The 10 Commandments Needed To Build Muscle

Knowledge is power and with the constantly changing discoveries on muscle gain and fat-loss we need to keep up to date on these latest interventions. A good example is when HIIT (high intensity interval training) was first discovered in the 1990's, it changed the way we add muscle.

After millions of dollars have been spent by the research companies and manufacturers on specific issues related to muscle gain it becomes freely available to the general public very quickly. With the Internet now available to nearly 80% of the world's population information is free and easy.

If your specific objective is to gain muscle then you need to learn how to converse with your body. When you train on a regular basis you learn about your limitations and your capacity to heal. It is a self-discovery that all starts with education.

Today we can get up to date information online directly from the people who did the research. Whether the information is about some new product like creatine that has just been launched or a study showing the results of training differently for a few months.

The point is that the more knowledge you can get about planning your own workouts correctly the better your results will be. Muscle gain on a permanent basis is not easy to achieve and only comes from planning. The more specific the plan is to build muscle the better the results.

The basic ten commandments that are required to be included in anyone's lifestyle who wants to continue adding muscle to their frame is listed below, the reader should know that any loss of these 'ten commandments' will reduce the chances of you gaining muscle on a permanent basis.

• Progressive resistance is essential for muscle growth and that means if you do not get stronger you will not increase the muscle that you currently have on your body. From decreasing rest time between sets to increasing the weight that you lift, your training has to be always pushing to get stronger.

• Avoiding the dreaded training plateau where you continue to train on a regular basis but stop gaining strength. If your muscles adapt to the stress of a good workout repeated on a regular basis it will then stop growing. There are countless ways to help you break through a plateau that range from doing drop sets, forced reps, eccentrics, tempo training and many more.

• Muscle gain comes from increasing your core strength and that comes from doing compound movements on a regular basis. These movements can have many different variations on the sets and reps that are done as well as the way the rep is performed.

• Training with tempo reps every 6 to 8 weeks can ensure that you will not get stuck in a training plateau. Simple adaptation to a 4/2/o or a 2-1-2 tempo when you train can make a big difference to the muscle growth because of TUT (time under tension) that you get from training with tempo in mind.

• Without nutrition your intense workouts will only result in you losing muscle as you eventually over-train. If you are not supplying the required nutrients to help the muscle repair after hard training you simply get weaker and lose muscle. Knowing how to count calories and where to purchase unprocessed complex carbohydrates, efficient protein and good quality fat is a basic requirement for muscle gain.

• Complex carbohydrates is where you should get your energy and not eating simple carbs like junk foods and soft drinks. You need to know where to get brown rice, whole-grain bread and other complex carbs like Quinoa, oatmeal etc. Any well-balanced diet should have 45% - 60% of complex carbs like pastas and whole-grain bread.

• Good quality low fat protein like turkey, fish and chicken as well as high quality, easily digested protein like egg whites is a requirement for muscle gain. But more important than the quality of the protein is how this protein is prepared. A boiled egg is 70 calories and a fried egg is around 220 calories so it makes sense that the way the food is cooked is vitally important for fat-loss as well as muscle gain.

• Without any good quality fat like Olive oil and saturated fat found in butter and milk your testosterone levels will not be produced released every day as much as it could. Avoiding fat like trans-fat found in junk foods is only going to happen with awareness and education.

• Adequate rest and recuperation is vitally important in order to continue with muscle growth on a permanent basis. Any change in training should always be carefully monitored so that you know exactly how much damage your body can handle.

• The last point is form or technique on how the movement is performed. This is vitally important and is even more important when the movement is done on a regular basis to perform better in a specific sport. Common injuries like rotator cuff injuries can be avoided by simply training with correct form at all times and avoid injury.

When the fitness boom started in the 1980's the industry did not know the specifics on exercising for fat-loss which they mistakenly called weight-loss and some still do. Weight-loss and fat-loss are different and should always be considered when lifting weights on a regular basis.

It takes 50 calories a day to keep a pound of muscle on your body and it requires only 5 calories to maintain a pound of fat. This means that the more muscle you have the more calories you are going to need to maintain or increase the amount of muscle that you have.

If you know your somatotype you will be able to plan your own workouts and nutrition that you will need to gain muscle. A tall and thin Ectomorph will not respond to the same diet and exercise program that an athletic Mesomorph will respond to.

This only comes from knowledge and knowing what your predominant somatotype is the basis for getting results on a long-term basis. Any resulting muscle gain that is achieved comes from the constant changing and adaptation to the current lean body mass that you have.

There are many gym goers who follow a specific program and most of them fall into the trap of doing the same workout with the same weight every time they train. The result is obviously a training plateau when your body stops responding because you are no longer stressing yourself enough when you train.

Our bodies are built to survive and the adaptability of our bodies and minds are able to change their structure completely when training is done on a regular basis. It is the same when eating good nutrition or bad nutrition where your body goes into survival mode and deposits fats that it does not need for later use.

Our built in survival mechanism that the creator gave us can be altered with specific movements and nutrition to insure muscle growth on a permanent basis. The more we know about our bodies the more we will be able to constantly challenge this adaptability.

Fat-loss comes from eating less calories than you use every day and this can only be done by learning to count calories. Counting calories, when you know your daily calorie requirement, is the foundation of any well-balanced bodybuilding diet.

Eating healthy, well-balanced meals or snacks 5 or 6 times a day only comes from planning. If you walk out your home without thinking about what you are going to eat for the day ahead you will simply land up getting quick and easy junk food when your blood sugar drops and you get starving hungry.

The result is fat gain that hides any and all muscle that you might be holding. But nutrition has come a long way and we now know that preparing negative calorie foods can speed up fat loss without ever needing to go hungry. Starving and not eating at all only slows metabolism and makes you fatter when you start eating again.

When we stop eating and go on a grape diet or some fancy fruit diet our metabolism adapts as it is built to survive. It slows down the breakdown of any food/fruit that you eat so that the energy needed to keep your body going is always maintained and that collapsing is avoided.

The contrary is also true as the more often we eat the faster our metabolism goes. The reason why the metabolism speeds up is because it is never short of calories to feed your system. Whether it needs the energy to get you through your intense workout or maintain your basal metabolic rate, the energy will always be there.

The result is that your metabolism speeds up as it does not need to process any excess calories towards fat as there is always just enough energy available to meet its needs. Muscle gain is a holistic process and does not happen by accident, it comes from planning and regular training.

Diabetes is now the fastest growing disease in the world and the only reason that is happening is because of a lack of education. Lifestyle with a combination of genetic inheritance are the identified reasons for this radical increase in this potentially lethal disease.


I have been writing SEO articles online for 5 years and would be happy to write on any health related subject. I can be reached at swilling1@gmail.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shaun_Swilling