Muscle Building Mistakes
If you’ve been struggling to put on muscle mass and you don’t know why, chances are that you’re making one or more of the following common mistakes. If you want to start packing on muscle mass fast, make sure to read this article and avoid these common muscle building mistakes.
Mistake #1 – Not Putting In Enough Time
A lot of people join a gym and start lifting weights with a lot of initial enthusiasm. The problem is that many of them get discouraged very quickly. They don’t give themselves enough time to actually see results.
Especially when you’re starting out, you need at least 6 – 8 weeks to start seeing real results in both size and strength. Your body needs time to start building itself the right way. If you lose heart too quickly, you will never be able to build bigger muscles.
Mistake #2 – Not Eating Enough
You stimulate the muscles to grow in the gym, you give them the building blocks they need to grow in the kitchen. Muscle don’t grow unless you supply them with the nutrients they need in order to develop. If you’re working your tail off in the gym and you’re not gaining weight, chances are that you’re not eating enough. You need to create a calorie surplus to gain muscle. If you’re not used to eating a lot, you may find it necessary to “force” yourself to eat more for a while until you grow accustomed to it.
While there are a lot of muscle building diet information in magazines and online with often contradicting guidelines as to what you need to eat to gain weight, the main thing is to simply eat highly nutritious food rich in protein and complex carbs and vegetables.
Don’t try to hard to find the perfect combination of nutrients and foods and don’t fall for the notion that you simply have to use muscle building supplements to gain weight. The truth is that you simply need to eat more and you will start seeing results. A good nutrition plan for muscle building is Anabolic Cooking.
Mistake #3 – Working out too much too often
When you lift weights, you’re actually creating minor tears in your muscle tissue. The body reacts by rebuilding the muscles to be stronger and more capable of standing up to the strain you’re placing them under.
But to rebuild the muscles correctly, you need to give your body the time and conditions to recuperate. You have to rest.
If you workout too much or too often, you’ll never give your body the chance to rebuild your muscles. You’ll keep tearing into them. This will likely result in little growth, lack of energy, and perhaps even a serious injury. This is why I recommend never training the same muscle groups day after day and to take a week off from training every 3 – 4 months.
Mistake #4 – Doing The Wrong Exercises
If you’re putting a lot of effort in the gym and you’re eating a lot but you’re still not seeing any real muscle growth, you’re likely doing the wrong exercises.
A lot of trainees believe that doing focused, isolated exercises is the way to build the most muscle mass. This is dead wrong. You want to engage the most muscle tissue in each and every one of your workouts. Isolated exercises have their place but they’re no match for more intense, compound exercises like squats, deadlift, lunges, pull ups, bench presses, lat pulldowns, and so on.
You need to spend most of your time at the gym on doing multi-jointed exercises. These will push your body much harder than isolated exercises such as bicep curls ever will. You will quickly see your mass increase by doing these compound exercises.
Mistake #5 – Working Without a System
Building muscles is something that you need to plan ahead. You need to know which exercises to do and when, how many reps to go for, when to rest, how to eat and what, when to change your workout style, and so on.
It’s very difficult for an amateur to get everything right, especially at first. This is why working with a professional muscle building program is highly recommended. A proven system will give you a framework in which to work. This can be the difference between fast results and never getting any whatsoever.
Two highly recommended programs are No Nonsense Muscle Building and Triple Threat Muscle. Either of them will help get fast and impressive results.
21 Day Fast Mass Building
21 Day Fast Mass Building is a program by Vince Del Monte and Lee Hayward, two bodybuilders and muscle building authors.
The goal of this program is ambitious, to help you add up to 12 pounds of muscle in just 21 days.
This does seem like a bold promise to make. In this review, I want to see whether the 21 Day Fast Mass Building program works as promised and tell you exactly what you’ll be getting.
If you want to avoid the hype and learn the truth about this program, read on…
What is the 21 Day Fast Mass Building Program
This program is based on a training and nutrition concept which is used by bodybuilders and in other sport fields as well: calorie cycling.
