Weight training for women!!!

Now you must be scratching your head. Women in weight training? !!!

But for your surprise they do it and they do it well. Many women are reluctant to get into weight training or if they do, are reluctant to progress and lift heavier weights for fear of looking like a female bodybuilder!.

The female bodybuilder!!

Do your weight training and you will look better than ever!

You cant really get big muscles! It is really hard for women to build huge muscle. Women don’t possess the right hormones for it. Then how are the female bodybuilders so huge? They are steroid freaks. If you stay away from roids and male hormones, you’ll be absolutely fine.

Considering the fact that weight training do build muscle, you won’t loose your feminine looks, but you will look more shapely and firm. A little bit muscle on your shoulders and gluteus will make your waist look smaller and your waist will appear small.

Oh then my weight will go up!! Don’t worry. Having more muscle will increase the metabolic rate and you will burn more calories. Muscles consume more calories for just their being in the body. If you have a pound of fat in your body, to stay it does nothing, but if you have an extra pound of muscle, it burns a lot of calories throughout the day. This makes your fat burning goals easier. And moreover having less muscle and more fats, “muscle-to-fat” ratio declines as we get older. This in turn lowers the metabolic rate to increase fat. Weight training can put an end to this or work in the reverse. So you can look younger in your old age. (You will look relatively younger compared to the women of your age group)

I have seen many women progress in their fat loss and fitness goals better with the weights, cardio and proper diet, than the women resorting to cardio and diet alone.

Advantages listed to motivate you

• Weight training increases bone density in women.
• Older women in postmenopausal period are easily prone to osteoporosis and weight training can really help them fight its onset.
• It strengthens the muscles, making the cardio easier.
• At an older age women will feel more independent and functional if they possess strength in their body.

Enjoy your workouts

If you don’t like the idea of traditional exercises like squat and deadlift, try your hands on the machines. Nowadays we have a hell a lot of machines out there in the gym which can really make you feel as if you are inside a robot operating it Or get into bodyweight training or use more unconventional resistance like sandbags, medicine balls etc.

Training with a friend also makes the whole thing more fun. The bottom line is that for continuing health, strength and beauty, weight training is incredibly effective and it makes you feel great.

All the best!

The Rep Range

One of the most controversial and misunderstood concepts in bodybuilding is the rep range. Every where you look, some one is advocating a different rep range.

The popular thinking has boiled it down to the following generalizations:
Strength - 1 - 5 repetitions per set
Muscle Mass - 6 - 10 repetitions per set
Muscle Mass for slow twitch fibers - 12 - 20 or more reps per set for body parts like thighs and calves.

Does this sound interesting?
Yeah! It sure does. But do muscles count reps??

First, muscles don't count reps, so these numbers could be completely different for someone who takes 10 seconds to complete one rep, compared to someone who takes 2 seconds for each rep.

A good example of this misapplication is recommended by the late Mike Mentzer. He usually suggested 6-10 rep range. So everyone following Mike would say that using heavy weights is heavy duty. But the fact was different. Mike advocated a rep speed that took about 10 seconds to complete each rep. For 6 reps that amounts to 60 seconds. But the way most people do it would last only for about 15 seconds. This shows a humongous difference between the weights used and the results produced.

This is a very important concept that got lost over years. When studies were done that showed 8 – 12 repetitions was the optimal number of reps in a set for most people, the accepted cadence was 2 seconds for the raising (positive) part of the rep and 4 seconds (negative) for the lowering of the weight.

Each repetition took 6 seconds to complete for a total rep time of 48 - 72 seconds for the entire set. This is a vital fact of exercise physiology to understand if you wish to optimize your progress.

So muscles don’t count reps! All they count is TUT or TUL (TUT- time under tension & TUL- time under load).

So this is where the 8-12 rep range was born. But slowly, fitness professionals started advocating the rep range and left the TUT in mid air. The very concept of TUT just did not become famous but the rep range did.

Counting seconds while you count the rep is a very tough job. I had this problem personally while I started using slow reps in my regiment. So here is a easy work around for you. Count the reps alone. Do not cheat or use momentum, do the positive slowly and only with the muscle group involved, and do the negative in a relatively slow manner. This will ensure that your rep lasts at least for 5 seconds. When you gain experience, you might be able to go on even slower.

Fast twitch fibers respond best with a tension time of approximately 40 – 50 seconds. Slow twitch (more endurance oriented) respond best with a tension time of 90 - 120 seconds, while a mixture of the two does well with a time under load of approximately 50 - 90 seconds.

