Building Muscles

Welcome to www.buildingmuscles.org.uk

I realised at the beginning of 2008 (when I was 56 years old) that I had let my body get into a terrible state. This site was started to track the changes as I used bodybuilding/weighlifting to get back into shape. I gave myself 120 days, and I succeeded ! Since then I have maintained and built my body, and continue to do so.

Chest Training DVD, step-by-step full chest workout - Read about it here

View progress photos here.

Visit my channel on Youtube - Bazblog

Join my mailing list for my regular Hints & Tips for Bodybuilding (contact box on the right).

Keep up to date with my blog - below this post.

New Youtube Video

I've uploaded a new short video on youtube. This one features the triceps. I'll add it in here, but come on over to my Youtube site. We have built up quite a community there - great comments and great chat. See you there.

 

Bodybuilding Muscles| How to Train and Build Massive Muscles

The Importance of Food and Training. Part 5

Why are carbohydrates important?
 
Carbohydrates are the body's primary source of fuel. The energy can be released quickly and easily to fulfil immediate requirement within cells. Carbohydrates do not require oxygen to burn therefore they fuel most muscular contractions, meaning our carbohydrate intake is very important for regular exercise sessions. If carbohydrate stores are low, exercise will seem like a real effort!

Good Carbs
Complex carbohydrates are simply sugars bonded together to form a chain. Digestive enzymes have to work much harder to access the bonds to break the chain into individual sugars for absorption through the intestines.
 
For this reason digestion of complex carbohydrates takes longer. The slow absorption of sugars provides us with a steady supply of energy and limits the amount of sugar converted into fat and stored! They also keep you feeling full for a lot longer.

Bad Carbs
Their rapid absorption increases the chances of sugar converting to fat.  Foods like cake, pastry, biscuits, chocolate and table sugar in excess contain lots of "empty" calories. Because our cells usually do not require that amount of energy at that time, the sugar must either be converted to glycogen (sugar storage within cells) or converted to fat. The cell can only store a limited amount of glycogen so in many cases simple carbohydrate loaded foods may contribute to body fat stores.
They are digested quickly because the individual sugars are ready to be absorbed immediately plus digestive enzymes have easy access to the bonds in the paired molecules. You could say most of the work has been done!

The Importance of Protein
People that are looking to get the most from their overall fitness level with strength training should know and understand the importance of protein when lifting weights. If you engage in sports, stronger weight training, or even weight training that is minimal, it is absolutely imperative that you get enough protein.

How much protein do athletes need? The current dietary reference intake (DRI) for protein for persons over 18 years of age, irrespective of physical activity status, is 0.8 g per kilogram of body weight per day. Many sports nutrition experts have concluded that protein requirements are higher for athletes (American College of Sports Medicine, American Dietetic Association, and Dieticians of Canada (2000). Joint Position Statement: Nutrition and athletic performance. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 32:2130-2145).

The additional protein works in the following ways;
Aids in the repair of exercise-induced damage to muscle fibres.
Promoting training-induced adaptations in muscle fibres (e.g., synthesis of new proteins that are involved in energy production and/or force generation).
Helps to replace used energy stores.

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), American Dietetic Association (ADA) and Dieticians of Canada (DC) make the following protein recommendations for endurance athletes. 1.2 to 1.4 g per kilogram of body weight per day. They recommend as much as 1.6 to 1.7 g per kilogram of body weight per day for bodybuilders and other high intensity strength training.

I still think that for safety around 1.5 g of protein is more than enough to get great gains for most bodybuilders. Majority of this will come from your normal daily food intake. Protein drinks are just a convenient way to get the required amount of protein in your system for great training. They are super as a meal replacement for really busy people and those that have a problem getting in the 6 meals a day. They are also a great way for thin people to gain good weight if they have a weight gainer. A weight gainer is just a good protein shake with extra carbs in it.

Bodybuilding Muscles| How to Train and Build Massive Muscles

The Importance of Food and Training. Part 4

I have put together a list of some of the better protein food you can eat daily. The list can be huge. I have used the more common ones to keep the list short.

