If you fallen for the hype and propaganda marketing campaign from fitness clubs, cardio equipment manufacturers, shoe companies, bike companies, and health magazines that say all you need to do to lose weight is engage in long, drawn out cardio exercise. Run, bike, or use the latest gadget X amount of time a week for so many minutes per day and you’ll be fit, happy and sexy in no time at all, right?

Wrong!

This is why cardio is bad for you. Cardiovascular exercise burns calories, increases the heart rate, and does help you lose weight. But like any repetitive exercise your body adapts and you plateau, your weight loss stops, you don’t sweat as much, you don’t burn off as many calories as when you first started and to top it off you begin to lose lean muscle mass.

So running 5 miles a day or spending an hour long workout on that latest gadget can be detrimental to your fitness goals. Those long drawn out cardio exercises actually do more harm than good, but the advertisers want you to believe those sexy models with the hard bodies wearing that new brand of shoes, pouring sweat with a smile on their face will convey cardio is good for all your troubles.

You want to exercise to get in shape, to get healthy not gain weight or slow down your fitness goals to a dead stop. The cardio plateau comes from traditional types of cardiovascular exercise such as running, biking, jazzercise, and tread climbers.

Interval cardio is a much better exercise routine, not only does it prevent cardio plateau it helps you continue to burn calories long after your workout is over on top of burning twice as many calories as traditional cardio. An interval is just as the name implies, at intervals during your cardio routine, pick up the pace with short burst of intensity, your maximum capacity from 20 seconds to a minute. During long distances runs break out into sprints, on the tread climber pick up the intensity for a minute, then back down. Applied with resistance training you’ll develop lean sexy muscles and maintain them.

Now for the key to cardio intervals, 2 times a week is the maximum. Cardio alone isn’t the end all cure all. You need resistance training to balance out the cardio otherwise your body will become stressed from the constant cardio, and a stressed body produces stress hormones, – hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which make it impossible to burn fat.

So yes too much of a good thing can be bad for you.

Tradition cardio is bad for you; it can prevent weight loss, and can lead to muscle loss. Interval cardio is better for you; it prevents cardio plateau, keeps your body burning calories and can be inserted into any existing cardio program. Intervals will put that smile on your face during a workout, because you now know the secret, but feel free to tell everyone you know.

In order to maximize your weight gains in the gym, you need to maintain a strict muscle building diet. In fact, even if you lift a ton at the gym, it will amount to nothing if you don’t eat right.

So what does a muscle building diet contain?

Here are some basic guidelines:

1. The key to muscle building nutrition is that you need to create a calorie surplus in order to gain muscle mass. The biggest mistake people make is to try to lose weight and build muscle tissue at the same time. It doesn’t work that way. Muscle tissue weighs a lot and requires calories in order to build. So the 1st thing you need to remember is that you basically need to eat a lot.

2. Muscle Building diets are basically made up of 3 macronutrients: protein, carbs, and fats. Here are the basic ratios of each macronutrients:

• Protein – 30%-60%
• Carbs – 30-60%
• Fat – 20-30%

The exact proportion of the 3 macronutrients differ for each person and depend on your present goals. For instance, if you’re looking to build muscle and cut fat at the same time, you should aim for less fat in your diet. If you aim to gain the most weight fast, go for a higher dose of protein and carbs.

Good sources for each of the 3 food groups are:

Protein – fish, chicken, turkey, and egg whites

Carbs – Whole flour paste, whole wheat bread, wild rice, cereals.

Fats – Olive oil, coconut oil, flax seeds, nuts, almonds, and seeds

3. Breaking your meals down – The 3rd basic guideline of a great muscle building diet is to break down your meals into smaller ones. If you want to bulk up, you can’t settle for 3 meals each day, no matter how big they are. In fact, eating too large meals is bad because our body can only handle a certain amount of food at the same time. A much better course to take is to break your daily calorie intake into 6 small meals. In this way, your body will be able to utilize the nutrients you put into it in a much better way, and you will also feel much more energetic.

