Archive for January, 2010

Supplement For Bodybuilding: Vitamin C

We all know that consuming sufficient vitamins through our diet is the best way to maintain health and ensure that our fat burning and muscle building processes function at peak levels.

Even if you are deficient in just one vitamin, your body processes can be affected in a major way.

When you are a hard training bodybuilder, one vitamin is needed above the rest, albeit all are important. especially when it comes to the specific needs of a hard training bodybuilder.  If you are a serious lifter, you cannot be short on this vital supplement for bodybuilding—water-soluble Vitamin C.

There are many benefits to this important supplement for bodybuilding, some of which include….

1) It has antioxidant properties.

Due to intense exercise and natural bodily processes, oxygen combines with other compounds to form “free radicals” within your body. These free radicals are considered metabolic waste products—they attack your cells, mutate your cell membranes, and are even linked to diseases like cancer and diabetes.

Antioxidants have the power to prevent free radicals from forming in the first place, or once they are formed, they latch onto them and neutralize their effects. Thanks to its antioxidant properties, this supplement for bodybuilding does quite a bit to save the body from free radical damage.

2) It limits the production of cortisol.

This catabolic hormone gets triggered in times of stress, both from workouts and everyday life. Cortisol can do a lot of damage: it stimulates muscle tissue breakdown, increases fat storage in the abdominal area, impairs nutrient transport into the muscles, and even restricts muscle recovery between workouts.

Since you want to reduce the amount of cortisol secretion in your body, this is an ideal supplement for bodybuilding because it does just that.

3) It helps steroid hormones to grow.

Your natural anabolic hormone levels have a lot to do with how much muscle you can build. Vitamin C, a great supplement for bodybuilding, really helps in forming these hormones.

4) It helps in iron absorption.

Iron helps oxygen bind to the hemoglobin in your blood; this is then sent to your muscles to enhance performance. You need a high level of intensity for your workouts, but low iron levels work to decrease the amount of weight you can lift in the gym, not to mention your ability to maintain this intensity.

5) It gives a boost to the immune system.

Your immune system needs to function at optimal levels when you are following an intense training program. With a healthy immune system, you have the advantage of maintaining peak performance at all times because you will not fall sick.

6) Muscle soreness is reduced.

This supplement for bodybuilding has been shown to reduce muscle soreness in the days after a training session, as long as you take it close to your workout. This can be a big help for those who don’t like that deep aching usually felt in the muscles following a hard workout.

Vitamin C is a key supplement for bodybuilding, whether you are trying to build muscle or burn fat, and will help you make the most of your workout program.

The recommended daily allowance for Vitamin C is only 60 mg, but this dose is for average people, not hard training athletes. Obviously, for those working on an intense muscle building and/or fat burning program, the amounts of Vitamin C needed will be higher.

There are some people who encourage “mega doses” of Vitamin C. Mega-dosing is not something natural to our biochemistry and might interrupt other bodily functions, so even though it’s water-soluble and can be flushed out with sweat or urine, stick with normal doses.

Overall, this supplement for bodybuilding should be consumed in daily dosages of about 500 mg to 1500 mg, spread out over 2 to 3 doses.

You can take one part of this supplement for bodybuilding in the morning, and the other before your workout. Getting a separate Vitamin C supplement is important, since your multivitamin will probably only contain 50 mg to 200 mg.

Plus, raise your intake of Vitamin C naturally with tomatoes, apples, oranges, and red/green peppers.

Even though your odds of seeing any immediate effects to your bottom line are slim, Vitamin C still can and should be a big part of your overall plan to maximize your long term results.

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The Key To Huge Muscle Growth: Work Your Legs!

The big truth out there is that a good portion of lifters in the gym don’t concentrate on training their lower body to create solid muscle growth. I get it; a solid pair of quadriceps isn’t precisely what many people would deem a showy muscle.  Moreover it’s doubtful that any person has ever heard a woman ask a male to flex his hamstring for her.

Because everyone is so bent on getting a thick upper body, the other half of their muscles down below repeatedly become disregarded. To get out of difficult and heavy leg training, people frequently say I jog to build up my legs, squats are tough on my knees, or come up with some other lame excuse along those lines.

I can’t even begin to tell you how costly this gaffe is…

It not only appears ridiculous having a ripped, muscular upper body sitting over a pair of toothpick-like legs… but imagin if I assured you that a refusal to put equivalent muscle mass building focus on your lower body is a huge limitation on your upper body, back, arms, and shoulders in terms of significant muscle growth?

Even though many might view this as a ploy to get you into the squat rack, it is a truth that working your legs can do miracles in getting huge muscle tissue development. A great number of lifters see power training as “train muscle X using exercise Y, and muscle X will become bigger and stronger”. It is not that simple.

This restricted view of huge muscle growth is one of the main reasons why many beginners can’t get the maximum results from their workouts. Instead of reaching for the kind of explosive, huge muscle growth that you are truly capable of, too many folks settle for average gains.

The honest truth is this.