In the case of this program, calorie cycling is used to promote a burst of muscle growth. Lee Hayward calls it the Anabolic Amplifier Effect. In general terms, what you do is go on a low carb eating week (called Primer period) followed by a high carb, high calories 2 weeks (Overload period).
What happens during the low carb period is that you lose a lot of body fat and make you toned and ripped. In addition, you’re depleting your body and muscles so that once you start eating more calories during the next 2 weeks, they simply use up all those calories and grow much faster.
The primer period lasts one week and the Overload period lasts for two, so the cycle lasts for 21 days in total.
Naturally, you also need to know how to workout in order to achieve the most muscle growth. This is all explained in detail in the program. This is how you gain the most muscle mass in 21 days.
Click here to learn more about the workouts and nutrition plan
Can you really gain 12 pounds of muscle in 21 days?
The claim that you can add 12 pounds of muscle with this program is based on Vince Del Monte’s own experience with this method. No one can guarantee that you’ll gain as much.
Gaining 12 pounds of muscle in 21 days is quite a lot. You should be quite happy with half as much. Most people won’t gain this kind of muscle mass in a full year of training, so the gains you achieve with the 21 Day Fast Mass Building can be immense.
What do you get with the 21 Day Fast Mass Muscle Building
1. The 21-Day Fast Mass Building Manual
This is the main manual of the program that explains the science behind it, why it really works, and how you use this particular calorie cycling concept to achieve the most muscle gain. You’ll also get three workout programs which you use during the 21 days of the plan.
Click here to get the main 21 Day Fast Mass Building manual
2. Nutrition Plans
With these nutrition plans, you will know exactly what to eat and when during the 21 weeks. As the Anabolic Amplifier Effect is based mostly on nutrition, you will need to know how to eat. These nutrition plans will show you how to cycle your calories correctly for the most muscle gain.
3. 21-Day Fitness Model Physique 4-Hour Workout DVD
This workout DVD is made especially for guys who want to develop the Fitness Model look. This means that you will sacrifice a bit of mass gaining potential to develop greater muscle tone. You will get ripped but you won’t get as big as you may be able to.
4. 21-Day Muscle Model Physique 4-Hour Workout DVD
This is similar to the Fitness Model look but bigger. You will still look toned but you will have a lot more size. This isn’t a bodybuilding physique but somewhere in the middle between the ripped fitness model look and the bodybuilder look.
5. The 21-Day Hardcore Bodybuilder Physique 2-Hour Workout DVD
If you’re looking to get huge and shredded, this is a workout DVD that you need to see. Learn how to workout to build massive size quickly during the next 21 days and afterwards.
All in all, you have 3 workout DVDs (all of which you download to your computer or iPod) to choose from.
Addition bonuses in the 21 Day Fast Mass Program include workout sheets, supplement manual, and other resources.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- While I hardly know Lee Hayward, there’s no doubt that he has an impressive physique. Vince Del Monte is a true muscle building expert so he knows his stuff inside and out.
- The program is based on methods already proven to work.
- Has great user testimonials.
- Comes with a money back guarantee.
- Can deliver quick muscle gain.
Cons:
- The claim of gaining 12 pounds in 21 days is over the top. There’s no way to guarantee this.
- I like programs with a longer time range. You can do this over, but it is still a program focused on getting a muscle growth burst and not a continuous plan.
>> Click here to download the 21 Day Fast Mass Building Program <<
In conclusion
The 21 Day Fast Mass Building program is a worthwhile program to have as it can help you build more lean muscle quickly. Lee Hayward and Vince Del Monte provide a lot of value and the results people get with their program speak for themselves. However, do not expect to gain 12 pounds of muscles with this plan. This may be a bit exaggerated.
Things I Learned From Bruce Lee
bruce lee statue - Wikipedia
I recently saw a video of Bruce Lee and, as I usually do when I see him, I was amazed by his physical ability and the way he looked. The guy was the embodiment of functional muscles. It’s as if he didn’t have a single ounce of fat on his body and that every muscle cell was there for a reason, not to make him look better but to make him better at what he did.