There’s a lot more to creating the perfect muscle building diet. However, these 3 guidelines are a good place to start.

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Whether preparing for an upcoming show, or just trying to keep body fat low, cardiovascular training is an important part of all bodybuilders’ routines. When trying to add mass, cardio should be done at a minimum, but for health reasons it should never be completely deleted. Cardio strengthens the cardiovascular and respiratory system, and gives you a stronger heart and lungs.

It’s often hard to get to the gym four or five times per week to train with weights. It’s even harder to make the trip 5 times a week for cardio, especially if you (wisely) decide to do cardio training in the morning to burn the most body fat, performed on an empty stomach upon waking. For these situations, a home cardio solution is a great idea. But which works best? Let’s examine the options.

Walking or running

This it the easiest option – put on shoes, open the door, and go for it. Cost is free, and it can be done anytime. However, drawbacks do exist. Weather can prevent you from running – it’s very hard to spend 45 minutes in the elements when it’s ten below zero, or a sweltering 90 degrees. Also if you live in a bad neighborhood, utilizing a predictable walking schedule might make you a target.

Exercise bike

This is a favorite of many due to the low-impact nature of the movement, as well as the fact you can very easily watch television while training. Time does pass quickly on a stationary bike. One drawback is the low intensity nature of the machine. It cannot deliver the same kind of full body workout as other machines.

Elliptical

Elliptical machines are very popular in gyms, but less popular for homes due to their size (big), weight (heavy) and cost ($500 and up for a quality machine). They are very effective for full body workouts.

Rowing machine

This very effective piece of equipment suffers from the same fate as the elliptical. It is highly effective for cardiovascular purposes, but also large and expensive. If you have the space and can afford it, a rower is a terrific investment.

Stationary stepper

This small piece of equipment is available for under $50, and it is used by a surprising number of athletes. It’s the size of a shoebox and provides no upper body balance, but it is easily stored and used, and provides full ability to walk or run using very little space.

If you want to build massive amounts of rock hard muscle mass, then you need to master the fundamentals of bodybuilding nutrition. While there are many important components to a muscle gain program, none is more important than a well thought out muscle building nutrition blueprint.

Outlined below are 5 tips to help you get your bodybuilding nutrition program on the fast track to building more muscle mass.

1.) Make sure to drink enough water to properly hydrate your body and aid in the muscle building process. I like to drink somewhere between 1 and 1.5 gallon of water a day, depending on how long I train and the temperature outside. Your ideal water consumption goal will vary, but shooting for 1 gallon of water spread out throughout the day is a great place to start!

2.) Eat ample amounts of energy rich carbohydrates spread throughout the day. Sure we all know that protein is the critical nutrient when it comes to building muscle mass, but I guarantee you’ll have a hard time finding the energy levels required to build muscle mass if you don’t eat a variety of carbohydrates spaced out every few hours.

3.) Eat enough muscle building protein to aid in the repair and recovery of damaged muscle cells. There are a lot of varying opinions about how much protein you actually need to consume to build muscle mass. I tend to see good results with the 1 – 1.5 grams of high quality muscle building protein per pound of body weight each day methodology. At this level, it doesn’t feel like I’m eating too much protein but it’s enough for me to see decent muscle growth.

4.) Make it a habit to consume a nutrient dense and quickly absorbed post workout meal within 20 minutes of putting up the weights. This is the critical bodybuilding nutrition “window of opportunity” that you hear so much about. Your body is worn down and tired, not to mention beginning the recovery and growth process – it just makes sense to flood your body with high quality, quickly absorbed bodybuilding nutrients.

5.) Make sure to eat enough dietary fat to fuel muscle growth. While protein is typically considered the most important muscle-building nutrient, you will not build any muscle without eating enough dietary fat. If you’re concerned about the health consequences of eating too much fat, focus on the heart healthy omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

If you’re serious about building muscle mass, take some time to learn the basic bodybuilding nutrition principles. While not very exciting a solid diet can go a long way to ensure your muscle building success.

