Why would anyone want to be vegetarian?

Due to the nature of the food that vegetarians avoid they are at a significantly reduced risk of the following potentially life threatening diseases :coronary artery disease, hypertension, cancers and diabetes mellitus. As you can see the reasons for becoming vegetarian are quite compelling and that is before we even talk about the idealistic side of things such as saving animals, keeping food available for others, saving the rainforest, being more enviromentally friendly and so on.

Alright then, as regards protein where am I going to get sufficient muscle building supplies from?

Well the answer is pretty straightforward, Soy. Soy actually has more protein in it than beef and it is a complete protein which contains all of the eight essential amino acids. Great sourcces of soy include: miso, soy milk, seitan, tempeh, textured soy protein and of course tofu. These can all be included in a variety of tasty recipes and dishes. Beans, rice, seeds, legumes, nuts and even vegetables are another great supply of amino acids which together should ensure you never get short on protein.

Alright so that is protein deficiency crossed off the myth list now how about vitamins and minerals like: zinc, vitamin D, calcium, iron and vitamin B12?

Well, vegans ought to really to take a supplement for this. vitamin B12 is found in dairy products so is not an area of concern for other types of vegetarians. The others can easily be gotten from a decent meal replacement powder. Of course however many minerals and vitamins are easily available in the form of leafy green vegetables and fruit that you should not overlook if you wish to build muscle vegetarian style. 

So, overall there are many health benefits to being a vegetarian and being a vegetarian need not prevent you from achieving your bodybuilding goals. Of course a key factor to your diet succes will be the ability to plan, however this is just as crucial for meat eating bodybuilders also. With the above guidelines in mind go ahead and build muscle vegetarian style!! 

Whilst some of this advice is good some of it is less so and may not be particularly relevant for the new bodybuilder who really needs to simply get the basics down. So with that in mind here are three sure fire steps to help anyone build muscle easily.

1) Push yourself hard in the gym. Make use of the all time classic muscle mass building exercises such as: deadlifts, rows, squats, benchpresses and pull ups. These exercises will help you build muscle easily and have been tried and tested for many years now. Steer away from exercises that isolate individual muscle groups, these are usually not designed for packing on mass but more for carving definition and toning up. Get to the gym, hit the weights hard and intensely for 45 minutes then get out and grow.

2) Pay attention to muscle building nutrition. For decades now experienced and successful trainers have been quoted as saying that at least 80% of muscle growth success is due to correct muscle building nutrition. This is as true today as it has ever been! As a general guide half of your food should come in the form of carbohydrates, protein should make up 30% and the remainder should come from fats.

The following source of food come highly recommended, for carbs: rice, potatoes, pasta, brown breads. Good sources of protein include: chicken, milk, turkey, beef and fish, particularly mackerel and tuna. you will adequate fats from all of these foods. Whey protein, essential fatty, acids, creatine and a good multi-vitamin product would really boost your muscle growth if you can afford them.

3) Rest. Muscle recovers and grows whilst you are at rest so naturally you should spend sufficient time allowing your body to grow. Many novice bodybuilders do not understand just exactly how important it is that their body has a chance to recover properly after each workout. Most people will find that two workouts per week are sufficient.

Ok, I said at the start it was simple process and it is. If you just stick to those basics you too can build muscle easy. Whilst you may delve as deep as you like into all of these topics, essentially that is all you need to know if you wish to grow. With those points in mind, go out there, train intensely in the gym, follow a good muscle building diet and give yourself time to grow!

Firstly to build muscle eat more often. Try to eat 5-7 smaller meals every day. This is due to the fact that excess calories are required in order for your body to support muscle gains. You will not be able to build any muscle mass if your body is running short on calories. 5-6 small meals every day will mean that you can take on enough calories without stuffing yourself too much at any single meal.

Secondly, you will need to cut out a lot of the junk food that you are probably eating at the moment. Go admit it, we are all at times prone to eating junk food at some time and it is these measl that we need to cut out.

Thirdly, you will need to drink a good deal more water than you had been doing before. Ensure that you have a bottle of water near you throughout the day to sip from. nearly all reactions in the body require water to some degree and that includes muscle building reactions also.

