Muscle Building Articles

Bodybuilding Workout Programs

bodybuilding-workout-program.jpgThe quality of your bodybuilding workout program will largely impact your success as a bodybuilder whose  main goals are to gain mass and shed fat.  To make the most out of each of your bodybuilding workouts, you must understand the impact that each and every exercise will have on your physique.  Your bodybuilding workout program shouldn’t be something taken directly from a magazine - it should be a plan tailored to your specific strengths and weaknesses.  There are no shortcuts to building mass; however, the more tailored and refined your training plan is, the faster you will see the benefits of your hard work. 

 

Prior to beginning any bodybuilding workout program, you should see a doctor to ensure that you are in physical condition to handle rigorous exercise.  Once you are medically cleared, you need establish your bodybuilding goals and devise a plan to achieve them.  Ensure that your goals are realistic in order to avoid the disappointment associated with failure to meet unrealistic goals.   

 

When establishing your bodybuilding workout program, you have to consider both building muscle and buring fat techniques.  Many bodybuilders focus intently on muscle building exercises and neglect those that will burn fat.  This approach to bodybuilding will not leave you with a lean muscular physique.  In order to build a lean physique you must incorporate a proper bodybuilding nutrition plan and cardiovascular training into your workout program. 

 

Another thing to consider when trying to develop your bodybuilding workout program is your training split.  This is simply the sequence in which you choose to train each muscle group throughout the week.  Many bodybuilders train each body part either once or twice per week.  When developing your training split, ensure that you don’t train the same muscle groups on consecutive days as this will not allow enough recovery time for the muscles to grow. 

 

To avoid overtraining, burnout or a plateau in your results, it is important that your bodybuilding workout program includes variety.  You should incorporate machines, free weights and body weight exercises into your plan.  Additionally, you should use a variety of training techniques such as supersets, giant sets, drop sets and circuits in order to be sure that your muscles do not become accustomed to the same training regiment every week.  If you hit a plateau, it is time to change your bodybuilding workout routine to get your muscles growing again.

 

Finally, when you begin your bodybuilding workout program, it is important that you track each workout and how your body seems to respond.  Everybody is different and every body reacts differently to various stimuli.  Therefore, it is important that you understand the impacts of different workouts on your own physique.  The program that worked to get Mr. Olympia huge may not yield the same results for you.  A bodybuilding workout program is a personal thing and it is unique to each individual.  If you know your body well, you will be able to tailor your own plan to get the greatest benefits from each workout.  

 

Muscle and Fitness: Why You Need One to Have the Other

muscle-fitness-magazine.jpgMuscle and fitness are two terms that many people use interchangeably; however, while they are closely related, they have very different meanings.  Muscle is just one component of fitness, and complete fitness is unachievable without muscle.  This article will explain why, to be a successful bodybuilder, you have to have muscle and fitness, not just muscle alone.

 

Let’s first take a look at muscle.  As defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, muscle is “a body tissue consisting of long cells that contract when stimulated and produce motion.”  Muscle building is the process of developing this tissue to make it bigger and stronger.  Most bodybuilding workout programs focus on developing the skeletal muscles alone, completely ignoring the cardiovascular muscles.  This leaves bodybuilders strong, but not necessarily fit.

 

Fitness, is a physical state that is typically defined as the ability of the cardiovascular system, the respiratory system and the musculoskeletal system to operate at maximum efficiency.  To achieve true fitness it is necessary to do incorporate aerobics, bodybuilding workout and stretching into your bodybuilding exercise program.  You may also consider incorporating plyometric exercises, which will enhance your speed, agility, coordination and power.

 

Seeing that muscle and fitness go hand-in-hand, you may want to modify your bodybuilding workout routine so you can achieve fitness, not just muscularity.  If you do, you will see that the effects on your physique will be impressive, and you’ll be much more competitive in the bodybuilding arena. 

