Bodybuilding Vitamins

Vitamins are crucial to the muscle building process. They assist in the millions of chemical reactions that take place in our body each day, and make it possible for nutrients to be absorbed, digested and metabolized in the body. Bodybuilding vitamins are not only vital for maintaining optimal energy levels, they also assist in the crucial recovery process after your training session.

        There are millions of biochemical reactions that go on in our bodies each day. Our body uses what are called enzymes, as catalysts for these reactions. Other compounds can assist these enzymes in carrying out these biochemical reactions, making them more (or less) effective. Organic coenzymes are called vitamins, inorganic coenzymes are called minerals (but that's another story). All in all, there are thirteen vitamins that are required for our bodies to function properly. They are:

Vitamin A -
Vitamin B1 (Thiamin)
Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin)
Vitamin B3 (Niacin)
Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid)
Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine)
Vitamin B9 (Folic acid)
Vitamin B12 (Cobalamin)
Biotin -
Vitamin C-
Vitamin D -
Vitamin E -
Vitamin K





        Fat Soluble vs. Water Soluble - Vitamins fall into two categories - Fat Soluble and Water Soluble. The fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K) are saved by the body and stored in fat, sometimes for extended periods of time. They are not readily excreted from the body and therefore daily intake should be monitored closely. Overdose of fat-soluble vitamins is a common problem of over-the-counter type vitamin tablets and can lead to serious health problems.

        On the other hand, water-soluble vitamins (B vitamins, Biotin, and C) are easily dissolved in water, so whatever your body isn't using is easily eliminated in urine. You don't have to worry about overdosing, but this means you need a continuous supply of them in your diet. Now, let's take a closer look at these thirteen vitamins.


        Vitamin A - Of all the fat-soluble vitamins, Vitamin A (Retinol) is the most common. It's needed for healthy bones and teeth, and it helps maintain healthy vision, skin as well as the lining of the nervous, respiratory and digestive systems. However, excess intake may cause headaches, dry skin, liver damage and birth defects.

         Thankfully, it has a water-soluble cousin known as the carotenoids - the most common of them being Beta-Carotene. Most multivitamin supplements list vitamin A and have the words "Beta-Carotene" next to it. Beta-carotene is not toxic to the body even in large amounts, because the body takes only the amount needed and converts that into Vitamin A while the rest is excreted.
      Good sources include: milk, eggs, liver, dark green leafy vegetables, cheese and carrots.

         Vitamin B - Vitamin B or B complex is a group of eight water-soluble vitamins. Each of these affects a different part of energy production in the body.

         Vitamin B1 (Thiamine): Helps convert food into energy. It also facilitates the proper functioning of the heart and the nervous system. Good sources include: Nuts, yeast, whole grains, most vegetables, and citrus fruits.
        Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin): Helps the body cells use oxygen, promotes healthy skin and tissue repair. Good sources include: Cheese, meats, fish and poultry
        Vitamin B3 (Niacin): Important for cell metabolism and the absorption of carbohydrates. It also helps maintain proper brain function Good sources include: Broccoli, fish and whole grain breads.
        Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid): Helps the body convert food into energy. It comes from almost all foods.
        Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine): Helps produce essential proteins and helps convert proteins into energy Good sources include: Bananas, potatoes and nuts
        Vitamin B9 (Folic Acid): Important for the production of red blood cells. Protects against heart disease and essential in the first three months of pregnancy to prevent birth defects. Good sources include: Dark green leafy vegetables, fruits and liver.
        Vitamin B12 (Cobalamin): Important in the production of genetic material in cells. Helps maintain proper functioning of the nervous system. Good sources include: Eggs, meat, fish, milk products and poultry.


        Vitamin C - Vitamin C is perhaps the most common water-soluble vitamin. It should be ingested on a daily basis. 500mg of Vitamin C provides you with 833% of the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA), but it is not uncommon for individuals to take as much as 2000mg or more per day. Vitamin C provides the structure for connective tissues in the body. It is a powerful antioxidant. Good sources include: Citrus fruits and leafy green vegetables.

        Vitamin D - This vitamin is a fat-soluble vitamin required to help absorb calcium from the diet. It is produced naturally in the body from sunlight. Excess consumption may cause diarrhea, nausea and joint pain. The RDA for Vitamin D is 400 IU (International Units) per day. Good sources include: Salmon, tuna, eggs and milk. Remember that milk is often fortified with extra Vitamin D so be sure to factor that into your daily intake.

        Vitamin E - This fat-soluble vitamin is an excellent antioxidant that promotes healing and helps the circulatory system. It is found in almost all foods, especially in olive and vegetable oils. The RDA for Vitamin E is 10mg. Even though it is fat-soluble, the body easily breaks down excess Vitamin E.

        Vitamin K - This fat-soluble vitamin is needed for normal blood clotting. The RDA for Vitamin K is 80mcg (micrograms) for men and 65mcg for women. Like Vitamin E, it is easily broken down when in excess. Good sources include: Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, liver, avocados and tomatoes.

         Well there you have it - A quick guide to the bodybuilding vitamins that keep us strong and healthy. The next time you go shopping for supplements, be sure to keep these facts in mind. Even before the fancy prohormones, nitric oxides consider investing in a quality multivitamin first. Get your basic nutritional needs down, keep it simple early on, and worry about the fancy supplements later. Remember SUPPLEMENTS ARE MADE TO SUPPLEMENT YOUR DIET, WITH OUT A DIET SUPPLEMENTS AREN'T ANYTHING!

A Scientific Approach To Pre/Post Exercise Nutrition To Maximize The Training Effect

When implemented properly and consistently, strategic pre- and post-workout supplementation can greatly increase the effectiveness of your training. Without optimum nutritional strategies, the body’s response to training can only be considered a compromise at best.

From this perspective, training and diet cannot be considered as separate factors. The food and supplements that you take, and the work that you faithfully perform in the gym, are both part of your training. On the day of competition it will not be the athlete who trained harder who wins, it will be the athlete who trained smarter.

Introduction

Exercise causes acute changes in the metabolic environment of muscle tissue. First there is a significant increase in blood flow to working muscles. There is also a sharp increase in catecholamines (e.g. noradrenalin, adrenalin). These changes favor catabolism during exercise, and anabolism immediately after exercise. Because these changes are acute, some lasting only a few hours, the pre and post exercise meals are critical to optimizing the anabolic effect of exercise. This article will discuss pre- and post-exercise nutritional strategies based on current research in this area.

Before

Pre-workout nutritional strategies are based on providing alternative energy substrates (mainly carbohydrate) to preserve energy stores, and taking advantage of increased blood flow to muscle tissue.

Carbohydrates

High intensity exercise places great demand on glycogen stores. Glycogen is the sugar stored in the liver and muscles. Because high intensity exercise burns energy at such a high rate, the body is unable to supply sufficient oxygen to be able to use fat for fuel. Instead, it must use sugar both stored in the muscle and brought in from the blood.

Consuming simple sugars right before training can reduce the amount of glycogen used during exercise. This can prolong performance. More importantly, higher blood sugar and insulin levels appear to create a hormonal milieu favorable to anabolism (growth).

