If you were to walk into your local health and nutrition store looking for supplements that build muscle, you’ll probably find yourself confused and amazed at just how many products there are to choose from. With so many supplements available, it can be a little on the tricky side to decide which ones will help you with your goals. There are a lot of supplements out there to help you build muscle, although some may not be ideal for your goals.

The first thing to keep in mind, is the fact that you don’t always need muscle building supplements to build muscle, although will help you speed up the process. These types of supplements can help you increase muscular development, providing you work out. They can aid you in both muscle growth and the recovery of your muscles. Among the many products available, the most popular are protein, creatine, and multi-vitamins.

Protein is a preferred supplement among bodybuilders and those who exercise. It contains many amino acids which help you to build muscle. No matter what type of diet you are or on or supplement you select, you should always pick one that contains a lot of protein. The ideal way to take protein, is 2 grams per pound of body weight. You can get protein in pill form, powder, or even bars. When you select your protein supplement, you should also make sure that the supplement contains whey, soy, and eggs. Whey protein is the ideal supplement, as it contains everything you need to start building muscle.

Fitness Tips for Life Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks for visiting. To get started why not subscribe to the 21 day fitness plan at the top of this page. Look in the red box, it is right there.. Thanks Bill

I have written quite a bit over the last week about what you need as far as home fitness equipment goes but thought I would just round out this week with an overview of what you should have for equipment. So here is what I think that you should try to accumulate over the next while.

Mats - The most basic piece of fitness equipment is an exercise mat. You need an exercise mat for doing stretching as well as for doing abs and an exercise mat is always good for lying on when you are tired from a tough set or some cardio

Dumbells - Dumbells are those short bars with the weights on them. Who cares about them all matching but you want to probably have pairs of 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 pounds and sometimes even a pair of 3 pound weights are good to carry while you are running or doing other cardio. These all come in handy for lots of your weight exercises

Barbell - This is just a big long bar. The barbell bar weighs I believe 20 pounds although ones at the gym will weight 45 pounds. Then of course you need weights to put on this bar. Remember that anytime that you are using a barbell you are lifting more weight and in the case of bench presses or even military presses you can get yourself into real trouble if you do not have a spotter. Read the rest of this entry »

Information abounds. I was looking around for some tips to offer about increasing protein in your diet when I ran across this article by David Monyer on increasing protein in your diet. As you should really be aware most people do not get enough protein in their diet and if you are doing any weight lifting (also known as resistance training) you need a little more protein in your diet anyway. Read through this and see just how much it helps you learn more about protein.

One problem that I do have though is with the myth that you need 1.5 to 2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day. I could not stomach 300 or 400 grams of protein a day and think that 150 to 200 grams is the max that anyone should take in per day.

The first thing every bodybuilder needs to know is the importance of getting enough protein in your daily diet. Although plenty of protein can be consumed in the form of whole foods, bodybuilders typically use a combination of beef, foul (chicken, turkey), fish and protein supplements in powder or liquid form.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was in the midst of writing an article about losing belly fat and how spot reducing does not work for losing belly fat when this email from the creator of turbulence training came to me. It seems that he has evidence that belly fat can be reduced through weights and circuit training but not strictly fromn cardio and situps

But did you know the best way to burn belly fat is a shock to most men and women?

Even most personal trainers usually guess, “Crunches”, “Situps”, or “aerobic cardio” as the best way to lose stomach fat.  But none of those work best, or even work at all!

In fact, I often get asked, What’s the best way to burn fat and lose my belly? Do aerobics work better than interval Iraining? Does resistance training help at all? What should I eat to lose stomach fat? All of those are common questions.

But here’s the truth. Cardio is not the best way to burn fat.

In fact, I’ve met very few people who have successfully used cardio to lose stomach fat. And most of those people were young men, and anything works for them when they want to burn fat.

