Ever seen those protein power products advertised in health stores that promise to help you build incredible masses of muscle in a short period of time and to give you a body to be desired? Or better, have you ever seen an athlete that chug down copious amounts of protein-mixed shakes like there’s no tomorrow and looks like a hunk with rippling muscle and someone who normally graces the cover of Men’s magazines?

Well I have, and between you and me, it is not always a pleasant sight. Some do turn out looking great and with nice muscular and ripped bodies but others, such as an acquaintance that I know, end up with bodies that somehow do not look natural.

Between you and me, I think building muscle should be a natural process and actually there are many natural food that contain enough protein to fuel your muscle building routines and so below, I have listed the top best food for natural body building.

1) Eggs

Eggs are a tremendous source of protein with each egg containing about 5 grams of protein each and the best part is they are so small that it is easy to chug them down. You can consume them in a variety of manner – scrambled, sunny-side up, omelet style or even raw.

The most common way I have seen people wanting to put on muscle naturally is by breaking three eggs into a cup, mixing it and just downing it with a little bit of water. The only downside of eating too many eggs is the high cholesterol content of eggs but this can be resolved by removing the egg yolk as most of the protein is in the egg white. Nevertheless, eating eggs is a good source of protein for natural muscle building.

2) Tuna

Tuna is also a good source of protein and like eggs can be eaten in a variety of ways. You can eat it with bread to make a simple tuna sandwich or you can add it to your pasta (which, by the way, is also a good type of food to incorporate into your natural muscle building regime because it contains a lot of complex carbohydrates that provide the basic fuel for your body to generate energy). Besides protein tuna also contains Omega-3 acids which are known to improve your brain functions and so, tuba is a good food for natural muscle building overall.

3) Nuts

If you are nuts about natural body building, you should be crazy about nuts. Nuts are one of the best natural sources high in protein content and they are especially useful if you are not feeling particularly hungry after a work-out but still need protein to build your muscles. They are also healthy and are high in fiber which serves your body well in other ways besides body building. All in all, eggs, tuna and nuts are three good sources of natural good you should consider for natural muscle building.

Your aim is to improve your physique and so you have taken up muscle building.  So you now are getting set up with a good and healthy diet with a mixture of carbohydrates and proteins in the form of your everyday food intake with or without supplements. You’ve either purchased a gym membership or else you’re doing the hard work at home.  If you’ve got the gym membership then you would have someone to hand guiding you on what is best for you and how to get the results in the best time frame possible.  However, if you are going this route alone then one thing you must understand is what you’re body is going through and what measures you must take to ensure you are not doing untold damage.

One area of muscle building that you have probably totally overlooked is the area of rest.  This is so important – as important as the actual exercises you are doing.  Maybe it’s easier to see how important rest is if you can see what you’re doing to your muscles while building them up.  With your diet, you’ll be increasing the food that brings energy to the muscles and with the exercises you are working fibres that need to be treated with care.  Acids in the muscles are being produced and there is only a certain amount of these that are good for muscles.  In any aspect of life if we are looking to improve something we must take care about it – neglect does not equal good results. 

Rest is in many forms.  It has been scientifically proven that the average Joe requires 8 hours uninterrupted sleep a night.  We’ve had nights out and had to work the next day and survived on less than the 8 hours but have probably not performed at our best the next day.  So it’s easy to see that the nights sleep is as important when we are building up our muscles. 

Now the one we really want to know about it the rest that is required when doing actual exercises for muscle building.  You know how when you begin your exercises you go at a great pace and then with the next set of repetitions you really aren’t as fantastic and eventually you are painfully slow.  So what you need to do is be clever and read your body.  Take rests between the repetitions, short rests between repetitions and then a little bit more of a rest between different types of exercises.  Try to be as good on the other repetitions as you were when you began.

So you are being sensible the days that you are muscle building but you also need to give your body a day off from your intense training.  During the time off you can do other exercises – swimming, biking, jogging, and so on.  You’ll be secretly working other areas that you may have missed during your time at the gym.  Your body is a temple, treat it with respect and give it the time off it needs, you’ll be pleasantly rewarded.

