2 Simple Steps To Ripped Shredded Muscles
Written by Editor on March 2nd, 2007 in fitness.
Building muscle, the straight scoop on getting ripped shredded muscle…
Picture this scenario…
You’ve been training your tail off for the past 4 months, trying to pack on as much muscle size as you possibly can. You’ve bulked up considerably and are quite happy with the size you’ve been able to achieve. Bodybuilding is paying off for you.
There’s just one problem…
Along with all of that solid, lean muscle you’ve gained, you notice that you’ve also packed on some excess body fat in the process.
Let’s face it, no matter how “huge” you might be, no matter how long you’ve been bodybuilding, no one wants to be walking around with a soft, smooth and flabby body. After most trainees have finished their “bulking” phase, they decide that it’s time to “cut down” and strip off the excess body fat that they gained due to their high calorie, bodybuilding diet.
How do they usually go about this?
They lighten up the weights and perform higher reps.
This has always been a widely accepted method of “cutting down” and if you ask most trainers in the gym they’ll tell you that “heavy weights bulk up the muscle and lighter weights define the muscle”.
Do you want to know the reality behind the “light weight and high reps” method of building muscle and obtaining a ripped and defined physique?
It is completely, totally and utterly DEAD WRONG.
It couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, there is no logical basis for this way of bodybuilding whatsoever, and whoever dreamt up this downright ridiculous way of thinking has caused the vast majority of lifters to waste their time and impede their progress in the gym.
Let me clear this up once and for all: you CANNOT spot reduce. In other words, it is physically impossible to target fat loss from a specific area on your body. Performing bench presses with light resistance and high repetitions will not magically burn fat off of your chest or cause it to appear harder and more defined. It’s not a smart way of building muscle!
Every single time you wrap your hands around a barbell, dumbbell or cable, your goal is to stimulate as much muscle growth as you possibly can. There are no special, secret bodybuilding exercises that will “define” your muscles or cause them to become more “ripped”.
Training with weights builds muscle mass, end of story.
So how exactly do you “define” a muscle?
The only way to “define” a muscle is by lowering your body fat percentage in order to make your muscles more visible. Body fat reduction can be achieved in two ways:
Read the 2 Ways To Lower Body Fat article
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By Zach Bashore (www.fitnessaffiliatlinks.com/truly-huge )Cardiovascular activity is difficult to enjoy and it is even tougher when you do the same exercises every day. This article is going to give you an insight of the most popular methods of cardio available and how it can assist you to burn fat.The first method of cardio that I am […]
By Zach Bashore
(www.fitnessaffiliatlinks.com/truly-huge )Cardiovascular activity is difficult to enjoy and it is even tougher when you do the same exercises every day. This article is going to give you an insight of the most popular methods of cardio available and how it can assist you to burn fat.The first method of cardio that I am going to explain is walking.
Walking is the most common of cardio exercise. Walking is a very low-impact exercise, and is one of the few cardio exercises that can be incorporated into your own lifestyle. Another way walking can be used is power walking. Power walking at the gym is easy because you can just hop on a treadmill and take off.
You should choose a walking routine that emphasizes incline movements and you should alternate paces.
Jogging is the most common exercise known to the public. Most jogging program’s paces are determined on one’s physical conditioning. Beginner joggers should practice speed walking before they progress to a jogging routine. Jogging is not for everyone because it can be hard on your knees and is simply not an option when it is zero degrees outside. Jogging is a very good cardiovascular exercise because it burns twice as many calories per hour than that of walking.
Sprinting is running as fast as you can until you cannot run any further. This method of cardio should not be used by beginners.
Sprinting is the quickest way to do cardio that can be performed to burn calories because it only takes five to ten minutes to get an effective workout. However, sprinting can be dangerous to your body if proper warm-up isn`t in place. Make sure that you stretch thoroughly prior to sprinting because the quick movements cause an injury.
Dance is another popular method of cardio and is actually one of the few cardio exercises that are fun. Everywhere you look, it is almost certain that you can find a dance class to join. There are so many different dance styles available that it would be impossible to list all of them.
Indoor cycling, also known as spinning, is a new health club craze.
This intense workout targets the lower body, giving the quads, glutes, and hamstrings a good workout. Using stationary bikes that aim at increasing endurance, classes using the spinning exercise is a perfect way of getting a good workout and motivational boost at the same time. Almost every health club has a cycling class that you can join and the application process is easy.
Each forty-five minute session that you perform will burn 500-700 calories, who wouldn’t want to indoor cycle?
The best part about swimming is that it is not stressful on your body. Water aerobics offer the same support as swimming, but instead of propelling your body from one end of the pool to the other, you use the water as resistance to burn calories and tone muscle. Both methods are refreshing alternatives to boring cardio and will give you a good workout without getting sweaty.
Another reason swimming is a good exercise is that the water decreases the stress on your joints, and it helps people with joint problems incorporate exercise into their lifestyle.
For people who live in cold areas, ice skating is the preferred method over rollerblading. However both methods serve the same purpose and that is to get you active. These exercises are fun to do and are great for the lower body. If you want a more challenging exercise you can simply rollerblade uphill, but be careful when you are going back down because the excess speed may cause you to crash. Which brings me to the downside of rollerblading. It is a very dangerous exercise and you must wear protective equipment at all times. You also might try to show off when your ability levels are not so great and you could injure yourself if you are not careful.
