The holiday season is a time for relaxation, family and delectably-tasty treats. From the special turkey dinner at Thanksgiving to the finger foods at holiday parties, it is hard to avoid putting on a little holiday weight. Though staying fit, healthy and slim through the holiday season will require restraint and dedication, it is possible to get the most out of the season without giving into the sweets cravings and lazy temptations.

Plan Workout Times:

For many who gain weight during the holidays, the lack of a plan and the mindset that it is impossible to give up those special treats leads to failure. However, according to Women Fitness, taking the time to plan ahead for holiday workouts make it easier to maintain the schedule when it is tempting to sit on the couch and watch that silly holiday movie with the family. Thus, it is important to work out when an appropriate time to exercise is and what will lead to the best success in terms of sticking to your plan.

Eat Every Meal:

During the holidays, it is easy to anticipate that special dinner or party and try skipping out on meals to save extra calories. Unfortunately, Peter Walsh from Oprah.com points out that skipping meals can actually result in extra weight gain. The hunger from avoiding necessary meals results in overeating at the special occasion and taking in more calories than you would have otherwise. This can be particularly true for stressed individuals, such those who have put in a lot of the time at office (or the malls) as well as students who have been hitting the books extra hard for their online classes, as stress can also cause people to overindulge.

Spend Time on Muscle Building:

When devising an exercise plan, always remember to include some muscle building exercises. While it might not be possible to get to a gym and use the lifting equipment, taking a few minutes for exercises such as pushups, squats, and lunges can maintain muscle mass and improve your metabolism.

Muscle building is just as important for the holiday months as it is for any other time of the year. More muscle mass results in a higher overall metabolism that works more efficiently even when the body is at rest. Trying to spend every other day on simple exercises that build muscle can help maintain or lose weight.

Plan a Day for Cheating:

Sticking to a strict diet during the holidays is challenging, particularly when it comes to the special treats that are only around in the winter. Fortunately, staying fit through the holidays doesn’t necessarily mean giving up every treat. Instead, you can plan ahead for a couple days a month to indulge yourself during the holidays. The key to the day of indulging on a diet plan is to keep the amount of treats you eat to a moderate level. Enjoy a slice of pie or extra-buttery mashed potatoes, but avoid overeating.

Eat Slowly:

With so many tasty foods set on the table, eating quickly is a common part of the holidays. Unfortunately, the body requires a little time to process when the stomach is full. By the time the brain acknowledges that it is full, fast eaters often find that they’ve eaten too much and now feel like the stuffing-filled turkey.

Taking the time to savor the meal and chew food thoroughly will not only make the experience more enjoyable but also allows the mind to recognize your body’s signals for when you are actually full.

Pay Attention to the Foods:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that diabetic individuals should pay attention to the foods they are eating and avoid or limit foods that have heavy sauces, glazes or gravies. Although the CDC is providing advice to men and women who must watch their blood sugar, the fact that it can help reduce excessive calories and sugars without giving up good food applies to anyone looking to stay healthy during the holiday season.

Avoid turkey that is covered in gravy or the part of the ham with the honey glaze. Instead, opt for pieces without the gravy-heavy, sugar-filled honey or other sauces. This will reduce your caloric intake at the meal without forcing you to eat less.

The holiday season is a tough time for anyone trying to stay fit and healthy. Fortunately, continuing to exercise and working out a plan to avoid eating extra calories is the key to staying healthy and maintaining your weight.
 

In brief, you have to give your body a reason to change and it’s a delicate balance between eating too little and too much. Your metabolism plays a critical role in everything you do to change your body, whether it’s muscle-building or fat-burning.

7 Minute Muscle

I just picked up a copy of Jon Benson’s 7 Minute Muscle, and I have to say, it’s eye-opening. It’s hard for me to believe that one can actually get a workout done in 7 minutes, let alone a good one!

