Showing posts with label 1rm Anabolic Blood flow restriction training Fast twitch fibers Growth hormone Hypertrophy Lactate Muscle growth Myostatin Occlusion One rep max Slow twitch fibers Strength Training tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1rm Anabolic Blood flow restriction training Fast twitch fibers Growth hormone Hypertrophy Lactate Muscle growth Myostatin Occlusion One rep max Slow twitch fibers Strength Training tips. Show all posts
When training for size, most casual and experienced lifters know that there’s an optimal rep range (approx. 6-12) that elicits a hypertrophic (muscle growth) response. Further, specific movements are often used to get just the right angle on the tricep, delt, or serratus…picture folks who camp out at the cable columns, here.
In my experience, some of the most underutilized movements that help you make size gains are unilateral lower body exercises. This is partially due to the fact that back squat, front squat, deadlift, and leg press have well-document effects on hypertrophy. This could also be true because split squats, lunges, and other single-sided exercises can be humbling, especially if you don’t do them often. Here are some tips for what will help you get the most out of them:
Move In Different Planes
Most bilateral exercises occur in the sagittal plane, or within the vertical plane that bisects your body into left and right halves. Unliteral exercises, like lateral or rotational lunges, allow you the freedom to move in the frontal and transverse planes. This allows for more selective muscle activation, just like the cable column allows you to pronate just the right way to isolate the lateral head of the tricep. This stimulus can help elicit a better hypertrophic response in muscles like your vastus medialis and adductor longus than with bilateral exercises alone.
1 Leg 1 Dumbbell
Another way to maximize your time when doing unilateral movements is to try loading on only one side of the body - holding one dumbbell, using asymmetrical loads on a trap bar, etc. In many lunge or unilateral RDL patterns, holding the load ipsilateral (on the same side) as the working leg requires intense contraction to counter rotational forces and other compensations in order to maintain proper form.
If you’re looking for that next step in gains and haven’t given unilateral work its proper dues, I encourage you to give it a try. Be patient, be okay with being humbled for a few weeks, and prepare to be sore in places that you may not have been before. Happy lunging!
Foam rollers are becoming increasingly popular as an aid to
help treat a whole range of musculoskeletal problems and also to help
deal just with tired and aching muscles. There are advertisements all
over the place for them. Rolling a muscle with some force over a harder
or softer roller has a number of physiological effects that are
beneficial to healing. The rolling can help pump lymph fluid and venous
blood away from the area being rolled. The roller also has a significant
effect on different trigger points that commonly form in the muscles in
a range of musculoskeletal problems. Often, they are not the primary
problem that is causing the issues, but they are secondary and do
complicate things. Using the rollers can help with the symptoms.
There
are specific rollers made for different parts of the body. Athletes like
to use the foam roller on muscles after hard workouts to facilitate
recovery. There has been a number of research projects done on the
efficacy of the foam rollers to treat a number of different conditions
and they are generally all showing that there are benefits, however in
some of the studies the benefits were not great.
There are even rollers that are small and made specifically for using
under the foot. One such product is the PediRoller. The PediRoller has
an advantage in that it can be refrigerated and used for some ice or
cold therapy at the same time The PediRoller is placed on the ground and
the foot is rolled backwards and forwards over the top of it. This can
be particularly useful for conditions like plantar fasciitis which
causes pain in the arch of the foot and under the heel. Because of the
pain from the plantar fasciitis and the dysfunction that the pain can
cause on the way the muscles under the arch of the foot can result in
the formation of trigger points in these small muscles. This makes the
pain of the plantar fasciitis feel worse than it really is. The use of a
roller, whether it’s the PediRoller or not is going to be very helpful
to help deal with those trigger points in the small intrinsic muscles of
the arch of your feet. Also, very helpful for plantar fasciitis is
using a larger roller on the calf muscles. The calf muscles, especially
if they are tighter play a very important role in plantar fasciitis, so
using a roller on them is always going to be of some help. To use the
roller here you place the roller on the ground and then sit on the
ground with your calf muscle on the roller and roll the calf muscle back
and forward across the roller. This is not all you can do for plantar
fasciitis as doing the roller on its own is usually not sufficient. But
using it in conjunction with the main treatment can make a very big
difference. Always consult a health professional if you are not happy
about the way your plantar fasciitis is progressing.
A great workout is just the beginning when it comes to building muscle. Here are some key nutrition and supplementation tips for the other 23 hours of your day.
Americans are experts on gaining size. Sadly, with over a third of our population classified as obese, that's not the kind of "mass" you're after. Yet that's exactly what indiscriminate eating and a lack of exercise can do for you.