• whey and other protein powders (supplements found in health food stores)
• chicken breast
• turkey breast
• salmon
• tuna
• cottage cheese
• swordfish
• haddock
• lean ground turkey
• round steak
• sirloin steak
• lean ground beef
• eggs
• pork
• crab
• lobster
• shrimp

Here's a list of complex carbohydrates foods.

• Spinach
• Whole Barley
• Grapefruit
• Turnip Greens
• Apples
• Lettuce
• Buckwheat bread
• Prunes
• Oat bran bread
• Dried apricots
• Zucchini
• Oatmeal
• Pears
• Asparagus
• Oat bran cereal
• Plums
• Muesli
• Strawberries
• Oranges
• Cabbage
• Brown rice
• Yams
• Celery
• Multi-grain bread
• Carrots
• Cucumbers
• Pinto beans
• Potatoes
• Low fat yogurt
• Soybeans
• Skim milk
• Lentils
• Broccoli
• Navy beans
• Garbanzo beans
• Brussels
• Sprouts
• Cauliflower
• Kidney beans
• Soy milk
• Lentils
• Onions
• Whole meal bread
• Split peas

How much should you be eating in each meal?

We have covered the idea of eating around 6 meals a day, and the benefit s of eating often. Obviously if you are eating huge plates of food for each of these meals you are going to end up massive. Many people like to count calories. I find this very time consuming and it means having to learn what foods have what calories in them. I prefer to use a very simple system of using portions. A rule of thumb is using your fist size as one portion.

I would use one portion (fist size) of protein and one portion of carbs per meal.

We are all different and so each of us will respond differently to the same amount of food. The key is to learn about how your body works.

Protein feeds muscle and carbs gives us fuel. The protein should remain constant with your meals. The one you play around with is the carbs. If you are overweight then have around ½ a fist size. If you are thin then have around 2 fist sizes of carbs. If you are average then one of each.  You will need to experiment with this and you will, in quite a short time, learn how much you should be having to get the desired results you want.

With all eating plans it is trail and error. If you stick exactly to what the author of one diet says, then you have to have the same genes as they have to get the same results. Use common sense. You are you and so you will be slightly different.  I will cover this more as it is such an important part of your lives as to how we will look and feel. It all revolves around the food we eat.

Bodybuilding Muscles| How to Train and Build Massive Muscles

The Importance of Food and Training. Part 3

I have spoken about the importance of eating often and small. I know this from personal experience. I can remember, for many years, I would have only one main meal a day, in the evening. I would have the odd sandwich during the day but was never consistent. I really did not think I was eating that much and yet I carried quite a bit of body fat. I also had the excuse that I could never eat early in the morning - that was just not me. I realised that it was just a mindset and not reality. It was what I chose to believe.

Many people I speak to will indicate they have a medical problem - they claim that they eat very little and yet they are overweight. The truth of the matter is that they are consuming more calories than they are burning.

We are designed to survive. That means that the body will, at all costs, hang on to fat for a rainy day.  That is why, when people go on a diet and cut back on food, they often find that they do not get very good results.  Often they will use various methods of counting calories ( and other quite tedious things) to lose weight. The body might lose for a while, however the first opportunity the body has, it will put the fat back on with interest. I really believe that you can, and should, eat yourself into the size you want to be. The body is easily fooled into believing it is getting more than enough if, every few hours, you are eating. It has no problem letting go of excess fat. That fat is what is used for fuel. The main reason this happens is because it perceives no shortage.

Obviously, the mind, and how you see yourself, has a lot to do with the weight you will lose. It is a fact that if you really visualise eating a lemon your mouth will salivate. That means that your thought causes your body to react. The way you think about your self and your size has a lot to do with how your body will work. I am a strong believer that you can stimulate your metabolism to speed up and help you to reduce weight. I also believe you can gain weight in a similar way if that is your desire.

