Get Big and Ripped

People tend to think that in building muscle mass, one has to copy the bodybuilder’s routine. These guys are blessed with genes so their muscle mass only needs little honing routines.

Average people like us can build muscles efficiently without overdoing the diet and exercise. There are best practices in building muscle mass fast.

To start, building muscle mass requires strength training. Lifting weights prepares the muscles for more strenuous activities. Do this in progression from lighter weights to heavier ones. Complement weight lifting with crunches, push-ups, and pull-ups. You do not need to buy a set of weight equipment. Just one dumbbell is enough for home gym equipment.

Contrary to what other gym enthusiasts claim, exercise routines do not need to target one muscle group alone. Choose exercises that target as many muscles at the same time. It saves time and increases results. Isolation exercises are recommended only if you are experienced in the gym. It is discouraged for gym starters. The muscles of gym newbie are prone to muscle cramps. Do not proceed to advanced level exercises if you did not take the elementary routines first. Doing so will produce harmful than triumphant results.

Perform squats regularly. A squat targets all muscle groups in one quick movement. Squats should be mastered first before doing bicep curls. Triceps kickbacks after squats are recommended too.

Those serious in building muscle mass perform exercises everyday at least 30 minutes per day. Beginners should have recovery time every after exercise routines. For the first week for example, focus on muscle intensity by doing full body workouts only.

For sure results, consult with your fitness instructor what exercise routines are best for your body structure. Certified fitness experts will advise you of the exercise progression according to your gym experience level.

Complement exercise with proper diet and sleep. Drink water generously especially during workouts. Take a swig every now and then to prevent dehydration. Sleep for at least 8 hours per day. Growth hormones responsible in building muscle mass are produced in great quantities when one is asleep.

Proper diet means consumption of whole foods. Avoid foods from the cartoon. Eat more home-cooked meals than heavily processed ones. Put interest on foods with protein and carbohydrates. Aside from meat, oats, and wheat, eat vegetables, fruits, and non Trans fat edibles. Eat especially food rich in proteins. Proteins help build muscles faster. Proteins exist abundantly in milk, poultry, pork, beef, soy beans, and fish.

Building muscle mass does not mean you have to starve yourself. In fact, you are encouraged to eat more. Eat frequently in enough quantities. Masticate food slowly. You can eat ample amounts every 3 hours as long as you exercise regularly to burn the calories. Eat breakfast and eat after every workout.

Remember to track your progress every week. Check if you are still following the prescribed food intake and exercise routines.

As fitness experts always point out, persistence is the key to success. If you are faithful to your routine, results will show. Building muscle mass should be an enjoyable experience and not a stressful one.



By: Bernice Eker

About the Author:

Get Ripped

Hard gainers have it rough in the sport of bodybuilding. We find it terribly difficult to pack on the pounds like our mesomorphic friends. But building muscle, even for the hard gainer, is easy if you know how.

Think of your bodybuilding lifestyle as a barstool: It’s got three legs. If one leg is missing or is longer or shorter than the other two, you’ve got problems. The same goes for muscle-building.

The three components of your regimen are your weight training routines, your meal plans (including proper supplementation), and your relaxation and recovery programs.

Shortchange any one of these three parts and you’re in for little to zero gains. You may even lose weight if you’re not careful.

In brief, I’ll lay out the conceptual framework for the three prongs.

Exercise

You need to train infrequently, at most 3 times per week, with each body part getting no more than 2 workouts per week. This is how I do it: Legs and arms on day A, torso on day B. Each day is separated by at least one day and you alternate day A and day B. Something like this: Monday — day A, Wednesday — day B, Friday — day A, then the following week you do Monday — day B, Wednesday — day A, Friday — day B.

Continue alternating like this for up to 8 weeks. Let your body be your guide.

This may sound like an easy exercise plan. It’s not!

It’s designed to work hand-in-hand with your Rest and Recovery portion of the program. You see, most hard gainers follow conventional advice as espoused by professional bodybuilders, who are genetically gifted, may be taking steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, and whose sole job is to bodybuild.

Most of us aren’t like professional bodybuilders in any way, shape, or form.

