Building muscle without weights is entirely possible–even preferred in some cases. It is a common misconception that you must join a fancy gym or buy expensive Olympic weights, squat racks, and other esoteric equipment in order to forge a well-developed body. But that is not true. Especially if you follow a sound, well-rounded exercise program coupled with good nutrition.

Remember when you were a kid and did all those pushups, pullups, and situps? You did calisthenics, ran, and played games in your physical education classes?

Most likely, you ate a solid diet consisting of plenty of eggs, mancakes, beef, fish, chicken, and water.

You know, the simple things. You led the simple life.

You still can.

Building Muscle Without Weights

In fact, unless you're an adult, I would suggest that you be very cautious of training with weights, especially very heavy weights. They take their toll on young joints, and while you may not feel it today, you may very well experience a lot of joint issues in your 40s and 50s. Arth Ritis is not a friendly man!

But you can certainly follow the lead of many men and women who train without weights. They do bodyweight exercises like pushups for the frontal torso muscles, chin ups for the back and biceps and rear delts, and single-leg squats for leg, glute, and lower back development.

By simply doing as many reps as possible for multiple sets per day, you can build a fantastic-looking and performing body.

Start out by doing one set of as many reps as you can do in each of these exercises:

• Chin ups
• Push ups
• Single-leg squats
• Crunch

When you can do more than 20 reps in any of the exercises, drop the reps and add a set. Start off with the first set at 12 reps and finish with as many reps as you can do.

A variation on this theme is to just pick a number of reps in a workout that you want to complete. I will talk more about that in a future post.

If you want a fully-fleshed out "how to build muscle without weights" program, check out the Bodyweight Training Program

Once in a while, I make a post about traffic numbers, usually when I set a stupidly ridiculous goal for myself and am about to miss it

Today is no different. I'd like to hit 20,000 visitors to Muscle-Build.com but I'm pretty sure it won't happen this month. I guess I could get 7,000 more visits in 2 days…but I doubt it!

So, in that light, let's see how close I can get. If you wouldn't mind, use all your social media might to get me all the traffic you can. Doing so will allow me to continue to bring you really cool muscle-building and fat-burning information – higher traffic numbers gives me more pull with advertisers.

It's really that simple.

Here are some pages that you may want to visit:

• Ultra Extreme Hardgainer
  
• GOMAD
• How to Build Muscle Strength
  
• The Muscle-Build.com Site Blog (this is an RSS-like digest of all the pages on Muscle-Build.com)

Simply view one (or all of the above) link and use the "Share this page" section at the bottom of each page to post to your favorite social media sites.

Thank you!

This is pretty cool.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the World Health Organization, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, and the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion agree – you should eat more fruits and vegetables.

Up to 10 total servings a day!

That’s a lot of food.

More at Are You Eating Enough Fruits And Vegetables Every Day?

I will tell you that I’ve been highly skeptical of the lab work Consumer Reports has done over the years, and this one is no different.

This story reminds me of their car seat story they did a few years ago, when they subjected car seats to their “scientific” study, sending the seats through tests that multiplied forces the safety seats were subjected to. And then, of course, child car seats failed the tests, sending parents into a frenzy.

Now, CR has done it to fitness-minded folk. What the heck are we to do if:

• Protein powders aren’t safe?
• We don’t even need protein supplements in the first place?
• Protein destroys your kidneys?

Of course, the 3 questions above are complete BS. Most (like 99.9 percent) of protein supplements are safe, containing much lower doses of the heavy metals called out in the report than ordinary food like spinach and shrimp.

If you want to build muscle, you have to eat a diet higher in protein than your average sedentary pencil-pushing office manager. You just do.

Finally, a high protein diet does not harm your kidneys. Read the article at the end of this post for more details on this one and the others. It’s written by Shawn Phillips, a nutritional industry insider and expert. He’s very candid in his assessment of the test, its results, and its apparent bias against the supplement industry.

In the event you’ve been in a media black out and missed it, there’s buzz about the article “Health Alert: Protein Drinks” featured in the July 2010, issue of Consumer Reports Magazine. The article (links at bottom of post) presents the results of tests done for arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury on 15 different “protein powders.”

I use quotations around “protein powders” to call attention to the fact that Consumer Reports used more than just proteins and powders in their tests. They included meal-replacements, including Myoplex, and some were ready-to-drinks, which are clearly not powders. The first of several oversights in the article.

Dissecting the Consumer Reports “Health Alert on Proteins” [Part 1] | Shawn Phillips | Start Strong Monday

Health alert on proteins from Consumer Reports, supplement safety, heavy metals found in protein supplements