During exercise, cortisol accelerates lipolysis, ketogenesis, and proteolysis (protein breakdown). This happens in order to provide additional fuel substrates for continued exercise. The effects of cortisol may also be necessary to provide an amino acid pool from which the muscle can rebuild new contractile proteins if there are insufficient amino acids delivered from the blood. This ensures that some degree of adaptation can occur regardless of the availability of dietary protein. Over time however, if this process is not balanced with additional dietary protein, the net effect will be only maintenance or even a decrease in functional muscle tissue, as is evident during periods of starvation or prolonged dieting. Fortunately, there is only a non-significant rise in cortisol levels when carbohydrates were consumed during exercise. (Tarpenning, 1998) The net effect is a more rapid increase in the cross sectional area of the muscle fibers with the greatest effect seen in type-II fibers.

This may be a less expensive option for those who were thinking of using phosphatidylserine. In this case, carbohydrate administration appears to down regulate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, probably through insulin or perhaps through the presence of carbohydrate itself. This would, in effect, greatly reduce the body’s catabolic response to exercise stress. All good news for bodybuilders.

Protein

Another pre-workout strategy involves taking advantage of increased blood flow to working muscles. Because the availability of amino acids is often the limiting factor for protein synthesis, a pre-workout protein meal will enhance the delivery of amino acids to muscle tissue. Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of a pre-workout protein drink.

Amino Acids

Delivery of amino acids has been shown to be significantly greater during the exercise bout when consumed pre-workout than after exercise (Tipton, 2001). There is also a significant difference in amino acid delivery in the 1st hour after exercise, with the pre-exercise protein drink providing a significant advantage. Net amino acid uptake across the muscle is twice as high with a pre-workout protein drink as compared to consuming it after. Phenylalanine disappearance rate, an indicator of muscle protein synthesis from blood amino acids, was significantly higher when amino acids were taken pre-workout.

These results indicate that the response of net muscle protein synthesis to consumption of a protein solution immediately before resistance exercise is greater than that when the solution is consumed after exercise, primarily because of an increase in muscle protein synthesis as a result of increased delivery of amino acids to the leg.

After

During exercise muscles use metabolic fuels at an accelerated rate. In order for physical work to be continuous, the body mobilizes stored fuels to make fatty acids, glucose, and amino acids available for oxidation. This is a catabolic process and cannot occur simultaneous to anabolic processes such as glycogen formation and protein synthesis.

In order for the body to recover from exercise, the catabolic environment must be quickly changed to an anabolic environment. The food that you eat after training affects the hormonal milieu in your body in order for this to take place. With the rapid introduction of carbohydrate, protein, and fat into the system post exercise, the body is able to begin reparations on damaged tissue and replenish fuel reserves.

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are important for performance and perhaps more importantly for glycogen recovery. Studies have shown an increased ability of muscle tissue to take up serum glucose immediately following strenuous exercise (Goodyear 1998). This is due to what is called, “non-insulin dependant glucose uptake”. After a meal, muscle cells transport glucose across the cell membrane in response to the hormone insulin. Insulin binds with its receptors at the cell surface causing a cascade of events that ends with proteins, called glucose transporters, being translocated to the cell surface. Once at the cell surface, these glucose transporters allow glucose to pass through the membrane where they can be phosphorylated and eventually stored as glycogen. Membrane transport of glucose will exhibit saturation kinetics similar to the effect of increasing substrate concentration on the activity of enzymes. The number of glucose transporters limits the rate of glucose entry into your muscle cells. Once all available glucose transporters are associated with a glucose molecule, the rate of glucose entry will go no higher.

There are at least 5 different classes of glucose transporter proteins. They are designated GLUT1, GLUT2, GLUT3, GLUT4, and GLUT5. Each class of GLUT protein differs in its kinetic parameters and is found in specific tissues. GLUT-4 is the primary isoform regulated by insulin, and sensitive to muscle contraction.

Muscle contractions, much like insulin, cause a separate set of GLUT-4 proteins to be temporarily translocated to the surface of the muscle cell (Sherman 1996). This greatly increases the rate at which muscle tissue can take in glucose from the blood after a bout of exercise. The effects of exercise on glucose uptake last for a few hours into the post exercise period. If the post exercise meal is lacking in carbohydrates, the replenishment of glycogen is delayed.

If carbohydrates are lacking in the diet, exercise will cause a glucose deficit and glycogen stores will continue to fall without being replenished to pre exercise levels.

Simple vs. Complex

There has been some controversy about which type of carbohydrate is best for post exercise glycogen replenishment. Some argue that simple sugars such as dextrose are best after exercise. Others say that drinks with glucose polymers are best. Still others say that there is no need to buy fancy sports drinks and that simply eating a meal high in carbohydrates such as pasta or rice is sufficient. Studies have shown no difference between different types of carbohydrates eaten post exercise and the rate of glycogen replenishment as long as sufficient quantities of carbohydrate are consumed (Burke 1997). Even when the post exercise meal contains other macronutrients such as proteins and fats, the rate of glycogen replenishment is not hindered, given there is sufficient carbohydrate in the meal as well. These studies tell us that the rate-limiting step in glycogen replenishment after exercise is not in digestion or the glycemic index of a given source of carbohydrate. Over a 24-hour period it is the total amount of carbohydrate consumed that is important. The rate-limiting step in glucose uptake during exercise is determined by the rate of phosphorylation once glucose has entered the muscle cell (Halseth 1998). Glycogen synthase activity is also a possible rate-limiting step (Halseth 1998).

These processes are not readily influenced by the composition of the “post exercise” meal, but rather by the extent to which glycogen was depleted during exercise as well as the amount of carbohydrate and fat consistently included in the diet.

Recommendation

It is recommended that at least 0.7 – 1.0 gram of carbohydrate per kilogram body weight be consumed immediately after exercise and then again 1-2 hours later. If you experience gastric upset try increasing the amount of water you consume with the carbs. Try to shoot for a total of 7-10 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight over a 24-hour period 3 for maximum glycogen storage. This may well be in excess of caloric needs but it is important to shoot for this intake if glycogen storage is your primary goal.

Protein

Protein is another critical nutrient post-exercise. Protein is essential to post exercise anabolism. Protein provides amino acids that are used to rebuild damaged tissues as well as provide enzymes and carrier proteins necessary for adaptation to exercise.

Without protein, which supplies essential amino acids for endogenous protein synthesis, the body’s ability to adapt to exercise is greatly diminished.

The Research

Studies have shown a 12 to 14 day period after the onset of an unaccustomed exercise program, in which nitrogen balance, the ratio of protein intake to protein loss, is negative (Butterfield 1987). Any study looking at protein needs and exercise must take this into account. Nitrogen balance during this period appears to be insensitive to total caloric intake, but can be improved with a high protein intake if adequate calories are supplied (Gontzea 1975). Even though additional protein intake will prevent nitrogen balance from becoming negative, it will still fall despite high protein intake during the first two weeks of exercise.