The important thing is to fix in your mind what size you want to be. Once you have decided this, then you eat yourself into the size and shape of your choice. It is really important to gain knowledge on what are the best things to eat. Eating must be fun and not a punishment. It is also should not be considered as a comfort. You must see food as FUEL. That is all it is.It is used to give you growth and energy.  So many people (and particularly parents) misuse food. They will try to console a child that gets hurt with a sweet or biscuit. Even dentists have used this practice. It is being reinforced in our minds that food is there to console us in hard or bad times. England has gone through some tough times recently. It is little wonder that the latest reports are that obesity is on the rise. If you think of food as fuel, and you eat often and the right quantities, you will be on the road to a fantastic body. Next we will cover some healthy types of food to eat.

Bodybuilding Muscles| How to Train and Build Massive Muscles

The Importance of Food and Training. Part 2

I want to spend a bit of time on food as it is really very important and the key to a healthy life style.

“WHAT YOU PUT INTO YOUR BODY TODAY IS WHO YOU ARE TOMORROW!!!!!”

When you really understand this statement you will be on the road to a great looking body and a healthy lifestyle.

Once upon a time someone came up with the idea that you have to have 3 square meals a day and thatis eating properly. Why they came up with 3, I really do not know. I think this has caused more problems than it is worth. By the time you get to lunch time, you have gone 5 or 6 hours without food, and you may be so hungry that you over load your plate to satisfy you hunger.  This affects your blood sugar levels and causes you to often have mood swings and to feel lethargic. Then you go till around 6/7pm before you have another huge meal because you are starved. After eating this meal, you often sit in front of the TV or computer doing very little. Common sense will tell you this is not a healthy way to eat.

Let’s have a look at nature. We can be classed as predators. I can talk on this subject having come from Africa and seeing these animals in their natural state. A lion does not eat very often but when it does it gorges. It is powerful but has to be an ambush artist. If it did not, it would not make it in life. The cheetah is a fine athlete.  Slim, muscular and ready for anything. You know about its speed. A cheetah uses its speed to get its food. It eats small quantities and kills very often.  A gazelle, the favourite food of the predator, grazes all day. It is always on the ready, is all muscle, extremely alert and ready for action. We should be eating the same way - small meals and often. Because of this idea of 3 squares, we will often snack in between. That is not a bad, but as it is not really planned food, we will snack on junk food and that is bad.

The answer is to eat about every 2 to 3 hours. Planned meals. Most people will say, working in a company or even kids going to school, they will not be able to do this. But how much do you want to feel and look good about yourself?

There are many ways you can prepare and have small meals during the day, at lunch times, and tea breaks. This will give you extra energy and help your blood sugar to stay level. You will start to feel very good. You could easily have a meal at 7am, teatime 10am, lunch 1 pm, teatime 3 pm, evening meal, 6pm and then a final meal at 9pm that is 6 meals a day.  By doing this you will be eating yourself healthy. I will talk about quantities and amounts in the next post. The quantities will determine if you will eat yourself thin or gain the amount you want in a very healthy way.

If you really think about it nothing could be simpler. It takes no more effort. If you are used to preparing 3 meals then just split each meal into 2 meals and you have your 6 meals.

Bodybuilding Muscles| How to Train and Build Massive Muscles

The Importance of Food and Training

I have started with what I really believe to be the most important part of training - the mind. The mind will work to get you the results you want.

The second most important thing that you need to consider is the fuel you are going to use to get the results you want. Eating right is not just for people who want to train. It is for every living creature. Let us have a look at what should be simple and common sense. There is so much information out there about diets and the way people claim you have to eat. This can be very confusing and unfortunately is now a very big money making racket. There are high fibre, low carbs, high protein, soup only, bananas and milk diets. In fact, anything you can imagine to eat, there is a diet using it. The most amazing thing about it is almost all of them work for a limited few people who believe in the diet. The key word here is believe. Unfortunately most people spend their lives yo-yoing from diet to diet.

What is the best diet for you?

