Let's face it- if you want to build muscle, you have to use enough weight to make it worth your while. Walking into the gym and simply going through the motions without a sweat just isn't going to get the job done. You have to overload those muscles with heavy weight and high intensity if you want to see real results. This is without a doubt the most effective means of stimulating muscular growth. Muscles grow due to a natural adaptive survival response, and if you don't give them a really good reason to grow, well- they just won't.
Though training hard and heavy may be awesome for your muscles, if you're not careful, it can be trouble for the health of your joints and connective tissue. While there are no guarantees that you'll never injure yourself lifting weights, you can certainly take specific steps to lessen the chance. An injury is the absolute last thing you could ever hope for, as it will stop you dead in your muscle-building tracks.
Most serious weightlifters will experience some form of injury at one time or another throughout their training careers. Below are five golden rules to follow that will minimize the risk of injury to yourself. If you can honestly say that you implement all 5 of these rules into your training program, then your risk of getting hurt will be much lower than someone who does not.
1) Always perform a thorough warmup.
A proper warmup is the single best thing you can do to minimize your risk of injury. This simple 15-20 minute process will prepare your mind and body for the hard work to come by increasing blood flow into the surrounding connective tissue and by lubricating your joints. At least 5 minutes of light cardiovascular exercise before each workout followed by 4-5 warmup sets for your first major exercise of the routine is recommended.
2) Always train with proper form.
This should go without saying. Every exercise that you perform in the gym should be done with proper form and technique in order to keep the stress off of your joints. If you start squatting or deadlifting with a rounded back, jerking the weights around in a ballistic manner or performing dangerous exercises you are almost guaranteed to hurt yourself at some point.
3) Always train within your own personal limits.
Weightlifting is a personal battle, and letting your ego take over is almost always a recipe for disaster. It doesn't matter what the guy next to you is benching and it is completely irrelevant to your training program. You must always use weights that you can handle and control with proper form, and if you start piling on the plates to impress the people around you, you'll be stretching your limits and putting yourself in a very vulnerable position.
4) Always know when to quit.
If you cannot complete another rep of an exercise using proper form, the set is over, plain and simple. Put the weight down and rest up for your next set. If you start using huge amounts of momentum and jerky body motions to crank out a couple of extra reps, you'll be on the sidelines before you know it.
5) Never ignore your aches and pains.
This is a critically important point that cannot be understated. When you're motoring along through a training program and are making progress from week to week, the idea of quitting just often seems impossible. This can sometimes lead us to ignore those obvious injuries and pretend as if they aren't really there as we often "work through" the pain and hope that it magically disappears. More often than not, it will only get worse. If you feel that something definitely isn't right and can sense that you probably shouldn't be training, listen to your gut and take some time off. Get the problem checked out by a professional and then take the proper measures to heal. While it may hurt your progress in the short term, the overall long-term effect will be a positive one.
So there you have it, five basic rules to follow in the gym to keep those joints healthy and to keep you training for years on end. Follow them closely, because if you don't, your chances of ending up with an injury due to your own bad judgment will be greatly increased.
Personal Trainer Huntington Beach at FitnessWorkx.com
Showing posts with label build muscle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label build muscle. Show all posts
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
What's Important About Proper Exercise
The Benefits of Proper Exercise
Proper exercise is extremely important to a healthy, well-balanced body. So many people are looking specifically at changing their diet to get more fit, but that is only half the battle. In order to get the maximum benefits from a healthier eating lifestyle, a healthier exercise lifestyle needs to be developed and followed, as well.
Some of the benefits of proper exercise are:
The benefits of aerobic exercise
- Strengthens and builds up our heart muscle and our bones.
- Lessens our body’s fat store because they are being used to fuel our activity level.
- Increases the level of oxygen to our lungs and bloodstream. This occurs because, during aerobic exercise, we breathe more deeply. The more oxygen that reaches the lungs, the more oxygen that can get into our blood. (Since oxygen is our most important nutrient, this is a great benefit!)
- We will not become breathless when doing activities like climbing stairs or walking around a shopping center. Doing aerobic exercise conditions the lungs so they are better able to handle everyday activity.
- Increases our immunity to disease, since it helps to drain the fluids from and circulate the fluids properly in the lymphatic system.
- Improves the endurance level of our cardiovascular system.
- Helps to detoxify the skin due to the promotion of sweating.
- Improves the flexibility and strength of our muscles throughout the body.
- Decreases our risk for developing heart disease.
- Lowers the total body cholesterol level while increase what is called “good cholesterol”, or HDL.
- Decreases our blood pressure.
