5/28/2017 0 Comments Rippetoe Diet Fat GramsTop 7 Mistakes Most People Make. It’s completely fine to make mistakes, we’re all humans after all. What’s not OK, is to make the same mistakes over and over again. Based on my own experience and experience from other people I’ve helped gain muscle mass, I came up with the following top 7 mistakes. Avoid these mistakes and you’ll be experiencing amazing muscle gains. Mistake #1: Not tracking the food intake. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Ironically this aspect of fitness rarely gets any attention. It’s true that calories in calories out model of thinking has it’s flaws, but if you want to gain muscle mass then it’s important that you take in more (quality) calories than you consume. When eating clean food it’s pretty damn hard to eat enough food for a caloric surplus since clean foods make you feel full quicker. If, for example, you’re supposed to eat 2. At least that was my experience. When you’re past the beginner stage, you have to be increasingly more methodical in order to gain additional muscle mass. The best way to track the amounts of food you eat is to use a tracking journal (physical or electronic). By using a simple online food diary like Fit. The 70's bodybuilding routine as noted by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frank Zane, Franco Columbo, and other top Physique stars of the 1970's - and how anyone can achieve. Piyush Dimri April 18, 2016. It have been following you from quite a long time. I really liked your idea about LCHF diet and your pursuit of cracking insulin. Maximize back width and thickness with these muscle-building exercises. From pullups to barbells, find the right moves to construct traps, delts, and rhomboids. Charles Poliquin on Strength Training, Shredding Body Fat, and Increasing Testosterone and Sex Drive 315 Comments. Day, it’s really easy to keep track of the amounts of food you eat. It takes me less than two minutes every day to log everything in. With over countless foods already available, you can rest assured that no matter what you eat will already be in the database with all of the nutritional data. In case you can’t find a specific food item, Fit. Day allows you to add a custom food item. At first it’ll seem a bit overwhelming to keep track of all the foods you eat but if you’re disciplined enough, and you’re eating the same foods every day then keeping track of the food intake will take you just a couple of seconds. Mistake #2: Not eating enough food. This one is closely related to the first mistake and I’d say that this is the biggest sticking point for most people. As mentioned before, if you’re not tracking the foods you eat there’s a big chance that you’re not going to eat enough food. If you’re undereating then you can forget about strength and brawn (unless you’re a beginner). When you’re starting out you’re going to see progress no matter what. You can gain muscle mass by undereating and eating shit as long as you train with intensity. Unfortunately for everybody, the beginner phase is over quickly. The body is fast to adapt to new stimuli and after a couple of weeks and maybe months of beginners gains, the progress in the gym suddenly comes to a halt. Your ability to gain muscle mass from this moment on is greatly diminished, where every additional pound of muscle requires more and more effort. The biggest reason why most people are not eating enough food is because they’re trying to eat different things every day. Their main concern is that if you eat the same stuff every day you’re going to be sick or something. This is complete and utter bullshit if you ask me because when you think about it, the average western man or women predominantly eats the same stuff every day. If you’re eating six clean meals a day (every meal different) then you probably have more variety in your diet than the average Joe and Jane have in a week. Eating the same foods every day will save you hours upon hours of food preparation and nerves. Eating the same foods doesn’t mean that your meals have to be boring, but quite the contrary. You’ll still be able to make delicious meals but they will take much less to prepare since you’ve streamlined the whole cooking process by cooking the same stuff every day. This is what kills the enthusiasm for most people . Nobody wants to spend their whole day in the kitchen cooking and thinking about what they’re going to eat tomorrow. Life is already complicated as it is, so why make it even more complicated? Zero carb is getting (relatively) popular. A handful of valued MDA forum members eat little-to-no-carb, and several others probably imagine it's ideal even.Just eat the same meals every day. Easier to track and easier to stick with. Enter your email below to get your 1. Part Muscle Building Course . Ironically it’s also the easiest one to address, but somehow I never get to sleep early. Your body needs quality rest, especially if you’re involved in some sort of strenuous physical activity like weight training. When you’re lifting heavy weights you make micro tears on your muscle fibers. Phase 1 of the RSP Chiseled Trainer begins with an intense chest workout in the morning and an afternoon HIIT cardio session. Complete guide to increasing your strength. Learn how to increase strength and power with the right workouts and diet plan. Weight Gain