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Exercise, Build Muscle with These Pushup Variations

November 29th, 2008    Subscribe To Our Feed

Many people aren’t aware that you don’t need fancy gym equipment to build muscle — in fact, simple bodyweight exercises like pushups can be effectively used to build muscle up.

It’s easy to underestimate how effective pushups can be at getting results. On the surface, pushups are plain and almost boring: up down, up down, up down — that’s it. And that’s true to an extent. But most people outside of fitness enthusiasts are only familiar with the standard pushups that they were taught in their high school gym classes.

There is a wide variety of pushups that you can perform to isolate different muscle groups, but we’re going to focus on five variations in this article. These might not be the best five for all people, but they should make you aware of the variety available with basic bodyweight exercises.

Military pushups: military pushups are similar to standard pushups, except that you move your hands underneath your shoulders and tuck your elbows tightly to your side. This variation works the triceps more than the chest.

Diamond pushups: Diamond pushups, also referred to as “heart to heart” pushups, require you to place your index fingers and thumbs together in the shape of a diamond during your push up workout. While diamond push ups tend to work your triceps more than your chest muscles, the benefits of modifying your hand placement during pushups, even if only a tiny bit, are undeniable.

Fly pushups: adding another layer to wide pushups, fly pushups require you to begin the pushup with your hands a normal width apart at the top position. When lowering your body to the ground, you should slide your right hand out roughly 12 inches, and then slide it back to normal width on the up rep. On the next repetition, you would perform this motion with your left hand. Hint: place your hand on a towel, piece of cardboard, or similar item to assist with the slide, or “hop” your hands in and out.

Decline pushups: Instead of placing your feet on the floor, or using your knees, place your feet on a platform so that your head is lower than your feet.  You can use a chair, a stepstool, or a bench — pretty much anything that will allow you to raise your feet up so that they are higher than your head. These types of pushups work your upper chest muscles.

Stacked pushups: with stacked pushups, one arm is spread wide to the side as in wide pushups, and the other is tucked in tight like military pushups. After 5 repetitions, the hand positions are switched.

Here is a more comprehensive list of pushup variations to build muscle up: wide, fly, military, diamond, fist, yogi, decline, incline, stacked, deep, prison cell, and inchworm pushups.

To get the most out of your pushup workouts, add some weight once the pushups begin to get easy. You don’t want to push out 50 easy repetitions. Rather, struggle with 20 or 30. Also be sure to add variety by varying your hand position for each of the above types of pushups.

Push ups are a great way to strengthen your upper body and build mass, so they are a worthy addition to your muscle workouts. If you keep it interesting by mixing up your hand positions and trying a few different styles of pushups you can increase the effectiveness of your at-home exercising and relieve the boredom!

Home Exercise Equipment - Finding The Right Type For You

November 29th, 2008    Subscribe To Our Feed

Titan T1 The Ultimate Home Gym Fitness Equipment

People try all kinds of strategies to get into shape, from crash diets, marathon training, hypnosis, various stretching exercise, but in recent years, many people have elected to start using home exercise equipment. Many people purchase home exercise equipment in hopes that without the hassle of going to the gym, they will have the discipline to develop and stay in a decent workout routine. However, few people have the budget to put together a workout room that can rival that of even the smallest gyms. With this limitation, what kind of home exercise equipment should a person purchase?

The type of home exercise equipment a person buys should depend on their fitness goals and what kind of work out they enjoy. Although it is somewhat stereotypical, many men opt for weight training and bodybuilding, while the majority of women focus on cardiovascular fitness. For having health that is optimal, a diverse balance of body building, weight training, as well as activity that involves cardiovascular is the ideal strategy, yet for your first piece of home exercise equipment, it is best to select something you are familiar with as well as enjoy. A lot of guys will opt for the bench press, which gives them a bar and weights, in addition to the bench, allowing them to do a variety of lifts like curls, squats, and other bodybuilding lifts. However, if a traditional bench press set take up too much room, a small bench and a dumbbell set can be just as effective. Not only can you do a mock bench press with dumbbells, you can do many other weight training exercises that focus on specific muscle groups.

Many women avoid weight training for fear that it will be too effective and cause them to look like body builders. For the most part, women do not possess the genetics or natural chemical balance to bulk up quickly. Instead, most women who use weight training as a fitness tool will notice that their arms and legs will actually become leaner and more toned.