If you're committed to a resistance-training program, you can instead pack on muscle by following a number of key nutrition and supplementation tips. But first you'll have to toss out any remnants of how most Americans eat.
To gain the right kind of mass, we enlisted two captains of the Muscle Militia, Twinlab athletes Ronnie Milo and Jason Wheat, to help us compile the 24 tips presented below.
Sure, eating clean and healthful foods is more difficult than eating whatever you want, but we're pretty sure you don't want to look like that other 33 percent.
1. Tip The Scales
Whether you're just trying to add some off-season size, or you're a hard-gainer who has trouble adding mass, growing muscle means consuming more calories—assuming you're already training hard. While you can log your meals over the course of a week to compute your average daily calories, perhaps the simplest step is to consume one additional mini-meal during your day that adds calories over and above what you normally eat.
Whether you're just trying to add some off-season size, or you're a hard-gainer who has trouble adding mass, growing muscle means consuming more calories—assuming you're already training hard.
By ensuring you have a caloric surplus, you provide your muscles with the raw materials to repair tissue damage brought on by heavy training to support growth.
A mini-meal of about 300 calories can be inserted anywhere during your day, preferably during your longest stretch between whole-food meals.
2. Assess And Grow
If, after two weeks, the scale still isn't budging, and you're not seeing gains in strength with the addition of a single mini-meal, add another. (The scale can't be your sole determinant, because you may be dropping body fat while you're adding muscle, in which case the scale may not budge.)
By increasing your daily calories slowly, any gains you make are less likely to be ones that ring your midsection. The extra meal will have to become part of your daily routine as well. This is especially true for hard-gainers and individuals with a fast metabolism who have difficulty adding muscle.
3. Eat More Meals More Often
If you're active and train hard, you likely burn a lot of calories each day. It's very difficult to eat clean foods that replace all the energy you've spent in just three meals. That's why bodybuilders—competitive and recreational alike—eat 5-8 meals per day to support mass-building. While most individuals still eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, they also eat a number of high-protein snacks as well.
If you're looking to add size, it makes sense to eat multiple meals every day, not just three. Taking your meals to work or school means planning and preparation, but it's an essential habit that separates those who succeed from those who don't.
I split my macros into eight meals so i'm eating a meal about every 2.5 hours. I like to eat that often so i'm never hungry.
"I eat eight times a day," says Orlando fireman and Twinlab Muscle Militia captain Jason Wheat, a former defensive lineman in college football who now competes in powerlifting. "I split my macros into eight meals so I'm eating a meal about every 2.5 hours. I like to eat that often so I'm never hungry. When I get hungry or miss a meal, I tend to want to cheat, or overeat. If I do get hungry and need a snack, my go-to is either a tablespoon of peanut butter or a handful of almonds, which I would count against my macros for the next meal."
"This is where supplementation is key," says Militia member and amateur bodybuilding champion Ronnie Milo of Sunrise, Florida. "Supplements allow you to to add extra calories to aid you in your goals. We all know that it's difficult to try and increase your calories from whole-food sources alone. It's a challenging task to eat as many times as possible and then add more calories on top of that."
4. Protein Counts
Protein foods are broken down into amino acids, which are then reassembled in your body. The aminos that enter muscle cells can help repair muscle tissue damaged from a hard workout, enabling them to grow larger. How much protein does a hard-training bodybuilder need? More than the average Joe who doesn't train, so beware of lowball estimates intended for the general public.
The simplest way to remember how much protein you need each day is to use your body weight in pounds. Hence, if you weight 210 pounds, try to consume at least 210 grams of protein per day. If you eat six meals and mini-meals a day, that's 35 grams per meal.
For card-carrying Militia members, sometimes even that's not enough. "I recommend 1 gram minimum, up to 2 per pound of bodyweight," says Wheat. "The more active you are, the more protein your muscles need for growth.
5. Eat Clean
You have any number of food options for a given meal that have various macronutrient and micronutrient profiles, but remember the old adage: "You are what you eat."
"I believe the most important aspect of gaining quality weight is high-quality food choices," says Milo. "Your body needs quality food and nutrients to aid in performance and recovery. A lot of beginners and advanced athletes make mistakes when trying to add quality weight, making poor food choices like fast foods or processed foods."
6. Whole-Food Proteins
Get your protein from a variety of whole-food sources including dairy, fish, fowl, steak, and eggs. Choose leaner cuts of steak (opt for "loin" and "round" cuts, which have the lowest amounts of saturated fat) and remove the skin from turkey and chicken.
Fattier cuts of beef like prime rib and even ribeye, as well as higher-fat dairy products, can cause your calories and daily fat intake to skyrocket. You want to moderately increase your daily calories, and too much dietary fat that's consumed with your protein foods can quickly contribute to the wrong kinds of weight gain.
