Archive for August, 2009
Stop the Muscle Building Insanity
| By Jason FerruggiaI often wonder how guys were even able to workout before internet training forums were around. I mean if you can’t visit 469 different message boards per day and post your muscle building workout in order to get the approval from at least half the world’s population before hitting the gym that day how could you ever make progress? It’s bewildering to me.
Or where would the variety in your training come from? Everyone knows the fastest way to make gains is to mindlessly, blindly and without reason switch on a monthly basis from the Russian Pyramid Scheme to Indonesian Drop Sets to Hungarian Hypertrophy Training to German Volume Training and so on and so on. Right? Oh, the insanity… There are a few very important factors that need to be remembered if you are interested in muscle building. Consistency, dedication, commitment are three of the most important. You have to be willing to put in the time and pay your dues. You have to pick a plan and stick with it. Results won’t come overnight. You have to be patient and consistent. If you are trying to get bigger and stronger you have to add weight to the bar; AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE. You have to eat way beyond the point of being uncomfortable. I’m talking about having a fork in your mouth for the majority of your waking hours. There are some guys who will argue that you can gain size on a caloric intake at or slightly above maintenance. They will talk about “dry muscle” and other nonsense. This is good advice to follow if you want to remain a pencil necked geek forever. If you want to gain size as rapidly as humanly possible you have to eat inordinate amounts of food and lift incredibly heavy weights. There is no way around it. If you don’t want to get fat in the process you should do cardio, time your carb intake and make healthy food choices. Although the truth of the matter is if you allow yourself to get fat while getting bigger you will reach your goal faster. More calories, more weight gain and better leverages to lift heavier poundages will lead to faster hypertrophy gains. It won’t be the prettiest look in the world but you can slowly diet the extra fat off later. That’s the fastest way. I’m not saying it’s the most attractive option for everyone. But you’ll get big and strong in a hurry. If you try to stay under 8% bodyfat year round while trying to gain size, you’re going to be in for a long battle ahead. Decide what it is that you really want to accomplish with your training and do it. Don’t over analyze everything because I can promise you that you’ll never get anywhere. Don’t question it. Don’t think about it. Just pick a solid, proven training plan that has a good track record of success and stick with it. For at least 8 weeks. Don’t ask everyone you meet what they think of your training program or what they are doing. Just commit to making the fastest gains possible in the next 8 weeks, train hard and heavy, eat a lot and you’ll be blown away by the progress you can make when you actually believe in yourself and what you are doing. For a proven muscle building program that will remove all the guesswork for you and has helped thousands of guys get huge and strong in a hurry click HERE now. Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He is the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more How to Build Muscle Fast tips, check out http://www.musclegainingsecrets.com/ |
How To Gain Weight with One Exercise
By Jason Ferruggia
When people ask me how to gain weight the first thing I ask them is if they do deadlifts. If you are trying to get big but aren’t including deadlifts in your program you are simply wasting your time. There is simply no more effective exercise than the deadlift
From your neck to your calves, nearly every muscle in your body gets activated and receives a powerful growth stimulus from deadlifts
Not only is the deadlift the most effective mass building exercise there is but it is also the most basic and has the greatest carryover to the real world. There aren’t many times in life where you would lie down on your back and press a weight overhead like you would during a bench press. But hardly a day goes by when you don’t bend down and pick something up off the floor. And that is what you do when you deadlift. So it trains you for real life situations and helps to prevent the oh-so-common lower back problems that plague hundreds of thousands of adults
But the bottom line for all skinny guys and aspiring mass monsters is that if you want to know how to gain weight, you gotta learn how to deadlift
Although the deadlift works the entire body from head to toe, it is especially effective at building huge traps, upper back muscles, spinal erectors, glutes, hamstrings and forearms. Plenty of puffed up bodybuilders have the big pecs and biceps but a deadlifter stands out from the crowd, looking powerful and intimidating with the mountainous traps and thick, ruggedly muscled upper and lower back
To perform a proper deadlift, stand directly over the bar with your shins nearly touching it and feet approximately 8-14 inches apart. Squat down by breaking at the hips and pushing your glutes back. Keep your back tightly arched, chest up and head in line with your spine. Your upper body should be at a 45 degree angle in relation to the ground. Grab the bar with a vice grip and begin to pull up and back. As the bar passes your knees, drive your hips forward powerfully, push your chest out and pull your shoulders back to lockout the weight
When you lower the weight, be sure to begin by pushing your glutes back before you squat down. After the bar clears you knees, squat down while maintaining a tight arch in your lower back, allow the weights to touch the floor and repeat
Remember- a lot of deadlifts lead to huge, muscular physiques. If there was only one thing I could teach you about how to gain weight that would be it. Now get to the gym and start pulling some big weights.
Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He has trained thousands of clients during his 14 years as a professional fitness coach, including more than 500 athletes from over 20 different sports. Jason has written hundreds of articles for numerous top rated training magazines and websites and has authored four fitness books. He is also the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more great muscle building information, please visit http://www.musclegainingsecrets.com
How to Build Big Calves
| By Jason FerruggiaHow to build big calves… it’s a question that I pondered for many years as a kid, being born with calves like string beans. After much experimentation, what I finally realized was that high volume works great for calves. They are probably the hardest muscle to build. Just doing a few sets for them never did anything for me. Since I had no desire to train them and preferred to focus on strength, athleticism and bigger compound lifts they stayed that way for years.The only time they finally responded was when I hit them with very high volume. I usually do this for about a month and then I am bored to tears and stop training calves again for another year. Also, you can’t really tolerate the high volume loading for too long before you will start to develop some ankle/achilles problems. If you are an athlete and run or jump a lot, don’t even consider doing high volume calf work.
But if how to build big calves is a question that you obsess over, and you just want to get them jacked then you need to really increase your volume and frequency. I once put two inches on my calves in just over a month! Now, don’t get me wrong, my calves are still nowhere near huge, but the point is you can add significant size to your calves if you really want to. They were Arnold’s worst bodypart and he dedicated all his time and effort to bringing them up. He even cut all of his pants off at the knee so he had to suffer the embarrassment of having his calves exposed wherever he went. One option is to do a set of calves between every set of every exercise you do at each workout. Be sure to go heavy, get a good, deep stretch and hold it for a second (and up to ten seconds) at the bottom and get all the way up on your big toe at the top while flexing your calves hard. When you do standing calves your knees should be slightly bent on the way down and then locked out on the way up. Another option is to start each workout (or each lower body day) with calves. One day per week would be heavy standing calf raises for 5-10 sets of 5-8 reps and the other day would be seated calf raises done for 4-5 sets of 15-30 reps. You should also consider training the tibialis anterior muscles. These are the muscles that run down the front of your shin. Some people develop imbalances from too much ankle extension and not enough ankle flexion. When this happens and becomes a problem, the calves will not grow. So train these muscles by hanging your feet off the end of a bench and holding a dumbbell or DARD device between them and flexing your feet up toward you for a few sets of 10-20 reps, twice a week. After you finish up with standing, seated and donkey calf raises and the tib raises, try doing farmers walks for up to five or even ten minutes while remanining on your toes the entire time. This will absolutely smoke your calves. Finally, finish up your workouts with 10-20 minutes of jumping rope. The above strategies should definitely get anyone’s calves to grow rapidly in a couple of months. Just be sure to ease into the extra volume slowly and gradually and take a step back if your ankles start to bother you. If you are currently doing only 3-4 sets of calves twice per week you should slowly add a set or two at every workout until you get to about 10 or so. Ten hard, heavy sets plus the farmers walks and jumping rope should be more than enough for most people to add an inch or so in a month. Now you know how to build big calves. For more information on adding size to the rest of your body check out http://www.MuscleGainingSecrets.com now. Train hard, Jason Ferruggia |
How to Lose Man Boobs
By Jason Ferruggia
Seinfeld fans will undoubtedly never forget the episode in which Frank Costanza and Kramer invented the mansierre, which was a bra for men with excessive breast development. While we all laughed hysterically some people were just the slightest bit uncomfortable because the reality is that an inordinate number of men have “moobs,” or man boobs. If you want to lose man boobs then read on.
Having man boobs is often due to excessively high body fat levels. But it can also be due to high levels of estrogen. Having high estrogen can not only cause you to gain body fat in the chest and lower abdominal area but it can lead to numerous health issues and diseases. Unfortunately more and more males are suffering from increasingly high estrogen levels and this is leading to the continued feminization of the male species as we know it.
It has to stop now before it’s too late.
How do you do that, you ask?
Simple. Follow my advice below and you will start to get your estrogen levels in check immediately and hopefully eliminate your need for ever having to call up Kramer and Frank for one of their prized inventions.