If you’re ready to begin a fat loss workout plan as you embark on self-improvement, kudos to you. There are still far too many people who are under the delusion that significant fat loss can be had while avoiding exercise. The most successful ‘fat-burners’ look at this idea with a kind of saddened amusement.

Any reasonable fat loss workout has so many extra benefits – increased energy, greater breath flow, increased self-confidence – that it’s amazing that so many people avoid it. Others just don’t really know where to start, or are overwhelmed by misinformation.

I’ve dedicated myself to finding out exactly what kind of fat loss workouts are done by the most successful people, people who have taken the initiative to lose 50 to 100 pounds or more because they could no longer stand being overweight.

Here, in a nutshell, is what I have discovered:

• They have fun with cardio. Some kind of sustained, aerobic exercise is essential to fat loss. This is because when you are engaged in a physical activity, the initial period of exertion is spent depleting glycogen (carbohydrates stored in your body) and not fat. The burning of the fat happens only after this depletion has occurred. This means that 15 minutes of an aerobic exercise (running, spinning, elliptical training, etc) is not a good enough fat loss workout to actually start burning much fat. 30 minutes is good, and 45 minutes is great.

But how does someone motivate themselves to commit to such an intense fat loss workout, and for 5 days a week? They choose the kind of exercise that they enjoy the most. If you have a gym membership, you have many effective methods to choose from: using a treadmill, a stationary bike, an elliptical machine, a rowing machine, a cross- country ski machine, a stair-climber, etc. These are all effective means of aerobic exercise. If you don’t have a gym membership, you may want to invest in a piece of equipment, or take up jogging. There are always ways to do these things when you have the motivation.

• They work their way up. Please don’t get the impression that you must be able to do a 30 minute fat loss workout as soon as you begin. This is not realistic, and you need to be aware of the importance of the adjustment period. This point is so crucial because many who aren’t aware of it end up quitting in frustration; they think fat loss ‘should’ be this or that, and fall back into the depths of shame and self-loathing.

Starting your fat loss workouts at 5 minute intervals is perfectly fine. What you’re aiming for at the start is getting your body used to moving continuously and at an adequate intensity (60 – 80% of maximum heart rate) for a pre-determined period of time. Think of the ongoing satisfaction you get when you can perform an aerobic activity for just 1 minute longer each week! As your satisfaction is ongoing, so will be your motivation.

• They pump iron to pump the metabolism. Aerobic activity is an immediate means of burning fat. Weight training burns fat in a less direct – but even more appealing – way. As you gain muscle, the lean body mass that you accumulate gives a boost to your metabolism. In a nutshell, this means that you increase your body’s ability to burn more calories at rest, even while you sleep. Although not everyone knows the relationship of building muscle to losing fat, the most successful do – the overwhelming majority of them include weight training in their fat loss workouts.

So, now that we know the basics of the type of exercise to perform in a fat loss workout, let’s look at quantity. At first, you’re going to want to ease into it and listen closely to your body to see how long you can go and on how many days per week without getting nauseous, light-headed or injuring yourself. At the same time, you’re going to want to have a longer-term goal, a point where you know that each and every time you engage in a fat loss workout that you’re getting beyond the glycogen burning stage and into intense fat-burning.

In the long-term, a good number to eventually shoot for in any given fat loss workout is a 45-minute period of continuous aerobic exercise. If this seems like too overwhelming a number, no problem – put it at 25 minutes or so. When you get to that point, you may very well feel that it’s not enough and you want to challenge yourself to go further.

At the beginning, you may want to workout aerobically 3 or 4 days of the week, but as you adapt a great number to shoot for is in the 4 – 6 days a week range. In addition, doing a free-weight workout 2 or 3 days a week will give you that exhilarating spark to your metabolism. Weight training workouts will usually last about 30 minutes or so, but you can begin at 10 minutes and you’re still doing yourself a world of good more than without any weight training at all.

Finally, one common misconception about fat loss is that you can do specific exercises to target specific trouble spots, like performing crunches to lose fat around the midsection. Having just read the information in this article, it should be clear that this won’t work, as getting to the fat-burning stage would take 30 minutes of continuous crunches or so to get past the glycogen-burning stage.

