Are Kettlebells Or Dumbbells Superior For Gym Based Strength Gains?

By Russ Howe

It's a war which has raged on for the best part of ten years but, thanks to recent scientific research, today you will get a definite answer to the question: Kettlebells vs dumbbells - which method will give you the best results?

Before we do that, it is important to point out that using both approaches is always going to be far superior to limiting yourself to just one style. You will often hear people swearing by the use of just one protocol, all this does is limit your ability on the gym floor as each style comes with it's own plus points and negatives, therefore a combination of the two styles alongside other forms of training, such as yoga, interval training and body weight movements, would be optimal for achieving the goals set by most individuals.

However, a recent study pitted the kettlebell against free weights in a study to determine which method would return the greatest strength gains overall. The results were quite profound.

In the study, researchers ordered their first group of subjects to perform a six week course of swings, goblet squats and accelerated swings using a 35 pound weight. Improvements of squat ability, vertical leap and power clean strength were documented.

The free weights group performed a six week program of barbell squat, power clean and high pull using around 80% of their one rep max on each exercise.

At the end of the six week study, the results of the two groups were compiled and compared. The overwhelming winner was the second group - the free weight group. These individuals boasted improvements of a 15% higher squat compared to group A's 5% increase. They also noticed a 10% power clean and 4% vertical leap boost.

Their kettlebell counterparts, on the other hand, could only manage a 4% increase to their power clean and added just 1% to their vertical leap. Those results were quite surprising, given the explosive nature of kettlebell training in general.

If you want to base your training program purely on the scientific findings, then free weights clearly return the greatest strength gains.

However, the optimal method for building a better body through effective fat loss and lean muscle building should include a variety of techniques. Although this particular study from California State University, Fullerton returned results heavily in favor of resistance training, this does not mean you should eliminate every other type of exercise from your program.

While free weights have now been shown to trump other equipment in the strength category, that doesn't mean they are the only method you should use. For instance, there are a number of exercises which can be performed using a kettlebell which are simply more functional than using conventional dumbbells and barbells. The swing is a perfect example of that.

The battle between kettlebells vs dumbbells will be one that undoubtedly cuts most gyms down the middle depending upon personal choice. However, the latest scientific research clearly documents one winner.

Original Source: http://weight-loss012.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/are-kettlebells-or-dumbbells-superior.html

The Importance of Muscle

From the very beginning of the ancestral health movement, Paleo-inspired exercise plans have focused on strength training over cardio, with the rationale that lifting heavy weights effectively builds and maintains muscle mass, while jogging for hours actually destroys it. But this begs the question: what’s so special about muscle mass? Why would you want to have more of it?

The first obvious answer is “because it looks good:” especially for men, but increasingly also for women, the athletic look is in. Muscles make for a nice beach body, and they’re also attractive as an outer sign of positive personal qualities like self-control, discipline, and drive.

On top of their aesthetic appeal, muscles are useful. Even in a society saturated with every form of mechanical convenience we can dream up, we still occasionally have to move a couch, push a car, or carry a bike up a flight of stairs.

But most importantly, muscles play a vital role in supporting overall health and wellness, especially into old age. They aren’t just about looking good (although that’s a nice bonus), and they aren’t just about the occasional need to help your friends move; they’re a critical factor in metabolic health, body weight control, bone strength, and resilience to stress and disease.

Muscles Promote Insulin Sensitivity 

One of the most important functions of muscles in metabolic health is their ability to store glucose (carbohydrates) as glycogen. They then use this stored glycogen as fuel every time you need to move. Muscle mass essentially acts as a glycogen reserve that you top up by eating carbohydrates, and deplete when you exercise.

This makes muscle a critical player in an overall healthy metabolism, because it allows you to use carbohydrate calories for what you want (energy and activity), and not what you want to avoid (storage as fat). In more scientific terms, it increases insulin sensitivity and protects against insulin resistance. In helping your body use carbohydrates this way, muscle mass is ultimately protective against metabolic syndrome and diabetes, which are really just diseases of inadequate carbohydrate metabolism (for more on this, see the full explanation here).