Muscle specific messenger RNA (mRNA) produced subsequent to training has a half-life of only 4-5 hours. It is so short because mRNA has no “quality control” mechanism built into the coding. By keeping the half-life short, any errors in the sequence won’t be able to produce enough defective proteins to do irreparable damage to the cell or organism. This also allows tight control of protein metabolism.

Importance Of Timing

The timing of protein intake is important. If the anabolic stimulus from exercise is to be maximized, a steady flow of amino acids must bathe the muscle while mRNA content is high. It should be no surprise that the optimum time for protein intake after your workout is relatively brief compared to frequency of training a particular muscle. Muscle protein synthetic rate (MPS) is elevated in humans by up to 50% at about 4 hours following a bout of heavy resistance training, and by 109% at 24 hours following training. A study done by Macdougall (MacDougall et al 1995) further examined the time course for elevated muscle protein synthesis by examining its rate at 36 hrs following a bout of heavy resistance training. Six healthy young men performed 12 sets of 6- to 12-RM elbow flexion exercises with one arm while the opposite arm served as a control. MPS was calculated from the in vivo rate of incorporation of L-[1,2-13C2] leucine into biceps brachii of both arms over 11 hours. At an average time of 36 hours post-exercise, MPS in the exercised arm had returned to within 14% of the control arm value, the difference being nonsignificant.

The following conclusions can be drawn from this study, following a bout of heavy resistance training, muscle protein synthetic rate increases rapidly, is more than double at 24 hours, and then declines rapidly so that at 36 hours it has almost returned to baseline.

Recommendations

Current recommendations for total protein intake for athletes is between 1.6-1.8 grams per kilogram body weight, depending on who you read, however, it is not uncommon for bodybuilders to consume in excess of 2 grams per kg of body weight with no ill effects. It should be remembered that the body does not have the capacity to effectively store amino acids. Protein should be eaten at least every 3-4 hours. The evening meal should contain slowly digesting protein that will allow a steady release of amino acids into your system well into the night. Dinner is a perfect time for steak or other meat dishes.

Fat

Little is known about the effects of fat in the “post-exercise” meal. Total fat intake is probably more important for a bodybuilder than just considering the post-workout meal. Essential fatty acids in sufficient quantities have the ability to alter physiology. Fatty acids such as omega-3s’ and omega-6s’, when consumed in differing ratios in a consistent and deliberate manner, can alter the composition of cell membranes which alters the production of prostaglandins in working muscles and thereby can modify everything from glucose transport to protein synthesis (Hayashi 1999). These effects are seen after at least 5 days of consuming of these fats in moderate to high doses. Eating them immediately after training and at no other time will most likely not have any dramatic effect.

Some forms of fat may delay gastric emptying which theoretically could slow the rate at which nutrients become available to tissues. We can only speculate whether this would have any “long term” effect on gains. Most research indicates that glycogen replenishment is delayed but not reduced when gastric emptying is prolonged.

There is some indication that cholesterol may be an important nutrient immediately after high intensity resistance exercise. Total cholesterol has been shown to be significantly lowered for at least 90 hours following a single bout of resistance exercise (Smith 1994). Serum cholesterol may be needed for incorporation into damaged cell membranes after resistance exercise. I’m not implying that you should eat a high cholesterol meal right after training.

Taken together, research is still lacking where the optimal levels and composition of post-exercise fats are concerned.

Fluids

I couldn’t really write an article about pre- and post exercise nutrition without at least mentioning fluid replacement. Hydration is extremely important on the cellular level. Muscle growth is inhibited by dehydration. In bodybuilding we tend not to focus on fluid replacement because, unlike runners or cyclists, most bodybuilders do not become dehydrated after a single workout. The rate at which you become dehydrated from training depends on how much you sweat (Gisolfi 1990). Some people sweat a lot when lifting and others don’t sweat a drop.

A good rule of thumb is to drink 1 ml for every calorie that you need. So, if you eat 3,500 calories a day, try to drink 3 liters. If you exercise in hot or humid climates add 2 cups of water for every pound you lose while exercising.

It’s about synergy

As mentioned earlier, macronutrient intake modulates post-exercise protein synthesis in ways that are just beginning to be understood. Yes, protein is required to supply essential amino acids for protein synthesis, but what is the mechanism by which protein is controlling this process? Also, are carbohydrates and fats needed only for fuel replacement, or do they play an “interactive” role in post exercise protein synthesis? Recent research has shed light on these questions.

Research

Researchers from the Division of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Illinois examined the effect of post exercise meal composition on protein synthesis. To do this, they looked specifically at the activity of specific proteins known to regulate protein synthesis at the translational level. Initiation of translation (the binding of mRNA to the ribosomal pre-initiation complex) requires group 4 eukaryotic initiation factors (eIFs). These initiation factors interact with the mRNA in such a way that makes translation (the construction of new proteins from the mRNA strand) possible. Two eIFs, called eIF4A and eIF4B, act in concert to unwind the mRNA strand. Another one called eIF4E binds to what is called the “cap region” and is important for controlling which mRNA strands are translated and also for stabilization of the mRNA strand.

Finally, eIF4G is a large polypeptide that acts as a scaffold or framework around which all of these initiation factors and the mRNA and ribosome can be kept in place and proper orientation for translation.

The researchers in this study looked at the association of the mRNA cap binding protein eukaryotic initiation factor-4-E (eIF4E) with the translational inhibitor 4E-eukaryotic initiation factor binding protein-1 (4E-BP1) in the acute modulation of skeletal muscle protein synthesis during recovery from exercise. Fasting male rats were run on a treadmill for 2 h at 26 m/min and were fed immediately after exercise with saline, a carbohydrate-only meal, or a nutritionally complete meal using Ensure Powder (54.5% carbohydrate, 14% protein, and 31.5% fat). Exercised animals and non-exercised controls were studied 1 h post-exercise.

Protein Synthesis

Muscle protein synthesis decreased 26% after exercise and was associated with a fourfold increase in the amount of eIF4E present in the inactive eIF4E.4E-BP1 complex and a concomitant 71% decrease in the association of eIF4E with eIF4G. Refeeding the complete meal, but not the carbohydrate meal, increased muscle protein synthesis equal to controls, despite similar plasma concentrations of insulin. Additionally, eIF4E.4E-BP1 association was inversely related and eIF4E.eIF4G association was positively correlated to muscle protein synthesis.

This study demonstrates that recovery of muscle protein synthesis after exercise is related to the availability of eIF4E for 48S ribosomal complex formation, and post-exercise meal composition influences recovery via modulation of translation initiation.

Results

The results of this study tell us a few things:

#1 |  Insulin

Insulin (via carbohydrate intake) alone is not enough to prevent 4E-BP1 from sequestering eIF4E. EIF4E must be free to bind to eIF4G in order for protein synthesis (i.e. recovery from training and net muscle growth) to begin. Insulin as well as amino acids must be present at the same time as indicated by the results from the group that were fed a mixed nutrient meal. So although feeding of the carbohydrate meal resulted in elevated blood glucose and elevated insulin levels, carbohydrates alone are not sufficient to allow protein synthesis to begin.