At that moment I realized that there are a lot of things you can learn from Bruce Lee which may affect the way you try to gain muscle mass. I want to share a few of the things I learned from him:
1. You don’t have to be huge to look great
A lot of guys want to get huge because they think this will make them look the best they can be. The more muscle they have, the better they feel. One look at Bruce Lee is enough to see that you don’t need to have huge muscles to look good. This guy was pretty compact. He was tight, rather small, obviously muscular but never bulky. However, he looked awesome, like a coil ready to pounce at any moment.
2. Strength has little to do with muscle size
While having big muscles gives the impression of being strong, it is often an illusion. A lot of guys who have huge arms have mostly achieved it through Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy, a muscle growth which is based on an increase of muscle cellular fluids and not muscle fibers. Bruce Lee has incredible strength. I saw him do one arm push-ups with ease. Yet, he didn’t have big muscles. He wasn’t bulky. This just goes to show you how bulging muscles have little to do with strength.
3. Muscle growth can be unbulky
Some guys (and gals) do not want to do heavy weight lifting because they don’t want to become bulky. One look at Bruce Lee is enough to show you how you can build lean muscles without being bulky. As long as you focus on becoming more athletic and building functional muscle mass, you can get a lot more muscle mass on you without it looking bulky.
Take these 3 things I learned from Bruce Lee and ask yourself, can I change the way I workout and train to be more like him? Is this the kind of body that will make you look better?
ManicMuscles Recommends
Visual Impact Muscle Building is a program created byRsuty Moore. What this program is all about is helping you improve get the kind of defined muscular look that Hollywood stars have. The idea is to build a great looking body without looking puffy or having rounded muscles.
This isn’t a bodybuilding program but an athletic body building program. If you want that lean athletically muscular look that women love, than Visual Impact Muscle Building is the program for you. It is a program that shows you how to workout correctly to get the kind of body women go crazy for.
Check out a review of it on this page: Rusty Moore’s Visual Impact Muscle Building Review
1000 Rep Muscle Challenge Review
In this article I want to write a review of the 1000 Rep Muscle Challenge, a program by Vince Del Monte and Artus Shakur. Vince is a famous muscle building author and Artus is a fitness model.
I was recently approached by Vince Del Monte who wanted me to review this program for you. I asked to get a copy, which he sent me, and I kinda forgot about it.
Recently, I went through it, watched the videos, and now I’m ready to share my 1000 Rep Muscle Challenge review with you.
What is the 1000 Rep Muscle Challenge
This is an intense muscle building program. You do 4 workouts each week. In each of the workouts you do 250 reps, bringing the weekly rep total to 1000.
You may be thinking that this is a lot of load to place on your body, and in a way you’re right. This is not a program for beginners. It’s a program for people who’ve been training for a while, had some gains, but now want to reignite bigger muscle growth. That being said, Vince and Artus have included a Primer Workouts module to help even beginners train progressively until they’re able to do the complete 1000 reps per week.
The 1000 Rep Muscle Challenge is a four day split workout program. You train 4 times a week, each time targeting different muscle groups. Vince and Artus have made sure that there’s no overlap in muscle groups within the same workout. For instance, you do Chest and Biceps exercises on one day, shoulders and abs on another.
The workouts themselves combine two types of sets: a low rep, high load set to increase strength and muscle tone (a Myofibrillar Hypertrophy set), and a higher rep, lower load set for greater increases in size (a Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy set). This is the kind of workouts I like. You won’t just be adding size to your body, which can result in a bloated look, but you’ll be working on size and tone together, a great combination to really get ripped.
>> Check out a short workout sample here <<
What does the 1000 Rep Muscle Challenge include
The program includes an ebook, videos, and audios.
Ebook
The 1000 Rep Muscle ebook provides an overview of the program, talks about the workout method and why it works, gives tips and guidelines for better results and gets you ready for the program itself.
Audio coaching calls
There are 3 coaching calls that you get with the program. They cover the following topics:
- Customization
- Nutritional guidelines
- Supplementation guide (don’t worry, you don’t need to burn a hole in your pocket on supplements to do this program).