None of the above. Dieting is one of the worst things you can do. I am not a believer in dieting but rather healthy thinking and healthy eating. I prefer to use a common sense approach to food. If you use your mind in the right way, why would you diet?  The first thing you need to do is to decide how you want to look and then put that picture in your mind. Then there are two things you will have to do. You will have to think and eat yourself into the size you want to be.  This might sound confusing but it is a fact. You have to really think of the exact way you want to look. Let’s assume you are overweight and you want to lose some fat. If you see yourself to be slim, and you believe it is possible, then you would think thin. Thin people do not diet. They also eat right. You would look at junk food and you would say to yourself "a thin person would not eat that". If you did, it would be in very small quantities. You would then go about eating the right foods. In other words, you would eat yourself thin.

The same goes for a thin person who wants to put on weight.  When you see yourself as a person with the size you want to be you will then eat accordingly. Again it is a matter of eating yourself to the size you want to be.

If you use common sense you will realise that fat people who put in more than they use will gain more weight. Thin people who eat more than they use will gain weight. It is as simple as that. Eating right is not rocket science. It just requires a bit of understanding about food and which are good foods and which are not.  Once you do that you are on the road to a healthy life and a great look.

Bodybuilding Muscles| How to Train and Build Massive Muscles

The Mind and How To Use It.

One of the biggest things that you need to realise is that you will have to learn to use your imagination again.

A lot of people get confused about what is visualisation and what is imagination. Visualisation is the recall of past experiences. It works with history.  If you plan to use visualisation you had better have been massive in the past so you can recall what you looked like and how it felt. If you were not huge in the past then you will have to use imagination. Imagination is what you learned to do when you were a child. You could imagine yourself to be superman and really believed you were.  I know of many kids who play with imaginary friends and those friends really exist in the child’s mind. If you want to build an awesome body then you must become like a child again and use your imagination. Picture what you want to look like. Forget what you currently look like. That is just a shell that requires some adjustments. You will have to go into a lot of detail in your mind and imagine yourself looking really impressive. See people complimenting you on how great you look. Here you need to notice how you feel about yourself. You should be feeling fantastic. It is by doing this that you will fix the image of what you want to be like in your mind. What you are doing is taking possession of what it is you want in your mind. All that is left to do now is to put in the effort. You see, you will believe that you are like this even though the mirror might say different right now. When you want to go and train, because you have taken possession of how you want to look, you can now use visualisation. You see this is now history in your mind because of the imagination that you used.

This is something that is really important to remember -the mind cannot tell the difference between something that is real or something that is vividly imagined.  It will become really easy to train and to achieve the kind of results you want.

Arnold Schwarzenegger  is one of the examples of this method. He imagined himself winning Mr Olympia long before he won it. He would then visualise every time he trained. He would see himself walking off with the trophy and so he would then put in a very intense training each time. This method can be used in any part of your life. It really works if you believe it will work for you. See what you want and then believe that you will get it. The rest will be history.

Bodybuilding Muscles| How to Train and Build Massive Muscles

The Mind - the Starting Point.

It really does not matter what kind of training you want to do - it all starts in the mind. This is the time most people make the biggest mistake. They decide that they would like to change the way the look and feel, so they choose a type of training they want to do. That is anything from running on the road to serious bodybuilding.  They then start to put together a training plan. Even if you went to a good gym you would find this is what the personal trainers would do. They would ask you what you want out of the training and then build a plan for you.  Unfortunately this is putting the cart before the horse.  Most people will end up giving up long before they get the result they thought they were going to get.

Let’s look at how to do it properly so when you start you will see it though to conclusion.

You have to first ask yourself a few simple questions and you have to be brutally honest with yourself.

• Do I like myself they way I am?
• Why do I want to change? (You had better have a very, very good reason for wanting to change or you will never achieve it. It has to be for you and if you are doing it for someone else you have failed before you start.)
• What is the end result that I expect? (Here you start to think very carefully about how you want to look. This is the start of the power of the mind.)

Once you can see the picture of how you want to look in your mind, you can build on this. You need to see this image every day. You can even get a picture of someone else that you would like to resemble and imagine your head on their body. The more you can do this the more you will believe you are able to achieve the end result. This is the key “BELIEF”. If you do not really believe you are going to achieve the result you are heading for failure. The more you believe and the more you have this image in your mind the easier it is to train and see it through. You also need to add emotion to the picture. Be excited about the end result. Emotion is the cement that binds it into your mind and makes it permanent. When you have done this you will be ready to start with the kind of plan you need to use.

