A large proportion of people, particularly men, have the desire to achieve that "ripped" look of lean defined muscle. Unfortunately many join a gym, load the bars up and lift away, giving little thought towards programme design, lifestyle balance or even health and safety! Many persist but also many give up without achieving their goals or worse still, turn to illegal and potentially dangerous performance enhancing drugs such as steroids.

In this Post, I will share with you the basic premise of building muscle and hopefully armed with this knowledge, you can realise your muscle building goals. This being said, I cannot accept responsibility for any action undertaken without my express individual advice and/or supervision so unless you are a client of mine, do this at your own risk.

1. Sort your diet out

The right diet can account for up to 80% of success in a muscle building programme, understand your food groups first of all. These are fruits and vegetables, Low GI carbohydrates (brown bread, pasta and rice etc), meats and fish, dairy, fats and oils and sugary snacks. The build muscle, you will need to take in around 1.6 - 1.8 kg of protein per kg of body weight per day. You get protein from meat, fish, eggs and dairy but it is also found in lesser quantities in the Low GI carbohydrate food group. Eat little and often, combining a portion of carbohydrate, portion of protein and a vegetable portion with each meal

2. Get on the water

Without exercise, drink 2 litres of pure water per day, if you are training, drink more. Water transports nutrients essential for muscle building directly to the muscles so without it, your muscles are not going to get the feeding they need in time

3. Sack off the booze

Alcohol has a potentially catabolic effect on muscle gains, not even taking into account the excess fat you will put on, hiding any gains that you do make, so if you are serious about muscle building, can the cans!

4. Get on the weights

To ensure results you do need to lift weights. It is possible to use body weight exercises such as press ups and free squats to shape up, but you end up doing lot of repetitions and you will tend to be leaner, plus you have to be quite creative to achieve that overload. So get on the weights, my advice would be to either get to a local gym and get an instructor to show you, or get a good personal trainer teach you proper technique. Design your program so that you work each major muscle group about 2 - 3 times a week and bear in mind that larger muscles take longer to recover

5. Lift free

When lifting weight, choose free weight exercises using dumbells, barbells, kettlebells etc, not saying that the machines are useless, Its just that exercising with free weights strengthens all stabilising (keeps you in place) and synergising (helps the main muscle you are exercising) muscles, small muscles you never knew you had. Its good for flexibility and in my opinion, definition as long as proper lifting is observed. Keep your repetitions to between 6 - 12 in a set (most stick to around 8 - 10) and choose a weight heavy enough that you can lift 8 - 10 times with good form until your muscles fail

6. Stimulate the CNS

There are always wild and wacky exercises coming out, but to build muscle, you should really stick to the basics, these are Bench Press, Dead lift and Squat. These are compound (Multi Joint) exercises, which puts more stress on the muscles, particularly the dead lift and Squat, these exercises stimulate the central nervous system which then sends a message out to the muscular skeletal structure saying "We're under stress! Grow!"

7. Apply overload

In all exercises you do, you must look to increase the weight every 3 - 4 weeks so that you are consistently placing your body under a little more stress to force it to adapt. Not applying overload is a big reason why lots of muscle builder fail in their quest, therefore it is essential that you diarise your training and measure consistently

8. Don't forget your cardio

In order to get your muscles to show e.g. your six pack, we've all got one albeit covered in a layer of fat! You are going to need to do cardio (running, cycling, cross trainer etc). There are many different form and for muscle building, you'll want to do between 20 and 30 minutes a week depending on intensity. So doing an interval session (best option in my opinion) would be nearer 20 minutes whereas if you were doing more steady state work, you would take it to nearer 30 minutes. You must again apply overload again, making it progressively harder each week.

9. Get enough sleep

Babies sleep a lot because they are growing. Just like them, you are growing so you are going to need to sleep more. Again, if you are serious about muscle building you do need to be looking a 9 - 10 hours a night uninterrupted sleep, quite challenging in this hectic life but getting those early nights means that your body will have time to repair itself

10. Do not neglect rest

Believe me when I say that more is not always better. It really isn't. If you overtrain, you run the risk of insomnia, loss of concentration, cold like symptoms and muscle shrinkage. When you train, muscle fibres a damaged through the stress of the training. When you rest, the muscle fibres repair themselves and grow back bigger. So if you keep wrecking them before they have time to repair themselves, they will never recover, never grow and could potentially get permanently damaged. So if you want great results. Train each body part 2 - 3 times a week, do cardio 3 times a week and have at least one day where you do absolutely nothing

Leave me a comment!

