What I want to do here is answer a question about shocking the muscles, or keeping your body guessing.  The short answer is yes, you do have to “Shock” your muscles to make them grow, but this isn’t nearly as dramatic or difficult as it sounds, or as crazy as most gym rats make it out to be.

1.When a physical factor is presented to your body, your body naturally reacts to it.  Think about being exposed to the sun for too long, you get sunburned.  After running a distance, you get winded, but then something amazing happens.

2. After a certain amount of time, and this time varies for every individual, your body grows accustomed to certain factors, and it adapts to these factors, becoming more and more tolerant of the factor.  This means that after repeated sun exposure, you start getting tan, and after running daily, you can run farther and faster.

1. When the body adapts to the factor, it needs more and varying levels of the factor to maintain the adaptation.  You might have a tan, but if you stay out of the sun, you don’t need it and your tan fades away.  If you stop running, your ability to run far and fast will start to fade; because your body doesn’t need to be able to run this way anymore.

The adaptations are based on what your body needs.  The bad part is what you want, and what your body needs are usually two different things.  Your body will adapt based on what it needs, not on what you want.  This can be altered, if you know how to do it.  My Mental Edge Muscle Building Program tells you how to merge what your body needs with what you want, to produce rapid, favorable results.

The previous rules apply to muscle growth.  When you lift weights, your body reacts to it and you get sore.  After a certain amount of weight training, your body adapts to the new stress by increasing muscle mass to increase strength.  You have to continually present your muscles with different stresses to make sure it keeps adapting (growing), and that your muscles don’t fade away.

So as you can see, you must constantly give your muscles a stress load that they are not used to.  Once you do this, they will adapt to the new stress, and then you will need to stress them even further.  Basically, you have to keep giving them something they are not used to, so they will keep adapting (growing).

This isn’t very difficult to do, and luckily, you don’t have to do it all that often.  Studies show that the body adapts and stops responding to certain weight training routines within a few days.  This means that if you do the same reps, same weight, and do everything the same as the last workout, your muscles will not grow, they don’t need too, there is no new stress to adapt too.  The bottom line is that something has to change.

There are several things that you can change to keep your muscles adapting, or “keep the body guessing.”  The list below is only a few things that can be changed to shock your muscles.  Remember, you only need a shock to the muscles, don’t electrocute them.  When trying to shake things up, you only need to change one of the factors below.  Every few weeks, try focusing on changing one of these factors.

• The amount of reps – More or less, and adjust your weight accordingly
• The amount of sets – Same as above, more sets =less reps per set
• The amount of weight – Try to add weight/tonnage every workout
• The amount of time for each set and for the workout as a whole – Try to reduce
• The amount of rest between sets – Reduce this time
• The frequency of your workouts- Change from MWF to TRS, or MWS

You don’t have to hang upside down from a metal pole with your legs between your arms and do a pull up to hit your biceps at a different angle.  Simply focus on changing the reps, sets, weight, or any of the factors listed above to shock your muscles, and you will be constantly forcing your body to adapt and grow more muscle.

The Basics:

There are basically two types of carbs, simple and complex.  Simple carbs are sugars, like fruit juice, candy, cake, well basically sugar.  Starches are complex carbs as they are made of hundreds of glucose units.  Unlike sugar, starches aren’t sweet and are found in flour, pasta, beans, rice, bread, potatoes, and corn.

Once a carb is eaten and starts to digest, it gets broken into single sugars so they can be absorbed into the body and enter the bloodstream.  Glucose is the only sugar that the body can use for fuel, so fructose and galactose are converted into glucose in the liver.  The body doesn’t really care if the sugar came from naturally occurring sugar or from a food additive.  It doesn’t matter where it came from, it’s going to be glucose and used as fuel, or stored as fat.

Real or Fake:

Sugars added to foods usually supply empty calories, or calories as sugar with no other real nutrients.  Make sure your carbs provide more than just a quick burst of calories and an insulin spike.  Eat fruit rather than a candy bar.  You’ll get vitamins A and C and fiber.  Also, drink milk instead of soft drinks to get calcium, protein, and vitamin D.