If you want to lose stomach fat fast, you need to increase the intensity of your workout by using both resistance training and interval training to lose stomach fat.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of myths in bodybuilding. When I was young, I took many things at face value. I just didn’t think there was a whole lot of written material meant to entertain me at best or mislead me at worst. I eagerly perused bodybuilding periodicals from cover to cover in search of what would satiate my desire to obtain a muscular physique. I spent thousands of dollars on supplements that were probably all worthy of the fate that befell a bottle of colostrum I purchased in 1990. I chucked that half-used product in to a ravine near where I lived.

Early Bodybuilding Mistakes

So naive was I in my quest for muscle building success that I easily adopted counterproductive training methods along with the worthless supplements. One of these, a protocol claiming to add an inch of arm size in 24 hours, sent my arm training progress backward for no less than two entire months. It called for any muscle building enthusiast who could devote one long day to the gym to perform biceps and triceps workouts every hour for an eight-hour period. This left my arms so over-trained that they performed about as well as wet noodles for seemingly endless subsequent workouts.

Good Bodybuilding ideas

Seventeen years later, I’m seeing much of the same hogwash I fell for in my youth as it’s reformulated for new audiences. The reason I know this is that I subscribe to a couple of popular bodybuilding newsletters. I make it my business to keep up with what’s out there and, putting it mildly; some of it’s looking less than scrupulous. Without mentioning any names or products, here’s a synopsis of some of the possibly dubious presuppositions I’m expected to believe in order to shell out the bucks for today’s ‘hot’ bodybuilding products:

• “Secret” protein formulas from the past can speed up muscle growth.

• Increasing a muscle’s “pump” will cause an anabolic effect.

• Eating liver tablets will increase muscle mass.

• “Bulking up” (i.e. gaining fat with muscle) is necessary for muscle gains.

The first on this list would be funny if it weren’t so friggin’ maddening. I’m asked to believe that a mid-twentieth century nutritional guru possessed a since-lost secret formula that accelerates muscle growth. But what should I expect in an era of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and ‘The Secret’? Many seem wont to believe something vitally important was lost and buried in the historical shuffle.

Read the rest of this entry »

Now that you have decided that you are going to start doing weights and doing them at home I am sure that you are starting to think of all of your options and when and how and how oftern. Well I can answer those for you.

The best way to get started lifting weights is to setup a schedule. For most people starting to lift weights the best time to start lifting is Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings or mornings. Mornings have to be the best bet because as we all know the day seems to have it’s own way of breaking up our plans for the evening and consistency in lifting weights is the key.

I find in getting started lifting weights you should do a bit of circuit training. The turbulence training program talks about how to do this but in essence this is what you do. Make sure that you stretch and warm-up and get yourself nice and loose and then do 10 reps of each of the following as one long set.

1. Bench press (for chest)

2. One armed rows (back)

3. Military dumbbell presses (shoulders)

4. Lunges (legs)

5. Curls (biceps)

6. Tricep extensions (triceps)

7. Situps or crunches (abs)

That should take you about 5 to 7 minutes and after that you deserve a bit of a rest. After you have done them all like this once you will be winded but after a 2 or 3 or even 4 minute rest you will be able to go again and do the same thing.

Try to do three sets of this routine. It should not take you more than 20 minutes to half an hour. If you do not know how to do each exercise then go to youtube and find the exercises.

After you have done this I hope that you feel a great sense of accomplishment. Doing weights like this is a great way to get yourself into better shape and after doing this three times a week for a couple of months you are going to feel stronger then you have ever felt in your whole life and your metabolism with be moving faster therefore helping you lose more weight. Another thing to remember about lifting weights is that any muscle that you gain will force your body to burn a lot more calories just for maintenance so you will have a bit of a double whammy to aid you in your weight loss.

One last thing. The day after your first few workouts like this your muscles may be sore. If they are very sore then you can take some aspirin to take away the pain but as the day progresses the muscle pain will go away. This is natural but if it is really bad soreness that you are feeling then it is important not to push yourself quite as hard as you did last time.

If this workout causes more then just soreness. There is a chance if you are not warmed up properly that you can pull a muscle. If this is the case I really urge you to go to a doctor and make sure that you are not hurting yourself. Doing weights is about making your self healthier not hurting yourself.

