Build Muscle

The Role Of Repetitions In Your Muscle Building Program

Repetitions are the basic building blocks of any strength or muscle building program but it is something that many lifters take for granted. How often do you see people at the gym speed through their reps, breathe haphazardly or fail to complete each rep correctly from a technical perspective? There is much more to the simple rep than meets the eye.

The first thing to note is that a repetition consists of three elements – namely lower, pause and lift. The speed at which this is achieved depends on the desired outcome, but to maximize muscle growth a slow, controlled tempo is required. The process should never be rushed, jerky or bouncy but instead should be controlled and smooth.

The second consideration relates to how many reps need to be performed. Once again, this depends on what you hope to achieve but you can use the following as a basic rule of thumb:

1. A single repetition maximum (1RM) increases muscle strength.

2. A six to eight repetition maximum increases muscle size.

3. A higher number of repetitions will have more effect on muscle endurance and little impact on size or strength.

Your aim therefore should be to complete six to eight reps of a load equivalent to 75-80% of your 1RM. This will maximize your muscle building potential, provided you complete each lift with perfect form in a smooth controlled manner.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Rick Mitchell has written numerous articles aimed at helping athletes, from beginners to advanced, understand how to build muscle and increase strength. He has also developed several supporting web resources including Muscle Building Tips

The Importance Of Sets In Your Muscle Building Program

In an earlier article we looked at how repetitions contribute to the muscle building process, but is the position regarding sets just as clear cut? Unfortunately, the answer to this is no as some experts feel one set to failure is sufficient, whereas others argue that multiple sets are needed to ensure maximum muscle gains.

Research to date suggests that, when using six to eight repetitions to failure at 75-80% 1RM, there is little significant difference between training with single and multiple sets in terms of increasing either strength or muscle size. Any small differences that have been recorded indicate that a single set completed to failure encourages strength gains but subsequent sets have a slightly greater impact on muscle size. What is clear is that the law of diminishing returns applies, so you have to question if the marginal improvements in size justify the extra time and effort expended.

Like everything else in life, bodybuilding does not remain static and several cutting edge experts have redefined the boundaries of achievement. Increasingly, serious athletes are using methods that extend the set beyond the point of failure. This involves forcing the muscle to perform more work despite having experienced failure in the previous rep. In practice, you perform one last forced repetition with the help of a training partner.

This obviously calls for great commitment and high motivation but the rewards include better mass gains thanks to the greater muscular overload. Such intensive training places additional importance on the need to lift with sound technique and to incorporate sufficient recovery time into your muscle building program.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Rick Mitchell has written numerous articles aimed at helping athletes, from beginners to advanced, understand how to build muscle and increase strength. He has also developed several supporting web resources including Muscle Building Tips

Creating An Anabolic State That Supports Muscle Growth

You can only build muscle if your body is in the correct anabolic balance to allow growth to take place. Intensive exercise is clearly an important part of the muscle building process but achieving the maximum muscle mass depends on putting the building blocks in place. This is achieved through sound nutritional practices so you need to be aware of the following anabolic enhancing principles:

1. Protein is the basic raw material needed to build muscle. Protein supplies the amino acids that the body uses to repair and build muscle following intensive exercise. Aim to consume 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight each day from food like beef, fish, poultry, eggs, milk and whey. Spread the load over at least six meals to derive the optimum benefit and avoid overloading the liver.

2. Carbohydrates are needed to energize the muscle building process. Carbohydrates stimulate the release of insulin which pushes the amino acids into muscle cells to begin the process of repair. The body uses carbohydrates as a source of energy – consume too little and the body will steal protein that would otherwise be used for repairing and building muscle. Aim to consume 1.5 to 2 grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight each day from foods like potatoes, pasta, rice, vegetables and whole wheat bread.

3. Boost your calories. Unless your main aim is to reduce fat you need a positive caloric balance if you want to build muscle. Make sure that your daily calorie intake is 10% higher than your energy expenditure for daily maintenance and that the calories are acquired from a diet characterized by a ratio of 50% carbohydrates, 40% proteins and 10% fat.