Reducing the workout frequency will give you the rest and recovery time necessary to explode your muscle growth. However, you must lift using High Intensity Training (HIT) techniques. Go heavy, do 6-10 reps for the upper body and 10-15 reps for your legs, with as much weight as possible (the last two reps should be killers). Use cheating, forced reps, and negatives to add even more intensity. Use super sets and pre-exhaust techniques to further up the ante.

Nutrition

You have to consume more calories than you expend. Follow a high protein, moderate to low carb diet. Don’t worry about fat. Eat plenty of eggs (4-8 a day, I’m not kidding), dairy, and beef. Chicken and fish are also great sources of protein.

In fact, if you just concentrate on getting 2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight, using the food sources above, you’ll be on the right track.

Supplement with high-quality protein powders, growth-hormone-inducing amino acids like arginine and ornithine, and dessicated liver tablets. Also ensure you’re laying a sound nutritional foundation by ingesting a mega-pak or two per day of a vitamin/mineral supplement (you can buy them in 30-packs at GNC).

Eat frequently, up to eight times per day: Three “squares” with snacks in between. On workout days, take in 20-30 grams of protein before and after your weight training.

Rest and Relaxation

Get 8-10 hours of sleep every night and use a set schedule for going to sleep and waking up. Nothing is more important than this for this prong of your training program.

If you can do it, take naps after your workouts. You grow when you sleep. A 30-minute nap is better than nothing. On your off-days, try to do something that’s relaxing, like reading, surfing the internet, or fishing. Something that sets your mind at ease. Many hard gainers who have success have found that meditation is helpful. Yoga works, too. It’s NOT easy, but in a very strange way, it’s grueling and relaxing at the same time.

There you have it. Three equal but different prongs for building muscle and gaining weight. Best of luck to you!

Don’t forget to check out Muscle-Build.com and Hard Gainer’s Manifesto for more helpful tips and training techniques for building muscle, gaining weight, and packing on the mass.



By: Muscle Build

About the Author:

Resistance Training

It is imperative to remember when thinking about trying creatine ethyl ester (CEE) that there is very little scientific data available. Creatine ethyl ester is a very new product that has recently been introduced to the bodybuilding community. It is showing great and strong promise for those strength training and the benefits can’t be disregarded. There are a few things that are known about CEE and the benefits that it can give any athlete.

The first key point about creatine ethyl ester is that it is much more soluble than traditional creatine products. What does this mean for the consumer? Solubility means that CEE is transported to the muscle for use much faster than other creatine products. Creatine monohydrate and other products have a considerably low solubility percentage. Typically the dosage is much higher than creatine ethyl ester for this exact reason. Because the solubility is so low, the dosage of creatine products are higher than CEE.

There is some confusion regarding creatine ethyl ester because at the end of a training session there is no sufficient evidence to support the fact that it leads to a larger increase of creatine in the muscle. At the end of the training period the levels of creatine in the muscles do not support the claims that it builds up creatine levels in the muscles. CEE is such a new product that this element is still being researched and studied.

One of the facts that are known about creatine ethyl ester is that it uses body fat more efficiently. This is a highly beneficial factor because it increases lipopholic abilities meaning that it infuses the cell wall and provides maximum benefits to the muscles. CEE is much more efficient in this manner than the creatine monohydrate and other such products. That simply means that CEE is absorbed and transported to the muscles much more efficiently than traditional creatine.

CEE doesn’t give the uncomfortable side effect of bloating. This is in part due to the high absorption rate of CEE. The other part of the reason for not bloating is that there is a significantly lower dosage required than traditional creatine supplements. Creatine in general attracts water into the cells and therefore, not taking as high a dose can prevent that water bloated feel and look. The creatine that doesn’t get absorbed by the cells gets stored outside these cells and causes the bloating effect. The pivotal difference with CEE is that it attracts that bloating water into the muscle. This provides hydration and a hard, solid appearance to muscles without the water retention. Give creatine ethyl ester a try today and discover for yourself the incredible strength training properties it presents any consumer.



By: Troy Degarnham

About the Author:

Resistance Training

The fastest way to build muscle is to be consistent, once you have learned what you need to know about diet and bodybuilding exercise. Provided you are following the right exercises in the right way, you will make faster gains the harder and more consistently you work out. As ever, it pays to learn what you are doing before you start, so here you will discover the fastest way to build muscle.

