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.

Then, all of a sudden, those gains come to a halt – no more gain from our muscle and strength. In the bodybuilding world, this is called “plateau”.

The very idea “plateau” would send shivers up the spine of any serious bodybuilder, because it means that despite our best efforts in workout and ensuring in adequate nutrition, no additional progress can be made.

What does a typical lifter do in response to this?

They immediately alter their workout routine hoping to “shock” their muscles into new growth… They change their exercises and rep ranges… And they implement new “advanced techniques” such as forced reps, negatives and static holds in an effort to break through the plateau into new levels of growth.

DON’T DO THAT!

Exercise variety may sometimes be a reasonable option, these plateaus exist as a result of far more fundamental reasons that have nothing to do with the repeated use of the same workout.

Most of the time, plateaus are simply due to overtraining.

Let’s see why this is the case…

We are damaging our muscles when training intensely and this affects our body’s recovery ability. After our training, our body needs rest and nutrients to rebuild the damaged muscle cells and to recuperate.

After the muscles are remodeled back to their previous state, the body will then build additional muscle mass as an adaptive response to the stress.

Take note below…

As you become stronger and add more and more weight to your exercises, the overall stress and requirement to recuperate continually increases.

An advanced bodybuilder who is bench pressing 300 pounds for 6 reps is stressing his muscle & body far more than a beginner who is benching 125 pounds.

If you are consistently adding more weight in your exercises, you are adding more stress to your body and you MUST compensate for the increase in stress by reducing your training volume and frequency.  Otherwise your body will inevitably be pushed beyond its ability to properly recover in between workouts.

This means that the muscle is not given an adequate amount of time to remodel and to increase its size and strength further.

This is why your gains slow down and eventually stop; because before your body is able to increase muscle size and strength, you interrupt the process by placing them under more stress and impact the ability to recover.

As a result, you never progress forward, and you keep yourself on the plateau.

Isn’t this obvious?

As you become more advanced, you must train less often and with fewer sets!

Training intensity and volume are DIRECTLY related, and are part of a balanced equation that determines your progress. As one variable increases, the other MUST decrease.

So if you are “stuck” on this bodybuilding plateau, regulate your volume and frequency!

Decrease the number of sets that you perform for each muscle group slightly, and consider having an additional rest day in between workouts. You will return to the gym stronger and, you’ll know for sure that you were previously overtraining.

A slight reduction in volume and frequency is usually all needed to make steady, uninterrupted progress in muscle size and strength.

Do not be panicking and jump into trying new routine.  You should now know that your body has a finite ability to recover and that as you grow stronger, you use up more of it on each individual set.

Reduce the volume slightly, consider an additional rest day, and that is most likely all you’ll need to blast yourself through the plateau and into a new phase of growth.

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.