Muscle building tips

One of the most detrimental habits a bodybuilder can have is smoking cigarettes. A normal smoker already puts him or herself at risk for cancer and other health problems, but a bodybuilder will find that smoking causes decreased performance. Since the nicotine in cigarettes is addictive, smoking can be a hard habit for beginning bodybuilders to quit, but if you are truly dedicated to the sport and to improving your health, you should put forth every effort possible to stop smoking. The main way in which smoking hurts your health and performance at the gym is by decreasing lung capacity. When you work out, either with cardiovascular exercises or by weight training, you should do it with a level of intensity such that you breathe hard. Smokers begin with a lower capacity in general, so even if your muscles feel as though they can lift more weight, your lungs can’t. Decreased lung capacity results in the transportation of less oxygen to your body, including your muscles, so you can also put yourself at risk for serious injury. Because of the high amounts of carbon monoxide you are inhaling when you smoke, you encourage your brain and cells to absorb more carbon monoxide than oxygen. This lack of oxygen prevents your muscles from operating at full potential. If you are competing, smoking has bad cosmetic consequences as well. The tar not only blocks air from your lungs, but also turns your teeth yellow, and although your smile is not a part of the judging, overall appearance can make or break you. Smoking gives the impression that you simply don’t care. Cigarette smoking also causes your skin to be less elastic, resulting in more stretch marks if you are putting on weight quickly. Unless you have a lot of time and money to spend getting the stretch marks surgically removed with lasers, they’re pretty permanent. It’s a hard process, but quitting shows that you truly want to become a top bodybuilder. There are many programs available to help you quit, and chances are that your friends and family, who are probably sick of smelling like smoke, will help motivate you to stop. When you quit smoking, you increase your chances of building and maintaining more muscle mass, improve your overall health and appearance, and become a better role model to the young bodybuilders around you. Teens with parents who smoke are a lot more likely to light up as well, so if not for yourself, quit smoking to set a better example for the sport.

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Top 10 Muscle Building Supplements

A question I get asked very often is: What are the best muscle building supplements? So instead of answering tons of emails here is a list I put together of the top 10 muscle building supplements.

1. Protein

Protein supplements come in many forms for example:
- Whey Protein
- Protein Powder
- Protein Shakes
- Protein Drinks
- Eggs (only the white part)

I recommend you stay away from soy protein or any type of soy, especially men because of the recent studies of how it effects estrogen levels. Protein is usually taken after your workout or with one of your meals.

2. Meal Replacement Products (aka MRPs)

Meal replacements can come in two forms, a drink or a bar. They are usually packed with protein, minerals, vitamins and almost no fat or no carbs.

3. Creatine

Creatine is great, it not fuels your muscles but it also reduces the chance of developing cellular dysfunctions. There are many types of creatine, but the most used is called Creatine Monohydrate.

4. Maltodextrin This is usually used by people who are doing extreme muscle building workouts, and it is essentially a complex carbohydrate that works quickly to slow down the enzymatic process.

5. Testosterone Boosters

There are many opinions to testosterone supplements, and while many claim that it can really increase your strength and muscle mass, it is best to avoid this supplement if you are a teenager. So if you are an adult you can consider testosterone boosters such as ZMA, Viraloid, ‘Tribulus Terrestris,’ ‘Avena Sativa,’ and Red Kat.

6. Glutamine

This supplement is said to give quality muscles, which is very true. Glutamine supplements helps replenish the amino acids that you have used in your workout. You can buy glutamine supplements in powder form.

7. Vanadyl

This is said to increase the effectiveness of carbohydrates you take in and by doing so bodybuilding can increase their retention of nitrogen.

8. Leucine

This is used mainly by bodybuilders that have a heavy workout. With leucine your levels of glutamine will normalize which will then support ‘anticatabolic metabolism’ of muscles as well as help the functions of your immune system.

9. Essential Fatty Acids

These help in the creation of energy, burning of fat, proper growth of tissues in the brain and nerve, and regulation of mood. You can get these through Omega 3 which includes most of fish oils and some plant oil and Omega 6 or majority of plant oils.

10. Glucosamine

This is basically a form of amino sugar. Damaged tissues from a hard workout can be repaired by taking a glucosamine supplement. However, if you are allergic to seafood then don’t use this supplement.