#2 |  Cortisol Levels

The only group that experienced a significant drop in cortisol levels was the mixed meal group. The carbohydrate-only group showed that neither blood glucose nor insulin had any effect on reducing cortisol levels. In contrast, the mixed meal group showed cortisol levels even below those in the control group who did no exercise and were also fed the same meal. It would have been nice for the authors of this experiment to explore the effect of the fat content in the “mixed meal”. From the results we saw that cortisol was lower in the mixed meal group. We can only speculate whether this was due to the protein, the fat, or some combination of protein, fat and carbs. Further research in this area should take into consideration all components of the post exercise meal.

One other issue that might be addressed in humans is the time frame during which re-alimentation is critical to “long term” adaptation to exercise.

In Closing…

Pre- and post-exercise nutrition is critical if one wants to maximize the anabolic effects of exercise. The pre-exercise meal should be high in a quickly digestible protein. This will ensure high delivery of amino acids to the muscle tissue. Carbohydrates can also be taken in to minimize glycogen loss and suppress catabolic hormones. Fat should be avoided pre-exercise unless the exercise is for endurance. The post exercise meal should consist of carbohydrate, protein and perhaps a small amount of essential fats, in a form that is easily and quickly digestible. There are many meal replacement products that fit the bill. Just pick the one you like the most. Don’t worry about sugar content because right after a workout, fat storage is not a big issue. A liquid meal is the most practical method of post-exercise feeding although it is probably not essential.

The ratio of macronutrients depends somewhat on the nature of the training session. An emphasis on high glycemic carbs, complete readily digestible proteins such as whey, egg, or high quality casein, and essential fats such as fish or flax oil will meet the criteria for an effective post exercise meal.

Ben Affleck's Nutrition Plan for "The Town" by Rehan Jalali

How Long After a Training Session, Do Muscles Continue to Grow?

Muscle hypertrophy, it sounds like an avoidable disorder, but it's exactly what you want to achieve when you implement resistance training into your workouts. Hypertrophy is the increase in mass and girth of your existing muscle cells. It is a complex process activated by catalysts including: resistance of force, intensity, duration and frequency of workouts and the recovery period after workouts. During and after training sessions your muscles undergo the beginnings of growth but must also have time for recuperation, otherwise you experience muscle weakening from overuse.

Growth prompting changes to your muscle tissue is triggered during your workout within two to four hours and continues for up to 24 hours. The length of time muscle growth sustains depends on the training session intensity, duration and trauma caused to the muscle cells.

Essentially, during your workout the muscle cell organelles are subject to slight tears, which activate surrounding muscle cells outside of the muscle fiber. The satellite cells begin to proliferate, or grow and divide, to repair the injury site. Muscle fibers fuse as part of the healing process and then form new myofibrils, or threads of the muscle fiber. Myofibrils increase in density and permit the initially injured muscle fiber to allow in more protein for building muscle mass. This process is called muscle protein synthesis.

Muscle protein synthesis plays a crucial part in completing the growth process of muscles from a singular workout session. Specifically, muscle growth only occurs when the rate of muscle protein synthesis exceeds the rate of muscle protein breakdown. At the most basic level, this means your workout has to cause efficient muscle tearing through resistance and force to allow existing muscle cell protein to breakdown rapidly. However, muscles can only repair and grow if new protein is introduced to the body during a sufficient window occurring in this cellular process.

A single intense set of high-weight repetitions can prompt muscle growth but you might never see the results if you do not continue engaging in consistent training. As important as the intensity and frequency of your workouts are, equally is the importance of recovery or recuperation time between workouts. Within two hours of your training session, consume a protein-filled snack to prompt muscle protein synthesis. You should also avoid working the same muscle group two days in a row. A day of rest in between muscle groups is adequate for prompting those biceps to grow from pebbles in to big old rocks.

Skeletal muscle such as that you are trying to bulk is extremely resilient and adaptive but this can lead to mass gaining plateaus. Hitting the muscle bulking slump is easily overcome by traumatizing your muscles in a new and different way. Simply boost your weight but lower your reps or change up your routine. Avoid ceasing your training sessions altogether because this can delay the progress from the efforts you have put in and force you to over-train the next time you attempt to replenish your workout.

If you are new to muscle bulking you will likely see relatively rapid muscle growth results. Keep in mind that proper form, consistent training and nutrition are important components of a comprehensive workout. With time persistent efforts lend to quality gains and increased muscular strength.

The Ideal Workout Routine For Skinny Guys

The skinny-guy body might resist normal workouts for muscle gain and strength. Don't be fooled though, because you can trick your body into accepting its muscle-bound fate by playing a different game with unique rules targeted at building your puny muscles into massive mounds of man meat. A comprehensive workout routine builds muscle while also maximizing your strength. You might not realize how strong you are or can become until you begin a thorough workout that challenges your body.

Workout Basics
The majority of exercises in your routine are compound, which means they work more than one muscle group at a time. Pepper some isolation exercises into your routine but do not make them the only focus of your workouts.

Each weighted exercise includes five sets, in a descending to ascending flow. Start with low-weight and build toward high-weight. For example: using 30 lbs., pump 10 repetitions; increase weight to 40 lbs. and pump 8 reps; increase weight to 50 lbs. and pump 6 reps; increase weight to 60 lbs. and pump 4 reps; increase weight to 70 lbs. and pump 2 reps. Take a break and then go in reverse, starting with 70 lbs. at 2 reps until you end with 40 lbs. at 10 reps. This is one set of five. You can rest at the end of each set for 30 to 60 seconds.

Ascending to descending sets causes progressive overload of the muscles, which forces the muscle to grow but at the same time adapt to the stress so you also gain strength.

Day 1: Upper Body
Incline bench press: Works the chest, triceps and shoulders.

Military Press: Works the shoulders, deltoids, trapezius and rotator cuff.

Bent-over Row: Works the back, biceps, forearms and latissimus dorsi.

Add a pull-up set of 15 repetitions, which is non-weighted but a compound exercise that targets your back, lats, shoulders, biceps and forearms.

Day 2: Lower Body
Wide leg squat: Works the entire leg region, including the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and thighs.
Walking dumbbell Lunges: Like the squat, the lunge works your entire lower body. Maintain momentum when walking but keep true to form.

Calf raise squat: Targets the calves, quadriceps and hamstrings. Use a secured bar or Smith machine because for this calf raise you will remain on tip-toes during reps. Use the same form as a squat but the power in your lift comes from the balls of the feet instead of the heel. After each set rest with the heel flat on the ground.
Add weighted abdominals: Perform cable crunches and barbell side bends.

Day 3: Upper Body Transitions
Dips: Works the pectorals, triceps and shoulders. Use parallel bars or the weighted dip machine at the gym. Body positioning can alter the muscle groups worked. For instance, incline your body to the front to work your chest harder or keep your posture straight to work the triceps harder.

Shrugs: Works the shoulders and trapezius muscles. Use dumbbells, Smith machine or kettlebell weights.
Three-way bicep curls: Targets the bicep muscle group. Partake in traditional curls with elbows close to your body. Rotate your hands slightly outward, creating an angle but keeping the elbows close to the body. The third transition involves pushing your elbows away from the body but still keeping your arms at an angle.