Jon has put a LOT of theory into this book. It’s hard to get your mind wrapped around it at first. Much of it seems a little dry.

But do it.

It’s worth the few minutes out of your life to read and learn about things that

• you never knew or
• you knew but don’t follow
• you knew, try to follow, but cannot

The emphasis of the book, and of the subsequent training, is all about getting your MIND into your workouts. Jon calls it flow. He not only tells you what it is, but how to get there, and how to use it once you’re there.

Now, I fully believe that you can get in a great workout in 7 minutes using Jon’s principles. Of course, I may be even MORE convinced once I’ve read the book in its entirety.

This is quite possibly the most important book you can read about elevating your bodybuilding program to a level you’ve never seen before. At the very least, learn as much about the mental aspect as you can, even if you don’t do the specific workouts, though you’d be hard-pressed to find a reason NOT to do the workouts. They’re very good, targeted, and specific.

Read more about Jon Benson’s 7 Minute Muscle here.

Building muscle

By Vince DelMonte

Do you truly know how to build muscle and gain weight quickly?

If you knew how to build muscle then the skinny jokes would have ended long ago. If you knew how to gain weight quickly then the blank stares would stop when you tell someone you work out with weights. And if you knew how to build muscle and gain weight quickly you would no longer frustrated that the scale has not budged upwards since you first started lifting.

I know from first hand experience what it feels like to train for hours in the gym, slug back protein shake after protein shake, spend your hard earned money on over-priced and over-hyped supplements, with little or nothing to show for it! If this is you than you’re not alone and are probably missing a few key ingredients that you’re executing effectively.

If you’re a naturally skinny person than you must play by a different set of rules. If you were not gifted with muscle friendly genes than does it make sense to follow a program by someone who builds muscle even when they sneeze? If you’re training drug free than does it make sense to take advice from a guy who’s spending a few thousand dollars a month on steroids?

Or maybe you’re taking advice from someone with great genetics? That’s like taking money advice from someone who inherited a fortune! You must accept the fact if you have muscle ‘unfriendly’ genes you must be prepared to play by a different set of rules if you want to build muscle and turn heads!

Here are a few simple tips to show you – the skinny guy – how to build muscle and gain weight quickly :

Train like a barbarian!

Do people stop and watch you work out? Do you reach the point in a workout where you question your ability to finish? If you treat working out more like a hobby than a job than it’s no surprise that you do not stand out in a crowd and are still spinning your wheels.

The majority of people that work out in a gym barely sweat and spend more time starring in the mirror and trying to impress the new front desk girl than getting into the ‘zone’ and crashing through previous training limits.

Here are some tips on how to ‘train like a barbarian’:

1. Treat every single set like it is your last set.
2. Treat every single rep like your life depends on it.
3. Wear a stop watch and ensure that you keep the rest period honest.
4. Wear a sweater so you can’t stare at yourself in the mirror.
5. Wear a head set on that tells others ‘do not disturb.’
6. No girl friends allowed or wimpy guy friends who are going to compromise the intensity of your workout.
7. Train with an intensity that scares the gym shorts off of every person in your path.

Are you starting to get the picture? There is a philosophy that simply states, “You get what you focus on.” Focus on training like a barbarian and you will soon start looking like a barbarian!

Give your muscles a reason to grow!

Guess what happens when you train at the same intensity as you did in a previous workout? Your muscles laugh back at you and say, “Nice try, we did this workout before and can handle this stress! Is that your attempt on getting us to grow?”

Don’t get caught up in the latest hype of bodybuilding and fitness magazines. Most of it is rehashed and just packaged sleeker to sell magazines. There are two forms of training that must be cycled in a successful weight training program:

1. HEAVY HEAVY HEAVY! Put everything into lifting heavier weights and getting as strong as possible. Use only one compound exercise per major muscle group and focus on a 5% increase in strength from week to week. This will ensure neuromuscular development and targeting the fast twitch muscle fibers which have the greatest opportunity for growth.

