By Fit4Life | May 29, 2010 - 3:00 pm - Posted in Building Muscle

If anyone wants to know how to build muscle quickly it must be sure that it really wants it because it might be an endless process even though it seems so easy. It does not matter if the person is skinny, fat, teen, elder etc. here only matters the wish and the exercises. It is not about looking strong without being strong and it is not absolutely about training in a manner to isolate each muscle.

You must learn what to eat and how to get stronger using body-weight exercises so you get the appearance you wish for.   Nowadays the world is obsessed with getting skinny. There are those of us who have workout goals that go against the grain. So, we need to know how to gain weight not any kind of weight but the muscle weight.  If you want to build your muscle mass and gain weight fast you should start bodybuilding training.

Building muscles is not a complicated science but I assure you that big muscles will not just happen by walking into a gym without the basic understanding. Also, you must know what causes them to grow if you want to build muscles quickly, so this understanding will be the paramount to your success.  If you are interested on this process you must force your muscles to grow.

It is well known that your body builds muscle naturally in response to a certain activity. Your daily routine must involve challenging your muscle to grow.  The most relevant issue here is the resting period, because the muscles grow during rest not during the training. You must give your muscles time to recover. Stressing the muscle is also an essential process.
Also, one contribution to all these can be the workout and your eating habits.

You can not build muscle unless you give the body the adequate building blocks to do so. You can include supplements to your daily meals, for example increasing the amount of protein, creatine, vitamins etc.

You must work out the right way (as mentioned previously), rest your muscles, change eating habits, use supplements you never used before and do strength training. All of these are those things you really want to do, because a person can never be sure that workout programs which have helped thousands of men and women to regain control of their bodies and their lives will work for you in exactly the same way.

To sum up, the workout on building your muscles quickly might be your gateway to a new and better life, a life of rewarding and fulfilling moments.

By Fit4Life | May 26, 2010 - 8:57 pm - Posted in Random Talk

I just got done doing a pre-dinner workout, and something struck me about how good my skin looked. It’s funny, because I had just gotten home from work, and my skin looked lifeless and dull, with an almost gray pallor to it.  I work in an office with a lot of florescent lighting and poor ventilation, and of course I’m also usually under stress at work, and I don’t get to get up and walk around too much, so all of these factors combined don’t exactly make for glowing, healthy looking skin if you know what I mean!

When my husband and I got home, we were both wiped out from work, but I forced us to do a half hour workout, and lo and behold we both felt a hundred times better. Just from doing that efficient yet intense workout, our mood, our energy level, and our complexions looked and felt a hundred times better.

There are several reasons that exercise is excellent for your complexion. First of all, your skin is the largest organ on your body, covering every square inch of your body.  It needs to be revived and get a lot of oxygen, which helps it to repair any damage that has been done to it.  Working out boosts your feel good hormones, and lessens skin-ruining hormones and accelerate the aging process and even lend to skin problems like acne that are circulating in the body because of it’s therapeutic benefits.

Exercise really helps your skin get that revived, fresh, dewy look, and it also helps with the underlying color and tone of the skin as well. Plus, when you exercise, you are burning calories which helps with any sagging, extra facial or chine skin, so your face looks youthful, more “lifted” because this excess fat doesn’t have many places to store itself on your face or your neck.

By Fit4Life | May 23, 2010 - 10:13 am - Posted in Sports Nutrition

There has been a long running debate about whether or not human growth hormone, the real thing, which is injected into your blood stream, and has been banned in professional sports, actually helps athletes boost their performance and gives them an unfair advantage over the competition.  Well, apparently new studies are showing that it’ snot all just a bunch of hot air. HGH really does boost athlete’s performance, especially if that athlete is in a sport that has to do with mere seconds at the end, like sprinting or something like that.

Biking may be another one where seconds count. It can give you that last bit of energy and endurance that you need to get your through, and yes, that does cause an unfair advantage, and I would agree that it should be banned in sports. But where do you draw the line then? Are you not going to allow things like protein powder supplements or body building supplements that contain things like creatine  or nitric oxide because they give someone an “unfair advantage”?