Videos
This is the main part of the program. There are 5 videos in total. The first is a brief introduction to the workouts. The other 4 are the 4 workouts you need to do each week. In each of these videos you will see Artus Shakur and Vince Del Monte show you how to perform each exercise. Vince does most of the talking, but I actually connected more to Artus’s way of working out.
The videos are easy to follow, the production is good, and they really get you in the mood to go to the gym and start pumping up.
In Conclusion
1000 Rep Muscle Challenge is a great program if you’re looking for a way to boost your muscle growth and strength. It is not an easy program to follow. The workouts are hard and you need to do them right to succeed. However, this is a program that can deliver results for you if you follow it right. Click here to learn more about the 1000 Rep Muscle Challenge
5 Myths About a Bodybuilding Diet
It’s well known that in order to gain muscle mass, you need to eat right. The common conception of a bodybuilding diet is that it’s made up of a lot of protein, supplements, and is usually bland and untasty. People think that all muscle builders eat are eggs, milk, and tuna straight out of the can.
A lot of newbies who want to build more muscle mass feel that their diet must be appropriately bland and boring if they are to have any hope of building the kind of muscles they want. They too fall prey to the many myths about bodybuilding nutrition.
In this article I want to dispel 5 common myths about a bodybuilding diet and help you see why eating for size doesn’t have to be the way most people think it is.
Myth #1 – Muscle building food must be bland
This is totally false. It is entirely up to you whether the food you eat will be tasty or not. There is no reason not to add a variety of condiments to your healthy meals that will make them totally delicious. It is simply something that you need to make a priority. One excellent resource for this kind of delicious meals is the Anabolic Cooking Cookbook.
Myth #2 – Preparing and cooking a bodybuild meal is a long and careful process
False again. If you’re trying to get everything perfect, it’s better to not even start. Perfection isn’t possible. It’s a dream which is elusive and frustrating. The key is to get most things right. This is enough to achieve fantastic results. This means that you don’t need to measure every food item you cook and you don’t need to spend hours in the kitchen. You can cook, in bulk, a full week’s worth of food quickly and easily.
Myth #3 – A bodybuilding diet is going to cost you an arm and a leg
While many fitness magazines would have you believe that the way to get a great looking body must include some expensive supplement or two, the truth is that you can get fantastic results with just regular food, carefully chosen and tastefully prepared. You don’t need to spend a lot on supplements, certainly not until you’ve achieved your full natural potential. For most people, this is still something to work towards, not something they’ve already achieved. Check out this article on muscle building supplements for more on this issue.
Myth #4 - You can’t cook even if your life depended on it
Guess what, it doesn’t depend on it but it’s still not true. You don’t have to be a master chef in order to cook simple yet delicious meals that will help you to build more muscle mass quickly. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never cooked in your life or that sandwhich making is your ultimate culinary achievement. As long as you can read, you can follow simple guidelines and learn to cook simple bodybuilding food in a short time. It’s easy.
Myth #5 – If It Tastes Good It Must be Fattening
Rubbish. That’s the gist of what I can say about this myth. The idea that food that tastes good can’t be healthy, lean and supportive of a muscle growth is ludicrous. You can and should eat tasty food. Nothing about good food suggests that it’s bad for muscle building. Nothing at all.
Manic Muscles Recommends
Anabolic Cooking by Dave Ruel is an excellent nutrition and cooking guide for the guy (or gal) who wishes to eat the right food to gain lean muscle mass. Known as the “Muscle Cook” by his peers and fans, Dave Ruel is an expert on bodybuilding nutrition. In this utrition program he shows you how you can create a variety of tasty dishes and meals which will give you the edge you need to propel your body to a fast muscle growth.
If you’re tired of eating bland foods hoping they’ll give you muscles and you want to know how to eat affordable, tasty, varied, and great muscle building meals, this is a program I highly recommend having. Remember, working out hard is not enough to get the results you want. Your nutrition is key. This is why this is an important program to use.