2. VOLUME VOLUME VOLUME! Expose your body to as much work possible in the shortest period of time. Placing your muscles under more tension will result in more tapped and untrained muscle fiber being recruited therefore more muscle growth! The key here is to find the correct balance in time and work. Volume training does not mean 2 hour gym workouts lifting light weights. Instead lift heavy weights close to your max threshold but with shorter rest periods, slower tempos and more exercise selection per muscle group.

No more program hopping!

Sure, it’s easier to test drive a program for a few weeks and than say it does not work and move on to the next latest ‘breakthrough’ program. This is called the blame game and neglecting responsibility! Do you think you will become rich if you test out a new job for a few weeks and than call it quits when your first paycheck does not meet your expectations? No way! But if you stay with the company and exploit the companies benefits and opportunities to the fullest than you will succeed.

The reality is that virtually every program will work for a certain period of time if it is done at the right intensity and as the author has written.

Find a program and study the details of its full entirety. Ensure that the program goals of the author are in alignment with yours and study all the fine details. Do not ask a million questions and try and find holes or flaws or attempt to make it ‘perfect.’ The perfect program does not exist. Trust the program, follow it honestly and monitor the progress. The experience and results you gain from following one program for a consistent period of time will be priceless.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

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About the Author:

Vince DelMonte is the author of No Nonsense Muscle Building: Skinny Guy Secrets To Insane Muscle Gain found at http://blog.muscle-build.com/go/nnmb.php

He specializes in teaching skinny guys how to build muscle and gain weight quickly without drugs, supplements and training less than before.

Meal Plan of Mr Olympia Lee Haney

The Official Site of Lee Haney

Building muscle fast (bulking up) requires really heavy lifting, but it also requires smart work-outs and meal plans. We’ll go over each of these in the following paragraphs.

A muscle grows only when it has to. Muscles grow as a consequence of overloading them and then allowing them sufficient rest and providing them sufficient nutrition so that they can adapt to the stresses put on them. As a practical matter, this means that you should exercise each muscle group a maximum of twice per week. When you really stress a muscle, you may even want to work out once per week. Muscles need a lot of time to recover after High Intensity Training (HIT) of this nature.

Here’s the work-out routine:

Day 1

* Squats, 4-5 sets, 10-12 reps. Slow and deliberate. Full squats.
* Hamstring curls, 3 sets, 15 reps.
* Calf presses, 3 sets, 20 reps.
* Tricep extensions, 3 sets, 10 reps.
* Barbell curls, 3 sets, 10 reps.

That’s it for Day 1. Day 2 is rest.

Day 3

* Bench press, 4-5 sets, 6-10 reps. No bouncing (EVER).
* Bent Rows, 4-5 sets, 6-10 reps. Feel the weight. Round the shoulders at the bottom, really squeeze the shoulder blades together at the top.
* Shoulder press, 3 sets, 10 reps.

Day 4 is rest.

Day 5

* Repeat Day 1. You can substitute stiff-legged deadlifts for the hamstring curls and you can do variations on the arm exercises.

Days 6 & 7 are for rest.

Day 8 (Day 1 of the following week)

* Repeat Day 3. You can substitute Lat pull-downs for the Bent Rows.

Day 9 is for rest.

Day 10

* Repeat Day 1.

And so on. This routine is merely alternating “Arm and Leg day” with “Torso day,” with each getting in at least one work-out per week. This program gives you the opportunity to really blast your torso in the first week, since you’re only training it one day for the entire week. You can also train really heavy on your squats, which is the most important exercise you can do.

In fact, if you only did one exercise at all, it should be the squat. Squats stimulate not only the quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes, but they also stimulate muscle growth throughout the body. There are so many stabilizing muscles that are directly stressed by squats that you’d be hard-pressed to find a better overall exercise. Additionally, it’s been shown that heavy squats actually trigger a muscle-building response in the body. In short, you’ll gain muscle all over simply by doing heavy squats.