The TUT/reps per set that is appropriate for you is also determined by your muscle fiber make up and your neuromuscular efficiency.( neuromuscular efficiency is the ability to contract a large number of fibers at one time). So the faster the muscle fatigues, the higher its neuromuscular efficiency and greater the fast twitch fiber content. The slower the muscle fatigues, the lower its neuromuscular efficiency and the greater the number of slow twitch fibers.

Knowing your muscle fiber composition is very vital when you are planning and putting into place all the other factors. Rather than approaching your workout with rep range in mind, approach your workouts with the time under tension in mind.

Give it a try for just four weeks. You will surely know the difference.

All the best!!

Fat loss diet for all

The first and foremost thing that I would say to those looking forward to lose fat is, “You cannot lose fat if you do not keep your calorie intake in negative” That is, eat a little bit lesser than what you expend on the day. So without wasting your time let me go straight into the diet plan.

Eat 6 Meals a day:

To keep the metabolism of your body high, you have to eat frequent meals. Rather than eating three large meals, 6 evenly spaced small meals can be utilized better by your body. You will get an uninterrupted supply of protein to maintain your hard earned muscle. By eating small frequent meals, you will give the body the necessary source of energy in regular basis. So your body will be in a good balanced state and so it won’t produce the chemical enzymes to convert food into fat storage. But if you eat infrequent meals, the body will go into a panic mode and will start storing fats under your skin in order to withstand long time without food.

Planning to make this 7 or 8 meals is also a wise decision.

The calorie game:

The most important factor in determining how much weight you gain or how much weight you lose is the calorie count of the food that you consume daily. As I said earlier, you have to be in a negative calorie balance in order to lose weight and fats.

You must remember one more thing. Human body has the best adapting mechanism. So if you keep your calorie balance negative always, the results will slow down and your body will simply adapt to the situation and will stop you from loosing weight and fat.

In order to over smart the body’s adaptation, we must learn to cheat. What???

Ya. Cheat in the right sense. Plan for two continuous cheat meals every three or four days. After three or four days of continuous negative calories, your body might think of shifting gear and it will try to adapt to the situation. But if you place a high calorie meal at this point, you will no longer be negative calorie balance. Instead you will be in a positive calorie balance. So your body won’t get adapted to the situation and will continue to support you in loosing fat.

There is one more advantage of cheat meal. It helps to pack on some more lean muscle onto your body. In order to maintain the added muscle tissue, your body has to spend some more calories that you eat. So it increases your fat burning capacity.

If you are obese by nature then space the cheat meals 5-6 days apart.

The macronutrient ratio:

Consume 60% carbohydrates, 30% proteins and 10% fats.

Is this correct ? – “If you consume 100 grams of food, then it should be 60 g carbs, 30g protein and 10 g fats”…

That’s absolutely wrong. When I say it in ratio it refers to the percentage of calories coming from each source. So the right way to consider is, - “ If I consume 100 calories, then 60 calories should be from carbs, 30 calories should be from protein and 10 calories should be from fats”.

Why on the basis of calories?

It is because,1 g protein = 4 calories, 1 g of carbohydrate = 4 calories and 1g of fat= 9 calories.

So fats constitute more than twice the amount of calories from protein or carbohydrates.

Time your carbs:

You can consume more carbs during your breakfast, before your workouts and even after your workouts. But it should be lesser during the night. Why?

As we all know carbohydrates are source of energy. If we consume carbs and go to sleep, then the energy consumed could not be used up by the body. So in turn the body will try to convert it into fats. So we must consume more carbs before high physical activity hours of the day and try to keep it very low during the low activity hours of the day and in night.

What carbohydrates?

Try to consume fibrous and starchy carbohydrates. And try to stay away from sugars, as they can increase your insulin levels and can spoil your diet. But consuming sugar carbohydrates immediately after training can help you replenish the lost glycogen stores in your muscle.

Never starve:

When ever you go into a negative calorie balance, take care that you do not reduce your calories drastically. Reducing the calorie levels by 10-15% is safe.

A fat loss enthusiast might try to reduce his calories by 50%. This should decrease his weight faster than the earlier…. But it will never result that way.

First of all, when he tries to drastically cut down his calories, his body will go into the panic mode. So now its concern would be to protect itself from the scarcity of food. To hold one kg of fat under your skin, you need not expend a considerable amount of calories, but if your hold 1 kg of muscle, you need much more calories than fats. So the body will consider the situation and start giving you energy from the hard earned muscle.

So after one week of this diet, he might have lost more weight than the other people on a safe diet. But from the second week the results will go down and will eventually stop.