You now have the most important information needed to get started with a fat-loss workout regimen. Keep a long-term goal in mind while going easy on yourself in the beginning and you will reach the success you seek.

Are you not sure if you are doing your muscle and fitness training the right way? A common difficulty that a muscle builder experience is if each muscle has been trained optimally as it was meant to be during a certain exercise. It’s only by achieving this that you can gain muscle mass maximally.

So, what is the solution? The solution is simple; increase your exercise intensity. This way your training will always be challenging and the motivation this will cause will ensure progress over time and the likelihood of regression will be reduced.

Now, what do we mean in tangible terms when we tell you to intensify your workout? Below we have outlined 8 proven methods of intensifying your muscle training exercises. Use them one by one or combine them in any thinkable way:

1. Change or Modify the Workout

The method will train all muscle fibers and thus ensure maximum muscle gain. This can be accomplished by modifying a certain exercise by changing angel, perform slower or faster etc., or simply add a new exercise to your workout session.

2. Reduce Intervals of Rest

When you reduce the rest intervals between the reps of one exercise or between each exercise the workout intensity will automatically increase.

3. Resistance Increase

If you push your muscle beyond its previous point of failure by increasing the weight lifted, the intensity will increase. Your goal should be to increase the weight when you reach six to eight reps without failure.

4. Employ Forced Repetitions

Forced reps mean doing one or more final repetitions after the point of failure has occurred.

Don’t attempt to do this without the assistance of an experienced helper.

5. Pre-Exhaustion Training

If an exercise involves more than one muscle, the weakest muscle will make it impossible to work the primary muscle to failure. A good way to come around this problem is to exercise only the primary muscle first and then immediately move to another workout that trains the set of muscles to failure.

6. Use Isometric Contradictions

With isometric contractions we simply mean to hold the weight still at the point of failure. This way a static contraction is stimulated in the muscle.

7. Partial Repetitions

At the point of failure you are not capable to do the full range of movement in a certain workout. A technique that can still work your muscles beyond the point of failure is partial repetitions, which only uses a segment of the lift. This technique – especially used by advanced bodybuilders – prevents you from over training because you don’t have to add extra routines to increase intensity.

8. Superset Training

Superset training means performing two workouts for the same muscle group and without a rest between the workouts.When you have to utilize different muscle fibers greater growth in your muscle mass will be stimulated.

Implement these techniques in your muscle and fitness exercise regimen and you will feel more and more confident and end up doing the right things to maximize the growth of your muscles.

Interval training (also called HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training) is a very popular cardio workout plan right now. It’s pretty much the polar opposite of LSD – Long Slow Distance.

HIIT is short and ultra intense – like sprinting would be. LSD, on the other hand, is much longer and done much slower – like jogging might be.

Scientific studies have shown that intervals are much more effective than LSD. It gives you many of the same benefits that LSD does, in just a short amount of time. And it gives you many other benefits that LSD doesn’t.

Basically, LSD is just aerobic training, meaning that it’s an activity that the body produces energy to perform with oxygen. Or in other words, you’re not breathing that hard. Interval training, on the other hand, is anaerobic training, meaning it’s an activity that the body produces energy to perform without oxygen. Or in other words, you are breathing hard.

LSD training increases your aerobic capabilities. Makes sense. Intervals, however, increase anaerobic capabilities (which again, makes sense) *and* aerobic capabilities. You’re getting two for the price of one.

HIIT has also shown very beneficial to losing fat, as at the end of a workout, your metabolism stays “jacked up” for a number of hours afterward.

But there is a major problem with HIIT though – it has to be super, super hard. If you’re not putting the proper intensity (which is 100%, balls-to-the-wall, you’re gonna have an arm chopped off if you don’t work hard enough kinda intense) into this cardio workout plan, then you’re going to get less than mediocre results.

This is because volume and intensity are inversely proportional in cardio workout plans. You can go long and slow, or short and hard. But you can’t go long and hard. Nobody ever sprinted a marathon…

But say you do your interval training at a low intensity. Now you’re slow and short – worst of both worlds.