Day 4 and 6: Recovery
Perform 30 minutes of non-weighted cardiovascular activity. This keeps your heart muscle strong and allows your intensely worked muscle groups a recovery day before the next workout.

Bodybuilder resting for recovery

Day 5: Upper and Lower Body Mix
Deadlifts: Works your lower and middle back, trapezius, hips, glutes, hamstrings and forearms. Use a straight bar or dumbbells. Keep your feet shoulder width apart. For an added challenge, perform the deadlift with one foot lifted slightly off the ground and then do the same for the other side.

Wide grip flat bench press: Works the pectorals, chest, triceps and deltoids.

Reverse grip pull up: Works the biceps, forearms, back and shoulders.

Add weighted abdominals: Perform kettlebell windmills and gorilla chin crunches using the pull up bar.

Day 7: Rest or Recovery
Take day 7 off or perform light cardiovascular activity and then start all over again at Day 1.

Difference Between Natural Protein and Whey Protein

Whey protein, usually used in protein supplementation, is a by-product of the cheese manufacturing process. In simple expressions, whey protein is derived from the residual solids in the liquid left after cheese coagulates from cow's milk. Like the majority animal-based proteins - dairy in this case - whey is a whole protein that contains all nine essential amino acids (these amino acids cannot be biosynthesized by the body and must be acquired from dietary sources). Whey protein, either in its concentrate, isolate, or sometimes in hydrolysate (rarely) form are used as protein bodybuilding supplements, meant to saturate the skeletal muscle cells with amino acids to prevent protein catabolism and help them improve their repair and recovery rate after training.

Natural or dietary proteins can be found in a host of food types. When thinking protein, most people think meat or animal-based products, for good reason: meat is an excellent source of complete proteins, although it also contains relatively high concentrations of fat and cholesterol. This is highly dependent on the type of meat; turkey breast has 17% protein content per weight, but is very low in fat while beef can contain up to 35% protein per weight, but just as much in fat. But meat is hardly the only source of protein available. Some vegetables, particularly legumes such as beans, chick peas, etcetera, contain high levels of proteins and almost no fat, making them favorites of vegetarians and vegans who may need to pay closer attention to their protein intake.

Unfortunately, vegetable proteins are not complete; they do not contain all nine essential amino acids necessary to good health. This is easily countered through protein combining, a practice in which several types of foods will be eaten together to ensure that all amino acids are presents; a good example of that are ubiquitous rice and bean dishes.
Natural protein and Whey protein have different uses, and under no circumstances should supplements, such as whey protein supplement, be used to completely replace dietary protein sources.

Dietary protein sources should meet everyone's - including athletes and bodybuilders - baseline protein needs. Protein obtained through food is highly bioavailable, and contains a host of vitamins, enzymes, dietary fiber and other nutrients absolutely essential to good health that will not be available in supplements, no matter how good. Except in very specific circumstances, no one besides athletes and bodybuilders should need protein supplementation.

Where whey protein supplements actually come into their own is to grow up lean muscle mass. Whey supplements assist bodybuilders and athletes saturate their skeletal muscle cells in order to permit them all the amino acids they require to grow throughout the recovery period after workouts, as well as during sleeping periods. To maximize saturation, experts recommend that protein supplements be taken as close as possible to the training period; opinions differ as to whether before or after is preferable. Whey protein supplements, commonly available as powder to be mixed with water, milk or juice, or in convenient low-carbohydrate bar form are ideal for this function, as they can be consumed at exactly the right time.

To Build Rock-Hard Muscle Fast, Here’s What Not To Do

1. Performing too many isolation exercises

An exercise is only as good as the time it takes you to adapt to it. Provided you use enough load for enough time, all exercises can build muscle. It’s just that some exercises do it better than others. It has to do with what the German strength physiologists call the scale of motor unit recruitment. For example, cam exercises for a given number of reps recruit less motor units than pulley exercises, and pulley exercises recruit less motor units than dumbbell exercises. The more you stick to what we were designed for as animals (lifting rocks, carrying carcasses and generally just fighting against gravity), the better off you are.

What that means is using free weights in preference to machines. A large, muscular physique is built from squats, dips, chins and deadlifts – not triceps kickbacks and cable crossovers.

2. Performing too many machine exercises

Remember this motto: “Seven days training on machines makes one week (weak)!” Again, because of the scale of motor unit recruitment, if you are the type who lines up at the gym for the lat pulldown machine, you are not going to grow as fast as the guy slaving away at the chin-up bar.

3. Believing the bulking-up nonsense

In the so-called Golden Age of Bodybuilding where bodybuilders were known by their first names (e.g., Arnold, Louie and Sergio), bulking up in the off-season and then cutting up was standard practice. Besides the obvious health problems associated with adding excess fat, bulking up is a really bad approach to trying to achieve your physique or athletic fitness goals.

Here are six reasons why:

#1 Anti-Bulking Fact

Bulking-up diet programs won’t produce any more muscle growth than ingesting an ideal amount of nutrients. Sorry, but it’s simply not possible to force additional muscle growth by overfeeding.
#2 Anti-Bulking Fact
Bulking up develops insulin resistance, which makes it harder in the long run to gain muscle. What happens when you bulk up is that carbohydrates will go preferentially to fat stores, not to muscle tissue.
#3 Anti-Bulking Fact
Bulking up will make it harder for you to get leaner because insulin resistance is hard to reverse. The fatter you get, the harder it becomes to get lean. Female bodybuilders learn this fact quickly, as it is considerably harder for women to reach the low body-fat levels required for competition.
#4 Anti-Bulking Fact
The fatter you get, the more aromatase enzyme your body will produce. In the extreme, getting fat could be considered a form of self-castration, as your own testosterone will be converted into the female hormone estrogen and you will suffer many unwanted side effects. If you’re a man and you enjoy wearing a bra, go right ahead and get fatter.
#5 Anti-Bulking Fact
Getting fatter will ramp down the effectiveness of your thyroid hormone production – not a good thing, because thyroid production is essential for fat loss. The fatter your abdominal wall becomes, the less conversion there will be of T4 to T3, the metabolically active form of thyroid.
#6 Anti-Bulking Fact
The lower your percentage of body fat, the better your body becomes at nutrient partitioning. This means individuals with low body fat are more effective at storing the ingested nutrients in the muscle (as muscle tissue or glycogen) or in the liver (as glycogen) and less effective at storing nutrients as body fat. To put it in simpler terms, leaner individuals can eat more nutrients without gaining fat.
#7 Anti-Bulking Fact
The idea that “a calorie is a calorie” is a bunch of bunk. Calories from sweet potatoes are great for building muscle; calories from beer are not. For that matter, getting fat increases the risk of dying from any cause, even terrorist attacks. I’m serious – you’re a bigger target and you can’t get out of danger as fast.

