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Miscellaneous Ramblings of an Eclectic Writer

Bill Davis ^(1,694) United States

http://www.internet-marketing-muscle.com

Bodybuilding for Beginners - Part 1 - Weight Training

Posted Monday, April 13, 2009 (223 days 22 hours ago.) Viewed 53 times.

This is the first of a 3-part series on bodybuilding for beginners. Effective bodybuilding relies on a 3-prong approach that consists of proper training, diet, and rest.

In this first installment, we'll briefly touch on training.

First, a few guidelines:

Train 3 times a week
Do full-body workouts
Use compound exercises wherever possible
Train the biggest muscle groups first
Do 1 set of 10 reps for all exercises below for the first 2 weeks
Do 2 sets of 10 reps for the next 4 weeks
Do 3 sets of 10 for the next few months
Concentrate on getting your form right
Think about what you're doing - feel your muscles doing the work!

Your workout should include the following exercises, done in order:

Squat
Bench Press
Bent Row or Pull-down
Overhead Press
Calf Press
Tricep Extension
Barbell Curl
Crunch (optional - want to gain weight? Skip this.)

For more information on beginning bodybuilding training, visit Muscle-Build.com where I show you the exact exercise routines, diets, and training tips you need to be successful.

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Creatine Cycling for Massive Muscle Gains

Posted Wednesday, April 01, 2009 (235 days 22 hours ago.) Viewed 162 times.

Most weight trainers believe that if they hit the gym 5 or 6 days a week that they will build muscle. Often, they neglect their diet. And then they wonder why they don't gain weight.

Nutrition plays a HUGE role in bodybuilding. In fact, bodybuilding is 80 percent nutrition, 20 percent training. Yeah.

Don't believe me? None other than the Iron Guru himself, Vince Gironda, proclaimed that very thing decades ago. He trained a lot of top bodybuilders, including Mohamed Makawwy, who won a string of IFBB titles in the early 80s.

If you are not getting the results you want in terms of gaining size in the gym, take another look at your diet.

If it's lacking in supplementation, you're doing yourself a disservice. Besides a top-notch weight gain powder, you need creatine.

Creatine is one of the "super supplements" that you should investigate at the very least. I submit that you should give it a try. Creatine can help you build bigger muscles very quickly.

It's a "must-have" supplement. But just following the instructions on the container will not suffice. What you've got to do is "cycle" it.

Here's how:

For the first 5 days, take 5 grams of creatine 4 times a day. That's 20 grams total.
For the following three weeks, take 2-5 grams per day.
For two weeks, take no creatine.
Repeat

This will put your body into the best shape possible. Cycling of any supplement is wise, if only to give the digestive system and all other bodily systems a chance to rest. But the cycling of creatine actually increases the amount that each muscle cell stores, giving you the best chances possible to build the muscles you really want.

If you want to learn more about creatine and nutrition in general, visit Muscle-Build.com for all that and MUCH, MUCH more.

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Lou Ferrigno Is In I Love You, Man!

Posted Monday, March 30, 2009 (238 days 3 hours ago.) Viewed 212 times.

When I was a kid, my favorite strength athlete was Lou Ferrigno. I first saw him in the very first World's Strongest Man competition in 1977 (which I still follow to this day), where my most vivid memory is of him bending rebar with his bare hands. That was truly INCREDIBLE (foretelling the future, I might add!)!!!

Then he was the co-star in the bodybuilding documentary, Pumping Iron, in which he played the good-guy underdog to Arnold Schwarzenegger's bad-guy topdog. The movie, of course, was not entirely factual, but it got bodybuilding in front of the general populace.

Of course, when Lou beat out Arnold for the role of the Incredible Hulk, I was ecstatic! Don't get me wrong, I believe Schwarzenegger is the greatest bodybuilder of all time, but Louie was my favorite. He was bigger, stronger, and he had the up-and-comer appeal. Lou never won the Mr Olympia title, having competed 3 times, coming in as high as second.

One thing is for sure, though: Lou Ferrigno has gotten better every year. He's a bona fide movie star, too. His most recent role is playing himself in the movie, I Love You, Man! This movie is really funny, and Lou does a great job (of course, he plays himself, and how hard could that be? Ask Louis Black that question!).

I also enjoyed watching Ferrigno on King of Queens. Again, he plays himself, but he comes across as a genuinely funny guy.

Needless to say again, I idolize Lou Ferrigno. He was my first hero and he has remained in that status for over 30 years for me. Take a look at Lou's web site - he's still in fantastic shape!

For more bodybuilding reviews, history, and advice, visit Muscle-Build.com and The Muscle-Build Blog.

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Breathing Squats for the Hard Gainer

Posted Friday, January 30, 2009 (296 days 14 hours ago.) Viewed 668 times.

