Gain Weight and Muscle

Muscle Building: Great Tips To Gain Weight And Muscle #5 – Body Building At Home

When you look at the cost of gym membership nowadays, there’s a big temptation to buy some equipment to help you gain weight and muscle at home. Although the initial investment is high, the temptation to avoid the on-going gym fees is tempting.

I want to explain to you why I think this is a bad idea, and add on what I think you should buy for the home. Please read right through to the end, as there’s some important stuff later on.

Let’s weigh up the pros and cons of a home gym vs the professional one:

Can you afford it?

Setting up your own gym is an expensive business. Sure, you can save money by buying second-hand equipment, but then you have the worries over how safe it is (you don’t know what the previous owner did to it), and how long it will last. Even second-hand, it’s going to cost a lot to build a decent home gym, and you’ll be a long way short of the facilities that the professional gym has.

So, the end result is that you will have a second-rate gym. Whilst the main factor in muscle growth is a good programme of exercise, coupled with a balanced nutritional supplement, poor equipment is going to hold you back significantly.

Do you have the space?

A decent home gym is going to take up a fair amount of space. Now I don’t know how big your house is, but it’s very likely you don’t have the space to house the gym you need if you’re serious about muscle building.

If you have a family, or even a pet dog, you have to think about what happens when they’re around? Will they get in the way? Will they be safe with all that equipment around? These are questions you must think about carefully.

Will you end up training on your own?

One of the big advantages of body building in a professional gym is that there will always be other people around. Weight training is not something you should really do on your own. Apart from the obvious dangers if something goes wrong, you need someone to give you that extra push every now and then, both physically and verbally.

You may find a training partner who’s willing to work out in your home gym, but what happens when he’s away or busy? If you go to a professional gym, there will always be someone around to join you if your regular partner isn’t available.

So is it a waste of time buying my own equipment?

Certainly not!

I have explained above why I don’t think it’s a good idea to build a full gym at home, but that doesn’t mean to say you shouldn’t have any equipment at home.

I strongly recommend buying some light body building gear for home, to complement the sessions you have in the gym. Here are a few of the items that I think are essential:

Multi Gyms

Despite what I said above, a multi gyms are a great addition to your home, as they aren’t as expensive as a full gym, don’t take up as much space, and are generally safer to have around the house.

Like I said above, I don’t recommend buying second-hand equipment, and would rather spend a little extra and be sure I was getting a new, safe and guaranteed multi gym.

Ankle and Wrist Weights

I don’t use these as part of a work-out. Instead, I wear Ankle and Wrist Weights during my daily life. The extra weight on my limbs forces my muscles to work harder, building up the general strength of my arms and legs. I have noticed a great improvement in my general muscle tone when I’ve worn Ankle and Wrist Weights over a period of time.

Dumbells and Kettle Bells

Sometimes you find yourself with a few minutes to spare. Maybe you want a quick light work-out before bed, or when you just get up.

These sorts of times are great for grabbing a little extra training, without needing to go into a full work-out. Dumbells are an ideal way to get some extra exercise and tone up your muscles in a short time. Used regularly, they can help tone your muscle, and complement the harder workout you do in the gym.

Even better than Dumbells are Kettle Bells. These are a different shape, allowing a variety of exercises to be done in one session. Instead of the linear type of exercise done with Dumbells, kettle bells engage many more muscles at once, and so produce a more balanced all-round muscle growth.

I would go for Kettle Bells if you can, as you will get more benefit from them over the long-term, but Dumbells will also be a great addition to your home routine if you prefer them.

In summary

As I said, I don’t really recommend setting up a full home gym, but if you have the space for one, a multi gym will be one of the best investments you’ll ever make.

In addition to that, or in place of one if you can’t afford a multi gym, some light home equipment will enable you to do some more gentle, but nevertheless important exercises at home. I also recommend Ankle and Wrist Weights and Kettle Bells (or if you prefer them, Dumbells) to round out your extra equipment.

I hope you found this post useful. I’ll be back again son with some more great information on how to gain weight and muscle fast!

Bye for now,
Jim

Topics: Muscle building, Weight training equipment

Muscle Building: Great Tips To Gain Weight And Muscle #4 – Mistakes To Avoid

As I’ve said to you before, it’s around thirty years since I started working to gain weight and muscle. In that time, I’ve seen people come and go, I’ve seen some succeed, and others fail. Why do some fail? Well, there are many reasons, but one of them is that new body builders often fall prey to some common mistakes.

I’d like to share some of the ones I’ve seen with you, and hope that you’ll use them to make sure you’re still in the gym and in tip-top shape in thirty years!

1) Pushing yourself too hard to build muscle

It’s very common to see new bodybuilders join the gym, and jump straight into a daily schedule of two and three-hour workouts. Not surprisingly, most of them don’t make it.