On the flip side of this, sarcopenia (the technical term for inadequate muscle mass or quality) is strongly associated with diabetes. So far studies have only established a correlation, not a causation, but the strength of the relationship is telling. One group of researchers studied 810 subjects in Korea, and divided them into two groups: diabetics and non-diabetics. 15.7% of the diabetics, but only 6.9% of the non-diabetics, were sarcopenic. And in American subjects, another group of researchers found a strong correlation between sarcopenia and impaired glucose metabolism independent of body fat. In other words, the less muscle you have, the more likely you are to develop insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and ultimately diabetes.

Muscles Protect Against Obesity 

Diabetes, of course, usually comes along with an unwelcome co-morbidity: obesity. Diabetes and obesity are really just two sides of the same coin – diabetes is the inability to use carbohydrates productively, and obesity is the natural result when your body stores them as fat instead. Both are inflammatory; both are mediated by imbalances in the gut flora; both are closely connected to autoimmunity. Unsurprisingly, the muscle wasting of sarcopenia is also strongly associated with obesity, and the two problems react on each other in a vicious cycle.

This diagram (taken from this study) perfectly illustrates the vicious cycle of sarcopenic obesity:

To explain the relationship very simply, obesity is inflammatory, and inflammation causes muscle breakdown throughout the whole body. Muscle loss makes it harder to move around, contributing to a sedentary lifestyle. Sitting all day accelerates weight gain and muscle loss, and the cycle continues.

Sarcopenic Obesity and Aging 

The dangerous consequences of muscle loss and fat gain most obvious among the elderly, making muscle health especially important after middle age. Aging presents a perfect storm that greatly accelerates the rate of sarcopenia. As people get older, they generally stop exercising (if they ever did), and spend more time sitting still. But muscle, unfortunately, is a use-it-or-lose-it kind of tissue. For one thing, it takes a lot of energy to maintain, so if you want to keep it around, you have to use it regularly to show your body that it’s still worth the effort. Since an elderly person’s body already has enough to do without maintaining muscles for no reason, it breaks down the muscle proteins to spare energy and keep the heart and other organs functioning.

The elderly also don’t metabolize protein as efficiently as the young, so their protein requirements for maintaining muscle mass are higher at the time in their life when their actual protein intake is most likely to drop.

The result is a steady decrease in muscle size that really takes off around age 50 and accelerates with time. And it’s not only the amount of muscle tissue that’s affected; muscle quality also declines. Scans of elderly people’s muscles reveal much more intramuscular fat, or fat tissue that has penetrated into the muscle. Basically, the elderly are at a much greater risk of being “skinny-fat:” they aren’t noticeably underweight or under-muscled to the naked eye, but look a little closer and that “muscle mass” isn’t all muscle.

This diagram (from this study) summarizes the relationship between aging, weight gain, and muscle loss:

As you can see, it’s essentially an even more dangerous version of the sarcopenia/obesity cycle that occurs in non-elderly people.

All of these factors make old age an enormous risk factor for losing fat and gaining muscle, and as you might expect, the vast majority of sarcopenic obese patients are over 60. The consequences are severe. Sarcopenic elderly patients are more vulnerable to falls, and less able to recover from illness or hospitalization. Add obesity, and the story gets even worse; in one study, sarcopenic obese elderly patients fared dramatically worse than sarcopenic nonobese or obese nonsarcopenic patients in a test of their ability to carry out everyday activities (for example, bathing, dressing themselves, and cleaning the house). The extreme consequences of sarcopenic obesity in the elderly really highlight the crucial importance of muscle mass for maintaining a healthy spectrum of human activity

Muscles, Diabetes, and Sarcopenic Obesity: Summing it Up

To summarize the previous three sections, muscle loss is a key player in the cycle of obesity and diabetes. Gain muscle, and you improve your metabolic function and reduce your risk of fat gain. (Although it’s not a magic bullet, it’s also worth mentioning that muscle in the resting state burns more calories than fat, so it does raise your metabolism slightly).