That’s the exercise program. Each of these routines should take no more than 30-45 minutes to complete.

Now, onto the nutrition program. Vince Gironda, the “Iron Guru,” held the belief that bodybuilding was 85 percent nutrition. I won’t go that far. But I will say that training without good nutrition is pointless, just as good nutrition with no training is useless!

You CAN, however, trigger an anabolic response with proper nutrition. The key is keeping a positive nitrogen balance in the bloodstream. This means that you have to eat high-protein, low carb meals every 2-3 hours. DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE FAT. You’ll also need to take in a LOT of supplements. There are a whole host of supplements that you need to take to effect this anabolic response. Remember, your muscles only grow if they have to. You can help this along by supplying them with the nutrients they need. Here’s the program:

Breakfast

* Mix up 4-6 eggs
* 8 oz half and half
* 8 oz whole milk
* 8 oz steak or other beef

Snack

* Mix up 4-6 eggs
* 8 oz half and half
* 8 oz whole milk
* MetRx packet

Lunch

* 1 pound hamburger
* Mixed green salad or raw veggies
* 4 oz cheese

Snack

* Mix up 4-6 eggs
* 8 oz half and half
* 8 oz whole milk
* MetRx packet

Dinner

* 1 pound steak or roast
* Steamed veggies
* 4 oz cheese

Snack

* Mix up 4-6 eggs
* 8 oz half and half
* 8 oz whole milk
* MetRx packet

Supplementation (with every meal and snack)

* 10 dessicated liver tablets
* 5 yeast tablets
* 4 raw orchic-tissue tablets
* 6 amino acid tablets (ariginine and ornithine)

As you can see, this is a super-high protein, low carb meal plan with a LOT of supplementation! All of this is geared toward putting your metabolism in an anabolic (muscle-building) state. You should follow the exercise and meal plans laid out above for no more than 4-6 weeks.

You can see gains in as little as 2 weeks on this program!

Generally speaking, once you gain 2-5 pounds of muscle, you’ll want to go on a less extreme diet plan and change up your exercise plan to do a few more sets per body part, with more reps per set. Why? Your body adapts to each type of stress you put upon it. Constantly changing things up “confuses” your body and, because it always seeks to adapt to the stress, continuously grows. Also, by switching up the exercise regimen, you’ll be promoting different aspects of muscle growth (Muscles grow in various ways: The parts of the cells grow in number and in size, both require different training stresses).

In summary, then, you will constantly cycle through this extreme training and diet plan, you’ll move off it after several weeks, then you’ll go to higher volume but less intense work-outs for several months and a more traditional (“balanced”) diet, then you’ll return to this muscle-building phase. It’s a cyclical, or phased, approach. I call it the “Stair Step Method.”

Here’s to your bodybuilding success!

Bill Davis has been building muscle through bodybuilding since he was 12 years old. He has used his body as a lab, testing all sorts of muscle-building principles, and openly shares his methods at Muscle-Build.com. Mr Davis can be reached at billspaced@muscle-build.com.

Originally published on SearchWarp.com for Bill Davis Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Article Source: How To Bulk Up and Get Ripped

Don’t be a victim to “weak genetics”! Here’s a simple way to defeat the “hardgainer” curse!

Are you a “hardgainer”?

You know…someone who is reeeeeally skinny and has a hard time putting on muscle mass?

If so, then this hardgainer bodybuilding tip is just for YOU!

The “Hargainer Problem” (well…ONE of them!)

There’s no doubt that “hardgainers” have the odds stacked against them!

And one of the big problems they have is that the don’t have a hormone system that processes the “testosterone chain” as efficiently as other guys.

Sucks, doesn’t it?!

But here’s a little trick you can try that is guaranteed to kickstart some new gains…

How To Boost Testosterone For More Muscle Mass…

Ok, here’s what you do…

For ONE WEEK, before each of your workouts (no matter which body part you’re targeting)…

…do 3 SETS of high volume SQUATS!