So, how can you make sure that you’re not wasting your time, and still take advantage of the benefits of interval training?

Easy – just pick out intense activities, and perform them at a medium volume. This could include playing various sports, or better yet, heavy circuit-style weight training.

It will be a version of interval training, in that it’ll be shorter bursts of highly intense activity. However, since the cardio activity won’t be at 100% intensity, you just do a little more volume to make up for it.

If you want to increase muscle mass, it’s very important to eat the kind of food that gives you the best nutrition for building muscle. This is just about as important as going to the gym regularly. Your hard training will get you less results, if you are not getting the proper nutrition for muscle gaining. If you are skinny and have a hard time gaining weight, it is especially important for you to keep track of the nutrition you are getting from your meals.

Here you have my six tips for muscle gaining nutrition:

1. You should have a meal every 2,5-3 hours.

Having a meal every 3 hours is beneficial for those who want to add muscle, those who are trying to lose fat and gain muscle, as well as those just wanting to gain muscle.Skipping meals to lose fat is not a good idea, because when you do your body could start to store fat as a defense mechanism.Having more frequent meals supports fat loss, because it accelerates the body’s metabolism. For those of you who can´t gain weight easily,it´s very important to have a meal every 3 hours or so, because if you don’t, your body doesn´t have a constant energy source, and it could start eating up the muscle tissue for the energy it needs.And when that happens the muscles aren’t growing.

2. Your muscles need protein to grow.

Meat, eggs, cheese, kinoa, beans, tuna, salmon, cod and peas are examples of protein-rich foods.Your preferred protein intake per day is around: 1,5 g per pound of bodyweight (3,3 grams per kilogram).Every meal should include protein, 40-60 g. Protein is an important growing material for the muscles, and it speeds muscle recovery.If you would like to use powdered protein supplement, it should not be more than 40 percent of your daily protein consumption. This is to make sure that you are getting enough minerals, vitamins and digestive enzimes from your diet.

3. Carbohydrates are an important part of your muscle building diet.

Carbs can be put in three categories, simple (sugars), complex (whole grain breads, brown rice), and fibrous (vegetables).You should concentrate on complex carbs when you are working out hard and building muscle, they release a slower and longer lasting energy. Foods that contain high complex carbs are amongst others: whole grains, cornmeal, bran, pasta and brown rice.You should eat most of your carbs in the morning and post-workout.Having a good meal post-workout is crucial for muscle building and muscle recovery. The amount of carbs you eat every day should be around 5,5 g per kilo of bodyweight (2,5 g per pound).

4. For muscle recovery, veggies are very important.

Every meal should contain 1-2 cups of vegetables and fruit.You get anti-oxidants, vitamins and minerals from fruits and veggies and they speed muscle recovery and heal damaged muscle cells. High levels of acid loads to the blood, which are created by grains and proteins, need to be balanced out with alkaline rich veggies and fruits. To much acid in the blood can result in decreasing of muscle mass and bone strength.

5. Fat is important as well.

Depending on if you want to lose bodyfat or not, fat should be 10-30% of your meal. For those who don’t gain weight easily, 30 percent fat is the right amount, for those who would like to lose some bodyfat, ten percent is fine and for the rest, twenty percent is good. Consuming fat is necessary for the body, one of many of its benefits is its contribution to energy, and diffusion of oxygen into the bloodstream. The following are a few kinds of foods that contain “good fat” (essential fatty acids): olive oil, walnuts, seafood and pumpkin seeds.

6. Write down what you eat and when.

In order to keep track of the food you are eating, and whether it is useful to your muscle building efforts, keep a log of what and when you eat. Collect information about every meal, and its nutritional value, the amount of fat, carbs and protein you are eating. Even if this doesn’t sound very fun, it gets into a habit very fast, and has many benefits.You could have your phone remind you when it’s time to eat if you tend to forget meals.

By following these simple tips, your diet should be optimized for muscle gain.

I hope you found this article helpful and that it will help you in your muscle building efforts.

