Pre-workout nutrition is important in preparing you to have a good & effective workout because it will achieve these main goals:

1. Maximize your strength potential during the workout

2. Provide a steady stream of energy to your body so that you can be focus and carry the weights with intensity throughout your workout.

3. Minimize muscle breakdown

Your pre-workout nutrition should be taken around an hour before workout.   Do not take heavy solid food, as this will make you feel sick during your workout.  Eat fairly small meals for easy digestion and never workout on an empty stomach.

An ideal pre-workout meal should be made up of around 30-40 grams of protein with a combination of casein and whey protein.  You can do this by mixing 300-400ml of skim milk with 25-30 grams of whey protein.   Whey protein is made up of BCAA, the amino acids that prevent muscle catabolism during workouts.  However, you want the protein to release slowly so as to last for your entire duration of your workout.  That is the reason of mixing it with milk.

Besides protein, you need some carbs to provide you the energy.  You also want the carbs to release slowly to last you for the entire workout duration.  To achieve this, consume 1-2 portions of a high quality, low glycemic carbohydrates such as oatmeal, brown rice, or apples.  Don’t consume high glycemic carbohydrates before your workout because this type of carbohydrate is released rapidly into your bloodstream and will cause a surge of insulin followed by a sharp fall.  When it falls, you will feel sluggish and weak and will impact your workout intensity seriously.

Do not forget to drink enough water too.  Water will keep your muscle hydrated and is critical to keep your strength and energy levels high along with your pre-workout meal.

In summary, your pre-workout meal should be taken around an hour before workout with :

1. protein – mixing around 25-30 grams of whey protein with 300-400ml of milk.

2. low glycemic carbohydrates – 1-2 servings of carbohydrates such as oatmeal, brown rice, or apples

3. water

(Optional – drink a cup of coffee before workout to help you to be more focus)

If you found this article helpful, make sure to visit www.MuscleGainTruth.com for more highly effective muscle-building tips and tricks. If you want to build muscle fast, then you can’t be making mistakes that will sabotage your efforts.

Priority is always given to getting an effective training program from the Internet or bodybuilding magazine, or trying a super supplement hoping to build muscle & gain weight fast.  If you were new to bodybuilding, how’d you ensure in getting the best advice?  How often should you train each week?  How long to train per training session? How many sets and reps to use? Which are the best exercises to perform to generate the best results?

There will be no end in debating about the best methods to build muscle and gain weight fast.

The problem is – besides all details like exercise selection, sets, reps, supplements and etc., many bodybuilders ended up losing sight of their ultimate goals because they forgot one very important criteria…i.e. for them to progress to next stage in building muscle and gain weight.

You see… To pack on muscle and get bigger, you must get stronger progressively.

When you train with weights, your muscle will grow bigger and stronger in response to stress.  Continuous stress from your weekly training with the progressive increase in weights will force your body to recognize it as a threat to its survival, and therefore will increase its size and strength in preparation for future threats.

Therefore, you should focus on increasing the weights in the lifting or by forcing an extra rep every week.  The key here is to increase the load and stress progressively, and this forces the muscles to continue to grow larger and stronger in response to the increasing stress.

To make sure you are progressing, you need to record your training details down with a pen and paper!  (or you may record it into a phone or PDA).  This will allow you to look closely at each of your training session, and focus on the amount of weights or the number of reps, and make it a point to increase one or both of them from week to week.

Your effort in training program and nutrition is also important, but if you don’t increase your strength progressively every week, you will not gain muscle, and recording your progress down (with a pen and paper) is crucial to help you achieve your goal of building muscle and gain weight fast.

Happy bodybuilding!

If you found this article helpful, make sure to visit  www.MuscleGainTruth.com for more highly effective muscle-building tips and tricks. If you want to build muscle fast, then you can’t be making mistakes that will sabotage your efforts.

Deadlifts is the best exercise to help you pack on serious muscle mass.  Don’t you want to build a rock-solid physique that everyone aspires to?  It will help you to get that body you want faster than any other exercises.

Why other exercises such as bench press, barbell curl or cables aren’t providing us the same amount of gains the way deadlifts do?

It is because deadlifts works on every single part of your body.  It stresses all your muscles to a high degree simply by this raw power motion.  Deadlifts is high intensity in nature and therefore it triggers your body to secrete testosterone and growth hormone at a rapid rate.  These are very powerful anabolic substances and are very important in gaining lean muscle mass.  That is the reason that deadlifts is the best bodybuilding exercise for you.

Once you start doing deadlifts consistently, you will to see total body size and strength gains due to the nice “spill over effect.”.  You’ll see gains in your other muscle groups, but you will first see gains in your thighs as well as lower and upper back.  Eventually, these gains help you improve in your other lifts, such as the bench press and barbell row.

Are you now convinced to start doing deadlifts?

There are many types of deadlifts and this article will only describe the standard bent-legged deadlifts.