4. Burning too many calories outside the gym

You can’t effectively gain a lot of muscle mass if you play basketball four days a week and in the evening go to bars cutting the carpet till the wee hours, and then run up and down the beach on Sundays. My good friend Angus Cooper was a bronze medalist in hammer throwing at the Commonwealth Games. He used to repeat a poem that came from Al Schoterman, a PICP Level 5 strength coach who was a 1972 Olympian and Jud Logan’s hammer throw coach:

The Phases of Rest

• Never run when you can walk
• Never walk when you can get a ride
• Never stand when you can sit
• Never sit when you can lie down
• Never lie down when you can go to sleep

5. Keeping your reps too low

Using relative-strength protocols are great to build up the nervous system to lift high loads, but they are not the fastest way to hypertrophy. Alternating cycles of 9-12 reps with cycles of 4-8 reps is the quickest way to gain lean muscle mass.

6. Failing to take post-workout shakes

Taking a post-workout shake is critical for mass gaining. In fact, the rate of protein synthesis and possibly muscle growth can double when protein is consumed immediately after a workout. Researchers at the University of Connecticut at Storrs found that a protein/carb shake also helps increase the number of testosterone receptors. For those athletes who are already lean, I’ve found that results are best when you use a formula that contains four carbs to every gram of protein, and you should be taking one gram per pound of bodyweight post-workout. My recommendation is Quadricarb.

Post-workout glutamine supplementation facilitates muscle recovery and can accelerate muscle glycogen resynthesis and glutamine levels, which are critical in creating an anabolic environment and in preventing overtraining. Adding glycine and/or Primal Greens also helps lower cortisol post workout.

7. Failing to stay hydrated

Water is often the most neglected nutrient. Dehydration leads to higher cortisol output; negative repercussions range from increased oxydative stress to the brain, to increased fat storage. As a rule of thumb you should drink 0.6 to 0.7 ounces of water for every pound of bodyweight. In other words, if you weigh 200 pounds, you should drink 120 to 140 ounces of water a day. An easy way to ensure that you are drinking your proper daily quota is to measure your prescribed amount into containers for the day, every morning. By bedtime, all the containers should be empty. When first starting to do this hydration protocol, many individuals realize that they barely drink 40 percent of their water needs by the time they retire for the evening. This exercise in itself is very educational.

From a practical standpoint the best indication that you are staying well hydrated is that your morning urine is clear and odorless. If it has the color of Vermont’s finest maple syrup, start drinking more water.

8. Drinking stimulating drinks all the time

Stimulants by their very nature increase cortisol. That is fine if you are on your way to the gym and are going to use that extra drive to increase loading. But once the workout is over, no more coffee, caffeinated drinks, etc. One of the dumbest things I have seen was at Italy’s best gym in Tuscany: Locals would reach for the coffee machine post workout! No wonder I’d never seen anyone from that town bench or squat over 80 kg all week.

9. Getting insufficient sleep

As in the case of fat loss, sleep deprivation can interfere with muscle mass gains. Lack of sleep lowers androgen levels and growth hormone levels, thus robbing you of some serious growth potential.

10. Consuming insufficient protein

For a 200-pound lean male, 300 grams of protein per day would be the minimum. In fact, I think the rule should be closer to two grams of protein per pound of body weight, assuming the person is lean.For about 70 percent of the population who is not carb tolerant, two grams per pound is good for mass gains; it can make a huge difference. Personally, I couldn’t get above 192 pounds until champion bodybuilder Milos Sarcev convinced me to get two grams of protein per pound of body weight. In a matter of eight weeks’ time I was up to 205 pounds, lean. That being said, if an individual is carb tolerant (i.e., handles carbohydrates very well), that value would drop to 1 to 1.5 grams per pound of body weight. Someone like Christian Thibaudeau, who’s not carb tolerant, should be getting 2 grams per pound. But I’d say 1 to 1.5 grams for a guy like Milos Sarcev, who would be able to wake up and drink a gallon mixture of 50 percent maple syrup and 50 percent dextrose without it affecting his blood sugar. Guys like Milos need to get 70 percent of their calories from carbs.

The bottom line is that carb intake has to be individualized to an extent. Still, most people don’t “deserve” the carbs they eat. The rule for most people is this: You have to earn your carbs! While there are many mistakes that can be made in trying to gain muscle mass, correcting these 10 errors will help you achieve results faster than ever.

How To Make The Transition From A Cutting Phase To A Lean Mass Phase

Many times folks transition from cuts to bulks the wrong way. This occurs from overestimating the rate a natural lifter can put on muscle, as well as a lack of understanding of how the body responds to dieting. Another common mistake is going from restrictive dieting phases to free-feeding, resulting in weeks of work disappearing in days. Nutritional strategies have to be tailored to the individual and to the goal of the diet itself.

Comparing a competitive bodybuilder coming out of contest prep to the average gym rat’s month-long pre-summer cut is misguided.

For this reason, as always, there is no cut and dry answer. If you understand that as a natural gaining more than half a pound a week, even as a young male novice, results in unnecessary fat gain and if you tailor your approach to your situation, you will do okay. Let’s take a look at tailoring different strategies for different situations.

The Mini Cut

The mini cut is appropriate for bodybuilders in the offseason, athletes who compete in weight classes, and for the average gym rat that walks around relatively lean and wants to keep it that way. An offseason bodybuilder’s primary goal is to improve the physique for the next time they compete.

This involves overeating to get bigger. However, what a bodybuilder does not want to do is get too fat in the process, making dieting for their show harder than it should be.

How Its Done

So how does an offseason bodybuilder in need of physique improvements stay in a caloric surplus without getting too fat? The answer is periodic mini cuts. These are short term, aggressive cuts lasting 1-4 weeks. The purpose being to get a body fat range that allows further time in a caloric surplus without getting too far from stage weight. As a competitor I mini cut whenever I get over a certain weight and then continue my gaining phase. This prevents me from getting too out of shape to diet for competitions and allows me to spend maximal time gaining muscle. A Power Lifter trying to compete in a specific weight class could follow the same strategy. Transitioning from a mini cut to bulking is simple. You will see almost no metabolic trauma from a short cut, especially using re-feeds on a semi regular basis. The best approach is going right back to regular offseason food levels.

Reducing body fat and being in a caloric deficit will make you more insulin sensitive and your recovery will improve once you get back to regular calories, so you will see nice progress coming off a mini cut.

The Standard Cut

This is essentially a cut lasting longer than 4 weeks but not longer than 2-3 months. It will have a plateau or two along the way and the goal is to get measurably lean. A model getting ready for a photo shoot, someone who has been away from the gym for too long getting back on track, a competitor looking to drop to a lower weight class are all examples. This could also be an offseason bodybuilder who took their bulk too far, but from reading our articles you won’t have made that mistake in the first place right? A cut lasting a few months taking you to relatively lean levels will inherently have a few plateaus caused by metabolic slow down. Coming out of a cut like this, going right back to offseason numbers will net a few pounds of fat that could have been avoided. This happens because you are returning to a surplus that netted half a pound a week gained before you had a damaged metabolism. Now that you have experienced metabolic slow down, the surplus that your offseason intake provided before is significantly higher. To avoid gaining too much initially, it is best to taper your calories up, primarily increasing them in the form of carbohydrate because it has a direct effect on bringing the metabolism back up to speed.