What When and How Much:

The US Dietary Guidelines suggest eating 45-60% of your daily calorie intake from carbs.  As the body’s main source of fuel before and after an intense workout, it’s very important to maintain a consistent level of blood glucose levels during exercise and to replace used muscle glycogen after the workout.  The type of carbs you eat before and after your workout are important.

Complex carbs are great to eat before your workout in order to give your body the sustained energy level it needs to work intensely.  I suggest eating a pre workout meal high in complex carbs, moderate in lean protein, and low in fat.  A good example would be a turkey sandwich with low fat cheese on whole wheat bread.

After exercise, carbs are protein’s bodyguard and help to restore carb stores and start repairs in muscles.  Simple sugars are best consumed after your workout because they are digested quickly and cause an insulin spike.  That slams your muscles with needed glucose and protein from your post workout shake to start the recovery process.

You can drink chocolate milk with your shake, Gatorade, or PowerAde with a scoop of protein to get the job done. You could also simply drink your shake normally and eat an apple, banana, or low fat granola bar.  Muscle glycogen synthesis has shown to be lowered by 50% when carb intake was delayed more than two hours after an intense workout. Follow this shake up with a solid meal within two hours of your workout.

Summary:

There aren’t good and bad carbs, just the right carbs, at the right time, in the right amount to maximize your workout and your body’s ability to build muscle.

If you want to know the whole scoop on exactly how to time your pre and post workout nutrition, and you really want to know the best way to gain muscle, check out Mental Edge Muscle Building.  Right now, you can download the 7 Part Muscle Building Guide for free.

We all know that in order to achieve our goals, we have to stay with them on work on them.  So many of us “start” a new program, but never actually get started.  Here are a few tips on how to get or stay on track.

1. Replace “I Should,” with “I Am.”

Everyone knows what they “should” be doing, the question is what “are” you doing?  Every time you start to think, “I Should,” replace it with, “I Am.” When you start thinking of what you should be doing, you dwell on what you aren’t doing and negativity infiltrates your positive momentum. Keep it positive by thinking of what you are doing and ways to improve it.

1. Remember “The Why”

Most people do things out of emotion, and working out is no different.  You do it for a specific reason, and that reason stems from an emotion.  Whenever you want to slack off, or you feel your goals sliding away, remember the actual emotional reason why you decided to get on the program in the first place.

1. Learn From The Past

When you feel the negativity coming on, think back to past exercise programs that didn’t work for you.  Figure out what went wrong. Was it the program, or was it you?  Obviously, if it was you, and the cold hard truth is that it probably was, you need to take a step back, to step 3 and reevaluate why you started, and why you need to finish.

1. Avoid the “Toos”

Avoid the immature emotional logic of the “toos” (too tired, too early, too cold, too late, too hot…).  Think of the benefits of your exercise or nutrition program.  Base your decision to exercise on positive emotions, not on excuses.  Make a deal with yourself, once you get to the gym and workout for five minutes, if you feel like leaving you can.  Most of the time, you won’t leave.

Whenever you find yourself getting off track with your workout, think of how pumped up you get after a great workout.  Remember to always think of the positives, once you do, you leave little to no room for the negative to come in.

For more information on setting goals for building muscle, check out the Mental Edge Muscle Building Program.  Right now, you can download the 7 Part Muscle Building Guide, for FREE.  Several of the parts cover motivation and goal setting.

I believe it. I’m sure he ate a ton of fish oil pills, but I doubt that’s what caused him to “get huge.”  I’m sure the fear of prison and everything that goes with that might have had something to do with his motivation to workout the way he did.  Prisoners have nothing else to do but workout, eat, sleep, and swallow fish oil pills.  If we could do those things all day, we would “get huge” too.

I don’t want to take all of the credit from fish oil, I just want to make it clear that no supplement is fully responsible for muscle gains.  The truth is that fish oil is a very important supplement.  It’s one of the most anti-inflammatory substances on earth.