4. Get plenty of rest both in terms of adequate rest days between training sessions and sufficient sleep. Your muscles won’t grow if you don’t build adequate recovery time into your training program. Similarly, you can only optimize your body’s levels of testosterone and growth hormone if you spend enough time sleeping.

5. Consume quality supplements to support a sound nutritious diet. For most people it should be enough to add whey protein, creatine and l-glutamine to your daily diet.

6. Don’t overdo the aerobic exercise. Your aim is to increase muscle mass therefore you don’t want to burn excessive calories that could be utilized for bulking up.

7. Drink plenty of water. Failure to drink sufficient quantities of water will lead to dehydration and adversely affect your muscle mass. Don’t forget that muscle is 70% water so a generous intake will maintain muscle volume and help growth.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Rick Mitchell has written numerous articles aimed at helping athletes, from beginners to advanced, understand how to build muscle and increase strength. He has also developed several supporting web resources including Muscle Building Tips

Add Intensity To Your Muscle Building Workout

One of the biggest difficulties facing bodybuilders is how can they be sure that all muscle fibers have been recruited and exhausted during a given exercise and it is only by achieving this that muscle gains can be maximised.

The simple answer is, you have work beyond failure and experience a higher level of training intensity than before. This also ensures that workouts remain challenging and continue to engender progress over time thus reducing the likelihood of regression.

But how do you go about intensifying your training? Fortunately there is a tried and tested path to follow as outlined below:

1. Increase resistance – increasing the weight lifted in meaningful increments ensures the muscle is pushed beyond its previous point of failure thus maintaining the muscle building process. Aim to increase the weight when you reach six to eight reps and failure does not occur.

2. Change the exercise – to achieve maximal gains all muscle fibers in a body part must be trained. Changing the angle (e.g to incline bench press) or introducing a new exercise will stimulate growth.

3. Reduce rest intervals – giving the muscles less time to recover before exposing them to further work has the effect of increasing intensity.

4. Pre-exhaustion – when an exercise involves two or more muscles the weakest will prevent you from working the primary muscle to failure. The answer is to first isolate and tire the primary muscle before immediately moving to another exercise that works the set of muscles to failure.

5. Introduce supersets – this involves performing two exercises for the same muscle group without a rest interval. This means you have to utilize different muscle fibers which stimulate greater growth.

6. Use partial reps – at the point of failure you will not be able to complete the full range of movement for a given exercise. Completing a partial rep that uses only a segment of the lift will still work your muscles beyond the point of failure. This technique is especially useful to advanced bodybuilders as it allows them to increase intensity without adding extra routines that could cause overtraining.

7. Use isometric contractions – this involves holding the weight still at the point of failure to stimulate a static contraction in the muscle.

8. Employ forced reps – this involves completing one or more final reps after the point of failure has been reached. You will need the assistance of an experienced helper to attempt this.

Once you have added these techniques to your training regimen you’ll know you’ve done your best to maximize muscle growth.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Rick Mitchell has written numerous articles aimed at helping athletes, from beginners to advanced, understand how to build muscle and increase strength. He has also developed several supporting web resources including Muscle Building Tips

Know Your Muscle Building Exercises – The Chest

Every bodybuilder and weight trainer will have his or her favorite exercises for each body part. That’s how it should be – as you progress through the various stages of learning you’ll understand what works best for you. It is useful, however, to take stock of your progress every so often and carry out an analysis of where you are and what changes, if any, are needed to move onwards and upwards.

Part of this analysis should include an assessment of the core exercises that make up your bodybuilding training program. In this article we’ll look at the chest exercises that have proven their worth to serious bodybuilders for many years. Where appropriate a series of exercises suitable for achieving pre-exhaustion will be presented. All exercises should be performed to failure with one set of six to eight reps.

1. Dumbbell flyes – this exercise provides a useful means of isolating the pectorals and preserving the triceps for the subsequent exercise. The exercise should be performed as follows:

- Hold dumbbells directly overhead.

- Lower them to sides with elbows slightly bent, pulled back and to the side. Lower no further than level with the torso.

- Use the pectorals to pull the weights back up to the starting position.

2. Incline bench press – you can move straight on to this exercise if you have reached an appropriate level of experience. If you perform this exercise as the second part of a pre-exhaust routine you may have to use lighter weights than normally.

