Ten Muscle Mass Gaining Tips
Ten tips to help you
gain rock hard muscle mass. Now there are many
other things that you can do to help you build
mass, BUT these 10 things are the bare
essentials. In other words, they are
absolutely necessary for a successful
program.
1. Weight Train
Weight training involves the use of equipment
that enables variable resistance. This
resistance can come in the form of "free
weights" like barbells and dumbbells, machines
that use cables or pulleys to help you lift
the weight and bodyweight exercises like
pull-ups or dips.
For anyone trying to gain muscle, several
things must be done. One is to train with
heavy weights. By heavy I mean a weight that
is challenging for YOU. The average guy in the
gym usually works with a weight he can lift
for 10-15+ reps. For mass gaining purposes,
this is too light. Using an appropriate
weight, you should only be able to do 4-8
reps. That's it! Using heavy weights and low
reps puts your muscles and nervous system
under much more stress than using lighter
weights for many reps. This added stress
causes the involvement and stimulation of more
muscle fibers, which will cause rapid muscle
growth.
For maximum muscle gain, the focus of your
workouts should consist of free weight
exercises. Not machines or bodyweight
exercises. This is not to say that you shoud
not use machines or bodyweight exercises, but
they should not be the focus of your training.
To get an effective, muscle blasting workout,
you must stimulate the most muscle fibers as
possible, and machines do not do this.
The main reason for this is a lack of
stabilizer and synergist muscle development.
Stabilizer and synergist muscles are
supporting muscles that assist the main muscle
in performing a complex lift. The more
stabilizers and synergists worked, the more
muscle fibers stimulated. Multi-jointed free
weight exercises like the bench press, require
many stabilizer and synergistic muscle
assistance to complete the lift. On the other
hand doing a bench press using a machine will
need almost no stabilizer assistance. Click
here for my favorite mass building
exercises...
If you are working out at home, make sure you
check out this site for some greate home
fitness equipment.
2. Eat More Calories
The most important thing that I cannot
emphasize is that you need to eat to gain
weight. You need to eat like you’ve
never eaten before. If you are not eating
enough calories, you will NEVER gain weight,
no matter what you do. In order to build new
muscle, you must eat more calories than your
body burns off, creating what is called a
caloric surplus. To gain mass, you should
strive to eat around 18-20 times your
bodyweight in calories. The extra calories
will be used by your body to repair muscle
tissue that is damaged during the heavy
workouts, and to build new muscle.
Now, when I say eat, I do not mean just
anything. All calories are not created equal.
In other words, some types of calories are not
equal to others for gaining muscle. For
example, if I said that you need to eat 2,000
calories per day to gain weight, and you eat 4
bags of potato chips each day, do you think
you would gain muscle? Not likely. The
majority of your weight would be fat. Why?
Because potato chips, like most processed junk
food, contains empty, totally nutritionless
calories. These foods do not provide you with
the correct nutrient breakdown essential for
gaining muscle.
3. Eat More Protein
Without protein, your body will not be able to
build new muscle. Years ago, a higher
carbohydrate and lower fat diet was the rage,
recommended by professional bodybuilders and
trainers. They claimed that this was the only
way to eat for muscle gain. Unfortunately, the
only people gaining muscle on that type of
diet were a genetically gifted few. The rest
just got fat.
Carbs serve mainly as energy for the body,
while protein provides the necessary amino
acids to build and repair muscle. For muscle
growth, carbohydrates are not as essential as
protein and fats. High quality protein, which
the body breaks down into amino acids, should
be the center point of all your meals. There
are many studies that show intense exercise
increases demand for amino acids, which
support muscle repair and growth.To build
muscle, you should try to get at least 1g of
protein per pound of bodyweight.
Whether you believe it or not, the fact is:
High protein diets build more muscle when
incorporated with intense training. Low
protein diets do not. Period. Only protein can
build muscle. Carbohydrates and fat
cannot.
Here is one of the protein supplements that I
recommend.
4. Eat More Often
To gain weight, you will be eating a large
amount of calories. Unfortunately, your body
can only assimilate a certain number of
calories at each meal. For our purposes,
eating three meals per day is not beneficial.
If you had to eat 3,000 calories per day, then
you would end up eating 1,000 calories at each
meal. The average person can only use a
portion of those calories. The excess will be
stored as fat or removed from the body.
To enable your body to actually assimilate and
use the 3,000 calories you will ingest, you
have to reduce your meal size and increase
your meal frequency. Splitting your calories
into smaller, more frequent portions will
enable food absorption and utilization of
nutrients . I always eat six meals each day,
evenly spaced out at three-hour intervals.