It's one thing to read that you need 40 grams of protein at each meal, but do you know what that looks like if you're in a cafeteria line or throwing chicken breasts on the barbecue? And how many ounces of steak is that?
Learn how to eyeball what 40 grams of protein looks like to ensure you're getting enough of this muscle-building nutrient at each meal.
8. Fix It Right
The right choices of protein-rich foods like chicken breast can be spoiled by the wrong preparation methods. When preparing your foods at home, try grilling or broiling your meats; battered and fried foods boost fat-content and calories, and are less healthy.
Avoid oils, butter, and sauces in favor of a can of six-pack friendly Pam whenever you can.
9. Don't Fear Saturated Fat
If you eat protein from animal sources, you're also getting saturated fat with your protein. You don't want to go overboard, but nor should you cut out saturated fats completely; they're important for hormone production and the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. "A low-fat diet can, over time, lower your testosterone levels, which will hinder your muscle gains," says Wheat.
While recent research shows that saturated fat intake may not be linked to greater risk of heart disease, evidence does show that replacing saturated fat with foods that are high in polyunsaturated fats does reduce cardiovascular risk.
On a mass-building plan, you should be getting 25-30 percent of your daily calories from dietary fats. Divide your fat intake between healthier versions (including olive and canola oils, nuts and seeds, fatty fish) and saturated fats (which are contained in animal proteins such as dairy, meat, and eggs).
10. Consume Liquid Calories
Prepping for each and every meal is next to impossible unless you work from home, so a scoop or two of powder in a shaker cup is a great way to drink your calories between meals. Besides keeping amino acids in constant supply in your bloodstream, you inhibit the snack attack that can creep up on you between whole-food meals, reducing your risk of impulsively choosing the wrong foods when you're really hungry.
"My days can be lengthy at times with travel and meetings," says Milo, who is also Sports Nutrition Regionals Sales Manager with Twinlab. "I rely on quality supplements to fill a quick meal or energy source. This also keeps me from making bad food decisions when food isn't always on hand."
Looking for a quick food fix? Whey protein isolate dissolves easily with water so you don't need a blender. What's more, liquid meals are absorbed quickly and won't adversely affect your appetite for your bigger whole-food meals later in the day.
If you find it challenging to eat a large number of calories at a whole-food meal, liquid calories can help make up the difference.
11. Ignore Your Sweet Tooth
Sugar-sweetened drinks and processed foods are nutritional landmines. These empty calories displace healthier options that could've been hard at work helping you add quality mass. Clean your kitchen of these unhealthy foods so you're not tempted when a craving arises.
Also, never go grocery shopping on an empty stomach. And eat a high-protein food before you leave the house on weekends when you're running errands, so you're not hungry and don't give in to fast-food cravings.
It's nearly impossible to eat clean all the time, so allowing yourself a cheat meal at regular intervals—say, on a weekend afternoon—can make sticking to a diet easier, and the bump in calories may help boost growth.
Just watch that you don't overdo a cheat meal and make it a cheat day—or worse, a cheat weekend—which can then throw you completely off a clean diet. Use cheat meals as rewards for a good week of clean eating. Use moderation. Resist the urge to splurge.
Allowing yourself a cheat meal at regular intervals—say, on a weekend afternoon—can make sticking to a diet easier, and the bump in calories may help boost growth.
13. Choose Slower Carbs
Nearly half of your total daily calories come from carbohydrates, but there's a big difference between the simple ones and the complex variety. Complex carbs such as brown rice, whole grains, yams, sweet potatoes, and quinoa are longer chains of sugar molecules—hence they take longer to digest and absorb.
The benefit is that you'll have sustained energy throughout the day, and the lower insulin response means you'll be less likely to store any excess calories as body fat. Opting for complex carbs with minimal processing is better for your health and to keep body fat in check.
14. Speed It Up Post-Workout
The only time a high-glycemic carb (think sugars like dextrose and glucose and highly processed carbs like bagels and white rice) is your carb of choice should be after your workout, when your muscles are hungry to replenish spent glycogen stores.
The insulin spike helps drive those fast carbs—and, of course, the 40 grams of protein you consumed with it—quickly into cells for repair and growth. This insulin spike that you can manipulate post-workout is one reason why carbs are called the anabolic nutrient. Consuming simple sugars at any other time is more likely to contribute to gains in body fat.
What you don't need to do is go sprinting to the front desk to slug down a protein shake the instant your last set ends. The influx of protein can wait till you get home, son.