- Take a shoulder width grip.

- Lower the bar to the chest with the elbows pointed to the side.

- Return to the starting position.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Rick Mitchell has written numerous articles aimed at helping athletes, from beginners to advanced, understand how to build muscle and increase strength. He has also developed several supporting web resources including Fitness Gear Online

Lower Body Exercises For Beginning Bodybuilders

The lower body contains some of your biggest muscles which are capable of bearing significant weights. The temptation for beginners to go for broke by performing heavy squats should be resisted. To begin with you should concentrate on building the muscles safely by using machines that isolate muscle groups. The squat is an excellent compound exercise that trains numerous lower body muscles but it is one you should learn properly after spending three months strengthening the individual muscles that will be utilized later.

The muscles of the lower body can be divided into five groups:

1. Quads – this is the big muscle group consisting of four muscles at the front of the thigh. These are the primary muscles used when performing exercises such as squats, leg press, lunge and leg extension.

2. Hamstrings – these are the main muscles at the back of the thigh. These are the primary muscles used when performing leg curls.

3. Gluteals – these are the muscles that make up the buttocks.

4. Hip flexors – these are the small muscles at the front of the pelvis that allow you to raise your legs to the front.

5. Calves – these are the two muscles found in the lower leg.

For beginners these muscles should be exercised as follows:

1. Leg press – 1 set of 10-15 reps. This is a useful exercise for the quads but it also works the hamstrings and glutes to a lesser degree.

2. Leg extension – 3 sets of 10-15 reps. This is a useful exercise for adding definition to the quads.

3. Hamstring curl – 3 sets of 10-15 reps. This exercise isolates the hamstrings.

4. Standing calf raise – 3 sets of 10-15 reps. This exercise works the gastrocnemius muscle.

5. Seated calf raise – 3 sets of 10-15 reps. This exercise works the soleus muscle underneath the gastrocnemius muscle.

As with all exercises you need to take care in scheduling specific body parts. To begin with you should incorporate your lower body exercises into a program similar to the one suggested below:

Day 1: Biceps, Back, Abs

Day 2: Hamstrings, Shoulders, Abs

Day 3: Quads, Forearms, Calves

Day 4: Triceps, Chest, Abs

For the first couple of weeks complete one set but then add one set each week to a maximum of three. At the end of three months you will be ready to move on to more intensive intermediate level exercises.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Rick Mitchell has written numerous articles aimed at helping athletes, from beginners to advanced, understand how to build muscle and increase strength. He has also developed several supporting web resources including Fitness Gear Online

Shoulder Exercises For Beginning Bodybuilders

The main shoulder muscles that concern bodybuilders are the deltoids and although they work closely with the arms and chest muscles, it is possible to isolate the delts in a training session. Unlike other body parts though, the shoulder is not designed for heavy lifting in all directions so beginners need to take care and use lighter weights than usual for shoulder-isolating exercises.

The deltoid covers the shoulder and consists of three distinct segments:

1. The anterior or front deltoid allows you to raise your arm to the front.

2. The medial or middle deltoid allows you to raise your arm to the side.

3. The posterior or rear deltoid allows you to draw your arm backwards when it is perpendicular to the torso.

The front delt usually receives plenty of work with chest exercises such as the bench press and pushup, so you’ll need to use common sense and listen to your body when performing exercises that specifically target this muscle. The recommended shoulder exercises for beginners are as follows:

1. Seated dumbbell press – 3 sets of 10-15 reps. This exercise places the emphasis on the medial head.

2. Front lateral raise – 3 sets of 10-15 reps. This exercise emphasises the front delt.

3. Rear lateral flyes – 3 sets of 10-15 reps. This exercise targets the rear delt.

As with all exercises you need to take care in scheduling specific body parts. To begin with you should incorporate your shoulder exercises into a program similar to the one suggested below:

Day 1: Biceps, Back, Abs

Day 2: Hamstrings, Shoulders, Abs

Day 3: Quads, Forearms, Calves

Day 4: Triceps, Chest, Abs

For the first couple of weeks complete one set but then add one set each week to a maximum of three. At the end of three months you will be ready to move on to more intensive intermediate level exercises.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Rick Mitchell has written numerous articles aimed at helping athletes, from beginners to advanced, understand how to build muscle and increase strength. He has also developed several supporting web resources including Fitness Gear Online

Build Muscles And Smash Plateau For Beginners

Five times a week, two hours each visit. You’ve been more faithful to your gym schedule than you’ve ever been to any girlfriend you’ve had. And for a while it paid off: those muscles started rippling and the girls started paying attention.