Six-Pack Abs Exercise, The Truth!

So you want to get a great looking stomach. Whether your after a great six-pack, or a really sexy toned stomach, it all comes down to the same thing, low body fat percentage. In most cases, people already have developed abs. The only problem is, is that they are covered behind a wall of fat.

What you need to do is get rid of that fat! So stop wasting your time doing thousands of crunches and other workouts, and start burning that disgusting flab. There are plenty of ways to do this, a cardio routine can work, but I have found a much better program that will help optimize the toning of your stomach.

Okay, so to begin dropping those pounds you need to incorporate a good diet.

Here are some guidelines for you to follow.

– Drink lots of water. At the least it is recommended you drink about three liters, but more is better!

– Eliminate any processed foods and sugars

– Get rid of fried foods and cheese, they are bad!

– No fatty red meat! Only lean meats, 1-2 times per week

– Eat about five servings of vegetables and fruits per day

Exercise In Moderation To Start

Six-Pack abs exercise routines should be minimal until you start dropping that weight. The most you will do is firm up your abs with all of those workouts, which is good, but for now we are mainly concerned with actually being able to see your abs.

Don’t drop the workouts all together though! It would be your best bet to actually keep doing them, just don’t make sure that your main priority for now is losing body fat.

Cardio is great for losing weight if you know what you’re doing. All of this stuff can get you a great stomach eventually.

Want great abs fast?

Why spend all the time and money trying to create your own exercise and dieting plan when you could take one that is already created and optimized for losing weight and developing those abs? Do you want to know the truth about getting great abs?

If you’ve just gotten into weight lifting and bodybuilding, or even if you have been at it for a long time, you may be wondering what the best build muscle supplements to buy are. Though supplements should take a back seat to your nutrition and training, they can still be extremely important to your muscle building progress.

This article will tell you three of the best build muscle supplements for making progress in the weight room. These are the few products that lifters have really found to make a difference for decades. At the end, you can find a link to the best, most proven guide to building muscle.

Protein Powder

The absolute first product on your list of build muscle supplements should be protein powder. More like a powdered food product than a supplement, protein powder can make it much, much easier to get your daily requirement of muscle-building protein.

If you are really trying to gain some serious muscle mass, you should be eating around 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight PER DAY. That’s a ton of protein, and you will almost certainly need a few protein shakes to get that in everyday.

Creatine

Creatine is among the most proven build muscle supplements of all time. It has been through literally thousands of scientifically controlled experiments throughout several decades, and bodybuilding and competitive lifters alike have found it to be a real help in the weight room.

Creatine works by helping your muscle cells to produce more ATP (cellular energy) from the food you eat, more quickly. When your ATP stores are replenished more quickly than normal, you can push your weight lifting farther, either by doing more reps or adding a little bit more weight. More weight and reps means more muscle mass built.

Branched Chain Amino Acids

This is one of my personal favorite build muscle supplements, and it has recently been found by many researchers, bodybuilders, and other lifters to be one of the most effective. Though there are 20 known amino acids that make up the protein in our bodies, there are 3 special ones known as the branched chain amino acids.

Without getting into any complicated biochemistry, these amino acids are the “trigger,” so to speak, for building muscle. Consuming these build muscle supplements in sufficiently high quantities tells your body to build muscle at a potentially much faster rate than normal. You’ll have to be judicious about using this product, however, because they can get very expensive.

Here are some muscle building and muscle mass gaining tips:

Protein – Eat enough protein. Body uses protein to build, repair and maintain almost all of the tissue in your body including muscle. Eat at least 1 gram of protein per pound of your body weight everyday if you want to gain muscle mass fast. Protein helps suppress your appetite this will make you eat less which results in less calorie intake in the form of food. Therefore, in order to burn fat or decrease you calorie intake protein is essential overall.

