There are a lot of questions that I get asked everyday about what works and does not work outside of the gym for getting better results. These tips I hope will help you get a better handle on what will make you stronger and have more fun workouts with better results.

How much sleep do I need if I am working out?

There is a real need for sleep when you are working out. As you are probably aware it is really hard on your body just having a workout so you need to rest and sleep to heal your body before your next workout. Another good reason to sleep enough is to make sure that you not only recuperated from that last workout but that you have something left in your tank for the next workout.

How much sleep do I need?

This is a very subjective question. Everyone needs a different amount of sleep. I have always found that I can not get my for more than a few days with less than 7 hours of sleep a night and I will feel it in my legs on my bike after just three nights of bad sleep. The best thing to do is listen to your body instead of your mind. If you are used to watching TV on the couch late at night then you will not have a chance to know that you are tired and should be sleeping. Read the rest of this entry »

As a person that lifts weights on a regular basis I often get a lot of questions about how to best lift weights and what is important or not important. Well to this end I have decided to answer a few of those questions so that you can do just a little bit better in the gym and outside.

Should I eat right before I workout?
Well this is an easy one. Yes, and no. You need to make sure that you have sufficient carbohydrates to fuel your workout but at the same time you do not want to eat too much beforehand. A sports drink of some kind would be great and if you would like, even a coffee will do. The main thing is to make sure you are well hydrated and that you are not hungry or bloated before your workout.

Do I need to do 12 or 16 sets per muscle group?
It is important not to do a lot of sets for each muscle group. This will lead to overtraining and will make you actually lose muscle as your body tries to get healed between workouts but can’t it is much better to do a workout where you are doing only three or four sets per muscle group but taking these to exhaustion. The big muscle magazines have been showing the pros doing this for at least 20 years now and it is unrealistic to workout that hard for us mere mortals. Read the rest of this entry »

What is your weight lifting schedule? I know that mine tends to vary a little bit but on a weekly basis I beleive for me the best weight lifting schedule is to workout three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and on each of these days I will do weights.

As far as cardio is concerned I feel that I am ok these days with my bike partway into work and home and the only reason these days that I am hitting the gym is to do the weight training that I can not do otherwise.

I have covered in the past what kind of workout that I will do on those weight days but basically I have been sticking to a schedule of circuit training that has me do three circuits of bench press, lat pulldowns or rows, lateral raises, bicep curls, and tridcep pushdowns all in a very quick kind of set. One thing that I will just touch on here is that i do each of my sets to near failure. Read the rest of this entry »

I have had a question that is interesting about the difference between different muscle fibers and tried to get a good answer. Here is the differences between fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers and the difference that they make to your workouts and fitness level.

One slightly confusing area of exercise is the idea that a muscle can do both push a lot of weight once or move many times. Look at the difference between doing a set of squats compared to running or the difference in the leg muscles of a bodybuilder compared to a triathlete.

All types of skeletal muscle are constructed from densely knit fibers. These muscle fibers can be looked at as Fast Twitch and Slow Twitch muscle fibers. Which kind are you looking for when you are doing weights? Which ones do you want to have when you are running distance? Read the rest of this entry »

There seems to be two ways of looking at weight lifting. One method is to warmup and then progressivley increase your weight and decrease your reps like a pyramid, the other is to just do sets to failure. Which way is the best way to lift?

I always tell people as they are getting started lifting weights that the best way to start is to do a couple of sets of 10 reps per exercise and one exercise per muscle group. to many of us that have lifted weight for years this may seem to be a very random and not very effective way to start weith training as a form of exercise but there are in fact two good reasons to start out this way.

Easy Weight Workouts to Start

First when starting to do weights the seemingly simple bench press, or shoulder press, or lat pull down will feel very awkward and unnatural. Doing a couple of sets of 10 reps of these exercises gives you plenty of time to get used to the exercise and make yourself better at the form. Secondly, when getting started weight training you find that most of your muscles that do not get used often get very sore the next day and even more sore the day after. This is a great thing to minimize since after a couple or three weeks of lifting weights you will not get that muscle soreness that you can get initially.

The first day that someone commits to doing weight training is the day that they want to see results. People are more than willing, especially when getting started, to lift as much weight as many times as they need to. This is bad. In the excitement of getting started you can not only hurt yourself but if those results do not come the next day you will very quickly stop weight lifting in disappointment.

How to Weight Train – What Exercises

Instead it is best to start weightlifting as easily and effectivly as possible. Pick one exercise per muscle group and then do that exercise for two sets of 10 reps with a break of a cuple of minutes in between. Make srue that you go trhough the full reange of motion on every rep and that you are doing your reps slowly, count two seconds for the weight going down and another two seconds for the weight going up. As for the amount of weight it is always good to use a lighter weight as you are trying to figure out how much that you can lift. If one set is too light and one set is heavier that is fine. You will get a good feel then for your next workout.

Here are a few exercises to get you started:

• Chest – Bench Press
• Back – Seated Rows
• Biceps – Bicep Curls
• Triceps – Tricep Pushdowns
• Shoulders – Military Press
• Quadriceps – Leg Press (save the squats for later)
• Hamstrings – Leg Curls

As for the number of times that you are going to do weights I suggest probably doing this twice in the first week with a couple of days off in between  and then three times a week, usually people shoot for Monday, Wednesday, Friday and take the weekend off the weights.

This may seem simple but getting started weight training is the toughest part and doing this incorrectly will stop you from weight training forever. Get started today.

Getting bigger muscles is the top priority of anyone working out with weights. Lets look at how your muscles get bigger and then you can figure out what it will take for you to increase your muscle gains.