But then, like a bad dream you wake up from, your muscles suddenly wasn’t growing like what it used to do. Your muscles stop responding to your heavy workout no matter how intensely you’ve been training. So you said to yourself, now I will train harder. So now you put in three hours a session and but even as you upped your gym dosage, horrors of horrors, your muscles are actually shrinking.

Ahhhhh, the Gym Plateau. It afflicts all of us and few of us ever gotten out of it. In fact, most people don’t even know that they have hit the dreaded plateau and thought that their muscles can only grow so much due to inherent genetic factors. Not to worry though, if you read the following fitness tips, and follow these tips to the latter, I can assure you that your muscles will start growing again and grow bigger they will.

Here are your free fitness tips.

Fitness Tip #1
Take A Break

This tip is easy to comply for most of us but very difficult for some gym rats. Simply take a break from your workout. Do not step into the gym or do any workout for 2 weeks. Its time to let your body recover from the punishments you are dishing out to your muscles. Some bodybuilders may find this difficult to do because working out is addictive. You produce endorphin when you workout and endorphin is also known as happy hormone. The same hormone you produce when having sex.

Professional bodybuilders take a break after every 4-5 months of hard training and when they are back in the gym, they shock their well rested but complacent muscles back into massive muscle gain.

Fitness Tip #2
Are you training too often?

If your exercises are intense enough, you need only to train each muscle group once or twice a week. Your training schedule shouldn’t repeat muscle groups in the same week. Every time you train, you do your muscles damage. Muscles need time to repair and it does so in the after your training when you are resting. This means that if you lift weights on consecutive days, there isn’t sufficient time for the body to recover. Try to have one day rest between each weight lifting day.

If your routine requires intensive weight training, remember not to prolong your gym time longer than an hour. This is because your cortisol, a muscle eating hormone level will be elevated and thus will be counter productive to your efforts. It eats your muscles.

Most of all, you must sleep! Eight hours or even better, go for ten hours. Muscles do not grow in the gym; they grow when you sleep. When you sleep, you are secreting growth hormones for many bodily functions and one of those functions is to build muscles. That is why they called it beauty sleep!

Fitness Tip #3
Are you using the correct weight lifting techniques?

If your technique or form is incorrect, not only is your training retarded, you are also inviting injury. Don’t laugh. But when you exercise you must think and focus, instead of mindlessly repeating the motions, do take note of how you perform each exercise and rep. Do so with deliberation and at the beginning and end of every lift, pause and squeeze the muscles you are exercising. Mind and muscle must connect! Never never use momentum of the swing to lift the weights and let gravity pull the weight down. That is why you must lift slowly and lower slowly feeling the tension in your muscles and resisting the load all the time.

In order for muscles to want to grow, you have to stress them to the maximum, and then further. Do enough repetitions until you feel you cannot go any further using good form. You must then either increase the weight or the number of repetitions at the next session. This is called progressive overload, and progressive overload is what forces your muscles to grow. As a general guide, if you can lift more than 12 reps the weight is probably too light and it is too heavy if your muscles fail you in less than 5 reps. You may wish to consult your physical fitness trainer on the correct form and technique for each exercise.

Fitness Tip #4
Are you using free weights?

Most machines do not involve as much of the synergistic muscles (supporting muscles) as free weights do. And, therefore, do not build as much muscle mass. Synergistic muscles are the smaller muscles that aid the main muscles in balance and strength in each lift. Machines has its uses, but for beginners and for smashing plateaus, use free weights.