Omega 3 fatty acid found in fish oil protects your joints, your heart, and your brain.  Studies show that they might even help improve you mood and increase metabolism.

One problem with fish oil supplements, is that they might leave a fishy aftertaste.  You could try putting the pills in the freezer for an hour and then swallowing them frozen.  Being frozen slows the oil’s breakdown in the body.  Also, take them with food. That seems to reduce the fishy, burping aftermath.  If that doesn’t work, just upgrade to a higher quality product.  The better, usually more expensive supplements, are more fresh and less likely to have a bad aftertaste.

Do you think you don’t have time to build muscle?  I don’t think you are being honest with yourself.

There are 24 hours in a day, and you don’t have to spend 11 of them playing video games or watching TV.  Everyone should be able to spare at least 30 minutes a day to accomplish a burning desire of building muscle.

On days that you don’t have a full hour to get to the gym, you could at least cut that in half.  Here are the steps to building muscle in only 30 minutes per day, at the gym.

1. Get in the gym and get fully warmed up for 5-10 minutes.
2. Get in a warm up set of 15 reps on nine different exercises, covering all major muscle groups.
3. After your warm up sets, perform one set of each of the different exercises for at least six reps to failure

That’s it. If you are properly warmed up, you can lift one set per muscle group.  When you lift those sets with max intensity, you can still stimulate enough muscle fiber and cause a release of enough muscle building hormones, to make it a successful muscle building workout.

For a complete muscle building plan, check out the best way to gain muscle on the internet today.  Also, right now, you can get The Mental Edge Muscle Building Program’s 7 Part Muscle Building Guide for Free.

A recent placebo-controlled study published in Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise underscores how well thought out yet simple supplement strategies can synergistically enhance the body’s adaptation to weight training.  In this study, subjects completed 10 weeks of weight training combined with supplemental creatine monohydrate (five to 10 grams a day), whey protein isolate (50 to 60 grams a day), and a fast (high GI) carbohydrate (50 to 60 grams per day).

Upon cessation of the program, the authors noted greater increases in lean body mass, strength, and muscle hypertrophy compared to those in control or placebo.  If you are looking to implement this science into your current regimen, simply mix 20 to 30 grams of whey protein isolate with five grams of creatine into 250 to 300 ml of Gatorade.

Just drink one of these shakes 30 minutes before training and one immediately after training.

One common mistake is thinking that it is enough to jog for 10 seconds or do a few pushups and think that your muscles are warm enough to max out on the bench press.  Could you safely max out on the bench press after doing a few pushups?  Yes, just as easy as you could without having done any prior pushups.

A warm up is good for two things:

1. Safety- A proper warm up greatly reduces your risk for injury.  If a muscle isn’t warmed up, it has a higher risk of tearing or pulling, this could put you on the sideline for months.
2. More Productivity – A warm up does just that, it warms up cold muscles and prepares them to work hard.
3. Muscle contracts more efficiently at warmer inner body temperatures
4. Warm ups increase blood flow to the muscles being worked
5. Increased blood flow equals better range of motion in the muscles and joints
6. Increased blood flow also helps deliver more nutrients and energy to the muscles, while carrying away non productive waste products
7. Warm ups stimulate the nerve pathway to the muscle.  This helps the muscle contract more fully and powerfully.

The key to a successful warm up is to warm up the muscles without tiring them to the point that it hinders the actual performance of your lift.  A good warm up regimen for weight training is to perform one or two sets per individual exercise, using half of the maximum weight that you plan to lift in the actual set.  For example, if you plan to perform 10 reps of 200 lbs on the bench press, you should do a set or two of 10 reps of 100 lbs (rest about 30-60 seconds between warm up sets).

Enjoy a safe warm up, then get into the lift you just warmed up for.  You will notice that you will be able to lift more, with a greater range of motion.

In the early days of bodybuilding competitors realized that the mind is greatly responsible for their degree of progress.  The famous Mr. Olympia, now Governator of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has always emphasized that success in bodybuilding begins in the mind.