 

As a bodybuilder, you probably already have a pretty effective training split established to build muscle fast.  In order to work on the other components of fitness, the changes you’ll need to make are minimal.  First, you should be following a bodybuilding nutrition plan that will help fuel your muscle and fitness efforts.  Next, you’ll need to incorporate aerobic training into your bodybuilding workout program.  This should be done for 30 minutes a day for about 5 days a week.  Most of your aerobic training should be done at a moderate pace; just enough to raise your heart rate and increase your respiration.  The only other thing you need to do to enhance you fitness level is to stretch after every bodybuilding workout.  The more flexible you are, the better your range of motion will be during your weight training workouts.  Additionally, flexibility will decrease you chances of sustaining a muscular injury. 

 

If you already follow a bodybuilding workout program that focuses on muscle building alone, you can see that it takes very little time or effort to achieve muscle and fitness.  Building muscle will remain your main focus; however, your aesthetic results will be much improved if shift a little bit of focus to fitness as a whole.

         

 

Workout Without Weights: The Basics

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Using workouts without weights is a highly effective way to enhance your bodybuilding efforts; however, it is a greatly underutilized form of training.  Many athletes don’t include bodyweight exercises into their bodybuilding workout programs because they don’t understand the benefits that these types of exercise produce, nor do they understand how to perform these exercises.  This is a basic introduction to show you how to workout without weights to get a great physique and increased athletic abilities.

 

When you workout without weights, you are relying on your ability to move your own bodyweight to stimulate your muscles to grow.  Bodybuilders who lift hundreds of pounds of weights when they workout often think of this as unchallenging - until they try it.  The key to having an effective workout without weights is to do very high repetitions to break down the muscle fibers.  This will increase your muscular endurance enabling you to punish your muscles for greater lengths of time during future muscel building

 

Some examples of bodybuilding exercises that you can do using your own bodyweight are pull-ups for your back and biceps, push-ups for your chest and triceps, dips for your chest and triceps and hyperextensions for your lower back and hamstrings

 

Wide grip pull-ups are actually one of the most effective body building exercises that can be done to develop the highly sought after V-taper through the latissimus dorsi in the back.  You can also do close grip pull-ups to enhance the thickness of your back.  If you turn your hands to face your body, you will be doing a chin-up, which puts more strain on the biceps.

 

Push-ups, which work the pectoralis muscles and the triceps, are one of the most popular ways to workout without weights.  As with the pull-ups, push-ups are a highly versatile bodybuilding exercise.  You can perform them with a wide base to really target the chest, or with a narrow base to focus on the triceps.  You can also do them on an incline or a decline to change the angle they work the chest from.

 

Another great bodybuilding exercise that doesn’t require the use of weights is dips.  Dips target the chest and the triceps depending on the form you use during each set.  If you do your dips straight up and down, you will focus more on the triceps.  If you perform dips while leaning slightly forward, it shifts the focus of the exercise to your chest.  As with any workout without weights, you can add resistance to this exercise with a weight belt or a dumbbell positioned between the legs.      

 

One muscle group that most people don’t focus a lot of training on is the lower back.  This is the perfect muscle group to workout without weights since it tends to be weaker and more susceptible to injury than other areas.  Hyperextensions are a very effective bodybuilding exercise for this muscle group.  These are usually performed on a roman chair at a very slow pace.  As your lower back gets stronger, you can add resistance by holding a weight plate in front of your chest throughout the exercise.


This is just a short list of bodybuilding exercises that can be added to your bodybuilding workout program.  Try to revise you training plan to incorporate some time in which you can workout without weights so you can train your muscles differently to keep them stimulated - you will be pleased with the results you see if you do.

 

 

Navy Seal AB Workout

A six pack belly is every man’s dream.  If you are adamant about it, then there is no other alternative but to work for it and achieve it at any cost.  Man has always been very proud of his body and would not waste any chance for exhibiting it. Traditionally, US marines are famous for their bodybuilding. So also are SEALS – the underwater anti-terrorist squad of the US NAVY.

navy-seal-ab-workout.jpg One of the old saying still doing its rounds of the heavy iron circuits is that the strength of the man is dependent on the strength of his tummy. While one may be confused about exactly what this means, it is not hard to imagine what the basic idea is.

