The 5 Rules of Gaining Muscle Mass

We’ve compiled a list of the 5 most important nutrition rules to help you get the best gains from your workouts. Here they are in order of importance

Pack on the pounds

Whenever you start anything new, there’s always a learning curve and you’re bound to make a few rookie errors along the way. In bodybuilding there are two main mistakes beginners tend to make

Following a training program that’s not appropriate for their goals

Underestimating the importance of nutrition

You don’t grow just because you train; growth is actually dependent on proper recovery from training. And the way you recuperate best is by providing your body with the nutrients it needs at the appropriate times for optimal recovery and growth. Your goal is to add lean mass — muscle tissue. That’s true whether you’re a hardgainer, a guy with good genetics or a guy who carries excess bodyfat. Here are the basic nutritional principles you need to support your training to maximize your chances for muscle growth right out of the gate

Make sure you consume adequate calories every day

The bottom line is you can’t add weight if you aren’t taking in more calories than you’re burning. If you’re trying to pack on muscle, you have to consume enough surplus calories to support that growth. If you’re heftier to begin with, this task is a little trickier. You need to get enough calories to add muscle mass, but you also want to avoid an excessive increase in bodyfat. While you’re adding muscle mass, you should regard maintaining or just slightly increasing your bodyweight as progress

Split your total calories fairly evenly over 5–6 meals per day

This recommendation is a bodybuilding standard. The more frequently you feed your body, the better the contribution you’re making to build muscle mass while at the same time avoiding the addition of bodyfat. If you consume 3,000–4,000 calories over six meals versus just three meals, your metabolism will stay elevated and you’ll gain more muscle and much less bodyfat. Those who consume the same number of total calories, but in fewer, larger meals, however, send their bodies the signal to store bodyfat

Take in at least 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight each day 

When you want to build muscle tissue, you have to provide your body with the amino acids it needs. These aminos (there are 22 in total, essential, nonessential and conditionally essential) come from protein foods and protein supplements. Eating a variety of different protein sources is the best way to make sure you get a broad range of aminos. By targeting at least 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight, split fairly evenly over your six meals, you’ll keep a steady flow of aminos in your bloodstream to fuel growth

Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables

Many beginners focus too much on protein or calories at the expense of other types of foods that are dense in nutrients per calorie. Make sure you get in at least six servings of vegetables and fruit each day. They’re low in calories but rich in vitamins and minerals to support gains and overall health. At larger meals, you should consume more than one serving and you can do your body an even bigger favor by having a few different fruit or veggie items on your plate

Emphasize workout-window nutrition

Around the time of your workouts — before and after — your body needs protein and fast-digesting carbs (sugar) to drive the recovery process. Consuming sugar before and after your workouts helps reload glycogen burned during exercise, and it delivers amino acids to your muscles so that they recover and grow more quickly. Take in about 25–40 grams of protein before and after your workouts, depending on your bodyweight. Hardgainers should match their sugar intake to their protein consumption, gram per gram, pre- and post-workout. If you’re a bigger guy starting out, you can cut the sugar before workouts and just take it after

8 Ways Exercise Makes You Gorgeous

     Anyone who makes a habit of going to the gym, unfurling a yoga mat or hiking in the woods is privy to a secret known only to the physically active: The rewards of exercise extend far beyond slimming down or adding muscle tone. Dozens of subtle changes visibly revamp the body and the psyche in ways scientists are only beginning to understand

Maybe your skin looks brighter, your step is springier or you’re more confident at work. Such small victories may go unnoticed by unobservant exercisers, but those on the lookout for these benefits will find them every bit as valid as gains measured by scales and calipers.

1. Smoother, More Radiant Skin  . Working up a good sweat is the equivalent of getting a mini-facial, she says. “When the pores dilate, sweat expels trapped dirt and oil. Just be sure to wash your face afterward so the gunk doesn’t get sucked back into the pores.”

Working up a good sweat is the equivalent of getting a mini-facial.

Breaking a sweat isn’t the only way exercise benefits the skin — it also reduces bodywide inflammation, helps regulate skin-significant hormones and prevents free-radical damage. When you exercise, the tiny arteries in your skin open up, allowing more blood to reach the skin’s surface and deliver nutrients that repair damage from the sun and environmental pollutants. These nutrients also rev up the skin’s collagen production, thwarting wrinkles. “As we age, fibroblasts [the collagen-producing cells in the skin] get lazier and fewer in number. But the nutrients delivered to the skin during exercise help fibroblasts work more efficiently, so your skin looks younger.

2. Greater Self-Confidence

Confident people radiate a certain physical appeal and charisma. A recent British study found that people who began a regular exercise program at their local gym felt better about their self-worth, their physical condition and their overall health compared with their peers who stayed home. The best part was that their self-worth crept up right away — even before they saw a significant change in their bodies.

3. Increased Stature

a yoga instructor and founder of YogaForce took up yoga as a means to relieve stress. But it wasn’t until she had a checkup a few years later that she saw the full effects of her practice. When the doctor measured her height, they both noticed she’d grown an inch and a half. “I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “I’d always wanted to be taller; now I fit into my clothes better and feel more spacious in my body.”