Muscle hypertrophy

Muscle hypertrophy is when your muscles cells get thicker. You muscle cells will thicken but not lengthen and it is still up in the air as to whether your muscles cell will actually split or divide to get larger. The best way to cause muscle hypertrophy is to put pressure on your muscles so that they expect to need to push more weight.

Another form of muscle building is Muscle Hyperplasia and this is the actual splitting of muscle cells. Anyone that has seen a giant bodybuilder has to wonder if we all have the same number of cells

Resistance training

Resistance training is doing weights. It is just about that simple. What you really want is to make yourself stronger by making your body more able to handle heavier and heavier weight for at least four reps. Power lifters as you have probably seen in the Olympics are not the biggest guys and that is because their goal is to lift the most weight for exactly one rep. To fool your muscles into thinking that they have to be able to lift more weight they will need to do a few reps at the higher weight. Your body will then get used to this higher weight by increading the strength of the individual muscle cells

How big should your workout be?

There are many strategies to get stronger and the idea behind all of these strategies is to be able to lift more weight for a few reps a month from now then your are doing now. You have a few options and they are these

• Number of reps per set
• Number of sets per exercise
• Number of exercises per muscle group
• Amount of rest between workouts

All of these parameters are a little too much to cover in this article so I will cover them later but for now just think about how you are structuring your workouts and frequency of workouts.

I hope that this info helps you understand how to get bigger and better at working out I hope you that if you have any questions then you can of course leave comments here as well.

If you are trying to gain muscle there are a few things that people do to sabotage themselves. I have done a few of these things in the past and just wanted to drop these here to let you know as I have nowhere else to put it.

Don’t drink booze. Alcohol is very bad for your metabolism and it will stop you from making any gains at all in the gym as well as punishing your body with dehydration, one thing you really do not need.

Although I did once write a bit on how great beer was for you, this is one of the worst things for your muscles as that old dehydration and lack of metabolism will really sap your gains. Read the rest of this entry »

Fat Loss 4 Idiots – Will It Help You Lose Weight?

Fat Loss for Idiots is a site and diet that my wife had learned about from her stepmom. Initially I looked at the Fat Loss For Idiots website and saw that after clicking though a bunch of pages of information I found that the program was only $39.

As a fitness and health enthusiast I know that there are no easy ways out of losing weight so when I first saw all of the hype around fat loss for idiots I was of course initially skeptical.

I have scoured the internet looking for more information on the Fat Loss For Idiots program and would like to present this to you here so that you can make an informed decision when you visit the Fat Loss For Idiots site.

Lose Weight Fast with Fat Loss 4 Idiots?

Fat Loss for Idiots claims you can lose 9 pounds lost in 11 days. Wow, is this possible? You probably have your doubts but I know because I have seen it happen, with the right diet and exercise program you can lose weight and lose it quickly.

Over the last year or so I have received over 200 success stories from people just like you. You can see them below.

After that quick weight loss it is important that you continue eating according to the plan and get some exercise of any kind and you will continue losing weight. The way the diet cycles means that you should lose weight every week with no bad weeks at all.

What do I not like about Fat Loss for Idiots?

Fat Loss for Idiots may be getting a lot of support by a lot of people but it is not all perfect. In watching how people use the diet I have found that some people have real problems with fat Loss for Idiots. First of all there is the dreaded “fruit day” one day of the cycle you eat nothing but fruit. Many people do not like this even though we all know how good fruit is for us.

One other problem with Fat loss for idiots is that you are supposed to eat until satisfied. Don’t stop when you are hungry and do not overeat but just until satisfied. But how much is satisfied? I am not sure what to say about this. People like to have a measured amount of food and doing it yourself is a little stressful. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the years I have seen a lot of flimsy ideas of how to get a set of six pack abs. The most common scams are special machines that will do it and sometimes some kind of drink. I remember at one point Slim Fast seemed to be showing chubby people suddenly spawning a set of six pack abs.

Anyway I wanted to put this notion to rest that there is some magic to getting a six pack. Sure there is some genetics involved in sculpting perfect abs but the two most important factors are diet and exercise.

What? Did you think there was a shortcut?

Six Pack Abs Diet

The diet part is fairly simple; you need to drop any extra fat. You have probably heard this before but there is no such thing as spot reduction when you are losing weight. You will lose weight proportionately, generally, as you lose weight. What you may find is that you have a large stomach and if that is the case of course you will lose that fat faster than you lose the fat on your legs but that is just because that is where the fat deposits will be easiest for your body to use.
Read the rest of this entry »

In the first two parts of this gaining muscle series I talked about the things that you can do in the gym to jump start muscle growth, everything from types of sets and reps to the amount of time per workout. Now it is time to look at the factors outside the gym that can help you in gaining muscle.

Fist of all most people that are serious about weight lifting will tell you that the gym is at most half of the factor important for gaining muscle, the rest is rest and diet so I will deal with them here.

Rest to help muscle gains

Most people know that there is an important correlation between rest and muscle recovery but there is more to recovery than getting a lot of sleep, in fact getting eight hours of sleep per night is only the first part of your gaining muscle rest and recovery. One of the things that you must do to allow your muscles to recover is to watch your amount of exercise. You heavy workouts are very important to help you gain muscle but other things like cardio or extra exercise can be a very dangerous factor toward overtraining your muscles.

You want to make sure that you workouts are really great in stressing your muscle but if the next day you do a tough cardio workout it will be very difficult for your body to heal your muscles in your off time. If you are concerned that this lack of cardio may lead to some weight gain that is fat and not muscle than you are right.
Read the rest of this entry »