I for one use plenty of supplements that help to enhance my health, my physique and my overall well being, and what if I was told that I couldn’t use those because they enhance my overall health too much and give me an unfair advantage over the competition?  I think it is difficult to say where to draw the line, but obviously there has to be one or every sports star would be doping to unfairly give them the edge over their opponents.  And where’s the real sport in that? It should all come down to blood, sweat and tears, not popping pills, right?

Scientists who made the finding injected one group with salt water and another with actual Human Growth Hormone, and found that the group that had the human growth hormone actually exhibited improvement in their athletic endurance, but not really a difference in their strength.  This was enough to confirm that HGH is definitely something that gives unfair advantage, and therefore should remain on the banned list of supplements in sports.

The problem with HGH use in sports is that it is very hard to detect as it usually does not show in urine tests.  Recent sports stars who have admitted to using it are Mark McGwire, who previously denied up and down that he used any performance enhancing products during his reign as the heavy hitter in baseball, and a record holder for home runs.

By Fit4Life | May 20, 2010 - 1:34 pm - Posted in Sports Nutrition

We are going to continue our discussion on some of the most popular supplements and how to choose them when you are looking to build solid muscle and cut down on your body fat with your workouts.  Weight workouts can only give you so much on their own, so athletes, actors, body builders, and average Joes often look to supplement their diets with powders, foods or even snack bars to help their bodies pump up to the next level.

Basically, their goals can be achieved if people consume more and more supplements gradually increasing each month. For example, they can consume proteins that make muscles grow, give energy to the body and are absorbed very quickly and easily. It is very important to know that the protein is made of amino acids which are the basic building blocks of every muscle.

Other body building supplements, also very safe and effective for anybody, after the protein, is creatine which surely can have great effect on your body and muscles especially if it was never used before. Also, it increases the main energy source which muscles use for power.

Namely, this group of most used supplements includes the glutamine, one of the most abundant amino acids found in muscle tissue. Its power is used to prevent muscle wasting and improves recovery. Also the multi vitamins are one of the most common supplements which people use everyday. A good multivitamin is a must for the best gains in muscle mass and for a good health.

A common belief behind those muscle pumping supplements is that if you use them frequently you will be more attractive and convincing when approaching the opposite sex. The easiest way to identify the best supplement is to check out for the manufacturer.

Finally, remember that supplements should be used as an addition to a healthy diet and a balanced life.  It does not mean that all these available bodybuilding supplements must be used and preferred if you do not feel their necessity. The best thing you can do is to add supplement slowly in your diet, and gradually increase the dose. We don’t have to mention that before start you should consult your doctor for all the professional info.

By Fit4Life | May 17, 2010 - 1:27 pm - Posted in Sports Nutrition

The body building seems so basic and simple but it is very important. People who want to have well built body use different kinds of supplements which can help raising their testosterone, helps them gain muscle, enhance their mood as well as maintain a healthy libido.

Body building upplements are not required to meet the safety levels and a prescription standards and no requirement is needed to prove the effectiveness of the body building supplements.

Nowadays, these muscle building supplements are very often used by people – especially men, who want to leave an impression with their appearance.  Hollywood movie stars have used them to bulk up for roles where they have to look like real badasses, and normal guys like you and me like to use them to add more muscle building power to our naturally God given abilities to bulk up.

It is supposed that they do these kinds of things because, apparently, they are convinced that they look better using supplements that improve their bodies quicker and without too much effort. In my opinion, those people have a lack of self-confidence.

There are so many supplements available that it’s really hard to pick one that fits both into your daily routine as far as what you eat, and also work synergistically with your body to give you the best results possible. People often ask themselves which one should they use, which one suit their body best, which one tastes best and gives me the least amount of side effects (for instance, some whey based ones may constipate some people at first, so on and so forth)…

First off, supplements are simply tools to increase your muscle building potential. In addition, there are different supplements that can help people achieve their goals. I will list now the top supplement types which people use to produce the best results:

Protein, Creatine, Nitric Oxide body building supplements, Glutamine, Amino-Acids, Grow Hormone, Multi-Vitamins etc.