Calculator. Determine the amount of Calories and grams of food required to bulk up, build muscle, and gain weight. How to Build Muscle for Skinny Guys: My 62lbs Weight Gain Transformation. Updated on January 4, 2016 by Regev Elya. For 1 Year I was following my bodyweight program for skinny-fat guys, training just 4 days a week at home for less than one hour each time. If you ain’t getting enough sleep then your body is unable to repair these micro lesions and this in turn can lead to overtraining and serious injuries. It’s all about the hormones. Our sleep is divided into cycles which consist of non- REM and REM phases. It’s during our non- REM deep sleep phase that we get our biggest growth hormone spike. In short, HGH (human growth hormone) is an anabolic agent that promotes muscle recovery and muscle growth among other things. So in order to gain muscle mass you want to make sure that you get the biggest possible release of growth hormone, every night. But how exactly can you do that? Since our growth hormone is released during the deep sleep phase and the deepest sleep occurs around 2 am you want to make sure that you go to sleep in the early hours of the night. There is a greater amount of deep sleep earlier in the sleep cycle, while the proportion of REM sleep increases later in the sleep cycle and just before natural awakening. During our restorative deep sleep phase, our blood pressure drops and our breathing becomes deeper and slower. With our brain taking a much needed time out from our daily preoccupations, there’s more blood available to flow into our muscles. Increased nutrient- rich blood flow (if you have your diet in check) combined with high levels of growth hormone, will drastically improve your ability to gain muscle mass. Lack of sleep and erratic sleeping schedule, on the other hand, can quickly decrease the amount of growth hormone that your pituitary gland secrets during your deep sleep. Growth hormone deficiency is associated with increased obesity, loss of muscle mass and reduced exercise capacity. The biggest reason why I’m not going to sleep early is because I keep my laptop on after 8pm. In order to go to bed early (approx 1. In my case, I try to turn off my gadgets at around 8 pm and every time I do this, I go to sleep early with no problems. It’s recommended that you get at least 8 to 9 hours of quality sleep per night. Sleep less than this and you’re compromising your progress in the gym. It’s possible to decrease the time you need to sleep in order to get fully rested by developing and sticking to a consistent sleeping schedule, but if gaining muscle mass is your goal, err on the side of 8 to 9 hours. Here are some quick tips for getting a good night’s sleep: go to sleep early (1. Boy are they wrong! I’ve spent months, lifting puny weights on all of of the major compound movements, and then was left wondering why I didn’t make any progress. You should definitely use light weights when starting out so you can master the correct form of any given exercise, but once your form is good enough all of your efforts should be focused on lifting heavier and heavier weights. Size follows strength. So what exactly does hard training mean? Well, it’s simply training almost or to muscular failure by focusing on major compound movements like deadlift, squat, overhead press, weighted chins, etc. When you finish your last rep and you know that another rep isn’t possible to be executed with good form, then you’re training with the right intensity. Especially in the beginning (beyond beginner’s stage) if you have all of the variables dialed in, your deadlift and squats should quickly surpass the 1. Mistake #5: Spending too much time in the gym too often. This one relates to doing too many exercises in a single workout and repeating the same workout almost every day of the week. There’s actually nothing wrong with spending a lot of time in the gym if you’re trying to make new friends or even meet a girlfriend who’s into healthy living but when you’re trying to gain muscle mass, try to make your training sessions as short as possible. This means doing a routine that focuses on intensity and not on volume. Remember that muscle grows when you’re resting, not when you’re training. When trying to gain muscle mass, routines that emphasize on compound movements like deadlift, squat, overhead press, etc. Don’t be doing endless sets of preacher curls and triceps extensions since you’re not going to get big with complementary exercises. Under no circumstance try to do routines you read in bodybuilding magazines since they are written for steroid gobbling genetic freaks. Compound is the way to go. By focusing on compound movements you’ll be able to finish your workouts in less than an hour and you’ll also save some money since you’ll be visiting the gym less frequently. A simple Push/Pull routine will do wonders for your size and strength if you’re training with intensity. Remember, when trying to gain muscle mass, less is more. Enter your email below to get your 1. Part Muscle Building Course . Good technique will allow you to lift more weight and as you may probably know by now heavier weights = more muscle. Focus on strength and the physique will follow. In my specific case, I was able to quickly increase my deadlift poundage by 4. The only change I made to my deadlifting technique was to incorporate a more narrow