- Improves the overall tone of our body. Aerobic exercise may increase the size of your muscles, your strength level, and your flexibility level while you are burning away unwanted fat.
- May help with the alleviation of stress and improve our overall mood, making us more productive in our everyday lives.
Aerobic exercise is a critical element for good health. However, you cannot stop there. For a well-rounded and proper exercise regime, you need to include some strength training activities, too.
The benefits of strength training exercise:
- Increases our body’s metabolism.
- Helps to intensify our body’s fat weight loss.
- Gives our body greater muscle strength, muscle tone and firmness.
- Helps to develop our tendon and ligament strength.
- Increases our body’s bone density and strength.
- Boosts our body’s stamina, energy and endurance.
- Helps increase our body’s coordination and balance.
- Helps improve our overall mood and attitude.
- Enhances our mental functions.
When you combine these two types of activity with stretching, you are working toward a proper exercise program. This proper exercise will give you significant weight loss and muscle toning results!
With aerobic exercise, you want to warm up with stretching or light walking before you build up to the higher intensity activities. After a set amount of time, you want to cool down, again with stretching or light walking. This will allow your body to do easy transitions from inactivity to activity.
With weight training exercise, it is also critical that you do a period of warm up and cool down activity. To warm up, do simple aerobic exercise for 10 minutes or so, as it will increase the blood flow to your muscles. Doing these warm up and cool down activities will help reduce the amount of soreness you experience after exercise and well as preventing strains and injuries.
Proper exercise helps our bodies in so many ways! The increased activity raises our metabolism, which allows our bodies to burn fat instead of storing it. This will help keep weight under control, if the activity level is maintained. Get up and keep moving to see realize the benefits for yourself.
Start getting in shape with two free personal training sessions. Go to FitnessWorkx.com
Proper exercise is extremely important to a healthy, well-balanced body. So many people are looking specifically at changing their diet to get more fit, but that is only half the battle. In order to get the maximum benefits from a healthier eating lifestyle, a healthier exercise lifestyle needs to be developed and followed, as well.
Some of the benefits of proper exercise are:
The benefits of aerobic exercise
- Strengthens and builds up our heart muscle and our bones.
- Lessens our body’s fat store because they are being used to fuel our activity level.
- Increases the level of oxygen to our lungs and bloodstream. This occurs because, during aerobic exercise, we breathe more deeply. The more oxygen that reaches the lungs, the more oxygen that can get into our blood. (Since oxygen is our most important nutrient, this is a great benefit!)
- We will not become breathless when doing activities like climbing stairs or walking around a shopping center. Doing aerobic exercise conditions the lungs so they are better able to handle everyday activity.
- Increases our immunity to disease, since it helps to drain the fluids from and circulate the fluids properly in the lymphatic system.
- Improves the endurance level of our cardiovascular system.
- Helps to detoxify the skin due to the promotion of sweating.
- Improves the flexibility and strength of our muscles throughout the body.
- Decreases our risk for developing heart disease.
- Lowers the total body cholesterol level while increase what is called “good cholesterol”, or HDL.
- Decreases our blood pressure.
- Improves the overall tone of our body. Aerobic exercise may increase the size of your muscles, your strength level, and your flexibility level while you are burning away unwanted fat.
- May help with the alleviation of stress and improve our overall mood, making us more productive in our everyday lives.
Aerobic exercise is a critical element for good health. However, you cannot stop there. For a well-rounded and proper exercise regime, you need to include some strength training activities, too.
The benefits of strength training exercise:
- Increases our body’s metabolism.
- Helps to intensify our body’s fat weight loss.
- Gives our body greater muscle strength, muscle tone and firmness.
- Helps to develop our tendon and ligament strength.
- Increases our body’s bone density and strength.
- Boosts our body’s stamina, energy and endurance.
- Helps increase our body’s coordination and balance.
- Helps improve our overall mood and attitude.
- Enhances our mental functions.
When you combine these two types of activity with stretching, you are working toward a proper exercise program. This proper exercise will give you significant weight loss and muscle toning results!
With aerobic exercise, you want to warm up with stretching or light walking before you build up to the higher intensity activities. After a set amount of time, you want to cool down, again with stretching or light walking. This will allow your body to do easy transitions from inactivity to activity.
With weight training exercise, it is also critical that you do a period of warm up and cool down activity. To warm up, do simple aerobic exercise for 10 minutes or so, as it will increase the blood flow to your muscles. Doing these warm up and cool down activities will help reduce the amount of soreness you experience after exercise and well as preventing strains and injuries.