More to come on this two part discussion on muscle and body building supplements and how you can use them to get your body to the next ripped level of musculature.

By Fit4Life | May 14, 2010 - 9:34 am - Posted in Fitness Advice

Pregnancy is a wonderful thing, by and large. Except the parts that aren’t so great. Like morning sickness, water retention, the general feeling of being stuffed with something, and the hormone swings that some women experience. Of course there are a bevy of advantages and disadvantages to being pregnant, but the fact that your ab muscles get stretched all to hell and back isn’t one of the good ones.

Because you know what, I hate to say it, but Jillian Michaels controversial statement about how she “just couldn’t do that to her body” when referring to pregnancy are absolutely right when it comes to the damage that pregnancy can do to your abdominal muscles. Even if you lose all the baby weight and then some, mothers often complain that their abdominal areas are just never quite the same after they have their babies.

I have several friends that have had children that are very thin, but they still say that their abs have never looked the same. Unless you get an ab tightening treatment after birth, which is where they surgically go in and tighten the ab muscles again, you need to help retrain those muscles to snap back into place, because they have been so stretched out from having a baby in your belly for nine months.

Some of the best ab moves that new moms might want to try to ease their ab muscles back into tip top shape are yoga-derived. Yoga moves really help to subtly engage the abdominal muscles instead of an all out crunch, so they help to gradually reshape them until you can do the more rigorous moves. Moves like downward dog help get the body warmed up, and plank is an excellent way to get your core burning on both ends, the transverse abdominal, upper and lower abdominals are engaged during the plank move.

Not only that, you also get a terrified arm workout in because your arms are supporting your body weight. Any exercise in which you are working two major body parts like this will have the additional benefit of burning more calories than if you were exercising just one part of your body at a time. This means that the extra fat you are burning will translate to a leaner stomach area, faster.

The boat pose, where you literally look like a boat is excellent too. This one has you sitting on your bum on the floor, with your legs in the air and squared off to the floor, and our arms extended out in front of you, tightening the abs the whole time . Getting a good yoga dvd might be helpful to get your eased back into killer abs like before baby!

By Fit4Life | May 11, 2010 - 8:50 am - Posted in Fitness Advice

Have you ever woken up to a bright, sunny day and said to yourself that you can’t wait to get up and get moving. And by moving, I mean getting up and working out – sweating, really kicking some butt – yours namely? While I’ll admit this rarely happens to me except on occasion and I must take absolute advantage when it does, it does happen, and it actually occurred today of all days. It’s a gorgeous day, sunny but not too hot, and I woke up to birds singing and the pleasant smell in the air that only a spring day can bring, and had instant energy.

Sometimes it’s not easy to want to work out. You wake up on a cold, gray day, and even though you know that setting foot on that gym mat or elliptical machine will make you feel a hundred times better when you’re done, you still can’t bring yourself to do it.

It’s almost like a vicious cycle, where your body doesn’t get enough exercise but you also have no energy to do much of anything else, so you are stuck in this sort of never ending limbo world where you keep making things worse by not moving and subsequently not getting the energy you need.

Exercise promotes high energy, that is probably one of the biggest reasons that I still work out to this day, and why I couldn’t imagine my life without being physically fit and wanting to work out.

By Fit4Life | May 8, 2010 - 10:40 am - Posted in Workout Regimens

No matter how old you are or what you prefer for your favorite physical activity, you can almost always benefit from developing your balance. Improving your balance may not be number one on your priority list but, maybe it should be. Balance falls into the same category as flexibility, core strength, and mobility. These are all things our bodies need to function efficiently, but many of us do not actually do exercises to improve them.

If you exercise regularly, you already work on your balance without even knowing it. Nowadays many athletes are using balance training as an important part of their overall training programs, both for injury prevention and performance development. One of the ways to improve your balance is using stability balls, also known as balance balls or Swiss balls.

