FOUR RULES TO BUILDING MUSCLE

The hardgaining skinny-guy's guidelines for packing on size.


Are you the guy who’s always being over-powered on the field? Are you the pick-up games last pick? Have you been grinding out hard work in the gym for hours on end with no results to date? Chances are, you’re a classic example of an ectomorphic-hardgainer. 

Your genetics have built you lean and that’s how you stay. But have no worries, with a little patience, persistence and training-by-the-rules, you’ll be well on your way to living large(r).


RULE 1: Go Big or Go Home

Heading to the gym to lift just for the sake of lifting won’t get you anywhere faster. You’ve got to go with the exercises and movement patterns that give you more bang for your buck. “Far too many guys spend time working on isolation exercises searching for hypertrophy,” says Colorado-based certified trainer and fitness writer, Jeremey DuVall. You want to program your workouts with moves like the deadlift, squat and overhead press. “Bigger exercises require more muscle recruitment and make for a more efficient workout," he adds. John Annillo, CSCS of Training for Warriors agrees, “Your body works as a unit, so drop the isolation exercises and train it like one. The more muscles (or joints) that are working during any given exercise the better.” Trainer, fitness writer/model Parker Cote also believes "big moves" are especially important for beginners saying, "it's the best way to expedite the mass gain process."


Workout Recommendation

Make the squat the primary exercise in your leg workouts. (3-5 reps, 6-8 reps) The deadlift in your back workouts. (3-5 reps, 6-8 reps) Overhead presses in your shoulder workouts. (3-5 reps, 8-12 reps) And barbell bench presses for chest. (3-5 sets, 10-12 reps)




RULE 2: Rest and Relax

When you’re going big and tossing around heavier weight, recovery is what’s going to give you the gains you need. Another component to this is how you're actually programming your workouts. "Supersets and other circuit-style techniques are excellent for fat loss, but when trying to gain lean muscle, it is beneficial to have longer rest periods," says Cote. Blowing through your sets will slow the mass building process—you need to preserve your strength for bigger lifts and heavier loads. “To maximize each set focus on resting longer (3-5 minutes), so your muscles are ready to fire at 100% with each rep,” Annillo advises.


Workout Recommendation

Assuming you're training with heavier weight at lower reps and lighter weight at higher reps follow this rest period guide:

10-12 reps, rest 3 minutes
6-9 reps, rest 4 minutes
5 reps and under, rest 5 minutes

RULE 3: Get More Sleep

“Real progress lies in the recovery stage—not the actual time in the gym,” says DuVall. This means get in the gym, work hard, and get to bed. "Both the quantity and quality of your sleep will play into how much testosterone you produce, how your muscles repair, and how you pack on the pounds," Annillo says. Yes, we’re going back in time to the days of “bed times.” “You destroy muscle in the gym and build muscle at night," says celebrity trainer Jay Cardiello. So get your 8 hours.


Recovery Recommendation

Take 10 minutes or so to practice some relaxing yoga poses, prepare a cup of caffeine-free chamomile tea and you’ll be good to go.




RULE 4: Eat to Get Big

While we're not giving you carte blanche to raid the fridge and eat everything in sight, you will need to eat more than you’re used to. “Eat something every couple of hours, upping your intake of calorie dense foods, downing healthy carbs right after your workout, and having a casein protein before bedtime," Annillo says. And to get the most out of your food, opt for high calorie, dense options. “Peanut butter and avocados provide a big boost of fat and calories to your daily totals,” says DuVall.


Eating Recommendation

Start yourself out by adding small things to your current diet. If you eat two pieces of toast in the morning with a protein shake, add an additional slice, or add a piece of fruit. Peanut butter sandwiches are also a great option as meal add-ons. If all this fails, then go ahead and raid the fridge and eat everything in sight.



By Mike Simone - MensFitness

17 IMPORTANT TRAINING AND NUTRITION QUESTIONS

What happens when ... You have sex before working out? And other common training and nutrition questions




In the world of health and fitness, old wives' tales and gym lore are oft repeated, chapter and verse, as hardcore fact. Opinions are bandied about as truth, and legend is taken as history. Health clubs are home to more speculation than the pork bellies market. And that's just the way it's always been. Until now.