On the other hand, if you lose muscle, your body has a harder time maintaining a healthy weight and a normal degree of insulin sensitivity. And worse still, the cumulative effect of sarcopenia, diabetes, and obesity is far greater than the sum of their individual problems. All three of these conditions magnify each other and keep you trapped in a vicious cycle of poor health.

This all goes double if you’re over 60. The elderly, as the population most at risk for muscle loss and fat gain, are especially prone to sarcopenic obesity, and have the most to gain from taking care of their muscles. But it doesn’t just affect the retiree crowd: in people who don’t regularly exercise, muscle loss starts around age 20. Preventing insulin resistance and weight gain in middle age, and heading off sarcopenic obesity in old age, start in the gym when you’re young.

Muscles And Bone Density 

Moving on from the metabolic advantages of having a healthy amount of muscle mass, strong muscles also help preserve and maintain healthy bone density. Especially for women and the elderly, bone density is important for preventing osteoporosis – and it’s not just about eating your calcium chews.

The connection might not seem obvious (how does more muscle mass make your bones stronger?), but the hidden link is in the concept of loading. The best way to build strong bones is to put them under a heavy load: lift, carry, drag, or otherwise move something with a substantial weight. And all the ways of doing this also result in stronger muscles. So it’s not the muscles themselves that make your bones stronger; it’s the exercise you use to build those muscles that also builds your bones.

Specifically, weight training with heavy weights has been proven again and again to increase bone density, even in the elderly. The literature on this subject is enormous; one comprehensive review found that the benefits of walking or light aerobics were debatable, but that strength training was both safe and effective for preventing bone density decay in older adults, especially when continued consistently for at least a year.

Just like building muscle to prevent sarcopenic obesity later in life, improving bone density through strength training is another benefit that it’s best to start working on while you’re young. If nothing else, it’s much easier to maintain a habit you already have than to take up deadlifting at 65. This review even found that exercise increased bone density in preadolescent children: as long as the exercise is done at an age-appropriate intensity, there really is no age limit on the benefits.

Muscles Improve Disease Recovery 

Another health benefit of muscles is their ability to create a “safety net” of protein that your body can draw on at times of increased need. Protein is one of the most important structural components in your entire body, and muscles play a key role in regulating protein availability. They absorb protein from the diet, store it, and distribute it to the heart, liver, and other organs as needed. In the absence of dietary protein, your body will break down your muscles to keep feeding your organs.

In healthy people under normal lifestyle conditions, the intake of protein from food balances out the demands from the organs, and muscle mass is preserved. In bodybuilders, the intake of protein from food exceeds the demands from the organs, and muscle mass is increased. Under the stress of any kind of illness or injury, though, your body’s protein needs increase significantly because all your organs need more support to help them fight the stressor. Patients with severe burns, for example, can require up to 3-4 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight (compare that to .8-1 grams/kg in healthy people).

Diet can rarely deliver this level of protein, especially diets of the hospital food that you’re likely to be stuck with if you have such a severe injury. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s also unlikely that humans could regularly get that much protein while severely injured and unable to hunt. Fortunately, your muscles can take up the slack – if you have an adequate reserve of muscle to start with. Muscle is your body’s “safety net” against the increased protein demands of illness.

If you don’t have that safety net, you’re in trouble. For example, muscle mass is an independent predictor of survival rates for patients with all kinds of cancers, even after accounting for sex, age, and stage of cancer. Compared to patients with normal muscle mass, patients with sarcopenia find chemotherapy harder to endure. They experience symptoms of overdose at lower levels of drugs, they require more rehabilitative care, they suffer from infections and complications more frequently, and they simply die more often.

From the numerous disadvantages of people who don’t have adequate muscle mass, it’s clear that skeletal muscle is an important stockpile that the body can draw on for extra nutrients when it needs them. So building up a healthy reserve of muscle is an excellent form of health insurance just in case life happens and you find yourself in the hospital with a serious problem.