My goal is to provide my body with constant
nourishment throughout the day. So if it
typically takes about 2.5 hours to digest most
meals, want to be eating another meal just as
my last meal is leaving my stomach. I do this
because my body is constantly in need of
nutrients to repair itself. I do a lot of
damage during my workouts and completely
stress my system. My body is trying to "adapt
to the stress," but in order to do this, it
needs consistent fuel.
If I ate only three meals per day, then my
body would be without nutrients for about six
hours between each of those meals! This is
unacceptable for skinny guys. Without food,
your body will quickly begin to breakdown
muscle tissue for energy.
5. Eat More Fat
If you want to gain muscle mass, you must eat
enough dietary fat. Dietary fats play an
essential role in hormone production, which in
turn is responsible for growth and strength
increases. I have never gained muscle on a low
fat diet, though many people still believe
that eating fat makes you fat. This is
absolutely false. In fact, there is a very
popular muscle gain diet that been around for
years, called the "Anabolic Diet" that
requires you to eat only fat! Butter, bacon,
and heavy cream are all on the menu. Though
quite extreme, this diet does work.
Most people are overweight because of a diet
high in simple carbohydrates, not from eating
fats. If your diet is too low in fat, your
body will actually make a point to store any
fat it gets, because it doesn't know when it
will get more. A low-fat diet will also lower
testosterone levels, something we do not want
when trying to gain weight. Studies have shown
that dietary fat has a direct relationship
with testosterone production. An increase in
dietary fat intake seems to bring on an
increase in testosterone levels. The inverse
is also true. A decrease in dietary fat intake
is usually accompanied by a decrease in free
testosterone levels.
However, you don't want to increase your
intake of saturated fats. Saturated fats are
what cause disease and coronary problems.
Though you will always have some saturated
fats in your diet, your main focus should be
to increase your intake of Essential Fatty
Acids (EFAs).
EFAs are unsaturated fats that are necessary
for thousands of biological functions
throughout the body. Because they cannot be
manufactured by the body, the must be provided
by your diet. These fatty acids not only help
increase testosterone production, but they
also aid in the prevention of muscle
breakdown, help to increase your HDL level
(good cholesterol) and assist in hormone
production. To get your recommended amount of
EFA's, I recommend supplementing your diet
with either Udo's Perfect Oil Blend (which
combines omega- and omega-6), or Cold-Pressed
Flaxseed oil (which is mostly omega-3).
6. Drink More Water
To make sure that your muscles stay hydrated,
you must drink plenty of water. Dehydration
can happen easily if you train hard. A
dehydrated muscle, takes longer to repair
itself than one sufficiently hydrated.
Drinking a sufficient amount of water not only
increases your vascularity (more visible
veins), but it will also help to quickly
remove toxins from the body. Protein generates
metabolic waste products that must be
dissolved in water. Without enough water, the
kidneys cannot efficiently remove these
wastes.
7. Take a Multi-Vitamin
There are many supplements and specific muscle
gain enhancing products that I recommend using
in my book, but I have to remember that this
is only the 10 most important elements of a
successful mass program. So, I have to keep
this brief and to the point. All of the other
products will help, but they are not
essential. So, I will only touch on two
vitamins supplements.Multi-Vitamins and
Antioxidants.
If you want to gain muscle, you must make sure
that you are not deficient in any vitamin,
mineral or trace element that your body needs.
I know many people are going to disagree with
me, but I believe that in this day, we
absolutely need to supplement our diet with
vitamins and minerals. I know that those who
are against using vitamins are going to say
that if we "just eat a balanced diet. . . ",
You know the rest.
Well first, eating a balanced diet is easier
said than done. America is the most overweight
country in the world. Most people don't even
know what a "balanced" diet is. Balanced with
what? Experts will continue to spout, "eat a
balanced diet," while Americans feast on
nutritionless fast food and sugar.
Second, not only do our bodies have to deal
with the ever-increasing external stresses of
everyday life, they also have to combat
nutrient-depleting exercise. Food today is,
for the most part, nutritionless - almost
totally void of the body strengthening
vitamins and minerals it contained one hundred
years earlier. Instead, we now ingest
over-processed, fiberless meals, and
under-ripened vegetables grown in barren,
over-farmed soil, laden with pesticides.
How healthy can that be? If you want to ignore
the facts and continue on about "balanced
diets," fine. It's your decision. But I, for
one, eat a balanced diet, and I still take a
multi-vitamin supplements.