Step 1

If you are looking for the fastest way to build muscle, look first at your diet. You need to be taking in the right nutrients, and the right number of calories before you can expect your bodybuilding work to succeed. It is a very common error amongst newcomers to bodybuilding to over concentrate on protein. Protein is absolutely necessary, but it needs to be combined with an adequate amount of carbohydrate, or else the muscles will not have the fuel they need to use the protein and grow.

Step 2

Eat twice as much food. Of course this piece of advice presupposes that you have amended your diet to be taking in the correct balance of nutrients. If you are using diet as part of the fastest way to build muscle, eating double the amount of food will ensure that your muscles will be built, and that your hard work will pay off. Just be sure that your hunger is enough to warrant eating that much food.

Step 3

Keep a diary of when you work out. When exercises become habitual, it is easy to forget exactly how many reps you have performed, or how much weight you managed to lift at the time. Keep a record of everything you do, either on paper or by an electronic method, and you will be able to make sure that you are increasing both your number of reps and your weight at the right time. You need to be constantly increasing the demands on your body for the fastest way to build muscle.

Step 4

These four steps of the fastest ways to build muscle would not be complete without mentioning weight training technique. If your exercises are not being performed properly, you could be wasting a lot of the hard effort you are putting in. The lift phase needs to be performed with the weight under control, but as quickly and smoothly as possible, while exhaling your breath. The release is just the opposite, and needs to be executed as slowly as you can, taking at least twice as much time as you need . This may be difficult when you start, but it will soon become second nature – correct weightlifting technique is an essential part of the fastest way to build muscle

The four tips in this guide have given you a good insight into the fastest way to build muscle. Use them, and they will serve you well.



By: Robert

About the Author:

Build Muscle

I think the biggest problem for a lot of people is that they can´t build muscle continually. Progress is the fastest when you are just starting out. But it is difficult for most people to make progress month after month, year after year. There comes a time when nothing happens. Some are so dissapointed that they give up, others start using steroids hoping that this will solve the problem.

But actually it is very easy to make build muscle weight continually. Every time you go to the gym you have to make some kind of a Personal Record. You can do more reps with the same weight, put on more weight to the bar, add another set or just make your workout more intense. Doing the same thing that you have done in a previous workout will not help you to build muscle. If you apply new stress to the body with more weight or extra reps, then the body will adapt by building itself up bigger and stronger. But if you don´t apply new stress then your body has no reason to adapt. That is why a PR is so important.

You don´t have to set a sinle rep PR. You can set a 3 rep, 5 re or 10 rep record. If you want to build muscle weight all the time, then you have to break records all the time. Of course it is impossible to keep track of every record without a training journal. Having a training journal is very important because you get detailed records of everything you do in a training journal and you can always look back at it so you have a goal to shoot for at every workout and on every set you do.

Having a PR will also give you more motivation and makes the workout more interesting. It is like you are combeating with yourself all the time. If you finish your workout and you have made a PR or more, then you also build muscle weight. If you follow that simple tip, then you will be surprised how much progress you will make.



By: Rando Meresmaa

About the Author:

Build Muscle

So you want to build muscles fast? So you can just simply join a gym, lift weights regularly and after a few short months, you should be able to build enough muscle mass to take part in your neighborhood bodybuilding contest?

If it is that simple, then why is it that most people in the gym do not seem to gain much muscle even after years of weight lifting?

Well, things are not as simple as it seem or otherwise, personal trainers and muscle building books will have already gone the way of the dinosaurs, extinction.

Here below are some basic building muscle mass tips and of course, these are just tips and are not comprehensive:-

a) Eat And Eat – To build muscles, you must eat and then eat again. You must consume more calories than you burn them. After all you are adding mass to your body and where do those mass come from if you have insufficient calories to build them?

However, try to choose good calories such as protein and complex carbohydrate. Calories from fats and alcohol do not count.

2) Up Protein Consumption – Proteins are muscle builders. You must make sure that you consume enough protein. You should consume about one gram of protein per pound of your body weight everyday if you want to build muscle mass fast. If you don’t get enough protein, your muscles won’t grow since you are not feeding them.

3) Health Supplements – Many people erroneously think that they do not need to take supplement to build muscles or supplements are not good for health. Hey, health supplements are food for your body and if chosen correctly, they can help you to build muscles faster.