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There has been an increasing number of enthusiasts and apprentices all around the world. Body building is popular with men as young as 15 up to those who are more than 50 years of age. More women are also becoming bodybuilders. Learning body building is quite easy. Doing it is the harder part. There is no definite age to start body building, especially if you just intend to make a hobby out of it. Beginners can start by following the steps provided here so that they can be well on their way to become bodybuilder certified. Before starting each bodybuilding session, always remember to focus on one part of your body at a time. Since you are just feeling your way with bodybuilding, it is important that you start slow and concentrate on a single body part per week. Don’t be too eager and over-train yourself. You might lose muscles instead of gaining it. Train your body part in the order of largest down to the smallest. 1. Crunches, 3 sets, 10-20 repetitions. This will work your upper abdominals section. Lie flatly on an exercise mat with knees bent and feet together. Cup your hand behind your ears and without moving from the hips down, curl up toward your knees. Make sure you use your shoulder blades to lift, and not your back. Do it for 10 to 20 times, depending on how much you can do. 2. Incline press, 3 sets, 12-15 repetitions. This workout is for your upper chest, as well as the shoulders and the triceps. To do it, lie on an incline press. Make sure your back is flat against the bench. Hold the barbell and lift it off the rack. This is the starting position. Lower the barbell until it touches your chest. Raise the barbell again to starting position. 3. Barbell Squat, 3 sets, 12- 15 repetitions. The primary muscles worked by this exercise are the quadriceps. The hamstrings and the buttocks are benefited as well. Grasp a barbell palms down. Stand before a rack as high as your chest. Lift the barbell below your neck and across your shoulders. Straight your back and point your toes forward. Knees should be bent slightly. Squat down until your thighs are parallel to the ground. Then stand up again to the starting position. 4. Lying leg curl, 3 sets, 10-12 repetitions. With this exercise, your hamstrings are being worked out. Lie facing down on a leg curl device. Knees should be below the bench. Your heels should also be placed behind the roller pads. With toes pointing down, extend your legs at the knees. Keep your hips flat on the bench. Bring up your heels toward the buttocks. Slowly go back to starting position. 5. Standing calf raise, 1 set, 12-15 repetitions. Your calves will be worked out with this routine. With a dumbbell on the left hand hanging down on your side, stretch down to let your heel extend off. Keep your back straight. Put your face up and lock your legs. Get on your toes, rising up as high as you can get and hold for a second. Flex your calf muscle while doing it. Do these routines from Monday to Friday. Assign Saturdays and Sundays as your work-out day offs. It is also possible to take Wednesdays off your workout schedule. That should still be fine. You can also add in a variety of different exercises so as not to make each day the same as the day preceding it. Variation is also important. It is also important to do some type of cardiovascular workouts for about 10 to 15 minutes before proceeding to a more rigid set. You can run in place, use the treadmill, or jump on the rope to put your body in good condition before a scheduled workout. Dieting is also important. Take in protein-rich food and cut on cholesterol and calories. Protein-rich foods are dairy products, meat, fish, tofu, and dried beans like peanuts. The general nutrition guidelines should also be followed. Bodybuilding requires having a positive mindset to succeed. Beginners should have the right amount of commitment before going ahead with it. There is a lot of work to do. There are a lot of steps to undergo. It will be a long process but the results will all be worth it. Start today. Go on and build that body.

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Body building industry is a tremendously large industry. There are thousands of companies offering hundreds types of supplements to cope with this increasing demands of muscle building supplements. But what is the most effective bodybuilding supplement? Which one to take and which supplement are necessary? This guide is to help assist you in choosing the best supplement you need, giving you the top ten bodybuilding nutrition supplement, body building supplement fact, cheapest and most effective bodybuilding supplement that you can find in the internet to assist you in the quest for your dream body. It does not matter whether you want to have a model body or want to join a body building competition, you have to start somewhere and build muscle first. How to build muscle? Basically in order to build muscle, calories in must be more than calories out. This is because muscles are living tissues and in order to build a living tissue, it must be built out of calories. I have heard a thousand times people saying build muscle and burn fat at the same time and I find that it is totally impossible because it just goes against Mother Nature. Having said that and clarified, lets talk about how to build muscle. A muscle can only be build if it is subjected to overload stress, which in layman terms we call it weight training, any form of it, in or out of the gym. When we weight train, for example we want to build a huge big gun biceps, we need to stress the biceps with weights and over load it. When that happens, the bicep muscle actually has minuscule tears. Then with proper rest and nutrition, the muscle fibers will recover and then added size because the bicep muscle wants to protect its self against the stress load that it have been subjected before. So the process goes like this weight train, rest, nutrition and the growth! Without proper nutrition, the body does not have the raw materials to build on. Its like craving a sculpture with very little clay, there is nothing much to carve with! The body must be in an anabolic environment to grow, and to provide that constant anabolic environment, proper nutrition is needed. But in these modern days full of pollution and chemicals, the quality of nutrition is not guaranteed in natural foods. Body building supplement can fuel the body with high quality nutrition! Proper nutrition is one of the part where people find it the most difficult to take charge. Firstly, they do not know the facts and how regarding nutrition for muscle growth. They have been given wrong information and wasted a lot of time trying the wrong food and supplements and then secondly, it is the nature of their lifestyle and working environment that do not allow them to have access in these wonderful nutrition. For example, if they have a hectic schedule or works in a factory that have no proper food served, their muscle gains will be interrupted. Hence, this guide is to tell you exactly what food groups and amount you need in order to achieve optimum growth and also the recommended and cheapest possible supplements that will help to achieve the best gains possible for you. Why choosing the right body building supplement that is suitable for your body type, goals and lifestyle is crucial? Well for example, even though 100 Percent Whey Protein Concentrate Gold is known to be one of the best brands around but it wont work for you if you have ectomorphs body type (the skinny body type and have small frame) but instead, getting a mass gainer with creatine in it would be the best choice. In additional, if you have an ectomorphs body type but have a tight schedule at work and eating regular quality meals is a problem for you, then it would be advisable to buy a weight gainer supplement or meal replacement that comes in convenient packs and bars. You see, buying and choosing a body building supplement is an art itself. That is the whole purpose of this guide; to assist you in the nutritional aspect as well as the practical aspects as well because I am a user my self and I have been there and experienced the difficulty that you are going though. Bodybuilding is an art and you need the right tools that can give you the edge to crave your masterpiece. The body that you have always wanted!