The Xtreme Fat Loss Diet Plan is actually a famous and also powerful online diet program at the moment, and also has aided more than thirty thousand men and women around the world to be able to drop weight effectively. The diet plan guarantees that you could shed up to twenty five lbs within twenty five days, that makes this an excellent option in case you would like to be slimmer for a specific occasion, or would like to start an extended fat loss plan.

This diet plan is a twenty five day quick weight reduction method, broken down into five days chain that repeated five times – and that’s why the outcomes specified are intended for twenty five days. This method includes Cheat Days, Fast Days, Depletion Days, and several additional “innovative” weight loss techniques into an arranged 5 day pattern which is repeated 5 times during the period of this diet method.

As an example the Cheat Day of in every cycle is actually a day that you can consume even harmful meals such as nachos as well as ice cream if you wish to. A Cheat Day once in every five days allows you to reset your leptin amounts and keeping a high metabolic rate. Furthermore, it offers outstanding mental advantages as having the ability to consume “non diet” meals such as pizzas every five days assists you to stay with any kind of diet regime so long as you may need.

The Xtreme Fat Loss Diet plan allows you to shed as much as twenty five lbs within twenty five days. The effect of these various days as well as exercise programs is a quick and also substantial weight loss.

This system is a superb eating plan which could efficiently increase weight reduction in an expedient way. Therefore, it continues to be strongly suggested. So should you be trying to find a successful diet that can make you slim down in short time, this program would be the solution to suit your needs!

1) Do not be afraid of the weights. Is a fact that resistance exercise with weights and machines strengthens and tones your muscles, which makes you burn more fat and energy sitting still without doing anything, will help to combat excess weight permanently and automatically, and gives your body a more healthy and attractive appearance.

Whether you’re a man who don’t want to look like “Arnold” or a woman who “wants to make a lot”, do not worry, even if you perform these exercises, professional bodybuilders require an immense effort and dedication to looking how they look, so it is very unlikely that you will start to resemble one doing a moderate amount of weight exercises.

2) Calculate your pre-exercise snack. Eating food or snacks high in protein and complex carbohydrates, moderate in 1 hour before cardiovascular exercise or weight training. Exercising will help you in a more lasting and intense than it usually would. However, it looks that this snack consumption exactly 1 hour to 1 ½ hours before exercise, will lose its effectiveness in burning the fat.

3) Use a variety, If you do the same things every time you go to the gym, your body will start to adapt and eventually stop burning calories and fat like before. Remember constantly, to change the order, frequency, and duration of the full range of cardiovascular or weight training you perform, so that your body never knows what they will go on and you burn more fat and have a faster weight loss.

4) Do the cardio last. Make strength training and weights before doing cardio. Why? It takes your body about 20 minutes to exhaust the reserves of glycogen (the primary source of energy) and start using the fat. So, if you hit the treadmill for 30 minutes, actually, burning the fat activates until the last 10 minutes.

If you start with weight training exercise, your body open and glycogen reserves are exhausted and cardiovascular exercise immediately begin using its fat stores for use.

5) Breathe through your nose. The inhale and exhale through your nose during exercise rather than through your mouth will help to stabilize your heart rate and increase your endurance. The result will be that you can exercise longer and burn more fat and calories. Do not worry if you don’t get used to this at first, with a little practice in a few weeks you will make it natural.

6) Watch your way Keeping a bad position (hunched or upright) while exercising on a stationary bike (or similar exercises) limits the amount of oxygen your body can use, and slows down the process of burning the fat. If you can not continue doing the exercise with good posture, then lower a bit the pace of this and start practicing good posture.

7) Do cardio for more than 30 minutes. It is proved that the most efficient way to burn fat is by doing cardiovascular exercise of moderate intensity and long duration, translating to perform an exercise like the treadmill or stationary bike at moderate intensity for 30- 60 minutes.

Now, if you do not have enough time in your day to perform this amount of cardio, then you can use high-intensity cardio for 15 to 30 minutes, which while not the most efficient way to burn fat will help you increase your stamina and endurance.