They can be incorporated into Pilates, weight training and many other fitness routines. Here are some exercises which will help you to improve your balance. Ball Balance: Position the ball under your abs and hips, hands on the floor and legs straight and off the floor.  Hold that position, keeping your body in a straight line, abs pulled in.  Working to stay balanced, slowly raise your right arm out to the side, taking care not to roll or allow any part of your body to collapse.

Hold briefly, lower the arm and repeat on the other side.  Repeat for 12-16 reps, alternating arms.  Ball Circles: Sit on the ball and place the hands on the ball for balance or place them behind your head.  Slowly begin to roll the hips in a circle towards the right, making small circles and then, as you get comfortable, larger circles.  Do 10-20 circles then repeat to the left. Hip Extension: Lie on floor with heels propped on ball. 

Keeping abs tight, slowly lift your hips off the floor (squeezing the buttocks) until body is in a straight line.  Hold for a few seconds and lower, repeating 10 to 15 times.  To make it easier, place ball under knees rather than under heels.  To make it harder, cross your arms over your chest.  Back Extension: Position the ball under your hips and lower torso with the knees straight or bent. 

With hands behind the head or behind back, slowly roll down the ball.  Lift your chest off the ball, bringing your shoulders up until your body is in a straight line.  Make sure your body is in alignment (i.e., head, neck, shoulders and back are in a straight line), your abs are pulled in and that do not hyper extend the back. Aim for 12-16 reps.

These exercises are just a small part of the huge variety of exercises with stability balls. Make a research on this workout. Bear it on mind, that you should always consult your doctor and trainer about your workout.

My husband and I were both way over due for a good pair of running shoes. You know how that can be when you’re trying to watch your money, it tends to fall by the wayside since a good pair of running shoes can run over a hundred bucks. But the fact is that if you run fairly often, which we do in the summer since we have a lot of nice outdoor areas to run in, you should really replace your running shoes about every 6 months to a year for maximum support. The support can break down that quickly, depending on how many miles you run at a time as well.

So, we finally broke down and went out shopping for a new pair for each of us. We really like Adidas shoes, in fact Adidas are the only kind of running shoes that I can even wear. For some reason, Nike and Reebok shoes just don’t fit my fit correctly, and they never feel comfortable or conforming enough. I used to be able to wear them in my twenties, but around ten years ago I found that Adidas were the only shoe I could get away with.

We went to an outlet store near us to shop. The selection is pretty decent, but nothing like the one you’d get at say a Dick’s store or an athletic shoe store. Still, the outlet store knocks at least twenty to twenty five bucks off the price of the shoe from what you’d pay for retail, so I thought that was a great deal.

We each looked and looked, and finally he said he found one called the Glide. He said, well I bet the women’s has them too. Turns out that women’s running shoes also carried the Glide version, called Glide Supernovas. The price on them was $75, which was about a $25 markdown from retail. I tried on a Glide and a Glide 2, which was a little more expensive, but actually not as comfortable or well fitting as the Glide. My husband found the same thing in his shoes as well.

So we both ended up with Glide shoes by Adidas. We tested them out running around the store, and they felt like you were running on air. Literally, you could feel no impact on your joints when bouncing up and down in these shoes. They are amazing, just like walking on clouds. I hope they keep making this shoe for a while, because I’m hooked, and I’d tell anyone that they’re worth trying on if you’re in the market for a great running shoe.

Try to find them at an outlet. You may have to by “last season’s” color, but who cares, all the colors I had available were still in style anyways.

By Fit4Life | May 2, 2010 - 2:36 pm - Posted in Sports Nutrition

No, we are not talking about the word “no”, but about NO supplements, which is just an acronym for nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a substance that is supposed to help the body pump more iron, build more muscle, transport more oxygen to the critical muscle masses that are doing the heavy lifting, and therefore, to help the body lift more weight, for a longer duration.  It is supposed to help with endurance, and also with the capacity to carry oxygen to the muscles for less recovery time after you do a really strenuous muscle busting workout.

We’ve dedicated a new page to talking about such supplements here, so enjoy!

Body Building Muscle Supplement