4. Less Stress and Anxiety

Anxiety, fearfulness and uncertainty all drain your vitality and dampen your mood, which in turn tends to show on your face and in the way you carry yourself. Roughly 40 million Indian over 18 suffer from anxiety disorders, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health — that’s nearly 20 percent of all adults — and for many of them, that anxiety strips both the smile from their face and the spring from their step. Exercise has been shown to alleviate most mild to moderate cases of anxiety, and can very quickly improve mood.

Exercise has been shown to alleviate most mild to moderate cases of anxiety, and can very quickly improve mood.

Exercise is like taking a tranquilizer, but better because you get the side effect of improved health and fitness.” Studies out of Raglin’s lab suggest that as little as 15 minutes of exercise bestows a calm that can last for hours. As for what kind of exercise elicits the biggest response, he recommends either heart-thumping aerobic exercise, like running, cycling or swimming, or a mixture of aerobic and anaerobic exercise, such as weight training.

5. Better Immunity and Detoxification

With spring cold season on the horizon, exercise’s immune-enhancing powers are nothing to sneeze at. Exercise shores up the immune system by goosing the body into churning out more white blood cells, including neutrophils and natural killer cells. More white blood cells mean fewer bacteria and viruses sneak past the gate. Net effect: You don’t get that worn-down sick look that comes from feeling under the weather, and small blemishes and wounds of all kinds heal faster.

6. More Restful Sleep

exercise sharpens the body’s sensitivity to the stress hormone cortisol, which can enhance sleep. Sleeping better leaves you looking fresh and healthy.

7. Less Visceral Fat

Yes, exercise can help you lose your love handles, but it’s the loss of excess fat deep inside the body that boosts your overall vitality and your looks.

The body contains two types of fat. The one you can pinch (subcutaneous) is relatively benign. But the less visible stuff, the visceral fat that pads the abdominal organs like so many packing peanuts, can be a killer. Excess visceral fat fuels low-grade inflammation in the body and is tied to a virtual who’s who of 21st-century ills, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, colon cancer, breast cancer and dementia. It can also upset the balance of important hormones (more on that to come) that affect your skin, hair and general appearance.

8. Stronger Sex Hormones

Getting fit not only makes you look sexy, it also makes you feel sexy by balancing the body’s sex hormone levels, which in turn can improve the appearance of hair, skin and muscle tone. Although the most studied hormones linked to exercise are endorphins, sex hormones, such as testosterone and human growth hormone (HGH — the same youth-serum substance celebrities pay thousands to be injected with), also get a boost.

Getting fit not only makes you look sexy, it also makes you feel sexy by balancing the body’s sex hormone levels, which in turn can improve the appearance of hair, skin and muscle tone.

When British scientists compared the hormone levels of 10 middle-aged men who ran more than 40 miles a week with 10 healthy, but sedentary, men, they found that, on average, the runners had 25 percent more testosterone and four times more HGH than the couch potatoes.

Weight Loss VS. Performance Goals

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If you are a runner, triathlete, or competitive anything, this post is for you. In the training world we often help individuals who have goals to lose weight, tone up, and/ or compete in a race. If you are in this boat one thing to remember this this: weight goals and performance goals are different.

If you want to run in a race and perform well, that is great. If you want to lose weight, that is awesome, too. But doing both at the same time can lead to bad results. Separate your goals and work on one at a time. The needs and actions required for weight loss are different than those required for increasing performance. Let’s look at why:

We will use running as our performance example. An individual who wants to increase their running performance will need to do some key things: run according to a plan, lift weights, eat well, and get lots of rest. Their training will include long runs, tempo runs, sprints, strength workouts, and lots of soft tissue work (massage). They will need to eat a balanced diet with enough carbohydrates to fuel their runs. Sleep is important as well as the body will need to recover from the days work.

An individual who wants to lose weight will need to do the following: train according to a plan, lift weights, eat well, and get lots of rest…
Wait….
What’s the difference?

The difference is actually quite immense. The individual who wants to lose weight may only need to eat 1,200 – 1,800 calories per day. Their training volume should be between 3 to 5 hours per week and they should still make time to sleep. The runner, on the other hand, needs to eat 1,200-1,800 calories per day AND whatever extra calories to fuel their training. In weight loss mode, we modify the training and eating so that your body burns excess fat. For performance training, the goal is to fuel the body so that it can be in prime function for the runs. If you try to increase your awesomeness at running while also trying to lose weight, you place yourself in an interesting hormonal situation.

When you decrease your calories, your body will naturally decrease your resting metabolism. Also, when you exercise and burn calories, your body will also decrease your metabolism to try to save energy throughout the day. This decrease in metabolism is often not noticeable, but if you track your steps you should see them drop. You just lose the motivation to move around much more throughout the day. If you combine epic training and weight loss eating, your body can slip into a state where it will not want you to expend any more calories than absolutely necessary.

Imagine that your resting metabolic rate is 1,800 calories per day. If you decrease your calories to 1,300 calories per day and pick up some exercise, you should be able to lose about a pound a week. This is taking into consideration that your resting metabolic rate (RMR) will drop. But, if you add performance training onto this, and you are burning 500-1000 calories during your training session, this does not leave much for your body to live off of. It will do whatever it can to slow your RMR to conserve calories for essential uses, and can even set you up to store much of the food you eat as fat.

In a nutshell, if you combine your performance and weight loss goal, you will achieve neither to your fullest potential. However, if you separate them, and attack one at a time, you can achieve both exactly to your expectations.

If you are a runner and are interested in learning more about how your weight effects performance,