15. Dine Out With Descretion
As obesity has skyrocketed in recent decades, so has the number of times Americans eat out. Many Americans visit restaurants twice as often as they did 30 years ago. The problem with eating out is that it encourages the wrong kind of mass-building.
Make your meals and eat at home as much as possible, and limit trips to restaurants to just once a week
With larger portion sizes, unlimited drink refills, and tempting desserts, you're almost guaranteed to overeat. The lesson? Make your meals and eat at home as much as possible, and limit trips to restaurants to just once a week.
16. Bring Order To Your Orders
When you do eat out, scan the menu for the cleanest protein foods you can find. If you don't see one, ask your server if one can be made without sauces or oils. "The majority of restaurants have choices like plain grilled chicken, beef, or fish," says Milo. "Most of them will work within your needs—all you have to do is ask." Well, they don't say no to Milo, anyway...
Side salads (dressing on the side) and veggies make good side choices to contain total calories. With some dessert choices topping 1,000 calories, you could end up having to do three hours on the bike just to burn that off. Opt for fruit if you must have something sweet.
17. About That Fast Food Meal
We've all been there: You're in a terrible hurry, have no food, and you're starved. Whatever Golden Arches you pull into, you're surround by bad food choices that'll tally up a day's worth of fat and sodium in a single meal. If you can muster any willpower, opt for a grilled chicken sandwich (or two, if you eat like a bodybuilder) and ditch the buns. You can't go wrong with a salad either, unless you slather it in dressing.
The come-hither smell of French fries can be hard to resist; but resist you must. Here again, get the 40 grams of protein and fill up with veggies as best as possible. French fries, by the way, do not count as a clean potato.
18. Eat A Pre-Bed Snack
Late-night munchies can ruin a day's effort of clean eating, so if you're looking for a midnight meal, a shake made of slow-digesting micellar casein protein can feed your muscles during your nightly slumber. A half-cup of cottage cheese is also high in casein, and provides 14 grams of protein.
A half-cup of cottage cheese is also high in casein, and provides 14 grams of protein..
Add some almonds and you get essential fats and some added protein as well. Carb-oholics watch out: Consuming too many at bedtime can elevate insulin levels, meaning those extra calories can more easily be shuttled into fat stores.
19. Creatine Boosts Metabolism
The importance of whey isolate and casein for boosting your protein intake can't be overstated, but other supplements can support anabolism too. Creatine monohydrate, in fact, is well supported by research to boost strength and size gains. Naturally found in red meat, creatine increases the volume of muscle cells, which helps signal anabolism, as well as short-term energy.
20. The Three Amigos
The branched-chain amino acids—leucine, isoleucine, and valine—are also a part of a mass-building supplement stack. They share a unique structure that's preferentially taken up by muscle, and ingestion directly stimulates anabolism. The supplement can also reduce exercise-induced muscle pain and decrease mental fatigue during intense exercise.
21. Boost Blood Flow
L-arginine is a conditionally essential amino acid that helps produce nitric oxide, which has been shown to elevate skeletal muscle blood flow. This not only allows for improved delivery of nutrients but also greater clearing of metabolic byproducts (sometimes called waste products) in working muscles. This helps you work out longer and harder. L-arginine has also been shown to increase anabolic substrates like growth hormone and insulin.
22. Never Miss A Meal
We can all get caught up with our schedules and appointments, running late, and skipping meals. But I'll bet you almost never miss a workout. Adopt the mindset that missing a meal is as bad as missing a workout. That might mean planning and preparing meals on weekends, carrying a cooler, and occasionally carrying snacks with you on the go.
We can all get caught up with our schedules and appointments, running late, and skipping meals. But i'll bet you almost never miss a workout.
If your goal is mass, you can't expect results when you're not fully committed. We all have demanding schedules and important obligations; what separates winners from losers is planning and commitment, not making excuses.
"The best way to stick to a diet is preparation and consistency," says Milo. "Preparation is key. This will aide you in staying on the right track, and deter you from making bad decisions."
23. Make Time For A Good Start
What's the second thing you do in the morning (after hitting the snooze button a few times)? Eating a hearty breakfast had better be your answer, because you've probably gone up to 10 hours without eating. If your morning meal includes a cartoon tiger, we can likely guess why you're not adding quality mass.
Get those 40 grams of protein with eggs or egg whites, slices of beef or chicken, a glass of milk, or a high-protein cereal. If you're in a hurry, a morning protein shake is the way to go.
24. Sleep For Gains
You train hard and eat right, so what could be missing? Since your muscles get stimulated during your workout but actually grow during your recovery periods, ensure you're allotting enough time for a restful night's sleep. Consider this sleep stack to nourish your muscles all night long: melatonin, micellar casein, ZMA, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), and 5-Hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP).