If we analyze his body composition, he would not have lost much fat and would have lost much more muscle. So if we consider the proportions of muscle and fat, muscle would be lesser than before and his fat would be nearly the same or even more. So his net fat % would be more.

Why did the weight loss come to a halt in this person?

As I said earlier, the body can adapt very fast. Earlier it would have been on 3000 calories. So when the subject cut it down to 1500 calories, the human body adapted itself to 1500 calories by using up some muscle tissue as energy source and by retaining fat under the skin for future scarcity situation. So after this point if the subject tries to drop more calories the same drastic way, the body will adapt.

And at a point he would get totally hopeless on fat loss and might start to eat normally again. But now his body has adapted to very less calories. So even 2000 calories would be excess for it and it will deposit it as fat under your skin. This is the most common mistake that people do and complain that their diet is not working.

So let us not complain about diet and let us play the dieting game with sense.

These are the building blocks of constructing your fat loss diet. Construct your fat loss diet sensibly and achieve your desired goals.

All the best!!!

Water, Fats & Calories

This week I am going to elaborate some of the commonly misunderstood factors in bodybuilding. Let us straight away go into the topic without wasting time.

Drink plenty of water

Lack of water immediately transforms in a less effective nutrition plan. When on a diet water is the most important ingredient you need to look at and so few people understand this. Many individuals start counting calories, fat grams, protein grams etc., but fail to know how much water they drink. It is very important in nutrition and bodybuilding in general to know how much water you consume.

Your body is about 80% water and it goes into stress rapidly if you dehydrate. You can live for weeks without food but for only few days without water. Water is required for every process that takes place in the body. No mater how much protein you eat, your system cannot break it down into amino acids without water. Without enough water, your body simply cannot utilize all of the nutrients you consume.

In addition to water's role in digestion, it also protects and lubricates your joints. It acts as a cushion to absorb shock. Water is also required for the fluid that lubricates the sheath surrounding and protecting the tendons. Without water, your joints and muscles would "freeze up" just like any precision machine without lubrication.

The minimum amount of water you should drink per day is 8 large cups and even more when you are doing a strenuous exercise routine, when you are working out you perspire lot and through this you lose on an average around 4 cups every hour.

This of course will depend on several factors such as your body weight, size and how vigorous your routine is, that is in a moderate climate, if you are working out in a hot climate you will of course lose much more than this.

There is a myth about water which is most misunderstood. When you feel thirsty, you need to drink water or else you will go into dehydration....... Is this true???

Fact: Your body is already into a state of dehydration when you feel thirsty.

Signs of dehydration:

• Your throat begins to feel sore and your voice may turn hoarse.
• A burning sensation in your stomach.
• Muscle cramps.
• You develop a headache.
• You feel tired.
• Your hands may feel cold.
• Your skin feels dry.

If you get any of these feeling during your workout or even during any other activity, just refresh yourself with some water and then continue your work. To make sure that you do not reach the state of dehydration, drink a plenty of water throughout the day.

Eat More Fat

Yep, eat more fat.

We know that the zero fat programs introduced in USA did not make people healthy, but made them fat. So don’t stay under the illusion that cutting fat out of diet is going to do good. Our body needs fats in order to support some internal organs and to digest fat soluble vitamins.

Essential Fatty Acids are extremely anabolic and increase your testosterone levels. Studies have shown that low fat diets (less than 20 percent of calories coming from fat) show lowered testosterone levels. But don’t mistake my point. I am not suggesting you to eat loads of junk food. Eat essential fatty acids on a regular basis.

EFA Supplements are not created equal. Not by a long shot. Be choosey in the brands that you select. But let me list some of the best natural sources of EFA’s so that you can include them in your diet rather than completely relying on EFA supplements

• Fish oil
• Falxseed oil
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Almonds
  

Eat More

Sounds obvious, right? You'd be amazed how many people complain about not being able to add muscle and they are only eating two or three meals a day and only getting about 2000 calories a day.

This isn't going to cut it. Your body needs more calories to grow. This doesn't mean stuff your face with junk food but make sure you eat six high quality meals a day with a good dose of carbs, protein and essential fats.

If you are skinny and find it very difficult to gain weight you can start by multiplying your bodyweight (in pounds/lbs)by 20 to get the number of calories you need to eat in a day. But the count of calories fully depends on your specific goals and body type.

Mass, Mass, and More Mass

If you are reading my articles regularly, you would know that I am a strict believer in intensity of workouts and going to failure. Here are a couple of key points that are an important part of making progress this way, but are rarely discussed.