We've recruited bona fide experts in the fields of exercise science and nutrition to help us answer 17 questions that have historically been ripe for speculation, guesswork and hearsay. So now, instead of listening to the advice of your training partner's friend's roommate's sister, you can be the one giving it. But one word of caution: You may find your standing among old wives seriously downgraded. So, what really happens when . . .


1) You don't wear a belt during heavy lifting? 

According to nutrition and exercise guru Chris Aceto, there are two sides to this coin. "If you don't use a belt when lifting heavy, you could possibly injure yourself because belts support the abdominal and lower back muscles -- the stabilizers of the trunk region," he says. "Paradoxically, when people start out training with a belt, they don't build those stabilizer muscles, so the risk of injury increases as the strength of other muscles increases." In other words, use a belt only to help prevent possible injury on your heavier sets, not to take the place of supporting muscles.


2) You eat too much or too little protein?

We all know that protein builds and maintains muscle (at least all m&f readers do it). So we do our best to get the right amount of protein to reach our personal fitness goals. But what happens on those days your meal schedule gets derailed?

Aceto explains: "If you eat too much protein, the excess is sent to the liver, changed to a sugar and used as fuel, stored as glycogen or stored as bodyfat. Many people don't realize that protein can be stored as fat. Conversely, if you eat too little protein, you fall into a negative nitrogen balance, meaning there aren't enough amino acids to make your muscles grow." All the more reason to keep a log of your daily nutrient intake. Try to stick to 1-1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight daily.


3) You get less than eight hours of sleep?

Sleep deprivation has reached epidemic levels in the United States. While eight hours of work, eight hours of play and eight hours of sleep used to represent the magic triangle of balance in a person's day, our current version is an isosceles, with the sleep side getting ever shorter. What does this mean to you, the dedicated trainer?

"Sleep need is an individual thing," notes m&f Science Editor Jim Stoppani, PhD. "But research supports the fact that most people require between seven and nine hours. You should strive for at least seven; otherwise you risk perturbations in your hormone levels, like growth hormone, which seven hours tend to gain more bodyfat." 


4) You don't stretch on a regular basis?

Between work, the fiancée, Sunday afternoon with the kids and your Internet addiction, you've got maybe an hour a day, four days a week, to hit the gym -- and you're not about to waste one minute of it stretching. So what's the worst that could happen?

"You'll lose flexibility and range of motion in each muscle," reports Aceto. "Consequently, you won't be able to overload the muscle through its entire range, and you'll limit your growth potential." Stretching is best done after working out to maximize flexibility and range of motion. It's never a good idea to stretch cold muscles, because it could lead to muscle pulls and tears.




5) You eat a meal (or meals) after 9:00 p.m.?

"Diet experts" often advise not to eat after 9:00 p.m. But what if you do?

"If your goal is to build muscle, you should consume a slow-digesting protein like meat or a casein product within an hour before sleeping to provide amino acids throughout the night," Stoppani advises. "Without them, muscle breakdown occurs while you sleep. As far as carbs go, some controversy exists. Many bodybuilders get good results by not eating carbs within four hours of bedtime. Others say it doesn't matter, as carbs won't make you fat if you don't take in excessive calories throughout the day."

A good rule of thumb: Try to grab a protein-rich (30 grams or so), low- to moderate-complex-carbohydrate meal about an hour before bedtime. Your muscles will thank you in the morning.


6) You try to train while you're sick?

"Studies show that exercise will generally cause an acute suppression of the immune system," states William J. Kraemer, PhD, CSCS, director of research and a professor in the department of kinesiology at The University of Connecticut, Storrs. "But with things like upper respiratory tract infections [colds], it's not going to do much damage and can even be beneficial if the exercise isn't too intense."

But what about the feverish? "If you're experiencing any flulike symptoms, you don't want to take the chance of compromising yourself and making things worse," Kraemer warns. Plus, it's not polite to sneeze on your gym partner while he's benching.


7) You train a bodypart two days in a row?

This idea is all but taboo in gym circles; the common belief is that it will surely lead to overtraining.

"We've trained people on consecutive days and have had success with it," Kraemer points out. "But the key is, the rest period following needs to compensate for the intensity of the workouts. This means between workouts, don't do any other type of activity -- just go home, eat and relax. It's also important that you vary the load on the muscles and the angle of the exercises. For example, if you were to train chest on consecutive days, you'd want to do flat benches on day one and inclines on the following day, or vice versa."