Concentration, or focused attention, is a key to achieving almost anything in life, and bodybuilding/ weight lifting is no exception.  Regardless of how intently you apply yourself physically to the completion of an exercise, you will never meet the high standards that you need to meet in order to gain size and strength, unless your mind it totally focused on the exercise.  It is a common flaw of all people that being able to focus 100% on one thing, at one time is almost impossible.  There always seem to be other intrusions enter the mind: financial woes, relationship issues, doubt in yourself, lack of time…

These distractions are necessary, but as you continue to progress in your goals to succeed as a bodybuilder, you will become better and better at keeping out and ignoring these distractions.

The following 10 steps will help you hone your skills in order to concentrate on your bodybuilding success.

1. Try to block out all negative thoughts.  This means ALL negative thoughts.
2. Always think about your training in a positive, encouraging manner.
3. Keep your mind on the workout.  When in the gym, don’t think about anything but success in the gym.
4. Plan your workouts so you won’t be interrupted or distracted.  This could include not working out next to the classroom during the bikini boot camp.
5. Don’t make excuses to miss a workout.
6. Make every exercise mental as well as physical.
7. Go to the gym to work out.  Be nice, but make it clear that you are there to train, not to socialize.  Wearing headphones will cut down on chit chat.
8. Have a plan.  Develop a workout plan for the day’s workout so you will know what you have left to do, and what you have already accomplished.
9. Look forward to training.  You are doing it for a reason, look forward to the benefits of successful training.
10. Use the visual imagery technique.  Force your mind and will power to push your muscles.

Use these tips and stay focused.

What Is Nitric Oxide?

Nitric Oxide is a gas that naturally occurs in the body.  It is a compound made of one nitrogen atom and one oxygen atom. In order for the body to create Nitric Oxide, it uses L- Arginine (an amino acid) and a family of enzymes called Nitric Oxide Synthase (NOS). When arginine and a NOS enzyme come in contact with each other, the chemical reaction produces Nitric Oxide and citrulline, which is another amino acid.

Most Nitric Oxide supplements contain large amounts of L-Arginine and synthetic NOS substances.

Where and How Does It Occur Naturally?

Nitric Oxide is produced within the flat endothelial cells that line the inside of blood vessels. When the endothelial cell is stimulated, which happens when muscles contract, the above mentioned substances combine and release Nitric Oxide. Once released, Nitric Oxide goes across the endothelial cell membrane into the adjacent smooth muscle tissue of the blood vessels, causing them to relax and widen.  This process is called vasodilatation. This results in an increase in blood flow to the stimulated area, which ultimately causes your muscles to get pumped.

Muscle Pump, Should I Care?

Why do muscles get “Pumped?”  Well, basically, the pump is one of the body’s fail-safe mechanisms for preventing a decline in muscle function and performance.  The body realizes that it is performing work at a level that requires more nutrients than currently available.  These nutrients are delivered by the blood.  Blood, which is the body’s primary transport medium, carries all the vital nutrients (e.g., amino acid, creatine, glucose, and oxygen) to the muscle, which are required for energy production, growth, and maintenance.  Blood is also responsible for taking away the byproducts of metabolism (e.g., carbon dioxide and lactic acid) that fatigue the muscle and reduce performance ability. The increase in the size of the blood vessels allows more oxygen and blood to be carried to the working muscle, which provides a bigger “pump” and increased stamina.  The benefit of Nitric Oxide, logic would say, is that with the increased stamina from extra blood and nutrients, you can lift heavier weights and more repetitions, which leads to building bigger, leaner muscles.

Is There A Downside?

The idea is that NO expands your veins and arteries to carry more blood and oxygen to your muscles.  This is a good thing because your muscles are getting more blood and nutrients.  That is undeniably a good thing.  Your muscles need blood, O2, water, amino acids…

But here is a question for you.  Doesn’t your body do this already?  Doesn’t your body already pump blood containing all of these nutrients to your working muscles?  It does.  If NO actually does what it is supposed to, it widens and relaxes your blood vessels, allowing more blood than normal to be forced through the vessels.

Does that sound good?  Is it good?