Cardiovascular exercise wouldn’t be fun without the different methods that are available. Try them all out and determine which ones that you like best. If you’re a beginner, I suggest that you start out by going on a walk or a harmless swim. But once you get more advanced, then start incorporating more of the techniques that I explained above. Cardio doesn’t always have to be hard, it can actually be fun if you approach it properly.
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Other Zack Bashore Articles: Post-Workout Nutrition, Fat Facts
Tags: Cardio, Cardiovascular, Exercise
By Gary Mathews
Fitness Instructor for the Royal Australian Air Force and Author of Maximum Fitness
The vast majority of myths about weight gain are mostly passed down from “gym talk” and so-called experts who know nothing about the body’s workings.
Myths that lead to wasted time, frustration and if are taken blindly as truth, can really set back your progress in the gym. Don’t believe everything you hear in the gym when it comes to exercise and weight gain, do the research yourself.
Simple, basic principles apply to all weight and muscle gain such as progressive overload, variable frequency of reps and high intensity workouts. Lets take a look at some of the most common weight gain myths.
High repetitions burn fat while low repetitions build muscle.
Progressive overload is needed to make muscles bigger. Meaning that you need to perform more reps than you did for your last workout for that particular exercise. If you perform the same amount of reps at each workout nothing will change on you, also if the weight doesn’t changes on the bar nothing will change on you. You need to become stronger.
Definition has two characteristics, muscle size and a low incidence of body fat. To reduce body fat you will have to reduce your calories; the high repetition exercise will burn some calories, but wouldn’t it be better to fast walk to burn these off? Better still; use the low reps to build muscle, which will elevate your metabolism and burn more calories (less fat).
Vegetarians can’t build muscle.
Yes they can! Strength training with supplementation of soy Protein Isolate has shown to increase solid bodyweight. Studies have shown that athletic performance is not impaired by following a meat free diet, and people strength training and consuming only soy protein isolate as a protein source were able to gain lean muscle mass.
[Rob’s Note:] I agree. I was vegetarian for 12 years and vegan for two of those. I was able to put on over 40 pounds of lean muscle tissue on a plant based diet.
Strength Training will make you look masculine.
If it is not you’re intention to bulk up from strength training you won’t. Putting on muscle is a long hard slow process. Your strength-training regime coupled with quality food will determine how much you will bulk up. To bulk up you also require more food. Women don’t produce enough testosterone to allow for muscular growth as large as men.
By working out you can eat what ever you want to.
Of course you can eat whatever you want, if you don’t care how you want to look. Working out does not give you an open license to consume as many calories as you want. Although you will burn more calories if you workout than someone who doesn’t, you still need to balance your energy intake with you energy expenditure.
If you take a week off you will lose most of your gains.
Taking one or two weeks off occasionally will not harm your training. By taking this time off every eight to ten weeks in between strength training cycles it has the habit of refreshing you and to heal those small niggling injuries. By having longer layoffs you do not actually lose muscle fibres, just volume through not training, any size loss will be quickly re-gained.
By eating more protein I can build bigger muscles.
Building muscle mass involves two things, progressive overload to stimulate muscles beyond their normal levels of resistance and eating more calories than you can burn off. With all the hype about high protein diets lately and because muscle is made of protein, it’s easy to believe that protein is the best fuel for building muscle, however muscles work on calories which should predominately be derived from carbohydrates.
If I’m not sore after a workout, I didn’t work out hard enough.
Post workout soreness is not an indication of how good the exercise or strength training session was for you. The fitter you are at a certain activity, the less soreness you will experience after. As soon as you change an exercise, use a heavier weight or do a few more reps you place extra stress on that body part and this will cause soreness.
Resistance training doesn’t burn fat.
Nothing could not be further from the truth. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue and has a role in increasing the metabolism. The faster metabolism we have the quicker we can burn fat. Cardio exercise enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but does little else for fat loss afterwards.
Weight training enables us to burn calories whilst exercising but also helps us to burn calories whilst at rest. Weight training encourages muscle growth and the more lean muscle mass we possess, the more fat we burn though an increased and elevated metabolism.
No pain no gain.
This is one myth that hangs on and on. Pain is your body signalling that something is wrong. If you feel real pain during a workout, stop your workout and rest. To develop muscle and increase endurance you may need to have a slight level of discomfort, but that’s not actual pain.
Taking steroids will make me huge.
Not true, strength training and correct nutrition will grow muscle. Taking steroids without training will not make you muscular.
Most steroids allow faster muscle growth through greater recovery, while others help increase strength which allows for greater stress to be put onto a muscle. Without food to build the muscle or training to stimulate it nothing will happen. Most of the weight gain seen with the use of some steroids is due to water retention and is not actual muscle.
Strength training won’t work your heart.
Wrong!! Strength training with short rest periods will increase your heartbeat well over a hundred beats per minute. For example, performing a set of breathing squats and you can be guaranteed that your heart will be working overtime and that your entire cardiovascular system will be given a great overall body workout.
Any intensive weightlifting routine that lasts for 20 minutes or more is a great workout for your heart and the muscles involved.
I can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.
Wrong. Only a few gifted people with superb genetics can increase muscle size while not putting on body fat. But for the average hard gainer, they have to increase their muscle mass to its maximum potential and then cut down their body fat percentage to achieve the desired shape.
Gary Matthews is a trainer from “down under” who has been coaching clients from athletes to bodybuilders for two decades. You may visit his website at Maximum Fitness.
Articles by Gary Matthews
Weight Gain Principles
Workout Without a Gym
Weight Gain Myths
Are You Overtraining In The Gym?
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