To perform it correctly, find a flat surface, load up your barbell with enough weights, feet at shoulder-width apart, bar close to your shins, and grab the bar just outside the span of your legs. Your grips can be one palm facing in and one palm facing out, or with an overhand grip.  After that, straighten your back, and pull the bar off the ground.

Your movement should begin from a squatting position and then use your leg muscles to drive the weight off of the ground.  During the pulling, make sure that your back is always flat, keep your abs tight and look straight ahead.  As you pull the weights up, keep the bar close to your body until you ascend to a standing position.  To descend, continue to keep your back flat all the way, tighten your abs and look straight ahead while you put the weights back down.

Once the plates are back on the ground, take a deep breath, and then pull that weights back up again. You should continue this lift till your legs hit muscular failure or your form starts to slip.

Pay great attention to your form when doing deadlifts.  Remember to always keep your back flat and keep the bar close to your body. Keep your abs tight during the motion will minimize the stress on your lower back.  Please make sure to keep this in mind so as to avoid injury due to the large amount of weights you are handling for deadlifts.

If this is your first time doing deadlifts, practise using light weights until you master the correct form.  You may also use lifting straps to prevent your grips give way before the rest of your body does.

Sets – perform 1 to 2 sets once a week (note: you should muster all your energy when doing deadlifts)

Reps – 5 to 7 (it is ok if you prefer to do more than this as long as it works for you)

In summary, deadlifts is the best bodybuilding exercise and you shouldn’t omit it if you can.  It is certainly an exercise which you need to muster all your energy to perform it correctly.  You need to overcome the painful experience and bust though the discomfort during this exercise.  However, remember, your will definitely be rewarded with a rock-solid physique that everyone look at you with respect.

If you found this article helpful, make sure to visit www.MuscleGainTruth.com for more highly effective muscle-building tips and tricks. If you want to build muscle fast, then you can’t be making mistakes that will sabotage your efforts.

There are so much information from bodybuilding magazines, and tons of information from the internet.  Where do you start?

Some beginners will pick up some training routines and start to train.  They train their chests – upper, middle, lower, flyes…; train their biceps – targeting with different angles; and etc.

Is there anything wrong with this?

The answer is yes!

If your objective is to build huge muscle fast, target training is not the answer for beginner.

Instead of asking these questions:

“What can I do to target my inner chest?”
“Which exercise is best to build up the lower biceps?”
“My rear delts are lagging behind my front delts. What should I do?”
You should ask these:

“Have I packed on at least 15-25 pounds of clean, muscular body weight since I began my muscle building program?”

“Am I training my squat, deadlift, bench press, row (and every other major compound exercise) and feel substantially heavy for my body”

“Have I added at least a couple of inches to all of my major muscle groups?”

“Are my clothes fitting significantly tighter? Are my friends and family noticing measurable changes in my physique? Am I beginning to gain a reputation as a muscular guy that people aspire to look like?”

Worrying on the smaller details of your physique is quite simply a waste of time for beginner.  Why?  It’s because diverting your focus onto these small and trivial issues will only serve to distract you from the most important and immediate task at hand.

And what is the most important and immediate task for a bodybuilding beginner?

It is to pack as much raw muscle size and strength onto your frame as humanly possible!

That’s right; forget about the nitty-gritty details of whether your biceps match your triceps or whether your chest is on par with your back. At this point, you should just focus on thickening up your entire body as a whole to a significant degree and worry the details later.

If you’re still a beginner and have been training consistently for less than a year, then stop obsessing over the details.  Train yourself with a sensible, rational weight training system and stick to it religiously.

Write down how you perform in every single workout – the exercise…, the weight you use, sets & reps as well as how you feel in each exercise.  Muster every ounce of energy you can on adding as much weight to the bar on a consistent basis as you possibly can.

Train yourself with all of the biggest, most difficult compound exercises and exert through discomfort zones with passion and intensity.

Prepare and pack in at least 5 or 6 properly balanced muscle building meals every day of the week, every week of the month and every month of the year.

Drink adequate water, get enough rest and take your supplements whenever necessary.

In other words: PAY YOUR DUES FIRST!

If you’re an experience bodybuilder, you know there is no temporary fix here.  You just need to get yourself to the most efficient path possible, which is focus on the fundamentals first and the details later.  You should not attempt to fine-tune and balance out your physique until you have a considerable amount of foundational muscle mass to work with first.

Building muscle requires consistency, willpower and determination. Stop over-analyzing… Stop obsessing… Stop spreading out your focus onto every single minute issue that pops up… until you’ve earned yourself an impressive and muscular body…

Get into the gym and TRAIN!

If you want to “build your foundation” in the fastest and most efficient manner possible, make sure to visit www.MuscleGainTruth.com for more highly effective muscle-building tips and tricks. If you want to build muscle fast, then you can’t be making mistakes that will sabotage your efforts.