Fitness N Muscle

Bulking up makes getting bigger a lot easier. When bulking, your main goal should be to maximize muscle gains while minimizing your fat gain. While bulking, it is extremely difficult to put on muscle mass without gaining a little bit of fat. Your objective should be to put on as little fat as possible. When you bulk up you have to consider two issues. These are:

1. You have to workout while bulking - If your not working out at the same time that you are eating a lot to bulk, you won't get improvments in muscle mass and you will just get fat. You have to make sure that most of the extra calories you are consuming are going towards growth in your muscle as opposed to fat gain.

 2. What you eat is what you are - Just because you're trying to bulk up, you can't be eating junk food like cake and taking in any empty calories. This is because you need the extra calories throughout the day. This does not mean that you should consume alot of calories in one sitting. Your body should be getting more calories from carbohydrates and healthy fats. Bulking is not an excuse to consume simple carbohydrates--your primary source of carbs should be complex, slow-digesting carbohydrates. This is very similar to a regular bodybuilding diet in tems of the foods you eat, but you are just consuming more of these same foods throughout the day.

We have just made a page about abs. If you are interested in the topic it is worth a look at. It will contain all the kind of information you need to know. We have not posted it here on the blog, due to it not being complete and it will be very long. So we think it is better to keep it on its own page. The page will be updating every few days till it is complete. You can find the page here. Thanks!

When you constantly follow the same exercise routine, your muscles start to get used to that workout and this slows down your muscle growth to the point where they won't grow anymore-this process is called the plateau effect. There can be many ways to change up your workout to avoid a plateau. The following list is what we recommend to avoid hitting a plateau: 

1. Change your exercises - Change a couple of exercises in your routine and/or change up the order of your exercises.

2. Perform more sets and fewer exercises - Add 2 sets to each of your exercises and eliminate 1 or 2 exercises in your routine, so you end up finishing with the same amount of total sets in your workout. This is assuming you want to maintain the same duration of your workout.

3. Number of reps - Change your rep range. For example, if you are currently doing 8 reps, start doing 12, and vice versa.

4. Perform drop sets - Drop sets will increase the amount of stress you put on your muscles, which will cause you to better target both fast and slow muscle twitch fibers.

5. Change your grip - For most exercises, you can easily change the grip. For example, from underhand to overhand to palms facing each other, and from close to wide grip. 

Weight lifting is a must when it comes to losing weight/fat. Not heavy lifting, just light lifting, going to about 20 reps, reaching failure. Including some weights in your workout or any kind of resistance will assist in weight loss because the more lean muscle you gain, the more your body will burn calories per day. Your body burns an extra 30-70 calories a day with 1 pound of muscle. The more lean muscle, the more your total calories burned increases and the more it will benefit you. In the long run, this will make your weight loss/fat loss progress a lot easier because it will help you burn a lot of extra calories throughout the day, which will total to a large amount in a month or year. Weight lifting may not burn as much calories in one workout period as cardio might, but you will experience the after burn effect which will continue to burn calories, for many hours after your workout!

Weight lifting is also recommended because it will give you a nice body structure. Then once you lose weight, you will look fit and healthy. Also, when you do high intensity cardio or when you diet, you will likely be losing lean muscle which is not what you would want, so you want to make sure you try and make some muscle gains through out your progress. Having muscle can also assist and benefit you in many other areas. It will help prevent muscle/bone injuries, which can be caused in a sport activity or in any kind of labor-intensive activity. Weight lifting will also promote balance and energy, which will be advantageous in any sport activity or labor type of work.

When doing your weight lifting, you want to make sure you go in the higher rep range. This is what makes your workout more effective, because you are using more energy, which means you are burning more calories. You also want to make sure you exercise the biggest muscle groups by doing compound exercises - this means doing exercises that use multiple muscles. For example, for legs, you can do squats of 20 reps. I would say doing an exercise like squats is better than cardio because you are getting a cardiovascular workout while building muscle at the same time! Doing squats incorporates many large muscles, and by doing many repetitions, you are burning a lot of energy. This is what makes you burn a big amount of calories, and give you a bigger after burn effect. When you are lifting weights, try not to really do any isolation exercises of small muscles like bicep curls, because this is not really benefiting you at all with weight loss. This is true because the bicep is a really small muscle compared to the rest of the muscles in your body and it doesn't really burn calories, due to it being a small and easy movement. It would be better to work biceps by doing exercises that work your back muscles as well, like chin ups.

It is recommended that you make your muscles rest after a weight training workout and not work the same muscle groups the very next day. It is best to alternate between muscle groups everyday. However, you can do your cardio on every workout day. But make sure to give your body rest at least once or twice a week (i.e. where you do no exercise at all). If you are planning to lift weights and do cardio in a workout session, start with the weight training first and then cardio. This is because you want to make sure you have all your energy for the lifting and not waste it on the cardio.