Building Healthy Muscles 

After all that description of the benefits of muscle mass, it’s time to get down to the details: how can you increase the size and quality of your own muscle tissue?

First of all, it’s important to note that not everyone has to be a bodybuilder in order to get these benefits. The studies linked above, that resistance training substantially improves bone density in elderly women, weren’t turning little old ladies into she-hulks with a steady diet of whey powder and creatine. To get the benefits of healthy muscle mass, you don’t have to go anywhere above the musculature that most people find attractive (unless, of course, you want to).

That said, the nitty-gritty of building muscles is actually fairly simple. First, eat adequate protein (20-25% of calories is a good ballpark number for putting on muscle) and adequate calories. If you’re losing fat, your body can build muscle mass on a slight calorie deficit because it will just take energy from body fat to make up for what you’re not putting in your mouth. On the other hand, an extreme calorie deficit is completely counterproductive and will actually destroy muscle mass you already have, since starvation produces the same kind of muscle-wasting stress response as injury or illness. 1,200 calories a day is not enough for an adult human of any size, especially if she’s also working out.

If you aren’t losing fat, you’ll need to eat a slight surplus in order to gain muscle: you can’t build any kind of mass without raw materials over and above what your body needs just to function. The bigger your surplus, the faster you’ll put on muscle, but many people prefer the “slow and steady” route since very fast muscle gain is usually accompanied by a significant amount of fat.

On the exercise front, easily the best muscle-builder around is strength training. This can be bodyweight exercises (push-ups, pull-ups, and planks, for example), or free weight training (squats, deadlifts, and presses). This article goes into a little more detail on your strength-building options, but for beginners almost any kind of exercise program will get results so don’t spend too long agonizing over which to choose.

Of course, if it were all that simple, there wouldn’t be entire forums full of amateur bodybuilders and powerlifters eagerly debating the best timing of their post-workout meals and the most effective protein powder. There’s an infinite amount of complexity out there if you’re willing to take the time to get into it. But starting off with a solid diet and a basic strength training routine will already get you a lot further than almost everyone around you. And by the time a beginner program stops giving you results, you’ll have the background knowledge to make a more informed decision about plunging into the details.

Women and Muscles 

Strength training and building strong muscles are especially important for women, who tend to have less muscle to start with, and who are also more prone to osteoporosis and bone density problems. But when it comes to building muscles, women are often skeptical. Even though the benefits are significant, they’re afraid of getting “bulky,” and shy away from heavy weights in favor of extremely light dumbbells.

CrossFit has started to make a dent in this attitude, but it’s still very prevalent, and it’s time to put it to rest: lifting weights will not make you look like a bodybuilder unless you also take massive amounts of steroids, eat thousands of calories at every meal, and devote endless hours to your biceps. Figure competitors and female bodybuilders dedicate an unbelievable amount of time and effort to looking that way; unless you’re willing to imitate their regimen, it’s not going to happen to you.

That isn’t to say that weightlifting won’t change your body. But for the vast majority of women, those changes are positive: a leaner physique, arms they love showing off in T-shirts, and toned, shapely legs. So there’s absolutely no need to fear the free weights, and plenty of reasons to embrace them.

Muscles and Human Health: Conclusion 

Muscles aren’t just for bodybuilders. They’re for everyone. Human beings are physiologically designed to have a fair amount of muscle mass built through regular exercise, muscle mass that allows us to metabolize carbohydrates efficiently, recover from injury or illness, and maintain our resilience and health into old age.

As a consequence of the sedentary modern lifestyle, we’re seeing all the dangers of muscle atrophy: osteoporosis, diabetes, obesity, fragile bones, and difficulty recovering from stress. These problems are not normal, and they don’t have to be inevitable parts of life. While muscle alone isn’t a miracle cure, building healthy muscle mass and maintaining it past middle age is one way to preserve good health and prevent the diseases of the modern environment.