If you are a hardgainer, you may think that you have tried everything to build muscle. But it's likely you haven't tried a specific exercise, the Breathing Squat.

Breathing Squats are designed to build maximum muscle in minimal time. In fact, if you ONLY did Breathing Squats, you most likely would gain more weight than you ever have in the past. They are that effective.

Not only do they stimulate the quadriceps, leg biceps, lower back, and glutes, they stimulate the production of increased human growth hormone and testosterone, two hormones you most definitely need stimulated! Plus, the method in which you perform the Breathing Squat further increases all of the stimulatory effects of a regular squat.

Here's how you would incorporate Breathing Squats into your workout routine. First, you don't need a lot of sets or more than one or two workouts per week. However, you do need a lot of reps.

Typically, you would begin your leg workout with a normal warm-up, then move right into the Breathing Squats. Begin with one set, then move up to as many as 5 sets once your body acclimates to the heavy burden this exercise places on your body.

The key is doing at least 20 reps, preferably all the way up to 30; use a weight very similar to what you use for 15 normal squats. At the top of each squat, inhale 3-5 DEEP breaths and hold the last breath in on the way down. Go at least to parallel. Then, forcefully blow out all the air as you press yourself all the way back up. Repeat.

You will find that you are breathing VERY deeply toward the end of each and every set. But persevere and get through it, knowing full-well that this program is to be used only for 2-3 weeks at a time.

If you want even more muscle growth stimulation, superset Bent-Arm Pullovers with the Breathing Squats. Do the Pullovers in a similar fashion as the Breathing Squats, taking in a few breaths before each rep and expanding your rib cage as much as possible.

You will find out soon enough just how effective a training method this is. Make sure, however, that you are taking in about 2 grams of protein for each pound of body weight, or else you may not realize the gains you should expect under a program this intense.

You can also learn more about bulking up and getting big by subscribing to my FREE Muscle-Build.com newsletter.

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How To Build a Massive Chest

Posted Tuesday, January 27, 2009 (300 days 10 hours ago.) Viewed 331 times.

The first question on many beginning bodybuilders' minds is, How do I build a massive chest? Well, you've come to the right place!

In the guide that follows, you'll get specific exercises that have been responsible for creating some of the biggest, broadest, and best chests ever. Chests like Larry Scott, Steve Reeves, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbu, and Lou Ferrigno. The way they build their pecs were remarkably similar: They all used a few complex movements as well as isolation exercises.

The king of all chest-building exercises is the bench press, specifically, the flat bench press. The aforementioned kings of bodybuilding relied on the flat bench to build chests in the high 50-inch to low 60-inch range. Some of these bodybuilding legends could bench over 500 pounds!

So the flat bench press is a MUST-DO exercise if you want to fully develop your pectoral muscles. It will also help to build powerful arms and strong shoulders. In short, the bench press is for the upper body what the squat is for the lower body.

There are a few variations on the flat bench, too. There's the incline, which stresses the upper chest and the decline which stresses the lower pecs, giving that fully-developed line defining the pecs and letting them stand out from the rib cage.

But the best exercise for truly massive pecs is the parallel bar dip, or dips, for short. This exercise is a winner for two reasons: First, it develops the pecs, delts, and triceps all at once, giving you a great foundation on which to build a killer upper body. Second, because it develops those muscles to such an outstanding degree, it lays the ground work for really heavy benches.

In short, dips make your bench press stronger, which makes your chest, shoulders, and arms bigger.

Include both of these exercises in your weight-training routines if you want to build a massive chest!

Two isolation moves that you'll want to include are flat bench flyes and bent-arm pullovers. The flyes give a degree of separation to the pecs that no other exercise can match. The pullovers build a bigger rib cage, as well as develop the lats and supporting muscles around the pecs like the intercostals and serratus.

Think of the rib cage as the foundation on which you place slabs of chest muscle. Without an enlarged rib cage, you simply will not be able to carry the added pec mass. And the pecs look best if they're surrounded by developed, striated, and well-defined supporting muscles!

One way to incorporate these exercises into your chest-building plan is to warm up with the pullovers and then do the flyes and flat benches in a superset. The flyes pre-exhaust the pecs such that it's the pecs that fail during the bench rather than the usual triceps or delts.

This gives the uncanny result of bombing your chest like no single exercise can do. Of course, you could do tri-sets or even giant sets to really beat the tar out of your chest. In fact, the chest, being so big to begin with, can take most anything you can give it!

Finally, add in a few sets of dips and you've made yourself a well-rounded chest program.

In a matter of just about six weeks, with proper diet, supplementation, rest, and the right attitude, you can gain 3-4 inches of pure muscle on your chest.

You have to place an emphasis, though, on really blasting your chest every workout with these simple exercises, if you want to build a massive chest.

If you want to learn more about bulking up and getting massive, subscribe to my FREE Muscle-Build.com newsletter.

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