Great body builders build lean muscle fast by using the right combination of physical and mental strategies.  Many great body builders have been influenced by the important role played by the mind, and this has nothing to do with pumping iron.

The potential of the mind and the fact that it can help you to build lean muscle fast is often overlooked.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, always imagined his biceps becoming mountain peaks, and eventually, this helped him become a great body builder.

Tom Platz imagined his quads blowing up like huge balloons, and this helped him build lean muscle fast.

It is important for you to maintain a sharp focus and the attitude of a winner in order to achieve your dream goals; use affirmations to help tread that path to success and remind yourself of your dreams.  Focus is the key to build lean muscle fast, and affirmations tend to foster this by creating a powerful link between your muscle and your mind.

You will get stronger as you get better at this technique because you will be in a position to focus on specific muscle groups and build additional strength.
Focusing on the muscle that you are working out and visualizing the impact of your exercise on it, plays a vital role in helping you build your body.

This technique will strengthen the mind/muscle link and help you build lean muscle fast.

Building lean muscle mass, takes a little more than just convincing yourself to get into a rigorous training session and blocking out all distractions.

It also important to condition your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind drives your thoughts and emotions from deep within, below the level of conscious awareness. The subconscious mind controls the way you think and act; it is often influenced by our daily circumstances.

Optimistic people easily achieve their goals and make the most out of life; on the contrary, pessimists find it extremely difficult to achieve their goals, facing negative events all the time.

To build lean muscle fast, bodybuilders think positively and avoid negative thoughts. They are positive about everything in life and effectively use affirmations to make progress. Thinking optimistically at all times is the most important step that an aspiring champion can take.

By practicing positive affirmations, you can not only build lean muscle fast but also up your performance at the gym. Affirmations are positive thoughts that when repeated constantly get embedded into your subconscious mind; they serve as a constant inspiration, driving the outcome of your actions.

Affirmations help you get motivated; they use their power of influence on your inner mind to overcome physical and mental barriers and achieve the insurmountable. They are one of the best methods to suppress pessimism and negative thinking and enhance your self-image, thereby helping you achieve to your goals faster.

You may want to use the following affirmations to help you build lean muscle fast:

• I will focus on my energy and power to overcome all barriers in today’s workout.
• My positive energy will help me surpass my personal bests today.
• I will be sincere to my diet to build lean muscle fast.
• I will have large quads.

While choosing affirmations keep your goal in mind; make it sound positive with triggers that will drive you towards the goal.

Check out the Muscle Gain Truth for additional information on how to build lean muscle fast with the help of affirmations.

Technorati Tags: bodybuilding tips, build lean muscle fast, build muscle mass, Muscle Building, Muscle Building Reviews

You’ve been there. No matter how hard you try you just can’t seem to squeeze out an extra pound on the bench press.  Sometimes we defeat ourselves by trying too hard.

Trying too hard? You probably thought in the mental game you weren’t trying hard enough. But it is not about “how hard”, but just “how”.

How we think about what we are trying to accomplish is equally as important, if not more so, than the effort we are putting into the routine.

Jeff Anderson, aka The MuscleNerd, has come up with 4 tips to help tip the scale in our favor. Understand, he makes no promises but says,

“these 4 powerful little mental “tricks” COULD help you add an IMMEDIATE 20% more to your bench press and break a new personal record!”

BENCH PRESS POWER TIP #1: Focus on your BODY…not the BAR!

When you’re benching, try to actually push your BODY away from the bar…NOT the bar away from your body.

This trick works for the same reason when doing pullups, you focus on pulling your elbows down.

Your brain sees the bar as an inanimate object OUTSIDE of your control and it understands that the bar may “win”.

But your brain sees your BODY as an “ally” and “WITHIN your control”…

…and is much more CONFIDENT in your strength when focusing on moving your BODY.

BENCH PRESS POWER TIP #2: “Pull” The Bar Apart!

As you’re lifting the bar, try “pulling” it apart as if your hands were moving away from each other.

Your hands don’t actually move…you just want to grip hard and imagine “stretching” the bar longer.

This calls into play more “stabilizer muscles” to give you extra power in your upward movement.

BENCH PRESS POWER TIP #3: Visualize The Bar Going UP!

Do you know this “spotter” trick?

Whenever you’re spotting someone on the bench press and they’ve hit a sticking point, most of the time all you have to do is place 2 FINGERS under the bar and it MAGICALLY seems to raise again.

No…you DON’T have the world’s strongest fingers!

It’s simply a total mental “mind f’er” where the lifter “thinks” he’s getting help with the rep…but is actually doing it all on his own.

You can do this by yourself (or with a partner) just by VISUALIZING the bar constantly moving upwards.

When you reach that sticking point, play a mental movie in your mind and vividly SEE the bar raising.

Your body will “believe” what you see and respond by making your “movie” a REALITY!

BENCH PRESS POWER TIP #4: Look To Your Dominant Hand!

Another “sticking point” destroyer…

Once you reach the point where the bar stops its ascent and you think you’ve been defeated, look (WITHOUT turning your head) toward your dominant hand (the one you write with).

This is yet another mental “trigger” for your brain to associate strength and power with what it perceives as your strongest assets in your “bench press battle”.

Well, there you go!

Bring your brain to your next chest workout and load up a few extra plates because you’re guaranteed t leave your wimpy old record in the dust once you try these easy tips!