Fourthyl, each meal should contain roughly the following proportions of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Attempt to split your meals in to seperate amounts of 50% carbohydrate, 30% protein with the rest to come from fats.

Fifthly, you need to learn what foods you should be eating for muscle growth. Here is a start to illustrate what some of the best muscle building foods are:

For protein: turkey, chicken, fish and shellfish, eggs, red meats, dairy products. These are brilliant sources of quality protein so include them in your daily meals as regularly as you can. However caution is advised as these foods are high in saturated fat so it would be sensible to mix them with the following foods that supply protein but with a great deal less fat: egg whites, lean meats like poultry and fish, non-fat or low-fat milk and dairy products, lean cuts of red meat, turkey breast,and skinless chicken breast.

For carbohydrates and sustained energy release: bread, brown rice, oatmeal, bagel, pasta cereals and potatoes. For immediate shots of energy consume: fruits such as apple, grapes, bananas, raisins, orange mand sports drinks.

Don’t worry about the fat portion of your meal that will take care of itself from the other foods naturally. Also getting a steady regular supply of vitamins and minerals from leafy green vegetables is essential. If you have spare cash for supplements then shoot for a decent multi-vitamin, whey protein, essential fatty acids and possibly creatine.

Lastly a few words of advice as regards when to eat your meals. To build muscle eat within one hour of finishing your workout, before bed and immediately on rising. These are critical times if you want to ensure muscle growth. With the afoermentioned guidelines adhered too you are then in a great position to start packing on some muscle mass.

I often hear that you should train each muscle group just once a week. Whilst this may be provide optimal progress for extremely hardgainers it is not true for the vast majority of people. Sure, you should avoid overtraining but like most things in life you won’t get good at something by practicing it just once a week, this is true to a certain extent in weight lifting also. You need to train each muscle more than once a week, probably twice per week being suitable for most bodybuilders. Ideally you should rotate your workouts through periods when you are near overtraining and periods where you near undertraining. This provides times when there is a lot of stress for the body to handle and other times when the body has more time to recover and build momentum for another push. Hitting training plateaus can be avoided by doing this.

Ensure that your training sessions don’t exceed 45 minutes. If you deem that time limit to short then possibly your workout is not short enough or you are not staying focussed and working out intensely. 45 minutes will be plenty if you really focus on intensity and avoid distractions. If your workouts last longer then this then testosterone levels drop dramatically due to the increased production of cortisol which actually causes the body to eat muscle tissue and store fat. completely the opposite to what we are after.

You ought to cycle your training. after a while your body adapts to a routine so that it no longer stimulates growth. You should change your routine before your gains diminish completely. You need to ensure that you don’t change your training sessions to frequently either. Doing this will confuse your body too much and prevent it from getting into a nice groove and feel like you are just simply spinning your wheels.

It is unlikely that you will make significant gains if you don’t perform the correct exercises. The right exercises are exercises that allow you to perform multi-joint movements and are know as compound exercises. The number one exercises being: bench presses, rows, squats, pull ups, shoulder presses plus any exercise that moves your entire body through air ie, not just moving individual limbs. If you use these exercises, with a few of their variations and correct muscle building nutrition then you can’t help but stimulate muscle mass growth. With those guidelines in mind, go pump some iron, eat correctly and get huge.

The RAV works together with the visual componenet of our brain and diverts our attention to specific things that our sub conscious has programmed into it, to be important to achieve our goals. The day to day actions, sights, sounds, preferences and so on that we get daily are all because of our sub conscious thought process that is continually operating.

This has been now proven by neuroscientists and actually qualifies the approaches of positive thinking and the law of attraction. If you have never heard of the law of attraction before it is basically the asumption that ‘what you think about, you bring about’ or ‘thoughts become things’. Now in the past this was thought of as being a bit to new agey for the majority of people however there is an increasing acceptance of this mental approach worldwide.

Now it doesn’t really matter if you adopt the neuro-scientists point of view about it or the new age approach to this as it will still work. So by reprogramming the software of our mind like this it is then possible for us to identify an pick out more clearly the paththat we need to take to reach our goals faster. Some people will come across strange co-incidences that will help there progress which is not uncommon and often gives this ‘law of attraction’ an unearthly feel whereas the truth is those things were probably there waiting to be found all along!