stance, that’s it. Sometimes small changes can really make a big difference. It’s really important that you have your lifting technique dialed in perfectly. The video camera is your friend here. Try to record as much of your workout as you can in order to see your lifting form on all of the big exercises. Compare your videos to other instructional videos on You. Tube and you’ll quickly see if your lifting technique needs more work before you move on to heavier weights. Mistake #7: Stressing about non important stuff. Stress can play a major role in your ability to gain muscle mass. Making sure you deal with stress is not only good for your progress in the gym but also for your overall health. How to Gain Weight and Build Muscle. So you wanna put on some lean muscle mass. And you want to do it within the context of the Primal Blueprint, but aren’t sure where to start. It’s a common question and it’s about time I addressed it head on. As I’ve made pretty clear, our ultimate goal is to achieve positive gene expression, functional strength, optimum health, and extended longevity. In other words: To make the most out of the particular gene set you inherited. These are my end goals, and I’ve modeled the PB Laws with them in mind. But that doesn’t mean packing on extra muscle can’t happen with additional input. After I retired from a life of chronic cardio and started living Primally, I added 1. The question is how much and at what expense? I’d be the first to tell you that lean body mass is healthier than adipose tissue. Generally, the more lean mass a person has, the longer and better they live. But to increase mass at the expense of agility, strength, or speed is, in my opinion, counterproductive. What would Grok do – go for enormous biceps or the ability to haul a carcass back to camp? Unless you’re a bodybuilder (nothing wrong with that, mind you; it’s just not my focus), I can’t advise simply packing on size without a proportional increase in actual strength. Those bulging biceps might look good on the beach, but then again, so does the body that comes with keeping up with the younger guys, knocking out twenty pull- ups in a row, and lifting twice your bodyweight. Form is best paired with a healthy serving of function. The two are quite delicious together, and, luckily, following the PB allows us to get both without sacrificing either. Of course, we’re all built a little differently. The basic building blocks are the same in everyone, but sexual reproduction (as opposed to asexual reproduction) has the funny habit of producing unique genetics and small variations that affect the way we respond to our environments. It’s why some people are short and some are tall, or why some of us respond better to carbohydrates than others. Even though we all pretty much operate the same way, there IS a range of possible outcomes that is proscribed by your direct ancestors. By that same token, some people just naturally have more muscle mass. They’re usually innately more muscular than the average person, and putting more on through resistance training is often an easy task. Then there are those who can’t seem to gain a pound: the hardgainers. They might be increasing strength, but it doesn’t seem to translate into visible muscle mass. Now, my initial advice for a hardgainer is this – don’t worry too much about it! As long as you’re getting stronger, you’re doing it right. Let’s face it, though. You’ve probably heard that enough already. It’s fun being the lanky guy at the gym who can lift more than most, but you’re dead set on bulking up (who doesn’t like a bit more muscle to go along with that strength?), and you want to do it in a Primal context. Besides, continuing to increase strength will eventually require increasing size. To do so, you have to target the very same anabolic hormones that others use to get big, only with even more enthusiasm and drive. Like I said, we all have similar engines, but some require more fuel and more efficient driving (sorry for the corny analogy). Activating these hormones will work for anyone, provided they work hard and eat enough food. The main hormones that contribute to muscle anabolism are testosterone, growth hormone (GH), and insulin- like growth factor- 1 (IGF- 1). A little more about each and how to utilize them: Testosterone. Crazy bodybuilders don’t inject themselves with anabolic steroid hormones that are based on testosterone for nothing. Among other roles, testosterone is an important muscle- building growth factor that favorably affects protein synthesis in addition to working with other hormones (like GH and IGF- 1) to improve their function (more on this later). If you want to increase strength and build muscle, testosterone is absolutely required (don’t worry, though: no injections necessary!). Growth Hormone. It’s right there in the name, isn’t it? It helps muscle grow and, perhaps more importantly, it burns body fat. After all, leaning out is a big part of building muscle (or else you’ll just look puffy) and GH will help you do it. Insulin- like Growth Factor 1. IGF- 1 is extremely similar in effect to GH, as it should be – GH stimulates IGF- 1 production in the liver. In fact, it’s suspected that IGF- 1 is actually responsible for most of the “growth- promoting effects of circulating GH.”Anabolic hormones all work together. In fact, to maximize their muscle- building