1) Don’t eat fake foods. If a cavemen couldn’t eat it, you shouldn’t eat. All the chemicals and artificial junk that they put in most foods these days can lead to increased estrogen levels and numerous other health problems.
2) Avoid eating and drinking out of plastic as much as possible.
3) Eat only organic, pesticide and chemical free, organic produce, preferably purchased from a local farmers market.
4) Avoid all meat and dairy unless you are 100% sure that it is drug free and organic. All of the drugs and hormones that go into most animal and dairy products will wreak havoc on your body, dramatically boost estrogen levels and lead to heart disease and cancer.
5) Limit your consumption of fish to no more than once or twice per week. Fish is loaded with PCB’s and dioxins that you should really avoid as much as possible. You should also support clean water laws and organizations like Waterkeeper.
6) Only drink purified water. Our water quality continues to worsen all the time and is filled with numerous toxins and estrogenic compounds.
7) Consume citrus fruits regularly.
Eat lots of cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower.
9) If you must drink alcohol try to avoid beer as much as you can because it is highly estrogenic; thus the acclimation of a beer belly. Red wine is a far better choice and may actually be anti estrogenic.
10) Eat a good amount of organic nuts and seeds. A high intake of organic nuts has been linked to increased virility in men.
11) And finally, be sure to only train with short, high intensity workouts that actually boost testosterone levels and decrease estrogen. This includes resistance training and energy system work. Unfortunately, the wrong training program can actually make things worse instead of better.
To skyrocket your testosterone levels, rid yourself of excessive estrogen and lose man boobs for good, go to http://www.MuscleGainingSecrets.com/
Be relentless,
Jason Ferruggia
Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He has trained thousands of clients during his 14 years as a professional fitness coach, including more than 500 athletes from over 20 different sports. Jason has written hundreds of articles for numerous top rated training magazines and websites and has authored four fitness books. He is also the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more great muscle building information, please visit http://www.musclegainingsecrets.com
Using the 5×5 System to Build Muscle
| By Jason Ferruggia
The 5×5 system is one of the oldest muscle building programs in the book and has stuck around forever. 5×5 is good and 5×5 is bad; it just depends on the situation. There are a few ways that the 5×5 muscle building system is implemented. The first way that people use the 5×5 system to build muscle is that they warm up to a weight and then stick with that weight for five sets of five. So you need to choose a weight that you can handle for that many sets. In essence, the fifth set will be the only set that is quite difficult. This is a decent method to build muscle but largely a waste of time for anyone but a beginner. There is too much volume at an intensity that is too low building muscle. For beginners and early intermediates, I think the 5×5 system is a good one. When you are neurologically inefficient, you seem to respond better to a few more repeated efforts. I still don’t know if five sets are really necessary though; 3×5 is probably better in most cases. The next way people employ the 5×5 system in an attempt to build muscle is by starting with a heavy weight that they can barely get five reps with and then lowering the weight with each significant set. Again, I think this is too much. The only set that was worth doing was the first and maybe the second. This is not the optimal way to build muscle. The third way I have seen this system employed to build muscle is to work up to a heavy weight that you can barely get five with and then keeping that weight for the next four sets, no matter how many reps you get. Progression is made each week by trying to get more reps in the subsequent sets. This is a favorite of one particular egomaniacal strength coach and like everything else he recommends, is total crap. The last way that the 5×5 system is used to build muscle is by doing five increasingly heavier sets so that only your last set is tough. Basically the other sets are warm ups so you are really just warming up to a five rep max or very close to it. If this is the case, it’s really 1×5 and not 5×5. It’s a bit of a misnomer. But if I had to pick one, this would be the best method. Working up to a five rep max and then a down set at 90% of your best is an even better option for building muscle. Or you could do a very heavy set of five but leave a little something in the tank and then go for broke on the second set. There is some evidence which shows that this second option may even be the better choice simply because the body may not function optimally during the first heavy set. This is due to the laws of homeostasis and various things of this nature. The first set causes shock and certain protective mechanisms may set it which prevents the first heavy set from actually being the best set. The job of the first heavy set may be to provide neural arousal and prepare the body to go all out on the second set. This is something that people have to play with on their own and see what approach helps them build muscle fastest. For more information on how to build muscle fast, please visit http://www.musclegainingsecrets.com/ Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He is the head training advisor for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more great muscle building information, please visit http://www.musclegainingsecrets.com/ |