You can’t expect a body that hasn’t been trained to cope with that kind of gruelling punishment. First you need to build up to a solid routine, and even then, you have to be careful not to overdo it.

Your muscles need time to recover after a session, and if you jump back in too soon, you can damage them, which means you won’t get the weight gain and muscle growth you want.

Similarly, a long session can put too much stress on your body, causing more damage than good.

In short, train regularly, but in short sessions – no more than an hour each time.

2) Not eating enough or not eating properly

As I explained in my post about eating properly when body building, it is very important that you make sure you’re giving your body enough nutrients when training. Read that post carefully, it’s very important.

Also, if you are serious about strengthening your muscles, you’ll need to look at a carefully balanced intake of nutritional supplements.

To add to what I wrote there, I see some people coming into the gym right after eating a meal. You just can’t do this and get away with it. Your body needs around an hour to digest a meal, and during that time, it’s using energy to digest, and pumping blood around your body to distribute the nutrients. If you try and train during this time, your body won’t be able to cope.

On the other hand, training on an empty stomach is just as bad, as your body won’t have the reserves it needs.

Eat around an hour before a session, and wait an hour afterwards before eating your next meal.

3) Not balancing your general exercise

Weight training is a very intense form of exercise. This is in contrast to the cardiovascular exercise that you do every day, just by walking around, going up and down stairs and so on. Whilst the general exercise is very important to keep you healthy, too much of it will take strength away from your muscles, leaving them weak.

On the other hand, too little cardiovascular exercise will mean you’re not fit, and unable to cope with extra physical effort. This will make weight training difficult, and possibly even harmful.

4) Haphazard training

If you are looking to build your arms, make sure to do a full range of arm exercises, and do them every time. Don’t do a few here and a few there, or you won’t see the full benefit.

When you do a few of one type of exercise, your body pushes blood into that area to cope with the strain. If you then jump off and start on another area of the body, the blood then has to be sent there instead. You end up with little concentrated exercise in any one area.

As I said in one of my earlier posts, make a plan of what you want to achieve and stick with it. This includes deciding what range of exercises you want to do for each area of your body, and doing all of them every time. This will give you a balanced, positive workout that will benefit your body.

OK, that’s it for now. I hope you found these tips useful. If you follow this advice, you’ll be well on your way to gaining weight and building muscle fast.

Looking forward to talking to you next time,
Jim

Topics: Muscle building, Weight gain

Muscle Building: Great Tips To Gain Weight And Muscle #3 – Nutritional Supplements

I hope you read and acted on my post about making sure you eat properly, as this is very important as you step up your campaign to gain weight and muscle. As promised, this time, I’ll talk about the use of nutritional supplements.

Depending on how fast your body burns up the resources it’s got, and how well you’ve matched your diet to your body’s needs, you may not need to take nutritional supplements to help you build your muscles and put on weight. However, most people find that they do help, and as long as you are careful, they won’t do you any harm.

Before we start though, I just want to say a word about steroids. When I was starting out, many of my friends took steroid injections to boost their muscle growth. Although it seemed like a clever idea at the time, as these do boost your muscle growth, the long-term effects were tragic. Steroids can cause damage to the body’s immune system, which can result in serious illness or even death later in life. Do me a favour, don’t ever be tempted into taking steroids, however much you want to build muscle and gain weight.

Right, that aside, let’s talk about the benefits of nutritional supplements.

The most obvious one is that these products can give you the extra energy and protein you need, without the extra stuff that comes in a lot of the food we eat. It’s far easier to regulate how much extra nutrition you get as well, which is good for measuring your progress.

A protein boost will help your muscle tone, build your immune system, give you more energy and help your muscles recover more quickly. Products such as Promax, Promax Extreme, Promax meal bars and Cyclone are all excellent for this. They contain high-quality whey protein, and are ideal supplements to your natural protein intake.

You will also find it less likely that you’ll get fat if you boost your diet with these supplements. Whilst extra carbohydrates are necessary for muscle building and weight gain, too much can result in the extra being stored as unsightly fat. Whilst most nutritional supplements don’t add extra carbohydrate, the extra other things they do add means you’ll need to eat less fattening foods to get the carbs you need.

The right balance of nutrients will give you a lot of extra strength, which is exactly what you need when body building. You will be able to lift heavier and heavier weights, which of course will build your muscle strength more. A good balanced nutrient supplement is of immense value, and Protrient, Immune Support and ZMA are all good choices to help keep you healthy and well.

When you come back from the gym, you’ll want to make sure you replace what you’ve just burned up. One serving of either Progain or Cyclone after a session at the gym will give your body what it needs to maximise the benefits of the training.

Your muscles are one of the body’s supply places for important amino acids. When you work out, you destroy the supplies, which can lead to weakening of the tone. You’ll find that Cyclone and HMB-1000 will reduce this effect, allowing you to train hard without destroying your build.