I know, I know…you hate doing squats period, right?

But especially for scrawny hardgainers (yeah…you women too!), squats are the “King” of all mass building exercises because they use more total muscle fibers than any other exercise.

Here’s Why This Works…

By starting your workout with 3 sets of squats (shoot for high reps…like 15-20), you jumpstart your endocrine system to kick up the production of anabolic hormones like testosterone.

Plus…using a higher volume rather than lower, you also stimulate the release of more human growth hormone that stimulates muscle growth.

Do this 3 TIMES a week and then move on to the rest of your workout (such as your chest, shoulders, etc.)

Repeat this trick any time you feel like your gains have plateaued and the flood of healthy, mass-building hormones will benefit your entire body to slather your scrawny frame with layers of muscle in no time!

Jeff Anderson, the “Muscle Nerd,” can show you how to build muscle, even if you’ve “tried everything.” He has several courses that show you how to build mass, combat body fat, and put your body in an anabolic state. Check out the “Muscle Nerd” series of bodybuilding courses.

1. Lift weights for no more than three to four days per week. Doing so is not only unnecessary but can quickly lead to over-training, especially if you are doing other physical activities such as cardio or playing recreational sports on a regular basis.

2. Limit your workouts to 30-45 minutes and 15-20 total sets. If you can’t build muscle and gain strength in that time frame then I’d say you are half assing it. You have to remember that results are greatest when energy levels and mental focus are at their highest. That is during the first 30-45 minutes of your workout. Going beyond that point causes both of these to plummet.

3. Use big, compound exercises and lift heavy. Deadlifts, military presses, squats, bench presses, rows and chin ups should always be the main focus of your muscle building workout programs. These have been the best muscle building exercises since the beginning of time and that will never change.

4. Continually try to get stronger and always track your progress with a training journal. Progressive overload is the most basic but often forgotten principle in weight training. It states that to make progress you need to constantly increase the amount of weight you lift. Follow this rule and you will get bigger and stronger. Ignore it and you will get nowhere. If you are benching 225 right now, you better be benching 315 by this time next year if you want to build muscle.

5. Train with a multitude of rep ranges. Doing this allows you to target both slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers and maximizes your muscle building capabilities. Reps from 1-20 should be used to target both fast twitch and slow twitch fibers.

6. Always change your weight training program every 3-4 weeks. After 3-4 weeks on the same program you will start to burn out and your results will slow down. To keep your body in a muscle building state, be sure to change your workouts frequently. If you have been lifting for several years, this may need to be done every two weeks because you will adapt more rapidly to the same stimulus.

7. Make a serious commitment to eating. Proper nutrition plays a huge role in your muscle building efforts. Without adequate calories you will never grow optimally. Force feed yourself if you have to and be sure to time your carbs correctly, meaning around training and at breakfast, while cutting them out at night if you want to stay lean while building muscle.

8. Be sure to get at least 8-10 hours of sleep per day and take naps whenever possible. When you are sleeping is when you are building muscle. Sleep is the time when you recover and grow. Without adequate sleep you will never reach your true potential and your muscle building efforts in the gym may be wasted. Do not overlook this important factor.

9. Utilize recovery methods. Training and eating properly are not enough to ensure the fastest muscle building results. You also have to be sure to use whatever recovery methods you can to accelerate your progress. Some of these include taking contrast showers or baths after training, stretching after training and on off days, icing, using foam rollers and whatever else you can think of to help you recover faster.

10. Find a good training partner. While I left this for last on the list it may, in fact, be the most important factor of them all. Without a good training partner your results will always be less than what they could be. It is imperative that you try to find someone to push you and to compete against if you really want to take your muscle building efforts to the next level.

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He is the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more great muscle building information, please visit Muscle Gaining Secrets.