First thing to make sure is that the sets last long enough to stimulate muscle growth. Arthur Jones recommended everyone to do a set of 8-12 reps with the positive lasting for 2 seconds and negative lasting for 4 seconds. This would make each rep last for 6 seconds and the set last for about 48- 72 seconds. The reason why I am highlighting the time is to show how much time your muscle must be under tension to stimulate growth according to Arthur Jones. But most of us complete one rep within 2-3 seconds. So a set of 8 lasts for 16-20 seconds, which is not even half of what Arthur Jones recommends. So the time under tension for the muscle is very less. This might be the mistake that most of the bodybuilders do and complain about their poor genetics. Most of the bodybuilders do not reach their genetic potential and start complaining about their genetics.

Another important point which is less talked about is the importance of the last rep. Arthur Jones preached training to failure and also advised people to go beyond failure. If you are looking for some quick improvement in your muscle then this is the most important thing that you need to concentrate on your workouts.

And I am not talking about the famous high intensity techniques such as rest-pause, pre-exhaust, drop sets etc. I am going to explain about a specific way of training the last rep. Arthur Jones suggested that once you could no longer complete another repetition, you should continue pushing or pulling on the weight.

Obviously you have to train in power racks with safety pins to implement these in movements like squats or bench press. And one more important requirement is to have a very good spotter.

Let us understand this technique with the help of bench press as an example. For most people when they reach their failure, they get stuck near the last rep near the bottom. The spotter has to pull the weight and rack it. Instead try holding or pushing the immovable weight against gravity in that position of stretch for a good 20 seconds, till you can no longer even hold the weight. Then allow the spotter to rack the weights.

On barbell curls, you would most likely come to a grinding halt about two or three inches into the rep, when your arms are slightly bent. You know you won't make the rep but you still have to continue to pull on the bar for as long as you can, before finishing the set.

The key concept here is that, all movements have a positive, a negative and a static movement. In the traditional training methodology, we fatigue the muscle in the positive and negative and reach failure and go even beyond failure. But we still have the static position energy in the muscle. And the muscles helping to hold weights in static position are not used up. To fatigue those muscle fibers, that is use up maximum muscle fibers to induce better growth stimulation you need to do static holds like this at the end of the sets.

For those who don’t know Arthur Jones, He was the mentor of “The great Mike Mentzer” Arthur Jones was the inventor of the High intensity training.

Try this technique and you will have a lot of muscle gains in a short span of time.

All the best for your gains….

Super heavy duty workout to develop lagging body-parts

One of my blog readers had asked me to write a blog on lagging body-part development. Before elaborating the technique, let me point out the common mistakes that people do.

Out of frustration, bodybuilders train their lagging body-parts with double volume compared to other body-parts. In spite of increasing their volume by 200% they add one more similar session to the week. They train the muscle two times a week. They will have a big guy in the gym who gives them the so called “magic advice”. At the end of the first double volume workout they will have a great pump. But they will have only negative progress. And I have seen many of my friends dropping out of bodybuilding just because of this fatal mistake.

The reality:
Let’s face the truth. Let’s think logically and rationally as a bodybuilder. We are not going to the gym to compete in an endurance contest. Most of us have the ambition of a beautiful physique.
A body-part is lagging in development because it is not able to grow at the speed of the other muscles. What does this imply?

The growth process is slow in this particular muscle.

It takes more time to recover in comparison to the other muscles of the body.(the recovery ability is less)

So what is the solution?

Train the muscle less frequently. I have explained the growth process earlier in my blogs but still I will explain in short here. When we workout we dig a hole into the reserves of the muscle cells. When we rest and provide proper nutrition to the muscle we cover up the hole. When we leave adequate time between the next workout we will overcompensate for the upcoming stress on the next workout. But if we train before the muscle fills its reserves and starts overcompensating, if we train the body-part again, we do not grow but we deplete the reserves again. So the reserves never come to full. When we are not able to fill in the complete reserve how will we gain muscle tissue?

For beginners and intermediate a mere set to failure or a pre-exhaust set to failure would do the trick to induce the growth mechanism. The technique that I am going to elaborate is only for advanced bodybuilders who have had 2 years of experience in the gym.( the assumption here is that these bodybuilders execute each rep with perfection and have a good nutrition plan)

Let us consider a muscle as a guideline for the technique. For most of the bodybuilders biceps are god like. So I am going to take bicep muscle as the guide for the technique. Before starting this kind of double heavy duty workouts take 2 complete weeks off from training.