In due course, the muscle tissue developing mechanism moves beyond a basic localized function that takes place at the level of your muscle structure alone! There is a enormous level of solid lean muscle development that occurs once the complete system is placed under tension and adapts to it on a holistic level. This is because more significant levels of growth hormone along with testosterone will be produced.

Regarded as the holy grail of massive muscle tissue development, these hormones happen to be the primary things which can control how much muscle the given man or woman will be able to gain. When bodybuilders inject anabolic steroids into their bodies, they’re increasing the circulation of those fundamental chemical substances in an attempt to get more huge muscle development.

Seeing that you’re a natural trainee and injecting a roid-filled needle into your butt just isn’t your way, it is important to find a different method to speed up the creation of these muscle-increasing compounds so that they can attain huge muscle growth.

So, how can you do this most effectively?

You already know it!

Intense leg workouts! Do leg presses, lunges, squats, as well as stiff-legged deadlifts.

Have you by chance found just how difficult and bowel wrenching these workouts can be whenever you perform them with complete intensity? Ideal for huge muscle development! An all out sets of these lifts may make you wish you would have stayed home. That’s simply because, not only do these lifts involve the most significant muscle groups on your entire body, they allow you to move solid quantities of weight.

These leg routines will make you enormous because their intense difficulty is one of the key ways to seriously drive your entire body to rev up its production of anabolic hormone. When you raise your anabolic hormone levels, it means you get increased muscle tissue size and strength, not only for your lower body, but for your whole upper body too.

The thing I’m trying to say is never let your leg training become an infrequent element or even an after-thought in your training program or you will miss out on considerable massive muscle mass development that you might be getting.

Take up this challenge.

Tack on an strong time of leg training to your weekly routine program at the gym. You may want to incorporate the most elementary compound lifts such as squats, leg presses, and stiff-legged deadlifts; force yourself to the limit and add greater weight each 7 days. In just 4-8 weeks, you will observe huge lean muscle growth.

You will report that your power on each and every single upper body routine shot through the roof, if you are just like 99% of the people… and you will notice your arms, back, chest, and shoulders got larger, also. Look, if you truly do not care about the size of your legs or huge muscle development, don’t worry about your leg workouts. At the very least, include hard and intensive leg training for the sake of those upper body muscle groups that you covet.

It may not seem logical initially, but intensive and steady leg training really is one of the true “secrets” to solid muscular growth and a powerful and ripped upper body!

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Today I wanted to bring you an article I published some time ago which had some good reviews so I am sharing it here.

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There is no cut-in-stone formula for developing your own body building routine but there are several tips that will help make certain your body building routine is the best one for you and get you the toned, sculpted body you so desire.

Tip #1 – If you cannot easily fit it into your schedule it just wont be effective. Make sure that you have plenty of time to work out sufficiently to build muscle and still have time for your daily and weekly tasks that need to get done. This may mean going with a high intensity routine of short duration.

Tip #2 – Don’t forget to schedule rest days and do not schedule routines that work the same muscle groups two days in a row. Your muscles build when they are at rest so rest in critical.

Tip #3 – Make sure your body is up to performing the routines your mind dreams up. Beginners especially want to build mass muscle quickly but your overall health just may not be up to the challenge. If you have any doubt as to you overall fitness at all, check with your doctor before beginning a workout routine.

Tip #4 – That guy or gal with the perfect body advertising the body building program may not have actually used the program. Do your research. Did the person actually use the program and workout routines they are recommending? Did it give the results you want?

Tip #5 - Define your goals first, look for a program second. It is easy to get these reversed. Without well defined goals how will you ever know what you are accomplishing? You may want to lose weight rather than gaining mass muscle. Is your goal to be sculpted? To have great abs? To add 6 inches to your biceps? In what period of time?

Tip #6 – Change the intensity and of your workout for continued improvement. If you lift the same amount of weight every day for a year, you will not be gaining a years worth of exercise. The only way to gain strength and muscle mass is to challenge your muscles and make them work harder on a regular basis.

Tip #7 – Use available free resources to develop you bodybuilding routine. The person you admire at the gym is a great resource. There are a number of free muscle building e-courses available. Pick and choose the routines that are right for you and which support your own goals. Then you can put together your very own body building program.

Stop struggling to try and figure it out for yourself. Grab a free course on a great bodybuilding routine and steal the secrets that fit your personal goals. If you are really crimped for time there is no better place to start than 7 Minute Muscle.

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Is Glutamine A Good Supplement for Bodybuilding?

Is glutamine a good supplement for bodybuilding? This is point that’s considerably debated in bodybuilding circle.

Glutamine is only popular with some people, unlike creatine, which is considered a “no brainier” supplement for bodybuilding that everyone uses. Yet, others believe that its effectiveness as supplement for bodybuilding is not certain.

Glutamine was considered to be a “must-have” supplement for bodybuilding until very recently. Recent studies, though, indicate that the alleged benefits of  glutamine were vastly overrated.

So, as a bodybuilder, should you include glutamine as a vital supplement on your list?

We’ll find out right here.