potential, you must have all three present. Testosterone increases IGF- 1, but only in the presence of GH. GH promotes skeletal muscle cell fusion independent of IGF- 1, but the two are most effective in concert. Luckily for you, the types of exercises that stimulate the secretion of one will generally stimulate the secretion of the others. Funny how that works out, huh? Enter The Central Nervous System. In order for your body to start pumping out these delicious anabolic hormones, you must first give it a reason to do so. I might even say you should give your genes a reason to express themselves. The most effective way to do this is by notifying the central nervous system. Now, the CNS can be a stubborn bastard, but he’s all you got when it comes to interpreting stimuli and relaying messages to the rest of the body. He’s not easily perturbed, and he won’t bother if you aren’t serious. If you insist on doing nothing but light aerobics or tiny isolation exercises, your CNS will barely notice. If you want to get your CNS’ attention, pick up the intensity. Run some sprints or do some heavy lifting. When you do an exercise like the squat with a heavy weight, all hands are on deck. Your CNS realizes that some serious exercising is going down and notifies the hypothalamus, which in turn talks to your pituitary gland. This tiny – but vital – member of the endocrine system is the gland that dispatches luteinizing hormones to tell the testicles to secrete testosterone. It’s also the gland that synthesizes and secretes GH. IGF- 1 is mostly produced by the liver, but its production is facilitated by the presence of GH, so we can see that it all comes down to CNS stimulation. Chronic cardio doesn’t affect your CNS in any meaningful way, so that’s why we tend to avoid it; vigorous sprints, hard and heavy lifting, and anaerobic output will get its attention, so do plenty of these to maximize muscle growth. Cortisol: A Hormone to Avoid. Promoting muscle and strength growth also requires avoiding excess amounts of catabolic (muscle wasting) hormones like cortisol. Cortisol is the major stress hormone, and it exists for a very legitimate reason (dealing with “flight or fight” incidents, inadequate sleep, anxiety), but in large amounts cortisol increases serum amino acids by breaking down muscle, inhibiting protein synthesis and reducing amino acid uptake by the muscles – all awful things for muscle growth. Compounding the problem even further, the broken- down muscle is converted into blood glucose, which then raises insulin secretion and increases insulin resistance while promoting fat storage. And we all know how great those muscles look with a nice layer of adipose tissue covering them up! On a serious note, most people following the PB already minimize cortisol by getting plenty of sleep and reducing stress, but if you’re preoccupied with building muscle mass and engaging in extended workout sessions to achieve it, avoiding excess cortisol can get tricky: excessive exercise without enough recovery time actually increases cortisol. It makes sense (think of it like your body’s telling you it needs a day or two off), but the desire for more muscle mass drives many to work out to the point of counter- productivity. Just be careful, and give yourself at least a day of rest after a particularly grueling session. Lift Really Heavy Things. If you haven’t figured it out already, you’re going to be doing some heavy lifting in order to put on lean mass. The foundation of your routine should be the big compound lifts: squats, deadlifts, presses (bench and overhead), pull- ups, rows, dips, snatches, power cleans, clean and jerks. These engage multiple muscles while triggering your hormonal response systems. Bodyweight stuff, while valuable, simply isn’t going to get you the strength and mass increases you’re looking for. Testosterone, while useful, only gets really anabolic when you start lifting. You need to get under some decent weight, enough so that your CNS and endocrine system are blasted, but not so much that you can’t maintain proper form. A popular routine is the 5. Popularized by programs like Strong. Lifts and Starting Strength, doing compound lifts for five sets of five reps allows you to strike a balance between strength building and superficial muscle hypertrophy. Done this way, your hypertrophy won’t be purely sarcoplasmic, which results in fluid- filled muscles that look big but don’t see a corresponding increase in actual strength. That’s real muscle that would make Grok proud. If you’re lifting heavy and lifting hard, keep your workouts spaced at least a day apart and don’t lift more than 3x/week. Three exercises per session should be perfect. That may not sound like much, but it’ll be plenty if you do it right. Remember, you’re doing big compound movements that will really shock your system, with an emphasis on intensity and power. You don’t want to overwork yourself, release a bunch of cortisol, and set yourself back a few weeks. Squats and deadlifts are absolutely required. They engage the most muscles and produce the biggest hormonal response. They will be the bedrock of your mass building campaign. Most programs recommend doing squats every session, and I tend to agree. Deadlifts are a bit more taxing and so should be relegated to every other workout.
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