Many mult-vitamin manufacturers try to put
"everything" in their product, but it's not
necessary. At minimum, your multi-vitamin
should contain the USRDA (recommended daily
allowance) of vitamins A, B-complex, C, D, E,
K and the minerals calcium, magnesium, zinc,
iodine, selenium, and possibly iron (for
women). Men should find a multi-vitamin
without iron. You typically get more than
enough iron from your food. Extra iron is
needed only for menstruating women.
It should also contain other essential
nutrients like biotin, chromium, copper,
manganese, molybdenum and pantothenic
acid.
There are some vitamins and minerals that are
best taken separately. Vitamin E, vitamin C,
folic acid and calcium are best taken at
higher dosages. Many proponents of
multi-vitamins cite that taking that many
vitamins and vitamins together causes negative
interactions because they compete with each
other for absorption. For example: magnesium,
zinc, and calcium compete for absorption;
copper and zinc also compete for
absorption.
But think about this for a minute. This is no
different than eating different foods at the
same time, as most people do. The vitamins and
minerals in the foods compete also.
Competition is expected and the body is
designed to handle that. Here is a good
multi-vitamin that I use.
8. Take Antioxidants
An antioxidant like Vitamins A, C, E,
Glutathione, Glutamine, and Selenium are
essential in preventing free radical damage,
which is accelerated after the heavy trauma of
weight training. Antioxidants protect other
substances by being oxidized themselves.
Here's a good antioxidant blend that I also
use.
9. Rest More Often
Rest is the most overlooked "skinny-guy
secret". If you don't rest, you won't grow.
Simple as that. Your body does not build
muscle in the gym, it builds muscle while
resting!
The key to successfully gaining weight is
eating enough calories, training hard and then
resting. No diet adjustments will make up for
lack of rest. If you train hard in the gym,
then you should be resting your muscles as
much as possible. If you do not give them time
to rest and repair, you will not grow.
Period.
10. Be Consistent
O.K., so you want the secret to gaining muscle
mass fast? Well, here it is: CONSISTENCY.
You can have the best diet, the best training
schedule, join the best gym that has the best
equipment, but without consistency it's all
worthless.
Over the past 3 years, I've talked to hundreds
of people who have successfully transformed
their physique. Though most of them trained in
totally different ways, there was one common
denominator that appeared throughout each
success story:
Day in and day out, they followed their
pre-determined plan, consistently, without
fail.
You must find the determination and drive
within yourself to consistently put one foot
in front of the other and see this through. If
not now, then when?
"You never know what you can do, until you try
to do more than you can." - Tony Blauer
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Think that this is too complicated or
inconvenient?
Sometimes guys will complain to me about the
perceived inconvenience of following a
specific plan. I can see it’s easy to
make excuses, after all, I used to do the same
thing.
Don't get caught up in this. The truth is, the
hardest part any training routine is getting
started. You've got to break your old habits
and make new paths for yourself. Remember that
saying,
“Do what you've always done, and get
what you've always gotten”.
Read it again.
Before I really learned the right way to gain
muscle, I trained sporadically. I worked out
when I felt like it. One week I might have
trained five days, while another week I would
train once or twice. As far as my routine was
concerned, I did whatever seemed interesting
at the time. Never keeping track of my
sessions or planning my routines. I had been a
member of a popular health club for 8 years,
yet I had managed to gain not one pound of
muscle. I tried all the popular "weight
gaining" products at the time. Very expensive
stuff like Cybergenics, weight gainer powders,
Boron, amino acid tablets, etc. The list goes
on.
Needless to say, none of it worked. I began to
give in to the fact that I just could not gain
weight. "It's because I have a fast
metabolism", I was told. I had been thin my
entire life, and I would have done just about
anything to gain weight. For years I did not
know what it felt like to weight more than 138
pounds. I was even underweight as a child.
After I was born, I had to remain at the
hospital for an extra seven days because of my
weight. Understand, this was not just some
overnight problem for me my lack of size had
plagued me my entire life. In my teen years, I
took up the martial arts in hopes of learning
to defend myself against the much larger kids
at school. Too ashamed of my appearance, I was
rarely seen without my shirt in the summer
time. To thin, I was not allowed to play
sports in high school or college.
When I speak, I speak from first hand
experience. I am not some guy who is naturally
athletic, or genetically gifted. I had always
been thin, and I would still be thin if I had
listened to everyone around me telling me why
I couldn't gain weight.
You can do it too; I'm not that special.
To read more about Anthony Ellis and his
amazing transformation, as well as learn more
muscle mass gaining tips click here for free
reports!
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