Orignal Source: http://paleodietlifestyle.com/the-importance-of-muscle/

Supplements Are Important in Body Building

by Jeremy Page

Body Building is the process of developing muscle through the combination of weight training, increased caloric intake, and rest. Body building champions are not cut from the same cloth as the majority of people. Body building nutritional supplements are easily available in every health food store and most gyms. Body building is the process of developing your muscle fibers by doing resistance training mostly with free weights and machines, increasing your daily caloric intake and having adequate rest for growth.

Supplements

Supplements not only help to offset nutritional deficiencies, but are also an indispensable aid to all bodybuilders and athletes who wish to achieve their optimum performance in terms of strength, stamina and muscle growth in their chosen field. Supplements can be added into your bodybuilding program to assist you. A site listing a number of recipes for bodybuilding shakes etc that include the use of protein supplements as well as cheaper options. Enhance workout routines with nutritional muscle growth and body building supplements. Nowadays, if you don't take body building supplements, you almost might as well not be working out at all in some circles. Standards have change, and now men need body building supplements to get to the massive sizes they desire, or to obtain the gargantuan muscle strength and speed demanded by professional sports. Many fitness enthusiasts, including athletes, bodybuilders and weight lifters are turning to muscle-enhancing supplements to power up their athletic performance, build a stronger physique and give them the winning edge. That is why nutritional supplements are a big part of weight training and body building activities.

Gym

Worn in and out of gyms everywhere, Gorilla Wear is the ultimate choice for gym wear and casual fitness clothing. It takes the discipline of consistent hard work and time in the gym. Ifyoure just getting started, its quite easy to become totally confused byall of the terms and gym jargon. These days, more and more people are turning awayfrom memberships to gyms and instead choosing to invest money in a home gym. You can put a homegym in a spare corner of your home, or even in thebasement if you wish. Don't expect to hit the gym a few times and see some significant results. Whether you are a professional bodybuilder or you just enjoy hitting the weights hard at the gym, setting a goal for your bodybuilding exercise plan will help you achieve maximum results.

Body building is actually a sport whereby competitive body builders display their muscular bodies in front of a panel of judges who assign points to determine the rankings and prize awards. Body building not only helps you physically but mentally as well because it builds self-confidence, makes you more disciplined and helps you achieve your goals in life. Body building supplement is a supplement that is designed to help people who use it to achieve several things that include but are not limited to weight gain, muscle building, and strength training. Body building is no different than gymnastics, tennis, etc.

Original Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Supplements-Are-Important-in-Body-Building/619743/

Know the Body Building Exercise Basics

by Dave Poon

Do you want to have defined and toned muscles? In order to get the best shape you desire, you have to know and keep a few body building exercise basics in mind.

Setting up your main goal is the first logical step as a bodybuilding beginner. You should be really decided if you want to be a real bodybuilder. Nonetheless there are many benefits you get when you undergo bodybuilding exercise trainings.

In bodybuilding, you may want to look good having a perfect body. Or you may want to stay physically fit and healthy. Just make sure that you do this for yourself and not for anyone else.

Nowadays, a high percentage of bodybuilding exercise programs are in demand because of the many participants who want to get better and look good. You may set specific goals up to what extent you want your body to progress and improve.

For beginners, here are some basic body building exercise tips in starting your body building program. Some of these methods are really basic but can help you a lot.

1. You have to know the basic methods that you will need in body building exercise. You can start up by increasing the weight and resistance slowly using weight workout machines.

It is also advisable that you perform repetitions using more sets of equipment.

2. Move the resistance slower and lessen your rest in between sets and exercises. In this way you can slowly improve on building muscles and progress on your resistance training.

3. For the more advance method, you can perform an isolation bodybuilding exercise and continue with a compound repetitive movement.

4. Perform static holds to increase resistance with the hardest position of the range of your exercise motion. You can do a top position while exercising your leg extension muscles.

5. You may exercise partial rep in weak range position. You may perform a portion of the rep exercise where you are weakest.