The workout:
As I said earlier I am going to elaborate with the help of biceps. Load the barbell with weights with which you you can do no more than 6 complete reps. Keep it ready. Now do two sets of preacher curls with dumbbells. Do one very light and one moderate heavy set. The whole idea here is to bring some blood into the bicep with some isolation movement.

Now get your concentration fully into your bicep and lift the barbell. Curl the weight for full six reps. It should be really challenging to complete six reps. The reps should be performed in a slow manner. With each rep taking 6-10 seconds. Remember challenges make life more interesting. You have 12 seconds rest now before you continue your program. Immediately after completing 12 seconds of rest grab the barbell again and now complete 5 reps out of the same. I know that it will be more challenging but this ain't any ordinary set. Its gonna shock your muscle to growth. It is going to send a strong impulse to your muscle to grow. So imagine your bicep growing and visualize a 20 inch arm of yours. This should be enough motivation to complete the 5 reps. Now you have an option to rest for 10 seconds. Quickly massage your biceps and make them ready to continue the workout. Now lift the bar again and squeeze another 4 reps. I know that your biceps would have started screaming by now. But remember this is going to give your lagging part the potential to grow and grow more. So complete the 4 reps. Scream, shout , cry and do what so ever you can to withstand the pain and complete 4 reps but don’t cheat your movement. Now you have 8 seconds to rest. Quickly shake your arms to flush out some lactic acid and now grab the bar again and squeeze for another 3. Had bodybuilding been so easy everyone would have been Mr.Olympia. So you have to put your complete effort into the workout. Now you have 6 seconds to rest. I know that by this time lifting your own arm would be a pain, but you have completed 80 % of your workout. So just few more seconds of workout left With that positive attitude pump two more reps. Now you have 4 seconds to rest. Remember “no pain, no gain”, “no guts, no glory” So just Do one more rep and you are done for the day.

That’s all. Your workout is done. Don’t train your bi for the next 10-15 days. And don’t do any kind of weight training the next day.

You will really be amazed with the results after just two workouts.

The nutshell:
Warm-up Preacher curl – 2x10
Barbell curl – 1x6
12 sec rest
1x5
10 sec rest
1x4
8 sec rest
1x3
6 sec rest
1x2
4 sec rest
1x1

The logic:
When you do your normal set, let us say 10 reps. The first rep is the easiest, the second rep is relatively tough and so on. Only the 10the rep is tough enough to stimulate growth. But in the super heavy duty rest pause method explained above, except the first 5 reps all the other reps are growth stimulant and a battle to complete.

Always the result of hard work would be great. So look forward to great muscular development. Don’t over do this training. Do not try to do more than one set of this training, you might end up in hospital. So train optimal.

Choose good compound movements for following the same technique for different muscle groups.

Break through your sticking points of growth and achieve your personal bodybuilding goals. May your dreams come true.

Keep yourself on track – Time and moment

It has been nearly a week since my last blog. So here are some guidelines to those who desperately want to make progress all the time. I am going to outline two very basic and simple topics which could actually make you think in a better way towards your bodybuilding and personal fitness goals.

So here we go….

Watch your time between sets

You need to time yourself between sets and exercises. This never seems to be emphasized in any training articles or fancy magazines but it's very important if progress is your goal. If you train just for fun, then this blog is not for you. If progress in fitness levels and muscle growth is your goal then read on…

If you don't know exactly how much time you're taking between sets you don't really know if you're making progress from one workout to the next. In one workout you may be squatting 225 for 3 sets of 5. Maybe a few weeks later you're squatting 240 for 3 sets of 5. But if you took 90 seconds between sets when squatting 225 and then 3 minutes
between sets at 240 to make sure you got 5 reps, have you really made any progress? Have you triggered muscle growth?

Live in the Moment

I know, this sounds a little weird. But it can make a big difference in your results. The only thing you should be focusing on is the rep you are currently performing.

Nothing else matters. Don't worry about how many reps you need to do in that set, or how many sets or exercises you have left. Don't pace yourself to get through the workout. That one rep is all that matters.

Many sports trainers and experts suggest athletes to live in the current moment. Because thinking beyond the current moment diverts your concentration away from the moment you are living in. For example you are benching 200lbs. If you concentrate on the muscle contraction and stretch on the top and bottom of the movement, You will really feel the muscle working and you can be sure that you have induced growth in chest, but if you concentrate on doing 10 reps with 200 lbs, then you tend to concentrate on the count and cheat yourself unknowingly from the complete stretch and contraction of the movement. So you end up with inducing lesser growth impulse on your muscle.

So as I always say, “Quality is the name of the game, not quantity”.

Try these in your next workout and you will be amazed with the results that you are going to get.