For those of you who think that supplements are harmful chemicals, then why are they called health supplements instead of drugs?

For instance, some your protein sources come from eating meat. However, too much meat can cause complications such as most meats contain saturated fat which can clog your heart and arteries. So instead of eating too much meat, you can take protein supplements to get your protein.

Also take multivitamins for anti-oxidant protection and to aid faster recovery.

4) Lift Weights – This is a bit of a misnomer. If you want to gain muscle mass fast, you must not only lift weights, you must lift heavy weights and lift them through compound exercises.

Compound exercises like deadlift and squats work many muscle parts at the same time, that means you work almost your entire musculature instead of a single muscle group like say, dumbbell bicep curls.

However, the correct lifting technique and form of lifting is very important so as to prevent injuries and make your training more effective.

5) Lift Free Weights – Use free weights like dumbells and barbells to recruit more muscle stabilizing and therefore more muscle fibers can be worked on. The more muscles you work on, the bigger they will become.

6) Get Enough Sleep And Rest – Have rest days in between your workout days and do not work the same muscle group more than twice a week. This is because your muscles need to recover from your workout to grow. More is not better in this game.

You should also get more than 8 hours of sleep if possible. Contrary to popular belief, your muscle grow when you sleep, not in the gym.

If you practice the above routine consistently, you will strat building muscles fast. Of course there are many more things you will need to know to build muscle mass effectively, but the above tips should get you along the road.



By: Chris Chew

About the Author:

Build Muscle

Creatine is actually an amino acid like structure that acts as an energy source in skeletal muscles during intense exercise. At rest, creatine is phosphorylated to form phosphocreatine. During intense exercise, this phosphocreatine is utilized by the muscle to form more ATP; which means more energy.

Creatine is not just a source of energy though. Creatine is known to draw water into the muscle cells. This increase in water raises the pressure inside the muscle resulting in a stretching of muscle fibers. Stretch is one of the forces known to cause an increase in protein synthesis in muscle cells. Increased protein synthesis means a positive nitrogen balance and an increase in skeletal muscle growth.

Everyone thinks they know how creatine builds muscle, but they don’t know about a few little-known studies involving creatine and satellite cells. Creatine is known to boost satellite cell production and when taken at the right time (which we will show you later) and in the proper ratio, you can make the most out of your creatine supplementation.

Creatine is reported to increase muscle energy output by recharging ATP and increasing cellular energy output. This is an important aspect of what creatine can do for the bodybuilder or powerlifter, but it isn’t the only story.

Creatine has been shown to be a powerful promoter of satellite cell expression, which again causes new muscle cells to be formed! This is an amazing find, but we researched and realized that creatine timing and creatine ratios are an important part how creatine can be used to build muscle.

Creatine can also be used synergistically with the other nutrients mentioned in this book to build muscle, increase endurance and most importantly help in satellite cell differentiation. We can show you exactly how best to use creatine in the following excerpts from training and nutrient journals. When picking a good creatine product, look for a mixed creatine supplement using advanced delivery methods. For example, LG Sciences COLD FUSION EX™ uses a combination of creatine delivery methods to give you the best creatine combination product on the market. It is a mixture of Creatine Ester, Creatine Malate and other Creatine forms to give you a steady, stable release of creatine without the bloat associates with Creatine other creatine products. Cold Fusion EX comes with ingredients to increase stamina and performance, so you get MAXIMUM gains in the gym and the ability to push yourself further than you ever thought possible!

The science behind creatine and satellite cell proliferation is shown in the literature and is summarized below in several abstracts. This is why creatine is the safest and most effective supplement ever created for bodybuilders and currently perfect for anyone under 21. Creatine gives you energy, enhances performance and also has value as an anti-aging supplement for the elderly. It’s sad that creatine has gotten such a bad rap in the press, since it is one of the most safe and effective supplements on the market. The point? Don’t skip on the Creatine when you are looking to build SERIOUS muscle.

Dietary creatine monohydrate supplementation increases satellite cell mitotic activity during compensatory hypertrophy.

Dangott B, Schultz E, Mozdziak PE.

Department of Anatomy, University of Wisconsin-Medical School, Madison, USA.