So how can a bodybuilder make use of this? Well think now about your present ongoing thought patterns. Precisely what is it that you are running through your mind on a daily basis. Are they thoughts such as ‘losing weight is impossible for me’ or ‘My muscles won’t grow’ for if they are then that is precisely what your RAV system is selecting for you to notice and take action upon on a day to day basis. It is therefore your everyday sub conscious thought process that you need to alter to positive muscle building thought processes such as: ‘muscle mass come quickly and easily’ or ‘I am getting huge fast’ and so on.

How exactly can these thought patterns be replaced? Here are a couple of things to try:

1)       Visualisation: first you need to set aside 5 minutes or so each day to do this. Simply shut your eyes and visulaise in your minds eye precisely how you want your body to look. Huge guns, ripped 6 pack and so on, be as clear as possible and hold that vision with belief that you look like that already.’

2)       Speak out aloud clearly and confidently simple statements like: I am extremely fit and healthy, I am huge and muscular, I am growing more and more each day and so on.

Go through these everyday. It will take a minimum of 30 days to start over riding your old thought patterns and to imprint the new ones but it will happen. Following that, don’t stop doing them keep going to continually reaffirm your new thought patterns.

If you don’t believe that this stuff works then I suggest that you take a look at a few sportsmens autobiographies or sports studies books, I gaurantee that you will find these processes talked about in depth, particularly visualisation which is an amazingly productive technique that should get daily usage!

Ok with these positive thoughts and feelings in mind, go build muscle mass!

Ideally this preworkout meal should be something that you are used to and that you know won’t make you feel heavy and bloated as you want to be at your best to give your all in the gym. You should try to include some slow burning energy such as oatmeal but make sure that you have some protein first. You risk making yourself lethargic if you consume the protein after the carbohydrate. This occurs as both the protein and carbohydrate cause the body to release specific chemicals that have differing affects. Protein stimulates the release of tyrosine which signals your brain to be alert and energetic as opposed to the carbohydrate which stimulates the release of tryptophan and instructs the brain to make you feel tired. Therefore always take on the carbohydrate second.

If you really want to know how to build muscle fast then great advice is to drink a protein and carbohydrate shake about half an hour before you workout. This will really boost your energy levels for your gym session. Ingredients should include whey protein, maltodextrin, wxymaize or dextrose. Try to shoot for about 25 grams of protein and about 40 grams worth of carbohydrate. Doing this will boost your insulin levels which is one of the bodies most powerful muscle building hormones. What’s more it will also reduce the production of cortisol which has a negative affect on building muscle.

Remember that spending time in the gym when you start your session already hungry and lethargic is not likely to make it a productive session. Always try to keep fruit or meal replacement powders or bars to hand should you ever not have time for a proper solid pre-workout meal.

Try and wean yourself off the coffee with green tea which has many more health benefits whilst also providing some caffeine. Finally, don’t forget to keep taking on board the water, this is critical too. Ok bear those things in mind and you’ll be hitting the gym in peak mode for an awesome muscle stimulating workout which you will be able to grow from because you will have had the correct muscle building nutrition.

Grow your triceps. As musch as two thirds of the entire muscle mass on your arms comes from the tricep muscle. It may well be that under-developed triceps are restricting your bench press progress. The best exercises to build muscle mass on your triceps are using barbells and dumbells: close grip bench-presses and skull crushers. Less effective are isolation type exercises such as tricep press downs. They should definitely help notch up your bench press.

Why not try training your triceps individually by themselves. Commonly, hitting the chest muscles is advised to be done in the same workout as tricep training. Try training them on their own for a change. Doing this allows you to attack them when they are fresh and really concentrate and focus on hammering them to stimulate growth. Do this for a number of weeks and see how much more poundage you can press.

Variety. have you been doing the same training session over and over again? time to switch things around a bit. Your muscle won’. Keep changing things, they can be subtle changes like altering the grip width or reversing the order of your routine or they can be larger changes like doing super sets, compound sets and so on, these will give you a real pump by the way.

Make sure you are not doing too much! While with most things in life more is better, in muscle building this is not quite true. Overtraining your chest muscles means it takes longer for them to recover and develop. Do not focus on quantity rather go for intensity and quality instead. A short intense workout is much more effective than a long drawn out one.