While this shouldn't be the basis of a long-term approach to your training, you could certainly incorporate it as a short-term way to shock your muscles into new growth. And make sure you consume sufficient carbs, protein and total calories.


8) You have sex before working out?

"Women weaken legs!" This infamous caveat bleated by crusty boxing trainer Mickey Goldmill to Rocky Balboa as he trained for his title shot made many a lonely lady out of athletes' wives and girlfriends. Did Mickey know what he was talking about, or did he have a few marbles knocked loose during his fighting days?

"It depends on who it's with," jokes Aceto. On a more serious note, he adds: "The idea that having sex drains you of your strength is an old wives' tale. I think it's probably a positive thing because it can help you to relax, men-tally and through the release of chemicals. When you're relaxed, you tend to perform better." Just don't make it a marathon session.


9) You lift too soon after eating?

Remember how your mom always told you to wait an hour after eating before going in the pool?

Some people believe the same warning applies to resistance training. But what really happens if you lift on a full stomach?

"For most people, nothing," Stoppani remarks. "Some people have to eat earlier, as their stomachs may be more sensitive; when you work out, blood flow is diverted away from the GI system and to the muscle, and digestion and absorption of nutrients slows. But it's more of an individual thing." Regardless of your preworkout eating habits, you need to consume some sort of protein and carbohydrate within an hour after your workout.

10) You slack off and miss a workout?

So now the job, the fianc´e and the rest of your busy life has squeezed that chest/back workout right out of your schedule. Or worse yet, all of your bodyparts took a backseat this week. Is it time to start repenting?

"Missed workouts provide you with an opportunity to rest," assures Kraemer. "A lot of guys become obsessed with getting to the gym anyway, so it can be a positive thing. The body is not going to untrain that quickly." Just how much time are we talking here? "In high-level athletes it can take two weeks," he says. "Recreational athletes won't see the effects for up to six weeks. Moreover, we've found that the longer an athlete has been training, the longer a rest period he or she should take to re-energize."


11) You get too busy and skip a meal?

Sooner or later, it happens to everyone: You're running late and you're fresh out of meal replacement bars. Major dilemma?

"If you skip a meal here or there, it's not going to suddenly put you into a catabolic state," Aceto notes. "We do have amino-acid pools that we store for just these instances. We also have glycogen reserves. But if you're trying to put on mass, you obviously don't want to make a habit of it."


12) You drink a glass of raw eggs?

Credit Rocky with propagating yet another sports-related myth. Who can forget watching the Italian Stallion in the ultimate act of athletic dedication, downing a glass full of freshly cracked eggs? And who didn't try, at least once, to emulate his gut-churning heroics? But to what end -- increased strength, energy and stamina, or food poisoning?

Although it's uncommon, you could suffer bacterial contamination. "You need to be careful with raw foods because they could contain food-borne pathogens," explains Kraemer. In fact, cooked eggs are better digested and utilized than raw. Sorry, Rock. Mickey should have told you.




13) You don't consume whey protein and simple carbs post-workout?

m&f has repeatedly heralded the importance of grabbing a quick-absorbing protein and simple-carb meal after working out. But why is this so important, and what happens if you miss it?

"We've found, as have other labs, that the initial 30 minutes to an hour after a workout is the optimal time for protein synthesis to occur," Kraemer states. The mantra "the sooner the better" clearly applies in this instance, he adds. "We actually try to get to that post-workout meal within 10 minutes after training. But sometimes people have a tough time getting a meal down that soon after working out, in which case a half-hour or even an hour is fine."

If you can't find whey or casein after your workout, go for any kind of protein. It may not be digested as efficiently, but as the sailors say, "Any port in a storm."


14) You sit in a sauna and try to "sweat off" pounds? 

It's hard to envision an image more synonymous with weight loss than that of a towel-clad health enthusiast sweating it out in a sauna. But what's really going on in there? Is some mystical metabolic process transpiring that will ultimately render the user thinner?

"No, you just lose water due to sweating for cooling the body," reports Stoppani. Don't sauna before a workout, as the majority of the water comes from the blood, so you may compromise blood flow and the pump to your muscles. A recent study did find, however, that sweating can be beneficial for your health."


