The 11 Most Common Muscle-building Mistakes

Starting out on your muscle-building journey can be a tough endeavor. From questionable training techniques to sketchy recovery protocol, potential progress-stunting errors are lurking around every corner. Get acquainted with them, and you'll avoid taking the scenic route to swole. We’re here to make it easy for you. Here are 11 mistakes you should avoid if you want to build muscle faster and without sacrificing your health.

1. You Don't Follow a Programme

Your time in the gym is precious. Don't waste it on the wrong exercises. Whichever goal you choose, find a training approach that lets you train hard while still maximizing recovery. During the workout itself, you stretch and work your muscles and break down muscle tissue. Then, when you rest afterwards, a biochemical repair and synthesis process allows the muscles to rebuild themselves, and thus become both larger and stronger. Your body needs this recovery period. The truth is that if you exercised every day, with no rest between workouts, it wouldn’t work as well, and you would actually make less progress than by resting between workouts.

2. You Eat Junk Food Often

Even if you're armed with the world's best programme, it's futile if you fail to eat junk food, Spend at least as much time sorting out your diet as you do planning your workout. Basically you could have fast food on occasions when you really need to add calories but it's not a viable option to get all of your calories from. Everything requires balance.

3. You Don't Drink Enough Water

Any form of exercise increases sweat, which means your body will lose water – up to two litres every hour – and if you aren't proactive about staying hydrated, it can impact your gains. Dehydration reduces the production of anabolic hormones after strength training and stimulates the production of catabolic hormones.

4. You Leave out Compound Moves

Keep away from simple and ineffective isolation movements, focus on training your biggest muscle groups. If you want to build serious muscle, you need to make compound movements that work across more than one joint – such as the Parallel dips, Pull ups, Barbell hip raises, Squats, Dead-lifts, Incline bench press, ...

5. You Overtrain

A lot of people try to copy the routines of professional bodybuilders, doing 15-20 sets for each muscle group. The truth is you can't take a programme used by a heavily drug-assisted and genetically gifted bodybuilder and assume that someone who trains without the same level of pharmaceutical assistance will get the same results. Your physique is affected by 5 things, and they are: Training , Diet, Genetics, Age and Mind. If you want to make a short term goals in fitness, you have to train hard, eat right, and put your mind to it. This is called the mind muscle connection.

6. You Don't Get Enough Sleep

The effects of poor nigt's kip are three-fold. Not only will you feel lethargic – and therefore less likely to put 100 % into your workout – but getting insufficient sleep tanks your levels of testosterone, growth hormone and IGF-1 (Insulin-like Growth Factor One), the key hormones for muscle-building, and cranks up cortisol, which breaks down muscle mass.

7. You Don't Squat Deep Enough

This valuable muscle-builder can be rendered near-useless with poor technique. Squatting with a good depth requires a balance and hip, ankle and thoracic spine flexibility and mobility and a lot of people struggle with at least 1 of these. Being able to get below parallel on your squat produces greater muscular activation (quad and glute building) as you drop below 90 degrees; In fact the glute muscles are at their most active in a squat when they are fully stretched so it pays to go deep if you want to to build both size and power.

8. You Lift Too Fast

Many make judgment errors when lifting weights. You should lift not too fast nor too slow, no matter what your goal. Practice your sport if you need to build your speed. If you lift more weight in any style, you will get bigger and stronger. Though lifting fast can build muscle, it harms your safety and results.

9. You Don't Train Your Back

Training your back does a lot more than build muscle. All the muscles on the back side of your body, from your glutes to your lats to your hamstrings and rhomboids, help balance out the muscles on the front side of your body. There are several reasons to make having strong back muscles a priority. Strengthening the back can : improve posture, help prevent back pain and secure stability of the spine.

10. You Skip Leg Day Repeatedly

Leg workouts are often neglected by gym-goers, who focus more on upper body work. A large upper body means nothing if the lower half can’t keep up. All of your workouts should be engaging and you should get something out of each and every one. Training your legs is essential if you want to achieve a balanced fitness routine, with the right approach, you will see huge gains and won’t have to worry about a lopsided physique again.

11. You're Not Eating Enough Protein

Your body needs sufficient protein to build muscle effectively. That's nothing new. But if you've only been upping your intake on training days, it's time to reassess your macros. Your body can't store amino acids for future use, so you need to keep your levels topped up between workouts. According to research published in the Journal of Nutrition, you should aim for a minimum of 1.7g protein per kg body-weight on the days you don't hit the gym (2.2g per kg body-weight was found to be the optimum amount).