Weight Training – You must lift with heavy weights and to add on more weight consistently to progressively build your muscles. Compound exercises like bench presses, squats, barbell rows, chin ups and dead lifts, allow you to stimulate the most muscle fibers in the least amount of time. In order to build more muscles try to use free weight like barbell and dumbbells but it is very important to follow correct lifting techniques. Some great exercises for gaining muscle mass are squat and calf raise for legs, bench dips and bicep curls for arms, pull ups for back, bench press for chest, military press for shoulders, crunches for abs. For building muscles weight training programs should concentrate on medium i.e. 7 to 12 reps. per set.

Moderate your workout – Do not try to workout more than 60 minutes because when you train your muscles intensely, you are actually breaking down your muscles. Have rest days in between your workout days and do not work the same muscle group more than twice a week. Keep in your mid training too hard and training to long will give you negative results. Sleep at least 6 hours a day for better muscle building.

Packing on Muscle mass involves a lot of dedication and care. At times, trying too hard can have its negative effects too. Right guidance and proper techniques make the perfect recipe to MUSCLE BUILDING. Muscle Building is no joke, but at the same time, very much possible. The bottomline is to workout in the right direction and not to harm your body. Here are some Do’s and Dont’s for Muscle Building.

Muscle Building Tips: Do’s and Dont’s

1) Muscle Building Diet: It occupies a prominent area in MUSCLE BUILDING pie-chart. You should be highly careful related to your muscle building diet. Always ask your trainer to write down a diet schedule for you.

2) Give rest to your body between two sets, say for two minutes.

3) Not work on more than two muscle groups at a time. Train those mucles in a group which work with each other. This technique has proven to be effective. For eg: Chest and Triceps or biceps and backs.

4) The most effective time to do muscle building exercises is in the morning. You have consumed a lot of carbs by evening. So, carbs become the source of energy for you when you do your exercises in evening. But in morning, body depends on its alternative source i.e FAT for energy. Hence fats get burned up more in morning.

5) Last but not the least, Dont be biased to any body part. Proper balance is a necessity. Having big upper body and skinny legs is no good. Work out on entire body.

Please don’t believe you are going to get six pack abs overnight. Although there are lots of pills and products out there which promise you really fast results, remember that if it appears too good to be true it usually is. In order to to get six pack abdominals you will need to reduce extra body fat and increase exercise. Finding the correct abdominal muscle workout will make this process a lot easier.

If you have excess body fat covering your abdominal muscles, you will need to lose this weight so that it possible for everybody to view the results of your abdominal muscle physical exercises. After you have achieved your desired body fat percentage, you must now focus on increase abdominal muscle mass. There are dozens exercises that can be done for the abs, so if you happen to really dislike a certain exercise, for instance the sit up, you are allowed to avoid it.

For the inexperienced out there that is not too familiar with the large mixture of six pack abdominal workouts, it might be helpful to check several of the many six pack abs exercises that are available. To begin, it may be advisable to use the free options hence you can get an idea of which physical exercises are best to you. You may note that there are normally physical exercises which are intended to target the upper abs, lower abs, and obliques so that you work all places of the abs muscles. Nevertheless, remember that if you want the best results and quick, a paid workout and diet plan is the greatest option.

Whichever six pack abdominal exercise you begin, always keep in mind that over time your abs will get familiar to the range of motion and your physical exercise will become less effective. Therefore you will want to workouts up to shock your abs and continue the results. You can do this in numerous ways, including adding dumbbells, maximizing repetitions, or varying the exercises that you do.

Being true with your workout will give you the healthiest results, don’t forget you must rest a few days in between exercises to give your muscles enough time to repair, if you don’t your results will be not as powerful and you may be more probable to hurt your muscles. Also, work out your back muscles equally as your abs thus you do not end up overdeveloping one part of the body and putting tension on the other part.

There are plenty of muscle building enthusiasts and personal trainers who share their tips on muscle building online. I’ve rounded up all the good information (because there are plenty of run-of-the-mill ones too from the thousands available online), including some from Muscle Gaining Secrets by Jason Ferruggia. Then I summarized them into this, hopefully, substantially helpful guide on building muscle.