Quality rest. Your muscles do not grow on the weight bench! They grow when they are resting. If you don’t allow then enough time to recover they ain’t going to get bigger. Of course do not workout again when your muscles are still, a fair rule of thumb is to limit yourself to 6-9 sets each workout for each muscle group, any more and you may be at risk overtraining.

Take a rest from training. Why not take a break if you hit a training plateau. Allow your body to fully recuperate and eradicate all the strains and return a week or so later doubly motivated.

Give your chest a more intense workout by doing negatives. Negatives are when you find two spotters to intially aid you to press the weight but who then let you take the full weight and lower it by yourself under slow complete control. This is done because people are able to lower more than they can lift. Therefore if we can get the body lowering more weight it is probable that this will aid us for the effort phase also. The lowering/negative phase also stimulates more muscle growth than the effort phase.

Review your diet. Are you taking on board a minumum of 5 meals a day whilst consuming at least 1 gram of protein per each lb of bodymass? If you are not then it may well be the case that you are limiting your gains by not following a muscle building diet strictly enough. In each meal try to get them divided as follows: 50% carbohydrate, 30% protein and the remainder can be compiled of fats. Take supplements if you have the money to, things like: whey protein, essential fatty acids and multi-vitamins.

Ensure correct technique. Are you pressing correctly. Bad technique can move the focus away from the chest muscles and put you at a greater risk of getting injured. Ensure you are not moving your feet up off the floor and that your hands are not grasping the bar too closely together, these are two easy and often made errors.

By following the guidelines above you will be giving yourself the best chance to build muscle mass on your chest fast. Just do it!

1) Are you eating lots? Some hardgainers are really just undereaters. Lack of muscle mass is often due to this. The key to building muscle mass is frequent high calorie meals! Consuming food every two hours is a sensible rule of thumb which will enable you to take in the required amount of calories. Make sure you snack lots on food such as: dried fruit and nuts, yoghurt, cottage cheese,  cereal and milk, protein bars, fresh fruit, and protein shakes, etc

2) Are you getting enough protein? To build muscle mass fast you should aim for 1.Each day you should get per pound of body weight 5 grams of protein. Superb source of protein for muscle building are: chicken, fish, turkey as well as dairy products. Eat lots of everything and do not be too concerned about eating low fat products, you need the calories remember. of course you require decent quality calories but you can do a ripping stage at a later date to remove excess body fat. A further great way to take on board quality protein is to get your hands on the large tubs of whey protein.

3) Have your routines gone stale? If you can dictate out loud your session off the cuff then that likely means you have been doing the workout for quite a while now. Your body is not going to grow if you are not providing stimulating workouts with lots of variety. Trying playing around with things like drop sets, partials, negatives, aided lifts and such like. You can even just reverse the order of your routine and see what difference that makes, how about 10 sets of 10 reps to failure on just one major exercise such as the bench press (get ready to be sore!) or just give yourself a week off from training to allow your body to fully recover. There are endless variations that are possible make sure you use them.

4) Are you getting enough down time? Did you ever see anyone walk into a fitness centre workout and then come out having put on half a stone of muscle? Never. Clearly then your muscle do their growing at home after you have pumped out. If you are not resting lots then you are limiting the amount of time available for the muscle to grow. If anything over compensate and give your body more than enough time to grow. Try limiting your workouts to one muscle group per week. Also reducing the number of sets per body part, how about a maximum of 3-5 really intense sets per body part per workout. Give them a go and the results will be the validation of them!

5) Is your water intake high enough? If you are skimping on the water then you really are limiting your progress. A lot of water is required in order for your to build muscle mass. Take a bottle of water with you, leave it in the car and always sip on it.

So the original question: ‘Why am I not getting bigger?’ as you can tell has many answers. Answer the list of question in this article and if you need to adjust something then start doing it today. The problem for your limited growth may well be the one point above that you do not meet. Some alterations are needed if any of these points are not being properly dealt with. Of course there are heaps of other reasons why you might not be growing but the above are the usual culprits. Now hit the gym and go get massive!

Training in a normal fitness centre will give you access to more equipment, professional advice and will likely be safer. If you have to cue up for equipment then this can be a little annoying also or if the people around you don’t show the same motivation for muscle building as you do.