The Takeaway

Patience is key in any fitness regime and strength training shouldn't be rushed. Muscle building doesn’t happen overnight, it takes smart, hard work, planning, and dedication. You will want to make sure you’re not making the above muscle building mistakes that can delay your progress, just take your time, train your body properly and you'll see the benefits to your whole athletic performance.

Source :

https://www.lifehack.org/827405/muscle-building
https://www.menshealth.com/uk/building-muscle/a746807/10-muscle-building-mistakes-438524/
https://regymenfitness.com/12-common-muscle-building-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them/

10 Ways To Naturally Increase Testosterone Levels

Testosterone is a male sex hormone responsible for sex drive, as well as protein processing for muscle mass development and strength. Testosterone helps to gain muscle and burn fat. Males produce about ten times the amount of this hormone as females do, but females are far more sensitive to its effects. If you have a low testosterone level, you might experience erectile dysfunction, depression, low sex drive, fatigue, irritability, and decreased muscle mass, so naturally you will want to boost your testosterone if you are seeing these symptoms.

 

 1 - EAT MORE FAT AND CHOLESTEROL 

Our diet plays a huge role in our testosterone production. To boost your testosterone levels you need to increase your fat and cholesterol intake. 

 

 2 - Avoid sugary foods and drinks 

Try to avoid as much added sugar as possible, especially soda and other sugary drinks. 

 

3 - EAT MORE NUTS 

Your testosterone levels will increase if you're snacking on 20 almonds at least 2 times a day. 

 

 4 - Take Magnesium, Zinc & Vitamin D3 Supplement

Our glands need certain minerals like zinc and magnesium. Vitamin D3 actually isn’t a vitamin, it’s a hormone - a really important hormone that provides a whole load of health benefits. Our bodies can naturally make vitamin D from the sun, but recent studies have shown that many westerners are vitamin D3 deprived because we’re spending less and less time outdoors. 

 

 5 - Take Omega-3 Fish Oil 

Fish oil has been shown to improve heart and brain health as well as increase production of the Luteinizing hormone (the hormone responsible for triggering the testes to produce T). 

 

6 - Lift Weights

 Testosterone will initially increase during exercise, especially if you are relatively new to exercise and weight training, you have to start lifting using heavy loads on exercises to target the lower body such as squats, cleans and deadlifts. 

 

7 - HIIT CARDIO Training 

 Studies have shown that HIIT workouts can also help boost testosterone levels. HIIT has been shown to improve athletic conditioning and fat metabolism, as well as increase muscle strength. 

 

8 - Get More And Better Sleep

 If you’re not getting enough sleep, your body can’t produce testosterone as efficiently or effectively. Not only does sleep boost testosterone, but it also helps manage cortisol, a stress hormone responsible for muscle weakness.

 

 9 - Manage Your Stress

 Studies have shown a link between cortisol and testosterone. When cortisol levels are high, testosterone levels are low and the opposite for the low hormone levels.

 

 10 - Take Ice Baths 

Take a 10-12 minute ice bath after hard workouts. Most of the research around temperature and testosterone hormone found that cold water can increase testosterone levels. Not very one can take a cold water especially person’s that live in a cold climate where exposure to cold water can lead to hypothermia, and persons suffer from heat blood pressure and heart diseases cold showers aren’t suggested. 

 

 

 

Source :

·https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/8-ways-to-boost-testosterone
·https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/home-testosterone-test#summary
·https://www.bodybuilding.com/content/16-ways-to-boost-your-testosterone.html
·Ribadeneira, Diego. "Steroid Revolution: Youngsters Increasingly Using The Drug Just to Look Good." Houston Chronicle. 6 Nov. 1988. pp. 1B+
·Nuwer, Hank. Steroids. New York: Franklin Watts, 1990
·Collins, Rick. Anabolic Steroids, Bodybuilding, and The Law. 1999-2000 www.steroidlaw.com

Customize Your Body: Get Fit With Portion Sizes Method

 

 In others to burn more fat you should burn more calories than you take. And most diets don’t work for very long because they are too complex and rigid. Too many rules, too much effort, too time-consuming. If you need to lose weight, you don’t think you could ever stay on a diet that required you to count calories.