I have found, with this method, I can train on days that I really do not feel like training. I keep reminding myself of the end result and because I want that so much I just get up and go and train.

Bodybuilding Muscles| How to Train and Build Massive Muscles

Bodybuilding

Bodybuilding can be a combination of both strength and fitness training depending on how you go about it. You will use weights to change the way you look.

There are many bodybuilders that get obsessed with building the biggest muscles they possibly can.  This class of bodybuilder often will resort to taking steroids to enhance their training in the short term.   They often, in the quest to build massive muscles, end up doing permanent damage to their bodies.

The average bodybuilder is a person that is not completely happy with the shape they are and wish to change that. They are not obsessed with training but believe in the benefits and make it a way of life. These people often end up with a great looking body, with lots of energy and a great deal of self-confidence.

Exactly the same as with power lifting or strength training, what the bodybuilder is trying to achieve is to tear the muscle fibres so they will grow.  They also want to gain mass and build but only with muscle. They focus on losing body fat and try to bring their body fat content right down.

With all training, food or the fuel you will use is very important. Bodybuilders often can become obsessed with the exact amount of calories they put in and the exact time to eat etc.  Keeping it simple is the answer so it is not an obsession but an enjoyable way of life. You can increase the size of certain parts of your body and decrease certain other parts. It is quite amazing what you can achieve.  You can use a combination of medium weight, high repetition training with some heavy weight, low repetition to build tone and gain fitness. A rough guide is - the more reps you do the fitter you become and the lower reps with heavy weight the more you will build.

It is important to take a photo of yourself and to be honest with the various areas of your body. Some might be reasonable and other parts not so good. With weights you can change all of that and that is what makes bodybuilding such a fantastic part of your life.  Bodybuilding is NOT about steroids and being incredible hulk. It is about doing what is right for you, and enjoying it. It is all about training for yourself and getting to the size you choose to be - not about what others think or say. Often we are too influenced by how someone else looks and how much they can lift. If you choose to change the shape of your body you are bodybuilding, and you need to do what is right for you. That means lifting as much as you can lift and forgetting what others can lift. Look the way you want to look and never compare yourself to others. You are you and doing bodybuilding is to try to get you to be the best you that you can be.

Bodybuilding Muscles| How to Train and Build Massive Muscles

Strength Training

There is a very big difference between strength training and fitness training. Strength training is just that -you are trying to build up your strength. Here you will use weights. Common sense will tell you that if you use weights that are easy to lift, and you stick with these, you will gain some strength because of the repetition - but that is about all. To gain strength you will have to go very heavy with the weights and do a very limited number of repetitions. The purpose is to lift as much as possible and to increase the weight at every given opportunity. This will build strength. You will bulk up in size too if you eat right.

The reason why this will happen is - we all have a certain number of muscle fibres in our body from birth. We do not use anywhere near all of them with the normal lives we live. Even fitness training will not use all of them. (You will use a few more with fitness training but most of them will still not be used). As you increase the amount of weight you lift, the more fibres you bring into play. What actually happens is you tear the fibres in the muscle because of the resistance and the blood that is pushed into the muscle. That is why you are often sore and stiff the following day or two. If you eat right you will then be able to repair the tears. When the fibres knit back together, they are a bit bigger and so you will get some growth and strength.

As you train with heavy weight you will force more muscle fibres to work, and so your strength will increase. Strength training is about trying to lift as much as you can. You will not be doing many reps. Often power lifters will put as much weight as they can and only lift it 2 or 3 times. Each time they train however they will try to increase the weight. They will bulk up, of course, because of the weights, but they really do not end up with a great build. You can have a look at the people who go in for the strongmen competitions; they are big all over. You will find that people training for strength will not be very fit. A lower weight with lots of repetitions is what gives you fitness. Lower reps and very heavy weight gives you strength. It follows then that just because you lift weights, it does not mean you will be fit.