Now, food and nutrition are just as essential as the proper exercise required in muscle building itself. When you’re building muscle, the timing of your food intake and your food selection spells the difference between a so-so progress towards your muscle gaining goals to an astounding one. Taking in carbohydrates before and after each workout would ensure you’ll get the right energy you need to get through your workout, as well as replace the glycogen from muscle that the body uses during exercise.

An hour or 1.5 hours before your workout, make sure you take in whole meals that include fiber and carbohydrates. This allows your system to digest your food right without going into a ruckus when your body starts to work. After your workout, exactly 20 minutes, make sure you pop in a whole grain carbohydrate snack or a fruit like a banana to keep your body in an anabolic state. No Nonsense Muscle Building by Vince Delmonte details other food information related to building muscle.

During workout, remember to keep tabs on the progress you’ve made including the weights you’ve progressed to and the reps you’ve done in a journal. Keeping this information will help you in decisions involving changing routines and resistance later on. Remember to keep it varied every 3 to 4 weeks. Not doing so would lead to a stagnant point in your weight training program. This is because your body eventually adjusts to the weight training you subject it too and would put out less muscle gain for the more familiar routines.

Workout patterns and sleep patterns would have to be established too, if you’re serious about gaining muscle. Workout consistently, even if it’s just for 20-30 minutes. Don’t do it every day; you’re body needs to rest to build muscle. Sleep is the best resting phase for your body to gain muscle so make sure you get at least 8 hours of sleep a day. The No Nonsense Muscle Building Review and Muscle Gaining Secrets Review includes more tips on muscle building.

When training for muscle gain, there are many factors that can affect your progress. Apply my ten tips listed below and you will move forward in your quest to pile on pounds of lean muscle mass.

10. Sleep – This may sound like a strange one to start with, but there are a few reasons why sleep can affect muscle building. If you are not getting enough sleep at night you are seriously affecting the amount of energy that you will have during your workouts, slowing down your results. Also while you are sleeping, your muscles are repairing any damage that will have incurred during your previous workout. This repairing and strengthening of the muscle fibres is how you get bigger. You should be aiming for eight to ten hours of sleep every night.

9. Eat enough good fats – Good fats you say?! Surely I should be avoiding fatty foods?! To an extent you should, but there are different types of fats out there. Firstly there are the bad ones, these are the saturated fats. These fats are found in egg yolks, cheese, butter, meat fat, etc. They lead to an increase in cholesterol in the blood, they should be avoided as much as possible.

Then there are the good fats, the polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. These contain essential fatty acids, such as omega 3. The body needs these for many important maintenance functions, including keeping joints healthy and promoting growth. The body does not produce these EFA’s naturally, so you need to get them from your food. Excellent sources of these ‘good fats’ include certain nuts, fish and olive oil.

8. Carb up! – When trying to build muscle mass you need huge amounts of energy for training to your optimum level. You body should be getting its required energy from carbohydrates in your diet. Like fats, there are good and bad carbs. It is the complex carbohydrates that you should be consuming. These should come from foods like brown rice, wholemeal pasta and potatoes. Try to avoid simple carbs from ready meals and other such processed foods. Eat a banana ten minutes before a workout, so your body has a source of energy for your workout.

7. Plan and log your workouts – You should have a plan of your weekly workout laid out well in advance of entering the gym. You shouldn’t go into a training session blind, not knowing what body part you are going to train or what exercises you are going to do. If you go and throw a few exercises together at random, with no structure or aim you will never get to where you want to be. Keep a log of your workouts as well, so you know what weight you have lifted a how many repetitions and sets you have performed. The reason for this is next on the list…

6. Proper form and muscle isolation – For every exercise, you should be concentrating on completing the movement with proper form. The exercise should be primarily working the muscle that is being targeted. For example if you are performing a bicep curl the focus should be on using the biceps to lift the weight. You should not be leaning back, using your back muscle or legs to lift a heavier weight. Lift as heavy weight as you can, while still performing the exercise with good form and in a controlled movement. This will also reduce the risk of injury.

