique that helps in overloading the muscles and promoting radical gains in the mass.

2. The second basic tip is to eat fish. This is because fish has very high amounts of fat. It produces omega-3 acids. This acid makes the muscle very sensitive towards insulin. This helps in regulating the glycogen storage and amino acid entry into the muscles.

3. The third tip is to increase the sodium intake in the body. Sodium is a very important mineral that regulates muscle growth. Sodium helps in enhancing the carbohydrate storage in the body and also absorbs the amino acid which in turn improves the muscle’s responsiveness to insulin.

4. The fourth tip is to stop doing aerobics. Aerobics interferes with strength gaining. It makes the body go lean and interferes with muscle building. Certain muscle building centers may also advice in light aerobics.

5. The fifth tip is to lift weights explosively. The amount of force a muscle is able to generate is directly proportional to the amount of weight a muscle is able to carry.

6. The sixth tip is to dramatically increase the intake of calories for three days. In general while doing cardio it is advisable to increase and decrease the speed with which the exercises are done. The same procedure can be performed to increase the muscles in the body, by increasing and decreasing the amount of food.

7. The seventh tip to take periodic rests. Certain body builders are very busy training all the time that they forget to take rest. Taking a couple of days off will restore the glycogen, increase the process of anabolism and also restore the hormonal indexes to optimal levels.

8. The eighth tip is to eat in the middle of the night. Intake of excessive calories increases the anabolism in the body, which in turn facilitates the increase in the muscles.

9. The final tip is to increase the strength in the body by power lifting. More strength will equal more tension which in turn will increase the muscles. The final tip is to supplement the body with Glutamine, creatine and BCAA.

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Muscle & Fitness – Chest and shoulders – Part 2

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Are Bodybuilders Burning Muscle Mass With Aerobic Exercise?

A large number of bodybuilders are perplexed regarding the role of aerobic activity, with some feeling that such effort is necessary to control body fat levels, while others embracing the idea that cardiovascular exercise will in effect either burn away muscle mass, or limit future muscle building dramatically. The latter group’s fear has caused many bodybuilders to avoid aerobic activity during muscle building periods, and even shy away from cardiovascular exercise when fat loss is the primary goal, but for many, the question remains as to whether the aerobic activity hysteria is well founded, or if this idea is instead a part of bodybuilding mythology.

Most bodybuilders do realize the value of aerobic activity in fat burning, but the worry begins when they consider the impact to muscle mass, and this idea has forced certain bodybuilders to replace their moderately intense aerobic routines with power walking, feeling that this is sufficiently intense to burn fat, but below the threshold for muscle loss. I often try to determine in my mind where exactly these ideas originate, and a group may have possibly felt so attracted to the idea of putting forth less effort (which is the case when comparing power walking to jogging), that they began promoting this rather foolish concept, or a group of marketers felt that they could design a particular program filled with propaganda, namely a simple to follow routine that will convince readers to sign up due to the magnificent effortless promises. Of course, such routines have repeatedly proven themselves to be abysmal failures, with horrid results. Yet, what bodybuilder does not enjoy the thought of reducing effort and achieving superior progress? Taking this idea one step further, do you know of any bodybuilder who would reject an excuse to abandon aerobic exercise completely if he or she were convinced that doing so was helpful to muscle gains?

Yes, the idea of evil aerobics sounds very attractive to those who wish to reduce effort, and marketing is an industry where the senses are tickled to the point of emotional purchase, but the virtues taught decades ago, such as “hard work pays dividends” are never replaced by marketing slogans, despite the effort of many physical fitness entrepreneurs to do so. The truth is, making aerobics seem wasteful is an excellent method at encouraging a bodybuilder to invest financially in a particular muscle building and fat loss system, because every one of us feels a sense of intrigue at the idea of more couch time producing superior results, but this particular gimmick does not translate into real world progress. Wherever the idea originated, marketers have used the “aerobics burns muscle” idea to market their own products, despite the fact that aerobic activity is not only effective in burning body fat when performed correctly and consistently, but is not a hindrance to muscle building.

All bodybuilders realize that his or her physique will deteriorate in overall aesthetic beauty as body fat begins to climb, and conversely, will improve extraordinarily as body fat declines. Therefore, prudence suggests that any body fat control technique should be employed at all times in order for the best possible bodybuilding results, and if aerobic activity is in fact an effective fat control mechanism, then it behooves all who seek the best possible bodybuilding progress to integrate aerobic activity into their regular workout plan.

The only exception to this rule is if a bodybuilder aims for muscle building, and due to time constraints or emotional inability to accept additional workout time, he or she feels simply unable to maintain maximum intensity during weight lifting workouts when aerobic activity is an additional burden; in such a scenario, aerobics can be saved for fat loss periods only, when weight lifting workout volume declines. But for those who have the time and wherewithal to perform consistent aerobic activity, integrating aerobics several days per week is prudent, even during muscle building phases, as the less body fat that is accumulated during muscle gain, the more focus can be maintained on achieving new muscle growth, and the more definition a bodybuilder will experience throughout the year.

Therefore, despite the skeptics and marketing experts who may claim otherwise, aerobic activity is helpful in fat loss, will not risk muscle when following an effective diet plan and weight training routine, and will improve metabolism so that body fat levels can remain acceptable at all times. If you are seeking maximum bodybuilding results, and wish to avoid extended fat loss periods, then consider aerobics to be your trusted fat burning ally.

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