I’m not an MD, but lets put this in simple terms.  Your blood vessels have smooth muscles lining their walls called visceral muscle.  This keeps the size and structure of the vessels intact and functioning.  NO is supposed to widen these vessels and relax them.

Picture this:  You have a water hose that water pumps through.  This would be like your vessels having blood pumped through them.  The heart is the pump.  Now, if the hose rounded and solid, as it should be, water will flow through much easier.  Now if the hose was expanded and relaxed, it would flatten out.  That would create a huge amount of backup on the pump, the heart.  It just doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Some side effects are low blood pressure, diarrhea, vomiting, and weakness.

Success Stories:

This was a quote from an individual on a bodybuilding forum:

“It does work and will produce some results provided you have a well laid down eating plan and steady lifting habits. Just remember, you have to be on it for at least 8 weeks to see any sort of results.”

Does that sound credible to you?  You will see results with steady training and eating over an 8 week period.  You would see results with or without NO or any supplement.

Take a look at all success stories for supplements.  Assuming they are true, they are all accompanied by a solid program of eating and training properly.  No real results can be directly contributed to the supplement.

When it’s all said and done, who really knows if Nitric Oxide supplements actually help you gain muscle.  The supplements are just the precursors to NO, not actual NO.  The ingredients must be present at the right place at the right time, and then your body has to combine them to form NO.  Will consuming these powders actually combine and form NO?  They might.  They might even work exactly as they should by increasing the size of your blood vessels and delivering more blood.  That sounds good for working muscles, but would you like the vessels of your brain, eyes, or internal organs to also relax and expand in size?  It could happen. Anything could happen.

My recommendation is to just go natural.  If you want to use supplements, try a protein shake and creatine, but only when you know how, when, and why to take them.

Just as stated above, with a solid plan of eating and training, you will see results with or without supplements.  Save your money and potentially your health and see what you can accomplish naturally.

Enter the Forced Rep

This situation is the same. You are hurting on your sixth rep, but powered through. Your friend and spotter pushes you to do a seventh. You lower your weight and push six or seven inches off your chest and are powerless. If you didn’t have your spotter you would be up a creek, but you do and he lifts about 15lbs of the weight and you blow through.

Now he thinks you should go for an eighth. You reluctantly and slowly lower the bar, but realize you can’t get it back up. You simply can’t lift the weight by yourself. Your spotter barely lifts the bar with you, only about 10-30lbs worth. After what feels like an hour you finally get the bar up and the set is over. This is a forced rep.

The true definition is: an extension of a particular set of repetitions in which your strength level at the beginning of the set has been reduced to a point of positive failure. This is the point at which you can’t possibly move the weight by yourself. Your spotter steps in to barely help and you achieve maximum intensity. He only helps slightly but you are so tired that you feel like he’s done all the work and you got nothing out of it. Trust me, you are the one who actually lifted that weight, he only helped.

The Good

This “forced rep” pushes out every ounce of intensity from your working muscles. When faced with a forced rep a physiological reaction occurs. If you are lifting a weight and can’t get through the rep, it’s a scary feeling. There are few options, drop the weight on yourself (ouch), tilt the bar to make the weight fall off, or have a spotter help. This is what goes through your mind, your body on the other hand is thinking sink or swim. This produces a surge of adrenaline making you stronger and able to power through the rep. In the end with one or two forced reps you will know for a fact you have used maximum intensity.

The Bad

When used in the right circumstanced forced reps are a good thing. It is very easy to get carried away. I use only one or two forced reps per exercise, not per set. Forced reps can lead to over training, and with every size gaining program you want to employ maximum intensity. When your body is performing a forced rep it is using it’s maximum strength capacity, and when the intensity increases, duration must decrease. Pretty much if something is heavier and harder, you shouldn’t be able to do more. Forced reps aren’t bad, too many are.

Forced reps are a great way to get the most out of any set. They are a great way of knowing you reached maximum intensity, but within reason. This is why I suggest doing only two forced reps at the end of your last set. If you do more,  or on more sets, it will lead to muscular exhaustion and actually smaller muscles.