Fitness Tip#5
Workout with compound exercises

Compound exercises are exercises that involve 2 or more joint movements and thereby employing bigger muscles and more synergistic muscles . Bench presses, dead lifts, squats, and barbell curls amongst others are fantastic compound exercises . For example, when you squat , all the muscles in your lower body get a workout and that alone is about 60 percent of your overall musculature . Squat also works your back and abs too. Using more muscles at one go means that you get a better overall workout. To add icing to the cake, because of the massive utilization of your muscles , you will pant, huff and sweat more. That means your routine also has a cardio effect and you will burn calories even hours after you stepped out of the gym .

Fitness Tip#6
Are you working out your legs?

Your body is programmed to grow proportionately with only slight variations. If you do not train your legs, your upper body mass will stop growing before it becomes large. Surely, you’ve heard of chicken legs! Just because leg training can be brutal, it doesn’t give you reason to hide your legs in your pants. To get that super hero X-frame, pepper your routine with squats . A word of caution though: compound exercises such as dead lifts, squats, and bench presses must be done in excellent form and a spotter is highly recommended. This is where your physical fitness trainer will come in handy as your spotter. If not, injuries are bound to happen and that may put you permanently out of the gym.

Fitness Tip#7
What are you eating?

Muscle building requires protein – the more, the better. Meat, especially red meats and fish, are the best source. It is in your food that your body will draw nutrients from, for strength and necessary fats for joint and organ protection.

To have massive muscle gain and help in muscle preservation , you need about 2-3 grams of good protein per kilogram of your body weight . If you want to get serious about muscles , you may need to supplement them with protein shakes . Eating a meal and having a protein shake immediately after your workout also maximizes the window for rapid absorption of nutrients. This is important as you need to feed the muscles now that you have damaged them. You should also 6 small meals a day so your muscles are constantly fed throughout the day. This will help rev up your metabolism to burn fat too. This will tremendously help you in your build muscle lose weight program. Remember to take your protein shake half an hour before you workout too.

Fitness Tip#8
How about Carbs?

Glycogen is the main energy source for any muscle-building exercise. The body stores whatever carbohydrates you eat as glycogen and muscles use it to give you energy during your workout. After an intense workout, do consume carbohydrates immediately to replace the used glycogen. You can even indulge in high glycemic carbs such as ice creams and white bread as these will turn into insulin and shuttles nutrients such as protein to your muscle cells quickly.

Fitness Tip #9
And Fats?

Yes, your body do need do need fats . But try to avoid saturated fats such as animal fats or worse, trans fats which are artificial fats found in pastries, confectionaries and preserved food. Consume healthy unsaturated fats such as olive oil, canola oil, fish oils, flax seed oil.

Fitness Tip#10
Water Water is essential.

Water is essential. It is the most underrated macronutrient. You need at least eight glasses of water every day but when you exercise , you lose even more water because of the sweating. So drink before, during and after your workout. Weigh yourself before and after the workout, and compensate for the loss by drinking at least 16 ounces of fluid for every pound or half a kg lost.

Fitness Tip#11
Creatine

While meats are the best source for creatine, which is a nutrient that helps speed up muscle gain and power you up during workouts, those who do not get enough from their regular diet must be supplemented. Creatine puts volume into your muscle cells and gives you that muscle pump thus your muscles feels tighter, look bigger and overall illusion of superb muscularity . It also helps to prevent muscle breakdown.

Fitness Tip#12
Glutamine

When supplemented, it may help bodybuilders reduce the amount of muscle wasting away or used up as energy. It also helps in muscle recovery.

Fitness Tip #13
Do you change your routine?

The human body is fantastic at adaptation. So whatever routine you are on, your body will get used to it. So do change your routine every 6-8 weeks. For example, instead of working out your chest muscles at the start of your workout, work your back muscles instead. You can reverse your whole routine or change the variations of your exercises or add new ones and take away some old ones. By changing your routines, you not only shock your muscles to new growth, it will also prevent boredom by doing the same thing all the time.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Chris Chew is an American Muscle and Fitness Institute Singapore based personal trainer. He trains models, pageant winners, actors and other celebrities to look great in their glamorous professions.Presently, he is running a local fitness school at www.sgfitnessonline.com and written an ebook “Burn Fat Build Muscles Fast” at www.sgfitness.com

Want To Own A Muscular Greek God Body?