Proper exercise helps our bodies in so many ways! The increased activity raises our metabolism, which allows our bodies to burn fat instead of storing it. This will help keep weight under control, if the activity level is maintained. Get up and keep moving to see realize the benefits for yourself.
Start getting in shape with two free personal training sessions. Go to FitnessWorkx.com
Friday, April 17, 2009
How To Build Muscle Properly
There are many things to learn when it comes to building muscle. There are three, however, that are considered to be the most important. Without any one of these your results will be minimal. Be warned, these three things sound ridiculously simple but aren't taken as seriously as they should be.
The first secret muscle building ingredient is to know your body type. Sure, it sounds simple and maybe a little cliché, but this is vital. If you don't know your body type you might as well quit right now.
Imagine that one day you decided to go on a vacation to Hawaii and you live in Michigan. Lets say that you have never been to Hawaii, you don't know where it is, but you have seen many pictures of it and have been dreaming about going for a long time. So you decide to pack your bags jump in the car and start driving in hopes to find this beautiful place. Sounds crazy, right? Absolutely it is. You need to know where you are in relation to Hawaii so you can create a plan to get there. The same goes for building muscle. You need to know where your body is in relation to where you want it to be. Only then can you come up with a plan to get there.
The second secret ingredient needed to build muscle is the most obvious and yet many people get it wrong. We're talking about an effective workout plan. A plan that works with your body type and your goals at the same time. So often people will go to the gym without a plan, let alone the right plan. It's important to have a workout plan and to know whether or not it is capable of forcing your muscles to grow.
Your workout is the vehicle you will take to get to the body of your dreams. Just like you could not simply drive a car from Michigan to Hawaii, you would not use a fat burning workout to build muscle.
Last but certainly not least, you need a muscle building diet plan. This is probably the most overlooked part of muscle building but it can many times be the key ingredient. Your body simply cannot do what it is asked of unless you provide it with the correct fuel. In order for your muscles to grow they need not only the right food, but they need it in the right amounts as well.
Not to sound to repetitive, but using the dream vacation to Hawaii scenario again, can you imagine what would happen if the airline you chose decided to use banana peels for fuel instead of the airplane fuel designed specifically for your plane? Exactly, you wouldn't go anywhere. That is precisely what happens when you put the wrong stuff in your body and try to use it for muscle building fuel.
So if your serious about experiencing maximum muscle growth you need to know your body type, use an effective workout plan designed for your body type and goals, and feed your body with the right food in the correct amounts. Don't let the simplicity of it all distract you. Going back to the basics is almost always a safe bet.
Come and see us at FitnessWorkx
The first secret muscle building ingredient is to know your body type. Sure, it sounds simple and maybe a little cliché, but this is vital. If you don't know your body type you might as well quit right now.
Imagine that one day you decided to go on a vacation to Hawaii and you live in Michigan. Lets say that you have never been to Hawaii, you don't know where it is, but you have seen many pictures of it and have been dreaming about going for a long time. So you decide to pack your bags jump in the car and start driving in hopes to find this beautiful place. Sounds crazy, right? Absolutely it is. You need to know where you are in relation to Hawaii so you can create a plan to get there. The same goes for building muscle. You need to know where your body is in relation to where you want it to be. Only then can you come up with a plan to get there.
The second secret ingredient needed to build muscle is the most obvious and yet many people get it wrong. We're talking about an effective workout plan. A plan that works with your body type and your goals at the same time. So often people will go to the gym without a plan, let alone the right plan. It's important to have a workout plan and to know whether or not it is capable of forcing your muscles to grow.
Your workout is the vehicle you will take to get to the body of your dreams. Just like you could not simply drive a car from Michigan to Hawaii, you would not use a fat burning workout to build muscle.
Last but certainly not least, you need a muscle building diet plan. This is probably the most overlooked part of muscle building but it can many times be the key ingredient. Your body simply cannot do what it is asked of unless you provide it with the correct fuel. In order for your muscles to grow they need not only the right food, but they need it in the right amounts as well.
Not to sound to repetitive, but using the dream vacation to Hawaii scenario again, can you imagine what would happen if the airline you chose decided to use banana peels for fuel instead of the airplane fuel designed specifically for your plane? Exactly, you wouldn't go anywhere. That is precisely what happens when you put the wrong stuff in your body and try to use it for muscle building fuel.
So if your serious about experiencing maximum muscle growth you need to know your body type, use an effective workout plan designed for your body type and goals, and feed your body with the right food in the correct amounts. Don't let the simplicity of it all distract you. Going back to the basics is almost always a safe bet.
Come and see us at FitnessWorkx
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