Adding 25-50g of carbs weekly until you get back to your offseason intake and then bringing your fat intake back up is an approach that avoids unnecessary fat gain as you transition.

The Long Cut

This is a diet that lasts a long time. This can be anything over 3 months to years of being in a deficit. This is a normal situation for people who are trying to lose large amounts of body fat. This cut doesn’t necessarily end with being extremely lean. This situation is not the same as contest-prep diets. Its goal is to get to healthy or relatively lean levels of body fat. The difference between this and the standard cut is simply its length. A cut this long is tough and it involves being disciplined for a long period of time. It may require taking some breaks and you will run into a number of plateaus along the way. You will have a significantly slower metabolism coming out of a long cut. Some of this is related to metabolic slowdown, but most of it is simply a result of losing a lot of weight.

When one loses a very large amount of weight, the number of calories it takes to maintain the new bodyweight will be lower than it was at a higher bodyweight.

Gradual Increase

For this reason, a different approach must be taken to transition to maintenance calories or a surplus. I suggest a gradual increase of calories, primarily as carbohydrate, but the amount should be half of what I suggested for the standard cut. Also, the goal is not to return to your prior intake, but to find what intake is required to maintain your ideal weight. So, slowly increase your calories until you start to gain weight again and stop. Beware, you will gain weight when increasing carbohydrates, this is water weight. For every gram of glycogen stored in the body, it brings with it ~3g of water.

You will have to wait for your bodyweight to stabilize after you add food to determine whether you’ve found your new maintenance intake level.

Contest Preparation

Dieting for a bodybuilding show is a different animal than other cuts. Contest preparation takes you to extremely low body fat levels and impacts the body’s hormonal balance and metabolism. This diet normally lasts from four to eight months and results (if done properly) in body fat levels of 3-5% in men and 6-8% in women.

This diet gets progressively harder as one nears essential levels of body fat. Hunger, hormone levels, mood and sleep patterns are impacted in various ways. After this diet, your body is primed for storing fat. Ghrelin levels are high, leptin levels are low, insulin sensitivity is at a peak, the body’s ability to convert carbohydrate to body fat is topped out and your metabolism is at its slowest. A properly laid out prep alleviates most of this, but much of it is caused by the very low levels of body fat. A slow gradual transition should be made out of the diet. However, one must realize that an offseason cannot be successful while at stage levels of body fat. Competitors must get to healthier body fat levels to have productive off seasons.

Depending on size, age, sex, training experience, and ability to lose fat, a competitor should stay between 15-30lbs over contest weight (and about 10-20lbs for women or lightweight competitors). This allows for the required surplus of the offseason while staying within striking distance when it comes time to diet.

Altering Carbs

I recommend a slow increase of carbohydrates before increasing fat intake; the rate being 10-25g a week. Putting on some fat is to be expected and is needed to get healthy again. Keep this slow increase up until you are about 8-12lbs over stage weight, then focus on gaining 1-3lbs/month, (6-9lbs for lightweights and women) and (1-2lbs for lightweights and women) which is the goal of your offseason. This is easier said than done. The body’s desire for food after prep is overwhelming, so it is essential that you have a plan for entering your offseason. You should expect to go through periods of overeating and even having occasional binges.

Summary

Try to follow your plan as best as possible, but understand that every competitor struggles with transitioning out of a diet. Don’t guilt trip yourself; our bodies have evolved to survive ice ages, not to walk around with striated glutes year round. Knowing this, you can expect your body (and thus your mind) to influence you in every way possible to put on fat right after a show.

Follow your plan and don’t sweat it when you lose control. If you exercise half the amount of self control you did during your diet, you will set yourself up for a very successful offseason.

Mass Attack: Compound Movements For Symmetry and Size

It is common place to see popular bodybuilders using special techniques and exercises to try to isolate individual muscles, or even parts of muscles. Sometimes they even claim to be able to change the shape or add striations or contours to the muscles by doing certain rep ranges, rep tempos and specific angles.

In reality muscles can only do two things: get bigger, or get smaller.

When they get bigger the striations become deeper, their naturally predetermined shape becomes more apparent, new veins crop up to provide blood supply and the fat covering them is stretched to show more definition. But in reality all that is really happening is a change in size.

The only other factor that affects the way muscles look is reducing the layer of body fat that is covering them.

The Elite Level

Now that being said, there is some wisdom in what these iron-veterans are doing. When you get to the top level of physique development it is often the minor details that set apart the good from the great. Minor imbalances in symmetry can crop up and need to be addressed, this can be due to a dominant synergist (like the delts overpowering the chest or the hamstrings overpowering the glutes in certain movements), or it can be simply a visual issue: having narrow clavicles requires more focus on medial delts, or bad bicep insertions require some extra arm size. I myself have to do some very specific pull down movements in order to activate and train the lower fibers of my lats because my teres major takes over in most pull down movements. However, an experienced bodybuilder and a beginner or intermediate lifter should train very differently!

You better believe that long before I started doing weak point training I was trying to get my deadlift over 500lbs, my squat over 400lbs and my bench over 300lbs. 80% of my development I can attribute to spending a good half-decade to simply getting stronger in the compound barbell lifts that train the whole body.

Advanced Techniques

For every pro bodybuilder you see doing a single arm cable exercise, you’ll see thousands of gym rats who have been following the same techniques for years who hardly look like they work out. This is the consequence of applying a customized technique that an advanced athlete has developed after decades of training haphazardly into your routine. Remember, the body awareness, control, and the amount of time that top level bodybuilders have spent with their bodies in the gym is immense. It literally has taken me over seven years before I could actually effectively isolate my lats in a pull down motion without having other muscles dominate the movement.

Simply put, advanced techniques are for advanced lifters and doing them as a beginner will not make you advance; it will make you stagnate.

Lifting Heavy

Muscles, while aesthetically pleasing, have always been designed to move. Thus, the best way to get maximum muscle activation has always been, and always will be to move heavy things. For 99% of lifters in the beginner and intermediate stage, deadlifts, squats, free weight chest presses, free weight shoulder presses, free weight rows, and pull ups or pull downs are all that are needed to develop a fantastic physique.

Compound lifts allow you to use heavy weight, target multiple muscles, and follow the natural movements of our bodies in order to develop symmetry.

A Beginner’s Approach

Beginners do best training their bodies frequently because they aren’t yet able to do so much damage that they require a lot of recovery. They also grow quickly and their physiques are ready to put on size. Research has shown that muscle recovers and is ready to be trained again in 24-48 hours, that only one or two sets is needed for beginners to grow maximally and that beginners don’t have the capacity yet to truly put themselves in a recovery hole. So, what makes the most sense is a full body split for a beginner, a setup that is low on volume per session, and is done three times per week on either a M/W/F setup or a T/Th/Sa setup.