If you are clueless at the gym and yet hungry for plain, good ‘ol professional advice to help you on the road to that sculpted physique of a Greek god, fret not! All you have to do is to have a solid commitment, use the knowledge gleaned from this article and you will attain the body you want pronto. But remember to warm up and cool down, as well as stretching before and after each session; Or even better, after each set for better muscle recovery and prevention of injuries.

Use Free Weights instead of Machines More Often

Machines will have its uses, but for a start, concentrate on free weights. That means work almost exclusively with barbells and dumb bells. Free weights recruit many stabilizing muscles for balance and control. That means you will work a lot more muscle parts other than the intended ones. That will give rise to little bumps, striations and definitions all over your body instead of one huge lump of muscle on your intended muscle. Because of the extra stimulant created, your muscles grow faster too. Why else do you think all professional body builders almost exclusively use free weights?

Compound Exercises Instead Of Isolation Exercises

Use as many compound exercises as possible to your workouts. Compound exercises are exercises that involve 2 or more joint movements. Because they utilize more joints, that means greater muscle mass are involved. Greater muscle mass means heavier weights. Heavier weights means greater muscle gain.

Some excellent compound exercises are the Squat, Deadlift, Chin ups, Dips, Bench press, Barbell Press, Lunges, Bent-Over Barbell Row…etc.

Train with Intensity

You must train intensively like a mad man for your muscle to grow. Try to do more reps or add more weight than the previous session or your muscles will think, “Ah… we’ve done that. Nothing new, so no need to grow bigger and stronger.”

Because of this, it is important that every time you train hard, you give your body time to recover as it has suffered strains and actually sustained many small scarring. Your muscles grow when you rest, especially when you sleep and not in the gym. So sleep at least 8 hours a day. Also, do not train everyday or work the same muscle group more than once or twice a week. If your training was vigorous enough, do no more than an hour per session.

Try not to do cardio work on the same day as your weight lifting work. In fact, during the muscle building phase, you should do less cardio work as aerobic exercises burn muscles. You can increase your cardio work when we come to the cutting phase, to lose fats and gain rippling definition.

Correct Technique And Form

Everywhere, everyday, you will see people using wrong form and technique when training with weights. This not only compromises your growth, it will also make you susceptible to injuries.

Wrong form occurs usually when people try to lift weights that are too heavy, whether out of vanity or ignorance. As a guide, always lift with strict focus on the muscle you intend to build for that particular exercise. Feel it contract and extend. Lift the weights deliberately and slowly. Never ever swing your weights up especially when doing bicep curls or the military press. Lower the weights slowly, taking about 3 seconds instead of letting gravity pull the weight down. You must fight gravity to stimulate the muscles, if not, half of your effort is going to waste. Another common mistake is when people arch their back when they are doing their bench presses. By arching your back, you are using your spine to press the weight up. Your back must be pressed against the bench at all times for the exercise to be effectively working on your chest! However you MUST arch your back when doing squats and deadlift.

With some exceptions, as a general rule, if you can lift a weight in good form for more than 10 reps, it is too light. Conversely, if you can’t lift it more than 5 times in good form, it is too heavy.

To Grow Fast and Huge, You Must Perform Lower Body Exercises!

This is what most people don’t realize. Your lower body makes up 60-70% of your musculature. If you don’t train them, not only will you look spider-legged, your entire body will not grow as quickly and as large. Don’t think that you can hide those skinny legs in your pants! Most people do not train their legs because squats, dead lifts and lunges can be very grueling exercises. But it is precisely because of such intensity that you will produce more growth hormones when you sleep and overall muscular development is stimulated.

EAT and EAT Correctly

Losing weight and building muscles cannot happen at the same time although there are methods to do so and will be too technical to describe here. To lose weight, you must have a caloric deficit. To build muscles, you must have more calories, period! So do not be afraid to eat. Have plenty of protein, moderate complex carbs and some good oil like Omega, olive, flaxseed, fish etc., especially immediately after a workout. That is when your body is most nutrient hungry and will absorb whatever you eat very quickly. The longer you delay eating after a workout, the less effective it will be. Even better, take quick absorption protein shakes and high glycemic carbs during this time. The carbs will induce insulin production almost immediately and shuttle the protein to your muscle cells very quickly.