The slow-releasing casein defends against muscle catabolism, while ZMA (which contains zinc) has been shown to increase testosterone and IGF-1 levels. GABA and 5-HTP both promote healthy, deep sleep, which is essential for GH release and muscular recovery.
Finding a harmonious balance between training intensity and volume is the key to making continuous progress while minimizing risk of overtraining and injury.
Periodization in powerlifting training is often underappreciated at best, or completely butchered at worst.
Are You Over Training? Stefi Cohen, DPT Finding a harmonious balance between training intensity and volume is the key to making continuous progress while minimizing risk of overtraining and injury. ► BodyFit Training Programs: - https://bbcom.me/3pFIdyO - ► Shop Bodybuilding Signature Supplements: - https://bbcom.me/3qZaq3z - Follow Stefi Cohen ► Instagram: - https://www.instagram.com/steficohen/ -
On one hand, we can find lifters running the same monotonous scheme of reps and sets for months on end with no concept of progressive overload wondering why they aren't making any progress.
On the other hand, we have lifters who redline every single workout, maxing out at RPE 20 for each and every set, also wondering why they've hit a plateau in their performance.
The ideal combination of volume and intensity must shift over the course of a training macrocycle to mitigate fatigue and maximize gains. Finding that balance between how much work you're doing with total reps, sets, and load (volume) how heavy you're lifting (intensity) is crucial to ensure that you make progress, avoid injury, and are as prepared as possible for meet day.
How you train is just one part of the formula. How you eat will make the most difference.
To gain weight, you need to eat a lot—but smart weight gain is about far more than just overeating. Anyone can overeat, but how you allocate all those extra calories will make the difference in how your body responds.
In this lesson, you'll get a systematic way to eat for muscular gains. Get ready to use your fork.
| Essential Ideas From The Video |
• Many people chase muscular gains by dialing back fuel quality and simply trying to pump as much as possible into their tank. That's the recipe to end up wheezing while you walk up the stairs and seeing waist gain—which is not to be confused with quality weight gain.
• Counting calories may be more important for someone trying to gain weight than trying to lose weight! Why? Plenty of so-called hardgainers just think they're eating a lot, but a more objective measurement shows them where they're seriously lacking.
• Here's where to begin: Create a food diary. Record every bite you eat, and every drop of a calorie-containing beverage, for an entire week. Don't change how you eat during this week; try to keep it as normal as possible, because you're creating a baseline to work from.
• You'll also need to know your basal metabolic rate (BMR)—which is how many calories you burn each day at rest, if you do nothing at all. This is something you can have precisely measured in a lab, or not-quite-as-precisely measured using online calculators.
• Your basal metabolic rate, plus your activity level, will give you a "maintenance" level of calories. You can calculate your caloric intake online.
• Add 500 calories to your maintenance level to start. If you're not gaining weight after a few weeks of eating 500 extra calories a day, add another 500 calories a day, and try again. Be patient!
• If you're serious about gaining weight, never go longer than 4-5 hours—and ideally, more like 3-4—without taking in some quality nutrition. For most people, this means at least four meals a day, along with one or two snacks or small meals. Eat something relatively small, but nutritionally substantial, every few hours.
• When gaining, shoot for getting 25-35 percent of your overall calories from healthy fats. If you're aiming to eat 3500 calories in a day, this would be at least 1150 calories from fat. Nuts, whole eggs, and avocados are your friends here.
• Despite what some bodybuilding-style diets advocate, you don't have to go far above 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight to gain muscle weight. But make sure you're at or close to this benchmark! Measure your protein, even if you don't measure other macros in your diet, just to make sure you're not far below where you should be.
• Keeping carbs at around 50 percent of total calories, or a 50/25/25 macro split, is a great choice for muscle gain, while keeping added sugars as low as possible. When you're looking to add weight, it is definitely not the time to go low carb!
• You may see a slight decrease in muscle definition when you're adding weight. That's OK. Every pound of muscle you add now will make it easier to become more defined later.
• Eat the same good stuff, only more of it. If you're not gaining half a pound a week…eat even more. If you're gaining 1 pound a week, keep doing what you're doing. If you're gaining much more than that, dial it back just a bit.
• Strength train at least 3-4 times a week, and sleep big—like, six hours minimum, eight hours ideally, and if your schedule allows, try to learn that old-school bodybuilder's secret weapon of a "muscle nap" during the day.
• Bulk for 6-8 weeks at a time, but not too much more. Doing it for months and months at a time will probably just wear you out, and increase the possibility that you're adding fat, not muscle.
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