Since glutamine is a non-essential amino acid, even though it makes up about 65 percent of amino acids in the body, the body can create it out of other amino acids and molecules in times of deficit. Muscle growth is limited during stress, when amino acids are diminished.

As a result of this, it makes sense to some people to add glutamine to their diet as a supplement for bodybuilding. There are some who claim that glutamine helps repair damaged muscles and prevents soreness after exercise, which is why it’s necessary.

Others claim that it helps enhance strength when taken before a workout, because it boosts immune function. However, there is no evidence of glutamine being an essential supplement for bodybuilding in any current research.

Some interesting findings of the research are that while glutamine does work under clinical stress testing, it doesn’t do anything to enhance a workout; quantities of glutamine that would cost an average bodybuilder anywhere up to $1000 a year were used for this test.

The types of “stress” that the studies refer to are also important, and include severe burns, AIDS, and extensive surgery. The tests also show that in healthy adults, glutamine supplements during weight training did not affect muscle performance, body composition, or muscle breakdown.

Even the belief that glutamine improved cell volume has been disproven during a research study. It was also proved that exercise-induced immune system reduction is not changed by glutamine.

The question that remains inconclusively answered is whether glutamine improves glycogen stores after exercise; however, some bodybuilders say that this isn’t something you should worry about because you’ll be drinking a high carbohydrate shake after your workout anyway.

Finally, one study showed that consuming an amino acid drink after a workout increased protein synthesis by up to 48 percent. However, adding glutamine to the mix did not change protein synthesis.

So, what do you believe now? Is glutamine a good supplement for bodybuilding?

As usual, the truth is somewhere in between.

Glutamine definitely isn’t everything that it was chalked out to be in the past, but it does provide some benefits. It can apparently be a good supplement for bodybuilding as it restores testosterone levels post-workout. When used in conjunction with a fat loss program, it is also a good supplement for bodybuilding to help you get that hard, ripped look.

So those who want to get extremely lean should gain some benefit from glutamine as a way of preserving muscle.

For the full story behind glutamine as supplement for bodybuilding and other muscle building truths, check out Muscle Gain Truth. We recommend it.

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Top Bodybuilding Supplement: MRPs

Sadly, the supplement industry has lost any credibility that it had, by steadily introducing products whose benefits are debatable.

This is not to say that all supplements are bad.

In your path to muscle building, you will definitely find a number of top bodybuilding supplements that are actually good and effective.

It becomes a little difficult to separate the truth from the lies, given the amount of false information already out there.

Well, if you’re confused about which supplement can help you pack on muscle, you’ve come to the right place.

I’m sure you’re wondering why the information that I give you will be different from all the lies perpetrated by the supplement industry.

The fact is that I don’t make a single buck out of any product that they sell, and I’m not on any of their payrolls.

Read on, if you want an honest, unbiased, and informed opinion.

What’s the top bodybuilding supplement? Protein.

You are perhaps already aware that for building and repairing muscle fibers that are torn down in the process of weight training, protein is essential.

The truth is that you will not see any appreciable gains if you don’t consume protein in adequate quantities; it is the single most important nutrient required by your body for building muscle.

Your protein intake needs to be as high as 30% to 40% of your total caloric intake, for optimal gains.

Now that’s a lot of protein that needs to be consumed.

While you can obtain this protein only from your diet, you’d have to eat quite a bit of lean red meat, chicken, fish, and cottage cheese to ensure that you’re getting enough,.

But that’s not always possible given the pace of our lifestyles, and so protein supplements become the ideal alternative.

Among the top bodybuilding supplements with protein, whey protein tops the list.

Almost everyone knows about whey protein, and the market is flooded with brands that sell tubs of this top bodybuilding supplement.

Moreover, it’s really good for you, and it’s not even too expensive.

Many different kinds of whey protein are available in the market, but we’ll have that discussion some other day.

Instead, I’m going to talk about MRPs; these are another protein supplement that can also be regarded as the top bodybuilding supplement.

In addition to providing your body with all the protein that it requires, MRPs, or meal replacement powders, provide you with good carbs, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals.

Sounds like the top bodybuilding supplement is no longer whey protein, right?

Well, it really depends on how much you can afford.

While MRPs are the perfect way of getting all the nutrition that you require, they are also very expensive.

A tub of whey proteins and a box of 20 MRP packets will cost you the same. That’s equal to almost three times the price of whey protein.

I bet you’re thinking what options you have!

Well, if you have the money and don’t have the time, MRPs are the best replacements (and good supplements) for at least one or two of your five to seven daily meals.

Don’t fret if money is an issue.

All the good stuff (good carbs, vitamins and minerals) that makes MRPs such a good bodybuilding supplement can be added to your diet at a fraction of the cost.

Just add a banana and some oatmeal to your whey protein powder; blended together with about 1-2 cups of milk will give you your own inexpensive top bodybuilding supplement.

For additional information on MRPs and their benefits as a top bodybuilding supplement, as well as other no BS muscle building information, I heartily recommend a complete guide such as Muscle Gain Truth.  You can read our review of this program at Muscle Gain Truth Reviewed.

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