6. Perform strip-set. Do this after you are through with your warm up exercises.

You may perform three sets of back to back exercises with no rest while starting with the heaviest weight available.

7. Perform the full rep then followed by a half rep with the normal range of movements. You may return to your starting position to start of the next rep on a lat pull down position.

Pull the second rep way below and resist weight back up on a half way position then pulling it again back down.

8. If you're main goal is to tighten and tone your muscles, focus heavily on increasing reps. it is also efficient for your muscle toning if you lessen your rest and change the style of your exercise frequently.

As a final advice, the methods and steps mentioned are general and basics only. You may adapt and adjust to a different bodybuilding exercise for your personal goals and experience.

For those who are in an advance body building exercise, you may challenge yourself to try a different method in 3 to 4 weeks or you may just stay with the basics.

There can be nothing more fulfilling than having a great body. Make sure that you live a healthy lifestyle to maintain that physically fit body. Start a body building exercise now.

Original Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Know-the-Body-Building-Exercise-Basics/274662/

Awesome Exercises For Building Lean Muscle Mass

by Tim Ryan

There are hundreds of different exercises you can do with free weights and resistance machines or with just your body weight to build muscle mass. You should include mainly multi-joint compound exercises in your workout as they build muscle fastest. The most popular and effective of these are: dead lifts, squats, bench press, pull ups, shoulder presses and rows.

Whilst they are very effective your body needs to be constantly challenged in new and different ways if your goal is building lean muscle mass. Here are a few awesome exercises that are often overlooked yet work really well. From time to time try and include these exercises in your workouts. Variety prevents boredom setting in and provides new reasons for your muscles to grow.

Try running on the sand, donkey raises or a jump rope for getting big calves. Running on the sand is very taxing and the bouncing motion in skipping will provide a real burn. as your calf muscles are generally used to endurance activities like walking all day they tend to respond better to longer endurance type exercises when seeking muscle growth. Donkey raises are when you place your toes on the edge of a 3-4 inch high block bend over to 90 degrees at the waist and rest your hands on a bard or bench at that height. have a training buddy jump on to your back so that you can pump your calve muscles up and down shifting two lots of body weight. stabiliser muscles all around the calve have to be used in order to perform these correctly making them more difficult.

Can you remember the last time you performed dips to hit your chest muscles? A great mass builder for the chest muscle is dips which are great for triceps also. Many older gyms have two long bars that run parallel to each other for exactly this. Often a v shape is formed which provides scope for different grips. This means you can really hit different areas of the chest and triceps effectively.

Try performing stiff legged deadlifts to nail your hamstrings. These are an awesome hamstring exercise seen very infrequently. Simply do deadlifts but you legs have to remain straight throughout meaning you bend at the waist and keep a straight back to lift the barbell or dumbbell. Maintain control of the weight by keeping it close to your legs whilst raising it and be warned that this exercise can leave your hamstrings very sore the next day.

Try hammer curls if you want big arms! The pal of your hand is kept facing in towards your body at all times, this is the only difference from regular curls. This places great stress on the inner bicep muscle that gives it thickness and size throughout called the brachialis muscle whilst also still developing the main bicep too. Stand with your back straight and flat against the corner of a wall to prevent yourself from using moment to assist the movement for a real burn.

How long is it since you saw someone do lunges at the fitness centre? These are awesome for your quads providing both mass and shape. With a pair of dumb bells in your hands take a decent stride forwardsand bend both knees down to 90 degress step backwards and repeat with the other leg. A superb workout alternative to squats.

For creating muscle definition and for a superb aerobic workout why not try boxing padwork it is very effective for the hitting the entire upper body or do uphill sprints to shred your leg muscles or even get on an exercise bike for uphill intervals immediately following a leg workout. That is a real killer!

With those group of classic exercises in your thoughts change your routine around a bit to gain more lean muscle mass.