Nutritional status influences muscle growth and athletic performance, but little is known about the effect of nutritional supplements, such as creatine, on satellite cell mitotic activity. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of oral creatine supplementation on muscle growth, compensatory hypertrophy, and satellite cell mitotic activity. Compensatory hypertrophy was induced in the rat plantaris muscle by removing the soleus and gastrocnemius muscles. Immediately following surgery, a group of six rats was provided with elevated levels of creatine monohydrate in their diet. Another group of six rats was maintained as a non-supplemented control group. Twelve days following surgery, all rats were implanted with mini-osmotic pumps containing the thymidine analog 5-bromo-2′-deoxyuridine (BrdU) to label mitotically active satellite cells. Four weeks after the initial surgery the rats were killed, plantaris muscles were removed and weighed. Subsequently, BrdU-labeled and non-BrdU-labeled nuclei were identified on enzymatically isolated myofiber segments. Muscle mass and myofiber diameters were larger (P < 0.05) in the muscles that underwent compensatory hypertrophy compared to the control muscles, but there were no differences between muscles from creatine-supplemented and non-creatine-supplemented rats. Similarly, compensatory hypertrophy resulted in an increased (P < 0.05) number of BrdU-labeled myofiber nuclei, but creatine supplementation in combination with compensatory hypertrophy resulted in a higher (P < 0.05) number of BrdU-labeled myofiber nuclei compared to compensatory hypertrophy without creatine supplementation. Thus, creatine supplementation in combination with an increased functional load results in increased satellite cell mitotic activity.

CREATINE SUPPLEMENTATION AUGMENTS THE INCREASE IN SATELLITE CELL AND MYONUCLEI NUMBER IN HUMAN SKELETAL MUSCLE INDUCED BY STRENGTH TRAINING.

Aagaard P.

Inst of Sports Medicine Copenhagen.

The present study investigated the influence of creatine and protein supplementation on satellite cell frequency and myonuclei number in human skeletal muscle during 16 wks of heavy-resistance training. In a double-blinded design thirty-two healthy, male subjects (19-26 years) were assigned to strength training (STR) while receiving a timed intake of creatine (STR-CRE) (n=9), protein (STR-PRO) (n=8), placebo (STR-CON) (n=8) or serving as a non-training control group (CON) (n=7). Supplementation was given daily (STR-CRE : 6-24 g creatine monohydrate, STR-PRO: 20 g protein, STR-CON: placebo). Furthermore, timed protein/placebo intake were administered at all training sessions. Muscle biopsies were obtained at wks 0, 4, 8 (wk 8 not CON) and 16 of resistance training (3 days/wk). Satellite cells were identified by immunohistochemistry. Muscle mean fibre (MFA) area was determined after histochemical analysis. All training regimes were found to increase the proportion of satellite cells, however, significantly greater enhancements were observed with creatine supplementation at wk 4 (compared to STR-CON) and at wk 8 (compared to STR-PRO and STR-CON) (p<0.01-0.05). At wk 16, satellite cell number was no longer elevated in STR-CRE, while it remained elevated in STR-PRO and STR-CON. Furthermore, creatine supplementation resulted in an increased number of myonuclei per fibre and increases of 14-17% in MFA at wks 4, 8 and 16 (p<0.01). In contrast, STR-PRO showed increase in MFA only in the later (16 wks, +8%) and STR-CON only in the early (wk 4, +14%) phases of training, respectively (p<0.05). In STR-CRE a positive relationship was found between the percentage increases in MFA and myonuclei from baseline to week 16, respectively (r=0.67, p<0.05). No changes were observed in the control group (CON). In conclusion, the present study demonstrate for the first time that creatine supplementation in combination with strength training amplifies the training-induced increase in satellite cell number and myonuclei concentration in human skeletal muscle fibres, thereby allowing an enhanced muscle fibre growth in response to strength training.

The effects of ergogenic compounds on myogenic satellite cells.

Vierck JL, Icenoggle DL, Bucci L, Dodson MV.

Muscle Biology Laboratory, Department of Animal Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA.