Examples of great routines that have been developed for hypertrophy are the HST program designed by muscle physiologist Bryan Haycock and Starting Strength designed by the famous strength coach Mark Rippetoe. Depending on your goals, be they strength or size, you could go with either.

The List: Compound Exercises

Chest

Flat bench presses (barbell, dumbbell or machine), incline/decline bench presses (barbell, dumbbell or machine), dips

Back

Deadlifts, chinups, weighted pull ups, pulldowns, rows (barbell, dumbbell, or machine), T-bar rows

Shoulders

Military presses (barbell, dumbbell or machine), upright rows, and remember front delts are worked on all presses!

Biceps

Underhand-grip chinups, underhand-grip pulldowns, underhand grip rows (all types), and remember biceps get slightly worked on all rows and pulldown movements regardless of grip

Triceps

Dips, close-grip bench presses (barbell, Smith machine), and remember triceps get significantly worked on ALL presses

Legs

Glutes/Hamstrings Dominant:

Deadlifts, sumo Deadlifts, stiff legged deadlift, back squats (low bar), RDL/SDL, leg press (high foot position press through heels), lunges (long step, press through heel), step-ups (step leg at 90 degrees press through heel), Hip Extension (Barbell, bodyweight, dumbbell or machine)

Quad Dominant:

Front Squat, back squats (high bar), hack squat, lunges (shallower step, press through midfoot), Leg Press (normal foot position, press through midfoot), step-ups (step leg at ~45 degrees press through midfoot)

Final Point

Just remember, you will get maximum recruitment of your entire lower body when you go heavy on squats. Leave the close stance, feet turned out partial range of motion leg presses to the pros and the beginners who don’t know any better!

Top 5 Shoulder Training Mistakes And We Show You How To Correct Them

Things get more complicated. We’ve previously covered muscles, such as biceps, that simply shorten or lengthen to close or open a hinge joint. That was primary school; this is college – because your shoulder joints offer an advanced degree of mobility. Three distinct delt heads move your arms over 180 degree arcs. This greater complexity leads to heightened risks of errors and injuries.

So take careful notes as we tackle the five most common shoulder training blunders and explain how to shoulder on correctly.

Mistake #1: Overemphasising Front Delts

All delt heads do not work equally, and the one that typically carries the heaviest load is the anterior. Your front delts are not only primary movers during overhead presses, they’re also secondary movers during chest and triceps workouts, helping during presses and dips. If you’re doing front raises in addition to a lot of shoulder, chest and tri compound lifts, you’re likely overworking your front delts.

This is especially true if you train chest and shoulders in the same workout or on consecutive days.

Solutions

• If you hit chest before shoulders in the same workout, consider how much pressing and dipping you’ve already done before working delts. If the total is at least eight sets, do no more than four sets total of shoulder presses and front raises.
• Don’t train chest and shoulders on consecutive days. Ideally, three days should pass between hitting each, so if you do chest on Monday, do delts on Thursday.
• Dumbbell presses or presses behind the neck stress the middle delts more and front delts less, so these are good alternatives to military presses if you believe that your front delts are overtrained or that they’re outgrowing the other heads.
• One cardinal rule of bodybuilding is that you can never be too wide. And so, it’s generally best to emphasize your middle delts more and front delts less on shoulder day, because the middles (most responsible for shoulder width) get little stress during other workouts and your fronts may assist during both your chest and tri sessions.

Mistake #2: Underemphasising Rear Delts

Just as anterior delts tend to get too much emphasis, posterior delts tend to get too little. Rear delts assist during lat exercises, such as rows and pulldowns; but if you’re targeting your lats correctly, it’s unlikely that your rear delts are receiving enough work on back or shoulder day to reach their full potential.

Most bodybuilders relegate rear laterals to last place in their shoulder routines, and then go through the paces for four sets of minimal intensity. It’s no wonder posterior delts are so frequently your shoulders’ weakest links.

Solutions

• Consider training rear delts on back day, when you can emphasize them separately from their front and middle brothers. Perform four to six sets of rear laterals at the end of your back workout.
• If you choose to train posteriors on shoulder day, don’t always perform them last in your routine.

Instead, do rear laterals after presses – but before any side laterals or front raises – or switch up the order from workout to workout.

Mistake #3: Too Fast And Furious

Especially when it comes to side laterals and front raises, trainers tend to go too heavy and use too much momentum. Each delt head is relatively small, and to isolate them, you need to minimise both momentum and assistance from other muscles. You may not want to be seen holding 20-pound dumbbells, but if that’s what it takes to best isolate your medial delts, then those are the weights you should be grabbing.

Solutions

• Do shoulder exercises seated instead of standing to remove your legs from the lifts.
• Choose weights that you can utilize for 8-12 strict reps at a relatively slow pace (1 second up, 2 seconds down). Pause at the bottom of reps to begin each rep from a dead stop and eliminate any swinging momentum.

Mistake #4: Improper Form

This mistake usually runs in concert with #3. The main culprit is emphasising the weight and not focusing on muscle stimulation. Thus, the weight is raised by any means necessary. Other times, trainers simply develop bad habits; some never learn how to do lifts in the manner that best stimulates muscle gains.

Solutions

Correct form is especially important on shoulder day, because of the ball-and-socket joints’ vulnerability to injury.

• When doing side laterals, let your elbows lead the way and raise them until they’re even with your shoulders. In the top position, your hands should be just below the level of your elbows (arms slightly bent) with your pinkies up and thumbs down.
• Throughout each set, focus on the deltoid heads you’re targeting, not on the resistance. Work the muscle, not the weight. After reaching failure in a shoulder exercise, don’t cheat to eke out extra reps. Instead, do a drop set, have a partner help with forced, reps or use the rest-pause technique.

When doing overhead presses, lower your hands to approximately chin level (or below) and raise to just short of lockout.

Mistake #5: Lack Of Exercise Variety

Shoulders may be the only body part you train with just free weights. It’s true that barbells and dumbbells are the most effective training tools, but you can too easily fall into a rut of doing the same three or four free-weight exercises the same way, workout after workout. Variety is also an effective tool.

Solutions

There are a lot of ways to do overhead presses.

Try including a different pressing exercise each shoulder workout. Here are three free-weight presses you likely aren’t doing: underhand presses (press a barbell over-head with a shoulder-width underhand grip); Arnold presses (press dumbbells from underhand at the bottom to overhand at the top); and rack military presses (press each rep from a dead stop off of power-rack supports set at chin level).

• There’s more to training middle delts than just dumbbell side laterals. On occasion, do side laterals with cables or a machine and, regardless of equipment, you can go unilateral. Wide-grip upright rows are another way of targeting your middle delts.
• Likewise, you can perform rear laterals with cables or machines and go unilateral. You can also do wide-grip bent-over rows to focus more on your posterior delts. A Smith machine is an effective tool for wide-grip rows; hold each contraction and flex your rear delts.

Lessons Learnt

• Work your front delts less and middle delts more
• Train rear delts after back or don’t leave them for last in your shoulder routine
• Sit down and slow down to remove momentum from lifts
• Use strict form and avoid cheating, even if only to extend a set beyond failure
• Do a wide variety of shoulder exercises