Rich

The global weight loss market is a colossal, multi billion pound/dollar/euro industry. Millions every year go along to slimming clubs, drink weight loss shakes, go for low calorie options, read books and participate in the latest diet craze that some celebrity has endorsed. it seems to me that the weight loss industry play on the public's:

a) Ignorance

b) Laziness
c) Lack of patience
d) Fickle nature

And to make as much money as possible without really caring if anyone actually loses any weight. In fact, I have always questioned whether or not the major players in the weight loss industry want anyone to actually lose weight, because then they would actually lose their client base... just a thought! I care if people actually lose weight so I am going to share in this article, good, no nonsense advice on how you can guarantee weight loss without playing up to the latest fad. Also, this takes into account the factor of sustainability over the long term because you can't live on shakes for the rest of your life! Again, I can't accept responsibility for advice undertaken without my individual advice and/or supervision so unless you are a client of mine, do this at your own risk

I explain the lot in this video that you can watch and its all summarised below too if you want to read it

1. Work out your BMR

That is, your basal metabolic rate, this is the amount of calories you would burn if you just laid on the sofa. You can do this by applying the following equation (Your weight in kg) x 25 = Your BMR. So for example,

75kg x 25 = 1875 calories

2. Work out your total daily calorie needs

You can do this by considering your activity levels. So, if you don't exercise or move very much, the equation would be (BMR) + 0. If you were moderately active, the equation would be (BMR) x 20%. If you were very active, the equation would be BMR x 50%. So if we take that our example is pretty active 1875 + 937 = 2812 calories per day. This would be to maintain weight

3. Create a calorie deficit

Doing these equations calculate how much the individual would need to eat to maintain the weight that they are at. The next thing we need to do is to create a calorie deficit. Now when we consider that a pound of fat is roughly around 3,500 calories. If we created an deficit of 500 calories a day, this accounts for 1 pound of fat

4. Know where the calories you do eat are coming from

Your daily calories should come from the following food groups.

33% of your calories should come from low GI (Glycemic Index) carbohydrates such as brown pasta, brown rice, brown bread potatoes, oats etc. Forget Atkins diet et al, if you don't get carbs, you won't have the energy long term to get off the sofa. Google Glycemic index to find out more but it basically means how fast the body processes the glycogen in the carbohydrate. If it processes it slowly, it will slowly release energy and you will feel fuller for longer.

33% of your calories should come from fruit and vegetables, bear in mind that a lot of fruit is a carbohydrate portion and some of it can be quite calorific (coconut for example) this is not to say that you shouldn't eat it and that it isn't good for you because it is. However in my opinion, many people eat too much fruit to over compensate for not eating enough vegetables. For your "five a day" I would go for 3 vegetable portions and two fruit portions

20% of your calories should come from meat or meat substitutes and Dairy. These contain protein and are the building blocks of your body, protein is used by the body to build and repair muscle and is essential for shaping and toning muscle

10% of your calories should come from fats and oils, this doesn't mean you can fry your chips in it! But if you choose unsaturated fats (those that are not solid at room temperature) or even better, eat oily fish. This gives you omega three vitamin that keeps heart healthy

5% of your calories is made up of sugary/savory snacks. This makes a healthy eating plan work over the long term. Everything in moderation.

5. Increase your activity levels

Not everyone can commit, or have the inclination to participate in a full on exercise programme (although I would strongly recommend that you do) however you must be active if you want to lose weight. This can involve taking the dog for a walk or cleaning the car. I usually define activity in this context as "movement without sweating" so if you are moving and not sweating, you are being active, if you are moving and sweating, you are exercising! Broadly speaking!

6. If you hate Broccoli, don't eat it!

The purpose of this advice is to give you something that is sustainable over the longer term, if you start this with the intention of eating all healthy food, you will be setting your expectations too high and will not succeed in the long term. Try different foods and recipes and eat good food in the guidelines that you enjoy

Please leave me a Comment

Thanks

Rich