When it comes to how many reps you should do, it all depends on what results you want. If you are looking to build muscle mass, strength and endurance, while not risking any injuries, you should do 8-12 reps, 8 reps for the smaller muscles on your body, like your arms, and 12 reps for the bigger muscles, like your legs. You also want to make sure you feel the muscle being stimulated while contracting. If you don't feel this then it's either because you are doing your reps too fast and you need to slow it down, or you are going to heavy and not using good form. This is what we recommend because by sticking in this rep range, you can stimulate your fast and slow twitch muscle fibers.

Other rep ranges can be about 1-3 for power, 4-5 for strength, 6-8 for strength and some mass, and 12+ for endurance. 8-12 is what's recommended to get strength, mass, and endurance (but mostly mass). Remember, it also depends on what muscle you are working: closer to the lower range for smaller muscles, and closer to the upper range for bigger muscles.

High protein foods are required for a healthy diet, for people trying to gain muscle, or lose weight. These are the top 10 high in protein foods:

1. Chicken Breast

2. Turkey

3. Eggs

4. Fish

5. Beans

6. Cottage Cheese

7. Milk

8. Nuts

9. Peanut butter

10. Yogurt

Cardio is very important for a healthy lifestyle and it is recommended that you do cardio everyday because of the many health benefits it provides. How much cardio and intensity you need all depend on your goals: how fast are you looking to burn fat?; how much do you want to lose?; and,  do you want to increase your endurance? The results you will obtain from doing your cardio at low intensity are different from the results you will obtain from doing your cardio at high intensity. Low intensity will burn a bit less fat than high intensity. Low intensity will burn 90% of calories from you fat sources, which is recommended more for bodybuilders who want to preserve muscle and get lean. High intensity cardio will burn a lot more calories and calories from fat in TOTAL but only 75% of the calories will be from your fat sources and the other 25% would be coming from mainly muscle.

If you are looking to just burn calories from your fat sources and not any other source, then you should consider only doing low intensity cardio. This will make sure that your are only going into your fat sources for energy. For bodybuilders, the plan to increase muscle growth in the quickest time possible, it is recommended to stay away from high intensity workouts because you will slowly be losing your hard muscle gains. This is due to the loss of extra calories when doing high intensity cardio. You also want to make sure your low intensity cardio sessions are not for overly long duration - they shouldn't exceed 45 minutes. Excessively long cardio sessions will burn too many calories which will prevent the growth of muscle, considering you need to consume enough calories for your muscle to grow .

When contemplating doing high intensity cardio, you should always consider what your goals are first. This is because high intensity cardio is not the best idea for everyone. If you are looking to lose fat as fast as possible, then it would be the best idea. But remember to make sure you are eating the right amount of calories you require per day if you chose to do high intensity cardio (considering you would be burning more calories per day). This is especially true if you are doing high intensity cardio while trying to preserve muscle mass, which is extremely difficult.

When you are working out you want to make sure you get the most and best results out of it. When you start a workout, start with stretching the muscle groups you are going to work on so you can increase blood flow and prevent any injuries. We recommend doing a warm up set of 12 reps using half of the weight that you are going to use on your working sets. By doing this it will give you a pump to benefit for your first set. To get the most out of your workout you also have to make sure you reach failure, while maintaining good form on your last repetition. Remember to pick a weight that will allow you to reach failure within your desired rep range.

When it comes to muscle building, your form is very important. You don't want to be putting any strain on your joints or ligaments. You also don't want to be working any muscles other than those you are focussing on. For example, when you workout biceps,  you should not be moving your back or swinging your arms to get the bar up to your neck. If you do this, you will be using your back and shoulder muscles to help lift the weight, taking stress off of the biceps. This is not desirable since your goal is to workout your biceps, not your back or shoulders. Therefore, when you go to the gym to workout a specific muscle group, you want to make sure you're working out that muscle and that muscle only. By using bad form such as in the example just mentioned, you are not fully contracting the muscle, meaning you are not going to get the optimal results you want. When you use strict form, on the other hand, you will feel the muscle contracting as you will be stimulating it more and THIS will give you optimal results.

You should never compromise form to lift a heavier weight. Doing so will greatly increase your risk of injury. The most common injuries are shoulder and lower back injuries. Having an injury like this will prevent you from continuing to do certain exercises until you recover, and that could take many months or even years. In some unfortunate cases, you will never fully recover from an injury. Being a bodybuilder, you cannot afford any injuries.

This is an important point to consider when planning your workouts. You should workout at that time of the day when you feel you have the most energy.  For some people, it may be early in the morning and for others, later in the evening. One important point to remember is to leave at least a few hours between your workout and when you go to bed. Two reasons for this: 1) you may have difficulty sleeping if you workout too close to your bedtime; 2) there is a 3-hour anabolic window after your workout in which your body needs nutrients to refuel your energy levels and recuperate your muscles. The nutrients your body receives during this 3-hour time period is the most important of the day. Therefore, it is very important to try to consume at least a couple of meals after your workout and before you sleep. In conclusion, determine at what time of the day you are most energetic and workout during this time period.