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With his Burn the Fat program, Tom Venuto, has developed the most comprehensive and #1 best selling diet program on the web. A respected professional bodybuilder, personal trainer and nutrition advisor, Venuto takes a hard-core, no-nonsense approach to fat loss and muscle gain. In fact, he claims that his program contains insider secrets used by professional bodybuilders and fitness models. A claim that isn’t too difficult to swallow, since Tom is a successful bodybuilder in his own right.

Why would you want to learn about fat loss from a bodybuilder or fitness model? ‘The answer is obvious’, says Tom, ‘bodybuilders have mastered the art of shedding fat while maintaining muscle. Conventional diets achieve fat loss at the expense of losing muscle, which downgrades your metabolism. That’s one of the reasons “diets” don’t work. I prefer to call this a nutrition program rather than a diet’.

What makes Burn The Fat more comprehensive than other weight loss programs on the market?

In his introduction to the the book, Tom lays out a dozen reasons why ‘this program might just be the most powerful fat-burning system ever developed’. He rather convincingly drives home each of these points throughout the program.
1. It is truthful, unbiased and objective.
2. It is not a very low calorie or starvation diet.
3. It is not just a nutrition program; it merges nutrition with exercise – a combination essential for permanent fat loss.
4. It does not confuse weight loss with fat loss.
5. It is not a temporary “quick fix.” It teaches you new habits you can maintain as a lifestyle.
6. It is not a generic “one-size-fits-all” program – it’s individualized for your goals and your body type.
7. It is not just about cosmetic improvements – it’s about your health.
8. It is simple.
9. It is simple – but it’s not easy.
10. It teaches you the secrets of goal setting and mind power to achieve any goal you desire.
11. It is based on real food you can find right in your local supermarket – no supplements or shakes are required.
12. It is based on real world results.

Regarding the ‘diet’ element of the program, there is not one ‘perfect ratio’ of carbs to fats to proteins. Nor is Burn The Fat a high protein diet, or a low carb diet. The program teaches you how to determine your own ideal macronutrient ratio by analyzing your body type (endomorph, ectomorph, or mesomorph), determining your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), the daily calories your body needs to maintain your current weight, and activity level, and assessing your own tolerance to carbohydrates. Each of us is a unique individual, and no one diet or macronutrient ratio will work for everyone. Tom says the secret of the ‘magical nutrient ratio’ is that there is no such thing as a ‘magical nutrient ratio’.

The only downside of Burn the Fat, it is that there is so much information you can easily become overwhelmed by it all. Also, the Burn The Fat e-book comes with a hefty $37 price tag, but at 340+ pages of in-depth information, it really must be viewed as an investment in your health. Quite a bargain when you consider it from that perspective.

Online Program
The e-book is comprehensive, but the subscription-based web site has the special ingredient that Tom Venuto terms the, ‘Fifth Element’, it also includes other tools such as meal planners, shopping lists, diaries, trackers, community forums, and many more. Subscription costs are $9.95 per month with no cancellation fees.See the Burn The Fat Inner-Circle web site.

Why This Diet?
Burn The Fat is unique amongst diet programs – for the depth and breadth of information and real-life examples that it provides. It is our top choice because it comes the closest of any program we have seen to meeting all of the principles that we believe the perfect weight loss program should meet.

Related Articles *MUST Read:

• Simply Stop: Quit Smoking for Better Results
• Top 10 Muscle Building Supplements
• A Beginners Guide to Body Building
• Body Building Supplement Guide
• Powerlifting versus Bodybuilding