A good side benefit of taking these products is that your body’s immune system should be strengthened from them. This means you are far less likely to get colds, flu and so on, as well as helping you gain weight and muscle.

I hope you’ve found this useful. Look out for my next post where I’ll give you some more great tips.

See you in the gym,
Jim

Topics: Eating properly, Nutritional supplements, Weight gain

Muscle Building: Great Tips To Gain Weight And Muscle #2 – Eat Properly

OK, as I promised last time, I have loads more great tips on how to gain weight and muscle, and will share the second of these with you today.

If you’re going to start a serious programme of exercise (and if you haven’t yet, read my last post about why you should), then you’re going to be working your body harder than you were before. If you want to gain weight, then you need to replenish the reserves that your body has stored, otherwise you won’t be building muscle, you’ll be losing it!

Every time you eat, your body extracts the vital nutrients it needs from the food and either uses them immediately, or (more likely) stores them away for when you need them. Assuming your body is healthy, you should always have enough reserves to cope.

However, when you step up your training programme, you’re putting more strain on your body, and using up those resources faster. You need to make sure you are replenishing them correctly for maximum muscle growth.

The first thing to do is make sure you eat regularly. I see too many people who skip breakfast, or eat at odd, irregular hours, and then wonder why they can’t gain weight and muscle. Make a point of starting your day with a good breakfast, to give your body the energy it needs to get you through the day.

The two things you need to concentrate on most are carbohydrate and protein. The carbohydrate gives your body the energy it needs, and the protein helps with muscle growth and strength. I used to drink milk, made from dehydrated powder, but make it up double strength. This gave me a protein boost that ensured my muscles had just what they needed. Carbohydrate comes from things like bread, potatoes and sugar – although you have to be careful not to eat too many sweets, as this can make you fat.

When I was a teenager, and heavily into my first stage of weight training and body building, I got into the habit of eating pizza, two veg and chips for breakfast! Yup, you read that right. We kept a stock of them in the freezer, and I would heat them in the microwave and have a good, carbohydrate-packed breakfast. I used to eat a moderate lunch and a light supper. This made sure that I was giving my body the most energy and protein first thing in the morning when it needed it, and less later in the day when it was more likely to be stored as fat.

If you stick to a careful regime of healthy eating, and make sure you eat three good meals every day, your body will always have enough resources to cope with your increased programme.

If you really want to boost your body’s resources, and turbo charge your campaign to gain weight and muscle, then you’ll want to think about some food supplements. I’ll tell you more about these next time.

Watch out for the next post,
Jim

Topics: Eating properly, Weight gain

Muscle Building: Great Tips To Gain Weight And Muscle #1 – Plan Your Exercise Regime

You know, one of the questions I get asked a lot, and one of the main reasons I started this blog, is “Jim, how do I gain weight and muscle fast?” I decided to share what I know, so that you too can put on that extra muscle and look lean and fit.

The first thing to note is that not everyone is built the same. Although we can all put on weight – without getting fat of course – we aren’t all going to end up looking like Arnie! If you have a slim frame, don’t worry though, you can still build up your muscles, and you’ll look and feel better.

As an introduction to this big subject, I’d like to give you one of the top tips I have found over the thirty years since I started weight training. I have plenty more tips, and will be sharing them as we go along with this blog, but will only give you one today.

OK, I want to start with probably the most important piece of advice I can give you if you want to build muscles fast. Actually, it’s pretty much the most important thing I could tell you about life in general, and isn’t really related to body building.

Think about what you want to achieve
and how you are going to do it

Whenever you want to achieve anything, whether it’s in the gym, in the office, at home or wherever, you need a plan. People who plan their actions before they start are far more likely to achieve than whose who wander along aimlessly. Look at all the big names in business, and you’ll find they didn’t just get there by accident – they planned where they were going and they stuck with it.

The same holds true if you want to get huge muscle and gain weight. Here’s how to apply the rule…

Take some specific measurable factors, like overall body weight, bicep circumference, and so on, and write down where you are today. Now work out where you think you could be in, say, three months time. Write down your goals on the same piece of paper. In short, build a system that will get you where you want to be.

Obviously, I can’t do this for you as I don’t know, and haven’t assessed your current physique, but you should be able to find someone in the gym who can give you some pointers. Don’t worry if you can’t get anyone to help you here, you can adjust your targets as you go along.

Now, you need to work out a programme of exercise to achieve the growth and muscle gain you’ve targeted. The last point is obvious, but crucial. You must stick to your plan, whatever happens.

I can guarantee that if you plan your programme of exercise, and you stick to it like glue, you will see great results!

OK, that’s all for this time. Keep your eye on this blog as I’ll be posting loads of great ideas on how to gain weight and muscle over the coming time.