 

Sometimes you make an error when you count your calories sometimes you have no idea how the food was prepared, what kind of oil it was cooked in, or what ingredients are in the sauce so counting calories become difficult and sustainable. But I know that not everyone will count every calorie that he take expect competitive bodybuilder, personally I never count calories at all, I use another method to be more mindful about what I am eating, the method called : “Portion Size Method”. 

 

A “portion” is the size of your open hand or closed fist. It means to eat at least one portion of each of “protein, carb, vegetable, or fruit”, and with this “handy” guide, you’ll always have a way to estimate portion size at your fingertips:  

1.      3 ounces of meat, fish, or poultry
Palm of hand (no fingers)

2.      1 ounce of meat or cheese
Thumb (tip to base)

3.      1 cup or 1 medium fruit
Fist

4.      1–2 ounces of nuts or pretzels
Cupped hand

5.      1 tablespoon
Thumb tip (tip to 1^st joint)

6.      1 teaspoon
Fingertip (tip to 1^st joint)

 

 

Meal Plan To Gain Muscle : 

 

If you're underweight this plan help you to gain muscle in a healthy way 

 

Gain Muscle

• 07:00 A.m

  Protein, Carb or Fruit.

  1

• 9:00 A.m

  Protein, Carb or Fruit.

  2

• 12:00 A.m

  Protein, Carb or Fruit.

  3

• 2:00 P.m

  Protein, Carb or Fruit.

  4

• 05:00 P.m

  Protein, Carb or Fruit.

  5

• 07:30 P.m

  Protein, Carb or Fruit.

  6

 

Meal Plan To lose weight  : 

 

If you want to lose fat, you should take out the carbs and only eat Protein, vegetables, in this case your body will turn into a fat burning machine and you can eat as much as you want , because eating only those 2 sources will put you in a caloric deficit, eating carbohydrate just after your workouts

Lose Weight

• 07:00 A.m

  Protein, Vegetables.

  1

• 9:00 A.m

  Protein, Vegetables.

  2

• 12:00 A.m

  Protein, Vegetables.

  3

• 2:00 P.m

  Protein, Vegetables.

  4

• 05:00 P.m

  Protein, Carbohydrates or fruit (Post Workout).

  5

• 07:30 P.m

  Protein, Vegetables

  6

 

Food Choices ...

 

>> And of course you have to keep track everything on your body to make The Portion Sizes Method work correctly and if you're making a progress or not by:

 

. Weighing yourself every week 

 

. Checking your progress every week and make changes to your diet and workout

 

If you are not making progress, you can look at what you have been eating and make the changes to your diet and workouts and the change will be like : "Eat less food next week"," Work hard", "Drink more water" >> until you find the proper key to make your body lose fat faster.

 

Source :

· https://www.precisionnutrition.com/calorie-control-guide
· https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/portion-control
·https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/weight-management/just-enough-food-portions

4 Reasons To Use The Tabata Training Method

 

 Tabata It's a type of  high intensity training consists of 8 sets of quick-paced exercises each performed for 20 seconds divided with a little break of 10 seconds, and here're the reasons why you'll want to know more about it.

 

1. It's only 4 minutes !

One big reason (or excuse!) for people not exercising is because they don’t have enough time. Well the Tabata workout can be literally done in 10 minutes, including warm up.  After a Six minute warm up, the Tabata is a four-minute session consisting of eight intervals of which you exercise at a very high intensity for 20 seconds and then 10 seconds rest. Surely there's time for that?

 

 

2. Increase your metabolism

 

The word metabolism describe all biomolecule reactions in your body, in other words, its means how your body consume nutrient and oxygen to use theme to fuel every activity you do.

 If you did properly your Tabata exercises, its will increase your metabolism and will keep your body burning calories long after you’ve finished the workout because your body is trying to work much harder to keep up with this high intensity training causing your heart to pump faster.

 

 

3. More efficient for weight loss

 

As I said before, that The high intensity training makes your  metabolism exhausted, at this point it's will continue  to use more fat and stored energy than normal for hours after the workout ends. It’s the gift that just keeps giving.

 

 

4. No equipment needed  

 

 Doing the right exercises with no - equipment will let you target muscles you don’t regularly use when working with the gym machine equipment. If you’re looking for a challenge, Tabata will be the best choice ... you don’t actually NEED anything at all.