Eat about 2 gm of protein for each kg of your bodyweight or 1 gm per pound of your body weight. Spread your meals evenly throughout the day about 3 hours apart. It is advisable that you have supplementation of Creatine, Protein, Multivitamins and L-Glutamine.

Yes, you will probably gain weight, but a lot of it will be muscle weight because muscles are heavier than fats. You may also gain some fats because of the extra calories consumed. Don’t worry, it is a happy problem because the more muscles you have, the easier the fats are to shed when you come to the cutting up phase to get those rippling definitions.

Easy isn’t it? Now that you know the facts, the rest is up to your determination.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Chris Chew is a personal trainer and count actors, pageant winners, models and other celebrities as his clients. He runs a fitness training school in Singapore at www.sgfitnessonline.com and has written the book “Burn Fat Build Muscles Fast.” See his books at www.sgfitness.com

How To Build Muscles And Own That V-Shaped Upper Body?

Every guy who steps into the gym dreams of achieving that great classical V-shaped upper body that commands respect and attention. Many have trained for months, if not years and yet that V-shaped upper body just isn’t forth coming. Ever wondered why?

Before I show you various ways to achieve that glorious ‘V’, you must also be aware that the ‘V’ shape is also an illusion. If you have a wide thick back with a powerful chest, coupled with boulder-like deltoids, your ‘V’ will show up commandingly because those attributes will make your waist look small and thus accentuating the ‘V’ illusion.

To have a stupendous upper body, you MUST train your lower body. V-shapes will just be an ugly upper body shape if your legs are like bamboo poles. The excellent full body shape is called the X-frame. Just like those super heroes you see in comic books. If you don’t train legs, you are missing out on training the largest muscle mass. When training legs, many other upper body muscles especially the back and abs will be involved. This gives you the most muscle mass trained in one go. And because you are training so many muscles at one go, you secrete tons of growth hormones when you sleep, further enhancing overall muscle development for that perfect X-frame.

Another muscle group many people fail to pay attention to is the back. The back must be trained for thickness as well as width. Many back exercises also develop the rear deltoids and the trapezius which are very important to getting that ‘V’. When your back is thick, you will look powerful and with the width, it will make your waist look narrower, thus making the ‘V’ more pronounced. Do bar-bell row, deadlifts for a thick and powerful back. Chin-ups and push-ups (weighted and doing them in a slow controlled motion) will provide you the width or more commonly called ‘wings’.

Another very obvious V-shape illusion creator are your triceps. But most people pay more attention to the biceps than triceps. Why triceps then? Because your triceps, as the name ‘tri’ suggests, has three ‘heads’ and each ‘head’ must be dealt with when you exercise them. They are also 1/3 bigger than your biceps. By training the triceps hard, your upper arms will grow bigger faster, giving more berth to your upper body and again creating a narrow waistline illusion.

The best illusion-shapers are your deltoids. Your delts have 3 ‘heads’. However, most of the time, I see people only working out the front delts. When you develop your delts well, they will be round and boulder-like, and they make your shoulder wide and strong. Now, close your eyes and have a mental image of yourself with a wide thick back, big strong triceps… now, do you see that ‘V’? Add lateral raise, bent-over lat-raisers and upright rows to your routine.

How to have a beautiful ‘V’ if your abs are flabby? Forget the side crunches and side bends. It will only make your waistline thicker. Go on a lose fat program by combining weight lifting, cardio exercises and eating correctly. Your abs will show in no time.

Ahh… to finally stamp your authority in the gym and at the beach, a wide and powerful gladiator’s chest will put you ahead of the pack! Train your chest heavy with dumbbells, barbells and cables machines. Use incline benches rather than flat or declining ones. You want to build the upper chest and not targeting the lower chest in case it gets you the droop or saggy chest which we call ‘bitch tits’. Although the pec is one huge muscle, it can be targeted at different places to recruit different fibres to shape it.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Chris Chew is a fitness personal trainer and count celebrities such as actors, models and pageant winners amongst his clients. He authored the book “Burn Fat Build Muscles Fast” at www.sgfitness.com and runs a fitness school at www.sgfitnessonline.com