Now that fall is in full swing and the baseball playoffs are winding down most of our exercise is going to need to take place indoors instead of the outdoors that it is so easy to do in the summertime. There are of course two kinds of exercise, weights and cardio.

First I want to apologize in advance to any hardcore weightlifters here. Most of this stuff is a bit of a review for you.

Sometimes I think that everyone of course lifts weights on at least a weekly basis. Of course this is not fair as most people, although well meaning, have never lifted weights in their life and are not about to join a gym to start lifting weights this week.

The simple fact is that the more muscle that you have the more calories that you body will need to burn in order to maintain your weight. This fact alone should make any person looking to lose weight to start looking at the gyms that they drive by.

The simple fact is that if you have never lifted weights just think of this time between now and the beginning of the New Year as the best time to start warming up to the idea of lifting weights. If you start lifting some kinds of weights at home then you can get stronger, build muscle mass and when the new year comes with all of the gyms giving great deals to join you will have a better idea if you want to join a real gym or not.

First of all I think that it is easy enough to get some light weights that you can start lifting with at home. Either look in the classifieds in your local paper or go to the local pawn shop or used sporting goods place and get some 5, 10, and 15 pounds dumbbells, women can probably get away with 2.5, 3, and 5 pound weights to start with.

So what if you have no weights at home? First of all are all of the regular calisthenics that we all know. You can do things like push-ups for your chest, shoulders and triceps, lunges for your legs, and sit-ups for your abs.

If you would like to start doing weights proper then you have many options. Look around the kitchen and you probably have some heavy bottles or cans that you can do bicep curls with, you have kitchen chairs that you can do front laterals with. There are many options and if you look around I am sure that you can improvise with what you already have.

I will write another article this week about what kind of workouts to do exactly but this week why not just try to find a few kinds of exercises that you can do around the house if you have no weights and if you can beg, borrow, or steal some weights it will make things a lot easier

As a hardgainer you know how hard it is to put on muscle. The hours in the gym, the eating, the constant weighting yourself on the scale, it is all very difficult to take but you keep trying to gain muscle anyway.
There are a few things that you can do to try to gain more muscle and I believe that if you have a plan even the toughest of hardgainers can still gain a few pounds in a couple of months. As you know most bodybuilders not on roids can only gain about two pounds a month but if you make radical changes then you can gain weight rather quickly for a short amount of time.

So here are some tips to get better gains in the gym:

1.    The key to gaining muscle is to conserve your energy in an almost slothlike style. When as a hardgainer you are doing your workout try to get the most muscle fibers working in the least number of sets and reps.

2.    Skip the cardio. Even though you know that you are trying to get yourself in better shape you still want to keep the cardio out of your workout. As you do cardio workouts your hard earned muscle is going to disappear as you lose your  fat…but you do not have any fat to speak of do you?

3.    Hardgainers need to mix up the workouts still to confuse your muscles into jumping in strength and mass.

So now I am going to get into some detail. What kind of workouts should you try in order to gain some more muscle? The key I believe in making gains is to break up your workouts and do high weight – low rep workouts that will really shock your muscles.

What you need to do is go to a two day split where you work chest, shoulders and triceps in one workout and legs, back and biceps on another day with two cycles of this a week. A total of four workouts a week is all that you really need.

One of the real problems that Muscle and Fitness as well as other magazines has is the idea that you need to do 20 sets per muscle group. This may be true for a steroid using pro but for normal mortals we can only get away with four to six sets per muscle group. Here is a sample of how you should do a chest workout.

1 set of 12 reps of light flat bench to warm up
2 sets of 6 reps of bench press at as close to max as possible
2 sets of 6 reps of cable crossovers at max weight
2 sets of 6 reps of incline flyes at max weight.

A few things to note about this is that after the workout you should feel sick from the amount of weight that you have lifted but at the same time you should not be exhausted as you did only a few reps. This kind of workout will tax your muscles with the minimum really of number of reps for muscle gain while at the same time you should stay away from overtraining with only a few reps and sets.