15) You take a month . . . or a year . . . off from training?

A lot of the more serious (read: obsessed) trainees out there can't stomach the thought of missing one workout, let alone a month's -- or a year's -- worth. What's the worst that could happen, other than gym-withdrawal side effects?

"After a month, you'll definitely lose some muscle mass and strength, but probably not as much as you might think," Stoppani points out. "A recent study found that lifters lost little muscle and strength and gained minimal fat after six weeks off."

And what if you decide to call it quits for good -- will your muscle turn into fat? "The myth that muscle cells turn into fat derives from the fact that most guys who were bodybuilders at one time continue to eat as if they still were -- as if they still have the same metabolic requirements as someone with big muscles," Stoppani remarks. "But with smaller muscles comes a slower metabolism, and less training means less opportunity to burn calories. Hence fat begins to accumulate."


16) You lift on an empty stomach?

Once again, life gets in the way of lifting, and you miss your preworkout meal. What can you expect from your hungry body during the workout? "As far as fatigue goes, it depends on your reps and total sets," says Stoppani. "The higher your reps, the more muscle-glycogen you'll depend on to complete those reps. Without some form of dietary carbohydrate, you may fatigue earlier."

He continues: "As far as hormonal responses go, lifting without taking in carbs before the workout will lead to higher cortisol levels during and after the workout. Cortisol inhibits testosterone's anabolic effects and leads to muscle breakdown.

"Not having any protein before the workout is a double whammy as even higher cortisol levels lead to further muscle depletion. Eating protein helps to inhibit some of this breakdown, so having nothing to eat before a workout is bad for muscle gains."

In other words, carry a bar, a drink, something. Just don't hit the gym with a growling gut.




17) You work out when you're still sore?

Another old wives' tale is to stay out of the gym if your muscles still ache from your last workout. "A recent study found that when muscles were trained when still sore, no added damage occurred to those fibers," states Stoppani. "One study found that when a workout was repeated just two days later and muscles were still sore, subjects had lower cortisol levels than normal. Since low cortisol means more testosterone is available, it may actually be beneficial from time to time to train the same bodypart two days in a row -- but only rarely."

Story by: By Shawn Perine

BUILD MUSCLE WITH GLUTAMINE

Glutamine remains the supplement of choice for many bodybuilders. Glutamine is an amino acid that can be found naturally in lots of foods such as beans, meat, fish, poultry and dairy products. Glutamine is also an important component of protein powders and is one of the twenty non-essential amino acids found in the body. 




Glutamine is the most common amino acid that is in skeletal tissues and makes up just over 60% of amino acids in muscles. And this is why Glutamine is so important for building muscle.

Glutamine for Building Muscle

Glutamine is distributed throughout the body and plays an important role in protein metabolism. In the eyes of someone that is trying to gain muscle, the strength of glutamine is its ability to reduce the amount of muscle deterioration that occurs as a result of intense physical training. Not being able to replace the high levels of glutamine used up during intense exercise could result in greater status to illness due to a weakening of the immune system. In addition, glutamine 'stolen' from the muscles to maintain the immune system must be replaced to keep those muscles in 'building' mode.




Supplementing with Glutamine

People wanting to build muscle can therefore benefit from supplementing with glutamine each day, preferably taken post-workout to enhance its recuperative effects. Glutamine is a classed as a non essential amino acid. Non essential means the body produces it naturally, not that it is not essential. Just over 60% of our glutamine is found in the skeletal muscle, with the remainder occupying in the lungs, liver, brain and stomach. Glutamine has a unique molecule structure with two nitrogen side chains. This structure makes glutamine the primary transporter of nitrogen in the muscle cells, crucial for supporting muscle growth.





Glutamine Research

Recently, glutamine has gained importance through research demonstrating its unique contribution to protein synthesis (muscle growth), anti-catabolic breakdown functions (prevents muscle tissue breaking down) and muscle building hormone elevating properties. Due to these effects, glutamine plays an important part in your body by aiding recovery of muscle cells. The immune and digestive systems crave glutamine. The digestive system often struggles to get enough glutamine to cope with the high protein diet of a for example a bodybuilder. The other main cause of glutamine depletion is intense physical exercise. When a person undertakes in intense physical activity (working out) more glutamine is required than the total amount produced by the body. If the body cannot get the required glutamine needed from the bloodstream it must revert to the storage facility, the muscles. The body will now break down the glutamine stored in the muscles and send it into the bloodstream. It's under these circumstances that glutamine supplementation is required.


by JonTaylor

The Key Mass-Building Move (Not What You Think)

I was having an e-mail conversation with Mr. America Doug Brignole, which will be part of an exclusive interview in the March ’12 IRON MAN, and I asked him which are his favorite exercises for building mass. 




