Man has always strived for maximum strength and physical perfection since time immemorial. A man with good physique and graceful body has always been looked upon with admiration everywhere. Men like Apollo, Hercules, Samson, Rustam and Sohrab will always be remembered with respect till their successes dazzle the world with more beautiful and proportionate bodies. A nation’s health is the nation’s wealth. This is an old saying and every nation can boast of having produced men of towering strength and enviable physical perfection. Towards the end of the last century the late Fugene Sandow started schools in England to build graceful symmetrical bodies. The movement took the populace by storm and gained such a vast popularity that it spread all over Europe and America in no time.
Body Building is the process of developing muscle fibers through the combination of weight training, increased caloric intake, and rest. Body Building originated from the Greeks believe it or not. Their basic idea was to celebrate the human body and it’s functions. Back then, however, it was much different than it is now. They weren’t so concerned with symmetry, just being massive and strong. Today’s idea of being symmetrical along with being massive and strong stems from the Victorian ages. Now, Body Building and strength training is considered mainly for health reasons and just to look good.
The easiest way to assure both proper energy before Body Building and to replenish that glycogen afterwards is to consume a whole food nutrition supplement both before and after a workout.
Nutrition is by far the most important factor and is almost always responsible for either success or failure in bodybuilding and most fitness programs. Although very complex, a basic understanding can guide anyone in the right direction. As you progress in your bodybuilding and fitness programs and gain further understanding of the relationship between performance, recovery and nutrition, you’ll be able to find certain nutritional strategies and manipulations that will help drive you to new heights.
In order to add muscle tissue you must force the body to add it. Your body won’t just add a pound of muscle just because you followed a 3-set workout that you read about in Muscle + Fitness. You need to give the body a reason to make improvements in the case add muscle tissue. You have to provide what I call a ‘stimulus’. This can be done in many ways and I’ll address a few in just a moment. Basically, you need to force the body to add muscle by subjecting it to levels of stress it is not used to. Some methods are more obvious than others but all can work. Here are a few examples of how this can be done effectively.
First, the basic and common methods:
1. Increase weight or resistance
2. Perform more repetitions
3. Perform more sets
4. Move the resistance slower
5. Rest less between sets and exercises
The key to Muscle Building is diet and exercise. Exercise will improve your muscle tone, help you control your weight, reduce your blood pressure, help prevent heart disease, and it will improve the functioning of almost every one of your essential systems, from digestion to sleep. The amount of exercise you do depends on the shape you are in, and what you believe your ideal physique to be. When creating a Muscle Building regimen, it is important to keep in mind your level of weight training experience. If you do not have a great deal of experience it is important to ease into a weight training routine. As a rule of thumb, three to four workouts per week of at least thirty minutes should keep you healthy. It is essential to do research, or consult a nutritionist when figuring out a diet which will support you in building muscle. A well balanced diet is crucial when building muscle.
“The key is to stimulate muscle growth with the least amount of training in the shortest period of time.”
Remember, if you have not stimulated enough muscle mass in a workout session, all the excess calories consumed are either excreted or deposited as body fat. Studies indicate that 95 percent of trainees simply don’t train hard enough to warrant an appreciable and consistent size and strength increase on a workout by workout basis. And yet they still continue to eat big to get big. Let me point out that you will get big if you eat big but it is often fat and not lean muscle mass. You don’t need 6-7 meals a day to build muscle and minimize the deposit of body fat. In fact, all that really matters is that total calories consumed in a day must exceed your Basal Metabolic rate
The essence of bodBody Building can be summarized as follows: feed the muscles enough calories to help the growth process and no more. “More is not always better”. Consuming more calories than what is necessary to serve the growth process causes your body to work harder to digest food and misuses valuable energy that could be better used to serve the growth process. The rest of the excess calories are usually turned into body fat and/or excreted. If we stimulate five pounds of muscle per training session and our next workout is 3 weeks away we need only 3000 calories in a space of three weeks to serve the growth purpose. Now when you divide 3000 calories by 21 days you have a little over 145 calories a day.
To do Body Building or any task you have to plan some goals by which you can know the work you doing is helping you or not. Here are some general recommendations for different goals:
If your goal is to tighten and tone muscles:
• Focus on increasing reps, decreasing rest, and changing exercises frequently
• Train each muscle group twice per weight
• Perform fewer sets of many different exercises
If your goal is to increase strength and power:
• Focus on increasing weighing
• Train each muscle group once every 7-10 days
• Perform multiple sets of each exercise approximately 2-5 sets per exercise
If your goal is to increase muscle size:
• Focus on shocking muscles by changing variables frequently (exercises, set and rep schemes rest time, etc)
• Train each muscle group on a variable schedule. Experiment by training a muscle group 3 times a week and then once every ten days.
• Perform multiple sets for a while and then perform single sets for a week or two.
Eating to gain muscle mass, power and strength is ridiculously simple. Remember the simple things in life are the things that usually work. Complicated issues like measuring every morsel of food are at best an inefficient way of gaining muscle mass.
A very important aspect of being able to build muscle, aside from doing the exercise, is to be consistent in your efforts. Building an impressive physique involves persistence and determination, but no matter what anyone says, it is well within your ability & if you have decided that you have to be a smart one than you will be.