Your knees are the pivot point for any kind of exercise be it running, biking or just about any team sport as well. Being critical to exercise it is important to keep your knees strong. There are a few things that you can do to protect your knees and care for them so that you can avoid the debilitating knee surgeries that so many people in even their 30s and 40s need to get.

You knees are made up of cartilage at the join on both the top and bottom bones and ligaments and tendons around the sides and through the middle. Over time it is the cartlage that wears and sometimes chips off, I can tell this myself as sometimes I will get a bit of a locking in my knees for a few hours until the bits of cartilage floating around become unstuck in the joint.

First of all there is a difference between protecting your knees and having an injury that involves the knee. As you no doubt have noticed your knees only going in one direction and either hyerextending (stretching to far) or having your knee go sideways can create an injury that will take anywhere from a few days to a few months to heal. If you do have a basic injury to your knee it is incredibly important to let it heal for as long as it takes. An injury that does not heal fully will be very susceptible to re injury afterwards as we have seen in many pro athletes.

If you injure you knee it will swell up very quickly as there is quite a bit of blood flow in your lower body so besides the obvious of going to the doctor to have you knee tested you also want to take down the swelling. Ice you knee for a half hour once an hour so 30 minutes on and 30 minutes off for the first day. On the second day and after alternate heat and ice for 20 minutes each as often as you can. The ice will keep the swelling down and the heat will help you speed up the healing. In this early healing time even though you may have a bit of strength in your knee always wrap your knee and be very careful not to push it at all you definitely do not want your knee to get hurt again this soon after.

I had a lot of problems with my knees over the years especially my left knee because I always did come back too quickly from injury. Now my knees seem to be pretty good because my main lower body exercise is low impact. I bike as much as I can and this has strengthened all of the muscles around my knee so that I am now quite strong. One problem that still persists though is running, I can not seem to do any consistent running for more than a few weeks without my knees hurting and having to give it up.

Another thing that will help your knees is to not lock out your knee during weight workouts. When doing squats or leg presses it is important to not lock out your knees as this is another way that you can cause harm to your knee cartilage.

Fat Loss For 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.

I would suspect with a good plan and some exercise that you should be able to lose 4 pounds per week or more.

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.

Fat Loss for Idiots Meal Plan

This is a great part of the fat loss for idiots program
Fat Loss for Idiots food is made up of lean proteins, fruit and vegetables, and the sources of fat come from whole foods (such as cottage cheese or eggs). There are some starchy carbohydrates (such as oats and pasta). The day is divided into 4 meals that should be eaten at a maximum of 2 1/2 hours apart. There is no calorie or carb counting, no limit on portion size - Fat Loss 4 Idiots says you “just eat short of being full”.

After the 11 day meal plan there is a 3 day “cheat” - where you get to eat whatever you want. Then you are back into the 11 day plan again.

The real difference between the fat loss for idiots plan and other plans is that the diet is purposely confusing your body so it never thinks it is starving. This is not a new meal program in that regard. Body for Life and other programs have long advocated confusing your body by having a day or more off of the diet so that you are in more control of how you eat. Fat Loss for Idiots does a good balance of this.

The meal plan is created by selecting from a list of preferred foods. These are then used to generate your meal plan.

Fat Loss for Idiots also includes a very extensive handbook that teaches you how to to eat, how not to eat and what is important in your goal of losing weight.

Exercise on Fat Loss 4 Idiots

Fat loss for idiots is a diet program. One thing and one thing only. The people that come up with the meal plans look at you as a user of the service as a person that is mainly sedentary.

Fat Loss for idiots recommends that you do get some exercise for additional weight loss. They encourage walking and other low intensity exercise of 30 minutes a day.

Fat Loss for Idiots - Is a Cheap Diet Program

Fat Loss For Idiots is a cheap diet. When you buy the diet is gives you access to an online diet generator as well as a diet workbook. Nutritionally it is a reduced carb diet that cycles macro-nutrient ratios (to try and trick your metabolism). It recommends common-sense weight loss principles (brisk walking, plenty of water, etc), and contains only whole foods (no processed foods, high-sugar foods, or supplements).