He’s put on quite a bit of size lately, so I was wondering if he’d made any “discoveries.”

His answer stunned me, even though it’s something related to an animal study on hypertrophy I often quote and directly related to my Positions-of-Flexion mass-building protocol (more on that in a moment)…

“[The best mass-building exercises] are the ones that have a resistance curve whereby the resistance increases as the muscle elongates and diminishes as it contracts–for example, standing cable laterals.”

Whoa! Ask most people what the best size-building move is for the medial-delt head, and you get “presses.” But I know for a fact Doug is not an overhead-press fan. That’s another story. The point here is that his best choice for shoulder size is a STRETCH-position exercise.




Doug said, “A standing cable lateral raise–with the pulley about hip high–provides resistance right from the beginning of the movement [where the medial head is somewhat stretched], and it diminishes as the arm is raised to parallel to the ground.”

That’s the complete opposite resistance curve of a standing dumbbell lateral raise, an inferior delt exercise, according to Doug. There is zero resistance at the start–the most important point–and it gradually increases to where it’s impossible to hold in the contracted position. There should be max resistance at the bottom with much less at the top.

So why is the stretch point so important for stimulating muscle-mass increases? Here’s the scientific explanation from top strength and hypertrophy researchers Steven Fleck, Ph.D., and William Kraemer, Ph.D.:

“At the optimal length [of the muscle fiber] there is potential for maximal cross-bridge interaction and thus maximal force….. With excessive shortening there is an overlap of actin filaments so that the actin filaments interfere with each other’s ability to contract the myosin cross-bridges. Less cross-bridge contact with the active sites on the actin results in a smaller potential to develop tension.”




In case your eyes glazed over while reading all the science lingo, what they are saying is that at the peak-contracted position, like the top of a dumbbell lateral raise, the fibers are very bunched up, so much so that they can’t produce as much tension as when the muscle is in a more lengthened, or stretched, state.

There’s definitely something very special about stretch-position exercises when it comes to triggering mass–semi-stiff-legged deadlifts for hamstrings, overhead extensions for triceps, flyes for pecs, incline curls for biceps and so on. I use those as the second move in standard Positions-of-Flexion mass-building protocol, but maybe they should be first.

I’ve been more intrigued with stretch-position moves since I saw the bird study by Antonio and Gonyea (Med Sci Sports Exerc. 25:1333-45; 1993). They produced a 334 percent increase in mass gain in the “lat” with one month of STRETCH-ONLY “workouts.” They progressively overloaded the bird’s wing at elongation, and according to Antonio, “produced the greatest gains in muscle mass ever recorded in an animal or human model of tension-induced overload.”

With Doug’s comments and revisiting all of the above, I’m going to experiment again with putting the stretch-position exercise first in my bodypart routines. I say “again” because we tried that years ago. In fact, it worked so well we created a video titled “Hypercontraction Training.” Lots of trainees reported excellent mass gains–but it fell out of favor. Why? Because strength was sluggish on the big midrange exercises, which were performed after a few sets of a stretch-position exercise. We thought because strength wasn’t increasing, it wasn’t working well. Wrong…

Now we know that there is not a major correlation with getting a muscle stronger to get it bigger. And maybe, just maybe, stretch overload is the key get-bigger trigger.

I’ll have more in a future blog. Till then, stay Built for Life.




By Steve Holman - Iron Man

Steve has been training for 35 years, since he was 15, and has been IRON MAN Magazine’s Editor in Chief for more than 20 years. He has written more than 20 books on bodybuilding, weight training and nutrition, and his popular “Train, Eat, Grow” series, which he writes with his training partner Jonathan Lawson, appears monthly in IRON MAN magazine. Steve has also interviewed many legendary bodybuilding figures including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cory Everson, Tom Platz, Lee Labrada and Boyer Coe.