Building Muscle Tips #2

Eat To Build Muscle

I’ve heard it said that building muscle is as easy as lifting heavy and eating. This may be an over simplification but it’s fairly accurate. There’s a bit more to it than just lifting weights and eating food suggests, but it pretty much sums it up.

Lets get into a little more detail though.

We mentioned in Building Muscle Tip #1 that the body experiences tiny tears and fractures in the muscles while you work out lifting heavy weights. This is a good thing because you’re teaching your body to grow and adapt to the increased workload. The important thing is to keep increasing the workload so you keep growing. So how does your body actually grow?

That’s the other half… Nutrition! Your body feeds on the foods you put in it to re-build the muscle fibers and make your body stronger. Therefore you MUST eat good wholesome food to nourish your body. Otherwise you will not achieve the gains you’re aiming for.

This step is as important (or almost MORE important) than actually lifting the weights. We’ve all seen someone who practically lives on KFC and McDonald’s without exercising. They’re fat and greasy, just like the food. Is that the way you want to feed your body?

Now don’t get me wrong, if you like a bit of take away food, go for it, now and then. It’s good to take a break once in a while. You’ll actually teach your body to “expect anything!” when it comes to food as well as lifting weights. A healthy “non-healthy” day is good for you.

However, if you want to make consistent gains then only good fresh and nutrient rich foods must be consumed the majority of the time.

Building Muscle Tips Eating For Muscle Gain Guidelines

Avoid Saturated Fats, chemicals and preservatives

These guidelines will keep you in an ANABOLIC state. This is a state of metabolism where your body is constantly repairing your muscles and you’re actually growing. You’ll see that the actual growth occurs not during the workout, but during the hours and hours after and between your workouts.

All your doing during your workout is stimulating your body to adapt and repair itself. You do a good job (i.e. you work hard!) and your body will be craving all sorts of foods and good nutrients to nourish your new bigger, stronger muscles. Get used to being a big eater!

Some of my favorite meals for keeping my appetite at bay are:

Building Muscle Tips For Main Meal Ideas

Building Muscle Tips #5

Get a Training Partner To Double Your Gains!

You’ve heard the saying “2 heads are better than 1″ Well, this is certainly true in the field of building muscle.

Tips 1 and 3 described the exercises you need to do and why you should do them, and Building Muscle Tips #5 is all about who to do them with (if anyone at all!)

So why workout with a partner?

Firstly, you’ll be less likely to slack off. Yeah, you heard me. You’ve been slacking off in the gym. Let’s say you had a training partner who you’ve agreed to train with. You’ve agreed to train hard and make a commitment to do 100%. Do you think you could just say “oh, hey, it’s getting a bit hard now, I think I’ll just do 4 reps instead of going to 5″… NO WAY! If you’ve chosen a good training partner this guy will be busting your balls to get that weight out to 7 reps! NO SLACKING OFF!

This is the first reason you should choose a committed training partner. You need to be sure your training partner is as motivated as you and about the same physical strength as you (although this is less important it does make it easy to do sets together)

The second reason is that with a training partner you can physically lift more weight. It’s safe now for you to really test your strength because you’ve got someone you trust to save you when your muscles truly fail.

Having a spotter is one of the best ways to truly take your muscles to total failure. You’ll know exactly how much you can lift, and when to increase the weight. Often it’s good to have someone there just to stabilize the weight as you lift.

Building Muscle Tips #5 BONUS!

How do you choose a good training partner?

You must find someone committed to training the same days as you. If you’re not able to train on the same days, you’ll find reasons to avoid training. You’ve got to look out for each other, and if you’re feeling like skipping a day, you want your partner to kick your ass back into the gym and make you work harder. Likewise the other way round, if he’s slacking, you want to kick his ass too. Ideally, you don’t want to be chasing each other all over the place just to get there. You want to be spending the efforts while you’re at the gym. It’s better that way.

You must find someone with the same goals as you. You’ll never get a massive muscular body if all your training partner wants to do is do cardio on the step machine. Don’t go to the gym with your girlfriend and expect to be benching 50kg warm ups guys. It’s never going to happen. Get someone who’s going to challenge you to get to where you want to go, and go there with you.

You must find someone who’s actually motivated! Yep, there are many people who “say” they want to train, but many just want to talk about it. Going to the gym is not a social visit, it’s not a place to check out the chicks (maybe after the workout though!). It’s a place to get fuckin serious about changing your body. If your partner is not interested in working hard, then ditch him, just like you’d ditch a slacking employee. You’re not getting your investment back and you’re better off doing it alone.

If you’re really serious about changing your body for the better you’ve got to check out Sean Nalewanyj. He’s the former skinny guy and successful author of The Truth About Building Muscle.
You won’t find a better building muscle success coach or training partner. (get the audio program and plug it into your ipod while you train!)