Here are some good reviews for the fat loss for idiots program:

“I started this diet 3 days ago, and have lost 2 and a half pounds so far.”

“I have now been on this diet for 11 days and have lost 6 and a half pounds. I am very happy with that, especially since I have not exercised or done the recommended walking.”

“On Fat loss for idiots I lost 7 pounds the first 11 days! I’m happy with that considering (like I mentioned) I had not done the suggested walking.”

The really nice thing about the fat loss for idiots diet is that it is cheap, and you buy your own food. No need to buy prepackaged food and expensive supplements which is the downfall that I always find with the more famous diets.

Fat Loss 4 Idiots - Will Work For Most People

There are a few things that seem to be really good in the fat loss for idiots diet and plan. Firstly the cheap nature means that you do not have to buy and create a complex meal plan. Secondly there is a cycling of your diet so that you keep your metabolism from working against you. And thirdly the diet is incredibly popular on the internet and the reason for that is that it seems to work for just about anyone.

Lastly there is a guarantee that this will work or you get your money back. I do not see any way that anyone can lose by at least trying Fat Loss 4 Idiots.

Who shouldn’t do Fat Loss for Idiots?

I have not been critical at all about Fat Loss for Idiots but I have to admit that there are some drawbacks to the diet.

If you exercise a lot Fat Loss for Idiots may not be for you. The diet itself is a diet designed to help you lose weight but people that get a lot of exercise, and hour or more a day, may find that the diet does not offer enough calories.

The diet itself can get a bit boring. There is a lot of repetition in the menu plan but most people seem to be OK with this as this is supposed to be a diet that helps you lose the weight that you want and then you ease off to a diet that you can live with for life.

I Really Recommend Fat Loss for Idiots

There is no magic behind Fat Loss for Idiots but really what it is a good focused meal plan and sensible exercise for beginners. Although this may not seem like much it is very important in my mind to be doing something that will give you the satisfaction that you are making the changes in YOUR life that will help you lose weight. This diet will work for you.

I am a big fan of Fat loss for idiots for no other reason than it is nice and simple, and it really does work, if you follow a diet that changes what you eat and moves you in a better direction nutritionally than what you are now.

And the simple fact is that at $39 fat loss 4 idiots is much cheaper than even a couple of weeks of Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers.

If anyone is interested in taking advantage of the special ebook Beyond Calories as well then do this.  Just click the link below and then scroll to the bottom of the page, go to the next page and about half way down you will see a 50% discount link, click the link and you will see that you can get Beyond Calories for an additional $16.95. The total package comes to $55.95

I believe that for the low cost I have to recommend the fat loss for idiots system and hope that it works great for you. If you go ahead and buy it please come back and post a comment of what you thing of the diet…

As a favor to you to help jump start your NEW YOU program, I am offering you four free e-books if you purchase Fat Loss For Idiots though a link on this page.

The e-books are:
101 Diet Tips (A great addition to everything else you will learn here)
Skyrocket Fat Loss (A Tom Venuto Interview that spans 41 pages)
Training and Nutrition Secrets (65 pages of secrets that almost no one knows)
Losing weight without starving yourself (61 pages about…well I guess the title says it all)

These ebooks alone are worth more than the total price of Fat Loss For Idiots which is only $39

After you have purchased Fat Loss 4 Idiots just email me at bill @ nadraszky . com (just click the link) and I will forward the books to you.

One last thing - If you are looking to lose weight then you need to act now. I am not sure how many pages of diet info that you have looked at but the trouble with the internet is that there is more information then you can possibly read and the problem is that there is no real plan to follow. Buy the Fat Loss for Idiots program today and see where you are in a month.

One month from today, if you commit now, you can be 10-20 pounds lighter. Otherwise, in a month, if you do nothing you will be the same weight or even slightly more than you are today. The choice is yours.