PURPOSE: A series of studies were conducted in which compounds commonly shown to be ergogenic aids for strength athletes if taken orally were evaluated for their ability to directly induce postnatal muscle stem cell proliferation or differentiation/fusion in vitro. METHODS: Compounds tested were creatine monohydrate, creatine pyruvate, L-glutamine, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), androstenedione, Ma Huang (Ephedra sinensis) extract, and Zhi Shi (Citrus aurantium) extract. Dulbecco’s modified eagle medium, supplemented with minimal levels of serum and antibiotics, was used as the initial vehicle for the test compounds. Subsequently, a defined treatment medium termed ITTC was used. Satellite cells were exposed to the test compounds for the indicated times and then evaluated by counting mononucleated and multinucleated (fused) cells. RESULTS: In serum-containing media, none of the treatment groups displayed increased proliferation over that of the control. However, in the differentiation cultures, 0.10% creatine monohydrate increased differentiation over that of the control cultures. When 0.10% creatine monohydrate was added to defined media formulations, all treatments but one demonstrated increased differentiation over the 0.5% serum control. Time course experiments, which followed the effect of 0.10% creatine monohydrate contained in ITTC defined media over 120 h, suggested that cells exposed to this treatment differentiated earlier and to a greater level than cells exposed to ITTC alone. CONCLUSIONS: Creatine in the monohydrate form induced differentiation of myogenic satellite cells. Other agents examined did not increase satellite cell proliferation or differentiation. These results provide initial evidence for a mechanistic understanding of observed effects in vivo of increased muscular size and strength from creatine supplementation.



By: Eric Marchewitz

About the Author:

Build Strength

Many factors go into whether or not you are actually building muscle or not. Things like rep count, workout frequency, routine type, nutrition, supplements amount of rest and so forth. Everyone is different but the right combination of the variables exists for everybody. But only ONE thing and one thing only keeps everybody building muscle once they find their way.

Since we are all unique, what works for some will not necessarily work for someone else. The way that I have managed to build mass over the years took many years for me to discover and may not work for you. I tried what I thought was all the text book ways of lifting for upwards of 5 years before I found the right “mix” for me. For the record, it turns out that low rep (4-6), very heavy weight, 90 seconds rest between sets, 5 pyramided sets, 2 body parts per workout, training 5 days a week was the way I finally started adding mass. Not to mention very little cardio work and heavy protein and creatine supplementation. I have many friends that have tried following my routine and it doesn’t work for them, but they eventually found their way. But the same thing keeps everybody growing once they start.

Set a Personal Best ONCE in every workout.

Fine. How do I do that? Here’s how and why it works.

Let’s say today’s chest day and you do 6 different exercises for your chest. If you are like most people you probably do the six lifts in the same order each workout and chart your progress. Hence the term “chest routine”. Once you start getting stronger you will grow but eventually plateau. Frustration sets in, you change your routine and maybe progress continues for a while. But when you go back to the original routine, you might actually be weaker, because you haven’t done these moves in a while. A common occurrence.

What works is this: Keep doing the same six moves in your original routine (they were working, right?), but change the order. You will obviously be strongest on either the first or second exercise because you are freshest at this point in your workout. So make that lift a different lift each session and during one of the sets of this exercise set a personal best for either most weight or more reps at your previous high weight. The trick is that you must perform at that level every workout thereafter. So now when you do this exercise next time, you are trying to match what was a personal best at a point in your workout when you are not at your freshest and strongest, as well as setting a new PB on a different exercise when you are, and so on and on and on.

If you do six exercises with 3 sets for each one, and follow this pattern, at the end of 18 chest workouts, every single set will be at weights higher than when you started 18 workouts ago. Which means if you hit your chest twice a week, in 2 months every set you do would be one that 9 weeks ago you couldn’t. So, how big do you want to be?



By: Steve Robbins

About the Author:

Build Muscle

For a skinny person, gaining muscle weight can be very difficult without professional help. Where for some fortunate genetically blessed people, gaining muscle mass very fast is a breeze. Therefore if you are trying to figure out how long does it take to build muscle mass, there is simply no direct answer.

Firstly, do take note that muscles do not usually grow in a linear process but in a series of spurts.

Therefore no matter how hard you work your muscles or how much you eat, muscle growth will not be at a predictable steady pace.

That said, let’s take a look at the factors which influence muscle growth. As you probably know, there are many factors influencing your muscle growth and not everyone will build muscles at the same pace even though they may be working out with the same weight, exercises and eating the same food.