Original Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Awesome-Exercises-For-Building-Lean-Muscle-Mass/1773720/

Muscle Building

Muscle building is an excellent choice for a workout routine. If you are interested in building muscles look into specific routines that you can follow in order to build muscles in your body. If you are already a little on the heavy side, you may think it would be harder for you to build muscles since it would take you a lot of hard work and determination in order to have a body that you can boast to the world.

If you want to take Muscle Building seriously then you would want to remove the fat and replace it with muscles, therefore you need an exercise routine that will help you burn fat as well as build the muscles in your arms, chest, legs, and back. Remember each person is different, so ensure you do your research to find out the exercise sets dependent on your body type.

Another big factor is diet so you will more than likely need to change your diet, cut down on junk food and fast food, and try and to eat nutritiously. It is important to change your diet because; you will need to have the proper energy to do the regular workout plan. It is important for any bodybuilder to be aware that building muscles require lots of patience and determination. Muscles cannot be built and then stop the routine you have. You will need to stick to a workout plan that you will need to maintain up until you build the muscles and then gradually change the exercise routines according to how you see fit.

Muscle building is very easy, if you have access to the right tip and follow them as stated. Before now, most people have tried to build muscles and have been unsuccessful, this is very common. The reason for this is that, either they don't have access to the right information or are not following them seriously. There are some tips you must take note of, if you want to build muscles successfully and quickly. Some of them include working hard, eating the right food, training consistently and resting properly.

One of the most important ways to build muscle quickly is by eating the right food and in the right way. If you really want to build muscles, you will have to eat more of protein food and less of carbohydrates. Avoid unhealthy fat, eat healthy fatty foods. You can eat protein foods like boiled or baked chicken, beans and turkey. Also carbohydrate foods like brown rice and whole wheat bread. If you must use oil when cooking, use olive or coconut oil, do not use groundnut of vegetable oil. You should also consume lots of vegetables and drink plenty of water.

The second tip is to work hard, take your routine seriously. Try always to do your daily exercise until you are unable to continue, this will stress your muscles and provide more opportunity for growth. One very important exercise you must add to your routine is weight lifting, without this you won't be able to get a good result quickly. Also you will have to work out consistently; you can't do your routine once a week and expect to get the same result as someone who does his routine three to four times a week.

Another important bodybuilding tip is having enough rest. After your daily routine, it is advisable to rest for at least 24 hours as this will allow your muscle to heal and grow. If you don't allow your muscles to heal before you continue with your workout, you might injure them thereby making growth difficult. Do not lift heavy weights every day. Also you should sleep for 7 to 8 hours a day, because your muscle grows best during sleep. Another very important tip is to take a week off after 8 weeks of extensive workouts.

Follow the above tips strictly and in less than two weeks you will see a tremendous improvement in your muscle growth. You don't have to work out for months before seeing result.

Your workout routine will need to change to help you maintain muscle. Your focus should be on 8-10 repetitions per set, but the weight should be moderate, not moderately heavy. So, what does moderate weight mean? It means you should be able to fully complete all 10 reps without too much struggle, but enough struggle to feel a little burn. This is very hard to explain in words, but you will know the feeling when you feel it.

When you no longer want to gain muscle, you should have a good sense of your body and how it feels under physical stress. You should know when your muscles are fatigued. You should still feel a good pump, without taking your muscles to failure. Your goal is to give your new muscles a reason to stick around. The reason why your body gained muscle in the first place was because you placed unusual stress on your muscles on a regular basis, and the body responded naturally by increasing in size. Now, you must still give your body a reason to hold onto muscle because you still have a workout program that puts moderate resistance on your muscles.

Remember your body still needs protein to feed the muscle you have. If you deprive your body of protein, you will lose a good amount of muscle fast. Use a good quality whey protein powder daily and drink plenty of water. Your muscles also need lots of water to survive. Sleep should be your next focus. Surprisingly, your body won't need the same 8-9 hours of sleep to maintain muscle the way it did to gain muscle. You still need the recovery, but your body will now recover faster because your body will not be stressed to the same degree.

Original source: http://goarticles.com/article/Muscle-Building/7634736/