If your mind set is so stable as to devise ways and means to work out impossible feats with your body and then add some premium actions that you would have dismissed earlier as fiction then this saying hold true for such persons and it is possible for every human being to do it and it is not a thing for only a certain section of people, but the only thing is you need a strong will to do it. 

Alexander the Great, when he started his conquest was yet to learn some basic requisites of the perilous trip he was going to take.  The most important strength point of his army was the strength and morale of his soldiers. Napoleon, the great soldier he was, recognized the fact that a well fed army is always one of the biggest assets of a general, without which he can attain nothing.

A well balanced food is also a priority with seals. Since a seal has to undergo a heavy and vigorous training, his food should be such that will supply him with all the required nutrients. It was said that an army marches on its stomach.

Now let us find out how the US Navy turns a raw incumbent to a 100% battle fit soldier, on whose shoulders you can entrust your country’s safety.  As we cannot give you a detailed chronicle of the training due to various reasons, let us discuss the salient points.

It is true that one has to go through a stringent and well disciplined workout program that takes an incumbent through stages of tough physical fitness with each stage, more difficult than the other. This regimen of fitness consist, mainly of, walking, running, diving, swimming etc. with little or no resting period. This program will take the trainee to his peak efficiency where the word resistance does not carry any meaning for him. He will have to participate in mock drills, which helps him to mould himself as a member of the unit. The tough training also helps him to attain a healthy mental set up. Finally with all these tough trainings there is no chance for his body to retain any fat deposit around his waist. It is emphasized that these exercises or physical training should be done under expert supervision to ensure that no side effects occur.

One another fact that needs to be stressed is that once you reach the maximum level of fitness, this state has to be maintained so that you do not get back the flab, which you had shed. Maintenance exercises or work out is thus very important.  Another interesting fact that has to be mentioned here is that any navy seal has to maintain good physical fitness under any circumstances. For the common man it is a matter of fitness and good living, while for a navy seal, it’s a very big criteria for his job too.
 

Body Building Exercise Regimes For Women

Body building is a sport that requires lot of effort and hard work to be put in. Men and women have always taken body building as a competitive sport with a tough mind and so it remains to be an extreme sport for women for that reason. There is not even a single talk about body building being more difficult for women than men. It has always been like that as it is considered to be the same for both the sex.

Women have come out a long way and they have already shown that they are in contention for all the jobs that men have been doing all these years. One can see women coming out successfully in various fields, which is a welcome change. So body building is not an exception for female to enter in to it. 2-female-workout.JPG

Female bodybuilder can also participate in competitions and they can succeed in it.  We all have same type and equal number of muscles and so they can also prove themselves like men. The bodybuilding workout routine does not vary when it comes to the sex of the people. These training workouts build up the muscles for the body building sport and you can have a trainer prescribing your daily routine.

Men produce testosterone that is developed in their body daily. It has always been a thought among people that due to this testosterone, muscle growth is more. It is very true in this case. Testosterone is a hormone that helps in the growth of the muscles. So men always find it much easier to build up the muscle . In the case of women, estrogen is secreted in their body and it is a hormone that builds up fat in the body. Women put on more weight once they stop doing their body building exercise as the estrogen level in their body will keep increasing at an alarming rate.

Many professional competitions are taking place for women on regular basis. But for them to face that higher level they need to have a perfect and a regular bodybuilding workout program. The shape of the women will resemble after a continuous period of periodic exercises and this shape is bound to be the natural shape of the body.

The fitness level of the women will have a sharp rise when the bodybuilding workouts are done and they will have a good control over their weights. The consequences of the body building routine being ignored for some reason will be spontaneous with the weight gain and the pace in which the weight gain happens will be enormous. So it is always a better to follow the routine regularly and practice it when you decide to go for body building.
 
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