Some people are genetically predisposed to gaining muscle mass and these folks will see impressive results within only a few months. We all know that the Mesomorphs (sporty body type) will be able to build muscles muuch faster than the Ectomorphs (thin body type).

Your rate of your muscle gain will also depend largely on how close you are to the upper limit of what you naturally are capable of in terms of gaining muscle mass. This phenomenon is also known as the adaptation ceiling in bodybuilding speak.

This gors to say that the closer you are to the upper limit of the adaptation ceiling, the slower your muscle will grow. That means that someone who has been lifting weights for a number of years will gain muscle mass much more slowly than a newbie to weight training.

It is not uncommon for people to gain fat when they are building muscle mass. The amount of fat you gain will depend on how much you eat and also on how lean you are when you started to fuel your muscle growth with what you eat. Eating to fuel muscle gain is called overfeeding in the bodybuilding lingo.

Studies have shown that during a period of overfeeding, you will gain more muscle and less fat if you are the naturally lean type. During the cutting phase to get rid of body fat so as to show muscle definition, it is known that fatter people tend to lose more fat and less muscle when they cut, but the leaner ones will find it the harder to lose fat without losing muscle.

Why is this so? Well, it may only be a psychological reason. If you have just worked your **** off to get your well defined six pack abs, then you will not want to put the fat on again and so you may simply be reluctant to eat the amount of food necessary to gain significant muscle mass, don’t you think so?

It could also be hormonal factor as some studies do show a link between low body fat and low testosterone(male muscle buiding hormones) levels. If your testosterone is low, it is also difficult for you to gain muscle mass.

So how long does it take to build muscle mass will depend very much on your genetic condition and other factors besides doing the proper workouts and eating correctly.



By: Chris Chew

About the Author:

Weight Training

Creatine is naturally produced in the human body. It is primarily manufactured in the liver where it enters the bloodstream and is regularly delivered to other body parts and muscles. Initially, the amino acids arginine and glycine react, then form a compound called guanidinoacetate. When guanidinoacetate receives a methyl group from SAMe or S-adenosylmethionine, it transforms into creatine.

Creatine is very widely used by athletes as it offers many benefits with the least number of side effects compared to other drugs. Creatine provides instant energy to the body and is used when an individual is into high intensity sports like bodybuilding or weightlifting. It sets back fatigue and helps a person work out more. Individuals who have undergone surgeries can get back to exercising using this drug. It increases heart function and is widely used by patients post surgery.

Creatine supplements are available in the form of capsules, tablets and powder. Creatine tablets contain creatine monohydrate as the chief ingredient along with Microcrystalline Cellulose, polyvinylpyrrolidone, modified starch, sorbitol, stearic acid, silica, and magnesium stearate. Creatine monohydrate is converted into phosphocreatine in the muscle tissue. This creatine phosphate compound stores the energy in the muscle tissue for ready release whenever the body is overly exerted.

There are many advantages from Creatine: Creatine provides instant energy to the body. It improves muscle strength and makes the muscle suitable for high-intensity, short duration exertion like weightlifting or sprinting. It is also found to speed up the recovery of energy. It delays fatigue significantly. It promotes lean-muscle mass and reduces muscle wasting in post-surgical patients. It is also believed to help heart patients by increasing their exercise capacity, reducing heart spasms and thus increasing heart function.

One of the most common myths with regard to Creatine supplements is the belief that taking higher doses leads to better results. This has been proven to be wrong, as most studies have shown that small doses of Creatine supplements are enough to generate good results

One of the biggest short-term risks in taking Creatine supplements is dehydration, which in some cases have become fatal. This is because included in the fluid that Creatine draws to muscles are the fluids that vital organs need to function. This means that people who take these supplements should make sure that they drink adequate amount of water. Other very common short-term risks include a higher incidence of muscle cramps, muscle pulls, and muscle tears.

With regard to its effectiveness, there are also some facts that people should be aware of to dispel any misconceptions that have been generated about them. One of these is that among the different kinds of Creatine supplements that are available in the market, Creatine monohydrate has been proven to be the most effective. In addition to this, there have also been no significant findings that using this kind of Creatine supplement poses any serious risk to people. Lastly and more importantly, it is also important to note that our bodies naturally produce Creatine and it can be found in meat that people eat, which makes them very safe for human consumption.



By: peterhutch

About the Author:

Get Ripped