However, maintaining good cardiovascular health is important too. Some of the most popular home exercise equipment for cardiovascular health is the exercise bike and treadmill. The elliptical has also become very popular in recent years. Many people decide to buy a bicycle for their home exercise equipment as a way of getting out of the house and doing something. However, there are many times of the year that weather conditions do not permit one to ride a bike, or make it undesirable.

Regardless of what kind of exercise habits you currently have, you should select home exercise equipment that will motivate you to create a realistic exercise routine. Your first piece of home exercise equipment should provide a workout you enjoy doing, or that you will enjoy the results of. If you can make working out in your home a rewarding experience and not simply work that you guilt yourself into doing, then you are much more likely to get years of use out of your home exercise equipment.

For a lot more informational value go here: Bodybuilding Workout Programs and certainly try Bodybuilding Nutrition as well as Benefits Of Natural Bodybuilding

Bigger Muscles In Three easy Steps

November 29th, 2008    Subscribe To Our Feed

Adding muscle to your body requires the implementation of three critical steps. Miss any one of these steps and your ability to build muscle will be greatly compromised. You’re most likely already familiar with the first step which is a good old fashioned bodybuilding workout to stretch and tear your muscles but what about the rest? What else do you need to add huge muscles to your body?

When it comes to building muscle the one step almost everybody is familiar with is weight training. Through some serious weight training you tear your muscles while working out in the gym and what a lot of gym goers don’t realize is that you don’t actually build any muscle in the gym. The only thing you’re doing to your muscles in the gym is breaking them down and tearing them apart. Before we look at how we actually build the muscle, let’s look at what muscles are made of so we have a better idea of how to repair the muscles once we’ve broken them down in the gym.

The muscles in your body are comprised of two things: protein and water. One of the most misunderstood things about bodybuilding nutrition is that the primary ingredient necessary to building or I should say rebuilding your muscles is protein. If all you want to do is maintain your current body weight then all you have to do is consume a gram of protein for every pound you weigh. If you want to add muscle, you should be consuming about 1.5 - 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight. In addition to protein obviously you need water but you also want to consume a fair amount of carbohydrates so that your body has something to burn for fuel other then the protein in your muscles and the calories you consume.

One point about carbohydrates before we move on. Consuming a combination of carbohydrates and protein is absolutely critical right after your workout and first thing in the morning. During both of these situations your body’s glucose levels are very low, if you have any glucose in your body at all, and you’re at risk of having your body eat away at your muscles for energy. You remember that protein in your muscles? Well given the choice between maintaining your muscles or survival your body wll always choose survival and eat away at your muscles! You wouldn’t want that now would you?

So make sure you consume plenty of protein and enough carbs to maintain your weight and energy levels but not too much more becuase they will pack on more fat then muscle onto your frame.

Last but certainly not least is rest. Your muscles need plenty of rest for them to grow and that's why the majority of your muscle growth will occur at night while you're sleeping. So make sure you’re sleeping at least 7-8 hours every night and if you’re really serious about adding muscle then you won’t expend too much energy during the day either. and if you really want to grow you'll drink a tall glass of milk and have some cottage cheese before bed. Casein is found in both milk and cottage cheese and is ideal for building muscle when you're sleeping.

So there you have it. As you can see adding muscle to your body is as basic as these three steps. Workout to tear the muscle. Consume plenty of protein and carbohydrates to maintain your weight and add muscle. And finally rest so you can give your muscles a chance to rebuild. Sleep. Eat. Train. Grow. Simple.

Build Muscle Up and Increase Flexibility with Kettleball Training

November 27th, 2008    Subscribe To Our Feed

While kettleballs have been popular for nearly a century in places such as Russia, their use was not common until recent years. In America, kettleball training is simple exploding, thanks to some very unique results that you can achieve with kettleballs. For anyone looking for muscle weight gain, kettleballs make an attractive entry in your conditioning routine.

Kettleballs look like small bowling balls with thick, large handles. They come in many weights from around 4kg to 35kg, but the heavier weights aren’t used often, because kettleball training focuses more on conditioning, explosive strength, and movement, rather than brute force.

The beauty of kettleball training is their versatility. In one short workout you can achieve many different goals. Some of the numerous benefits you’ll gain from kettleball sessions include:

• Strength improvement
• Explosive power increases
• Improvement in your conditioning level
• Increased range of motion and joint flexibility
• Anaerobic conditioning improvements
• Core strength improvements
• Stabilization and balance improvements

But wait, I’ve saved the best for last: kettleball training can boost your metabolism for after your workout is complete, making them ideal candidates to help you build muscle up and shed fat.