As regards working-out at home, there are many benefits to this: no fee (my favourite), no hassle travelling there and parking, workout with your shirt off, you can play your own music, no queing for equipment and you don’t have to worry about what other people are thinking about you when you are shouting at the bar for motivation.

The negatives are the intial outlay of money at that is required to purchase the equipment although this will likely last a for ages and can be sold again second hand, you may also incur the wrath of your housemates/partner if you use up too much room.

Working-out at home allows you to build muscle mass at your convenience and if you go by the following how to build muscles fast at home guidelines you should not have a problem working-out at home:

1)Find a suitably large space, such as a garage, basement or spare room. The floor needs should be firm and strong making a ground floor a better option. Good ventilation will be welcome too. If it is a garage make sure it is fully water-proof so your equipment does not get rusty.

2) Permanently remove any easily damaged objects. Ample warning is provided byt youtube where a guy doing barbell curls unfortunately lets his barbell nudge his large fish tank with a barbell just a little too hard! Hilarious, of course unless it is your fish tank. A permanent location will avoid problems like this, imagine putting a barbell through a plasma tv screen or dropping a weight disc on a laptop computer, not fun.

3) Purchase these pieces of equipment: a normal weights bench, squat stand, a workout mat, a pull up bar and a set of cast iron barbells and dumbells. There are some great innovative pieces of equipment out there so take a look around but make sure you buy very sturdy equipment that will last, don’t skimp on quality as it is going to take a lot of hammer!

4) Plan out a decent routine. Top quality muscle mass building exercises can be done with that equipment. Bench-presses, pull-ups, squats, dead lifts are all must have multi-joint exercises which should be used followed by exercises such as: barbell curls, upright rows, shrugs, lunges, shoulder presses, lateral raises and bent over rows are also great to include.

5) Be aware of the dangers. As you are going to be working out solo then get a friend around to help you if you want to perform any heavy one rep maximums as this will help keep you safe. Always make sure that all weight discs are securely fastened to the barbell. Some weight benches allow you to put a pin in at the bottom of your lift, when the barbell is just above your chest, do this as if you can’t press it back up then you can rest it on the pins, do the same on the squat stand too.

So, by following the above how to build muscle at home guidelines you can have a great workout, build heaps of muscle mass and all in the convenience of your own home.

Well, it may come as a suprise that this set of muscles are one of the most poorly trained set of muscles. By that I mean it is suprising how many bodybuilders go about building bicep mass in the wrong way.

Here we will set down a few firm guidelines to allow you to build bicep mass quickly. So here is out brief biceps guide how to build muscles fast .

1) Your biceps are trained a lot already in most major back exercises that involve pulling. So, concentrate on improving at these exercises and your guns will follow and get larger.

2) Do not overtrain the biceps. This is easily done, as already mentioned they are worked heavily on back exercises so stick to a absolute maximum of 4 sets of specific bicep work and in fact two sets will be plenty for most people.

3) Select the best exercises. The best mass building exercises for arms are: Pull-ups with an underhand grip followed by rowing exercises. If you really have to train your guns more than standing barbell curls will be your best bet. Avoid seated concentration curls – exercises like these are designed as shaping and carving exercises to shape arms that already have a lot of muscle mass. If that is not you then stick to the other exercises.

4) Do reps in the 5-7 range to stimulate the most growth in muscle size. Track your progress with a training log to monitor your progress. This allows you to set targets for each workout which is both motivating and ideal to review your progress. Next up muscle building nutrition.

5) Are you ensuring that you are taking on board enough calories. You need to take on loads of calories if you really want to support muscle gains. Eat between 5 and 7 times each and everyday with meals containing fruits, fish, pastas, rice, lean white meats and so on. These are the exact types of nutritionally high foods that will help you pack on bicep size.

6) Make sure you take enough rest. You’ve probably heard before that your muscles do not grow whilst you are pumping iron they grow when you are at rest. Therefore don’t you think you should be getting enough rest to let them grow. If you are not then your attempts to build muscle will be wasted.

So that’s all folks, our short guide to building bigger biceps fast. Check you are following those guidelines and you may just boost your bicep size and build muscle mass quicker than you expected. Get to it!