5. Progressive resistance – To get bigger you need to continually increase the amount of weight you are lifting (monitor this using a workout log, see number seven on the list!). When you lift a heavy weight, you are putting stress on your muscles, tearing the small fibres within. The muscle fibres will then repair themselves stronger so they can perform the task that damaged them without the damage reoccurring. To build muscle mass you need to be continuously repeating this process, increasing the weight you are lifting, so your muscle fibres are being broken down and repairing stronger and stronger each time. Aim to add 5lbs on the weight each workout.

4. Get your Protein – Your muscles need protein to grow, if you are not getting enough protein you will not grow to your full potential. A good guide line for protein intake is 0.8 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body weight. Good sources of protein are chicken, turkey, lean beef steak and egg whites. The majority of your protein should be coming from food, but you can increase your protein intake through protein shakes if you desire. I must point out that protein shakes are not a must, I prefer to get my protein from natural food sources. Protein drinks are good if you have a busy lifestyle or for convenience after a workout.

3. Get enough calories – To grow your body needs to consume more calories than it is using up. You should be consuming roughly an extra 500 calories above your maintenance level. For example if you eat 2500 calories and stay at the same weight, you should be consuming 3000 calories to build muscle. If you are not getting bigger this is the first place you should look.

2. Rest – You need to allow each muscle time to recover and repair before you work it again. Training one body part every day is not a good idea. Not resting your muscles enough will lead to over training, and may even start to reverse your muscle growth. Allow enough rest time for each muscle by using split routines, with adequate rest for each muscle.

1. Lift heavy! – Finally just to get the point across, to get big you need to lift big! One piece of advice I would give to you though, is don’t look at what other people around you are lifting. Lift what is big for you personally, and build on that. If you start trying to lift the same as someone else in the gym who is twice your size, or who has bad form, it will lead to you losing the form in your exercises and will reduce your results.

That is a brief run through my top ten list of things you should be doing if you are trying to build muscle mass. I have listed these points from 10 down to 1, but they are all important factors you should be considering and should not necessary be looked at in that order for importance.

I wish you all the success in your training.

Jon Allmark

If you want to gain muscle fast then you have to do the steps that will be successful to get you the body you want. See, there are some secrets to building muscle and losing fat that you should know that will help you out.

Free weights, not just machines

Fast muscle building to gain can not be attained only using exercise machines. Machines are meant to provide support and prevent injury. To gain maximum muscle mass you have to use free weights, nor do you want to use supplements such as glutamine powder. Research I have done indicates that the best muscle-gaining workout stimulates muscle fibers, which cannot be achieved with machines.

Why free weights work

Your body uses stabilizer and synergist muscles to help build muscle mass, these muscles support the main muscle in doing its work. A good example of this is a bench press or push up. In order to complete the lift, the stabalizer and synergetic muscles assist the main muscle. The major muscle group will never grow if your stabilizer muscles are weak.

Basically, building muscle to gain mass demands working out with free weights since they place a great deal of stress on the supportive muscles. You’ll grow fatigued quicker and won’t be capable of lifting the same amount as you would with weight-lifting machinery, however you’ll put on a greater amount of muscle and also gain strength.

Heavy weights are needed

Additionally, to add mass in order to get effective muscle building you have to work out with heavy weights. Folks really have the wrong idea about heavy weights. I remember way back in high school, and even in the beginning of my corporate career, in my 20s, the way my buddies used to boast about how much they could bench press, and the continuing dispute about building muscle mass.

Combine it with diet

Everyone knows that muscle is much more attractive than fat. So when you lose weight, you want to build more muscle and not just diet to lose fat. But there are other health benefits to natural bodybuilding for health and fitness that should motivate you to hit the gym. Te best way to have fat loss at the same time as muscle gain is to have a good diet. No junk food, but good sources of protein and carbs.

First, building muscle will reduce the percentage of body fat, giving you a more toned better-looking body. Muscle mass is about half the size of fat mass. More health benefits of muscle mass is the amount of calories being burned at a quicker rate. Muscle uses energy where as fat stores energy. Having more muscle means burning more calories maintaining a healthier body weight.

So there you go. When you do these steps, you will see results instead of frustration. With good results comes self esteem as well as a healthy body that everyone admires and comments on.