Kettleballs do have drawbacks, however, but they can be overcome. The drawback cited most frequently is that kettleballs are only effective for core and upper body conditioning, and not your lower body. To supplement you’ll need to pair your kettleball session with a good lower body session, or perhaps even a quick interval training session.

Keep in mind that ketteballs are considered most effective in interval-based workouts, so traditional body building routines aren’t a great fit. However, if your goal is to build muscle up and you pay attention to advances in exercise science, you’re likely aware already that traditional body building exercises aren’t the most fitting option.

With the many benefits that kettleballs offer, they should be added to your workout session, provided that it already emphasizes recent advancements in fitness science and is a good fit for your goals and body type.

5 Simple Tips to Gain Muscle Mass Fast

November 26th, 2008    Subscribe To Our Feed

If your goal is to get twice as good at something, how would you go about it? I can think of two primary approaches. The approach you select will be somewhere along this continuum: doing one thing twice as good (or 100 percent better), or performing 100 activities 1 percent better. I think that most people attempt the former approach, but the second is much easier to implement.

Taken a step further, to make each of these 1 percent building blocks more effective, you could also alter things that occur outside of your workouts. So you focus on changing your habits and making fractional improvements that will stack on top of each other to give you huge benefits.

So here are five minor lifestyle changes you can make to help you build muscle up.

1) Replace Traditional Cardio with High Intensity Interval Trainign

Traditional aerobic activities have a negative impact on muscle building because it burns branched chain amino acids (BCAA) and glycogen. Instead, focus on interval training for fat burning, e.g. a 400-meter sprint followed by a 400-meter recovery jog, repeated 3 more times.

2) Increase Total Time Under Load (TTL)

Rather than concentrating on the number of reps, focus on the total time your muscles are under load. Try spending 2 seconds on the negative contraction, 1 second at a neutral contraction (bottom of the exercise), and 1 second on the positive contraction. Emphasizing the negative is an easy method to overload muscles and promote muscle weight gain.

3) Increase your Sodium Intake

Sodium increases carbohydrate storage and amino acid absorption while also improving the muscle’s responsiveness to insulin. Just do in it moderation!

4) Recovery

Your body will only build muscle up by repairing it in response to your workouts. When your muscles are repaired, they are made stronger than before to respond to the higher stress levels put on them. If you don’t allow your muscles time to recover, they can never rebuild.

5) Cheat on your Diet

If you haven’t yet read the Cheat to Lose Diet, you should. It’s a pretty interesting theory into how the body metabolizes food. The short story is that your body burns fat in response to the presence of a hormone in your body, and that hormone appears as a direct result of overeating! So once a week, cheat, and follow your cheat day with two very low-carbohydrate, high protein days. You’ll enjoy the cheat day and burn more fat to boot.

Exercise, Build Muscle Up While Melting Fat with HIIT

November 26th, 2008    Subscribe To Our Feed

I bet you’ve been told time and time again: it’s impossible to build muscle up and melt fat concurrently. They say that gaining mass involves an increase in calories, while fat burning involves a decrease in calories. This conventional wisdom is partially accurate, but the concepts are being shaken up with insights into interval-based training. The truth is, you can accomplish muscle weight gain while you burn fat provided that you add intervals to your workouts.

Interval training isn’t entirely new, but it’s more widely understood, accepted, and used these days. While standard aerobic activities were considered the only reliable ways to shed weight, and the only effective workouts for endurance athletes, high intensity interval training (HIIT) has been shown to be advantageous to athletes in all fields, and for folks with all types of goals.

Standard aerobic activity is referred to as “steady state,” which means that you work up to a certain intensity level and continue working out at that level for the duration of the session. During the session, your body obtains half of its fuel by burning fat, and gets the rest through oxygen intake, and by cutting into your muscle and glycogen stores.

HIIT sessions, conversely, involve brief high intensity intervals followed by lower intensity recovery periods. HIIT sessions are muscle sparing and are short, but are killer. A 15-minute HIIT workout can raise your resting metabolic rate for almost 24 hours, enabling you to keep burning higher levels of fat for up to a day.

In addition to this, because your muscles burn calories during every minute of the day, the more lean mass you have, the more fat you burn, even while you’re inactive. Because HIIT not only spares your muscle, but also helps you build muscle up, your future fat burning capacity is increased.

The bottom line is that regardless of your fitness goals, HIIT sessions can help you increase your overall level of fitness with very short sessions. Better still, if your goals include mass building and fat loss, adding HIIT to your weekly workouts is a no-brainer.

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