If you just can’t wait to get to your gym to try, and keep trying out these tips, it may be time to invest in your own home gym equipment and save the gas and wasted time it takes to get there.

Technorati Tags: bodybuilding tips, Jeff Anderson, Muscle Nerd

I have another bodybuilding quick tip today, one that is sometimes overlooked but that is important nonetheless:

If you expect to be successful, you need a good bodybuilding strategy.

Every bodybuilder, whether seasoned or just starting out, needs a good, successful bodybuilding strategy to build more muscle mass. Without a strategy you will not achieve your goals effectively so you need to implement one today.

If your current strategy involves spending a lifetime in the gym, lifting umpteen weights for hour after hour training hard, then forget it and fast. This way will only lead to exhaustion, fatigue and probable injury, not to successful bodybuilding and muscle growth.

For successful muscle growth, your body building strategy needs to have five elements:

• Strength training
• Endurance Training
• Aerobic exercise
• Healthy nutrition
• Rest

If you think this all sounds like rubbish or that you just don’t have the time to develop a good strategy, you are free to keep going to the gym every single day and seriously over working your body. Of course, if this results in a serious injury, you will have plenty of time to develop a better strategy while you are recovering.

Seriously, following these recommendations will actually free up much of the time you have been spending on your workouts.

Strength Training
The strength training is completed in the gym, but can be done in as little a time as three minutes, three times a week, working two muscle groups each day, for roughly one and a half minutes. Do not think about sets and reps. Think in terms of time spent doing the actual exercise.

Endurance Training
The endurance training comes from a mix of strength training and followed with aerobic exercise. It is about your ability to endure, and this isn’t even something that you really need to think about as long as you are doing everything else. It builds on its own, naturally.

Aerobic Exercise
You may think that you only need aerobic exercise if you want to lose weight successfully. Losing weight is not what bodybuilders normally are trying to do, but aerobic exercise is still necessary. It will help you build muscle, keep fat off, build endurance, and strengthen your heart. You will need to participate in such aerobic activity three times per week, for 30 minutes at least.

Proper Nutrition
If you want your muscles to grow successfully you have to feed them properly. Follow a good, healthy diet for muscle building. Make sure you include protein, as well as other needed vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. A balanced diet is essential.

Rest
Last but not least, you will need plenty of rest. Your muscles do not grow when you are working out. They grow when you are resting and sleeping, after being stressed from your routines. This is the time when your muscles repair themselves. Make sure that you are getting eight to ten hours of rest each night at least. If you don’t, both you and your muscles will become fatigued and stop growing in the proper manner.

If you are ready to start building muscle while still having a life outside of the gym, there several bodybuilding courses that are designed to help you do just that. Two that I can recommend without reservation are The Musclehead and No-Nonsense Muscle Building. Check out the reviews on this site and develop your own personal bodybuilding strategy.

You deserve success!

Technorati Tags: bodybuilding, bodybuilding tips, Muscle Building

Nobody told you that you were going to be a complete failure at bodybuilding, did they? But if you are following any of these steps, your failure is guaranteed!

1. Choose the wrong exercises and use all of the fancy gizmos available to make your workout routine easier!

2. Over train by doing as many reps as possible, as long as possible and as often as possible!

3. Ignore your diet and eat anything you want anytime you want. Develop a firm belief that it doesn’t matter what you put into your body!

4. Rely on muscle magazines, forums, supplement store salesmen and television infomercials for bodybuilding advice!

5. Never track your progress because it really doesn’t matter, does it?

6. Develop and “Iron Man” mind set and never allow your body to rest to rebuild your muscles!

7. And the best of way of all to totally guarantee your complete failure as a bodybuilder is to rely on…

“The Miracle Pill”

We all want to find better, faster ways to get more results from our workouts. So, I thought I would simply “steal” a few tips from some of the top bodybuilders and pass them on to you. I am not really “stealing” they have all given me permission to do this. And, hey! It helps me get this part of my day done a little faster.

Today’s tip is from Jeff Anderson, the Muscle Nerd. He has a great program in Optimum Anabolics that I have previously reviewed but he has a lot of other programs too that are equally good. If you have yet to pay a visit to his site, you are missing some good stuff.

In This Quick Bodybuilding Tip...

• Instant Power! How to lift more weight in your very next trip to the bench press!
• (Guess what? It works on ALL your other exercises too!)

How would you like to INSTANTLY be able to lift 10-20% more weight on your very next set of Bench Press, Pulldowns, Curls, or Pushdowns?

Yes, that’s right…INSTANTLY lift more weight!

Well, here’s a little known “TRICK” I learned that will help you do just that…

Right before you get ready for your lift, stetch your targeted muscle group’s ANTAGONIST muscles!

(“Antagonist” means that muscles’ “opposite” muscle group: chest vs. back; biceps vs. triceps)

For example, before you get ready to knock out a set of Bench Presses, FIRST stretch your BACK muscles (your “lats”) right before you lay down on the bench.

You’ll find yourself IMMEDIATELY stronger in your lifts!

Simple…but an EFFECTIVE technique to help you power through those sets a bit stronger…and maybe even jack up your muscle gains a smidgen more!

Okay… break is over. Get to work, but be sure and stop by Jeff Anderson’s site for some straight scoop!

Technorati Tags: bodybuilding tips, Jeff Anderson, Optimum Anabolics