1) Use towel to wipe the machine you were using. No one likes to lie down on a sweaty bench!

2) Re-rack your weights. Forget all the ”It was there when I came!”, just do it!

3) Grunting is OK, consistent screaming is not. I’m happy you’re pumped up, but it breaks my concentration if I can hear you over my music.

4) Don’t be egoist and share the machine you are working on, no one wants to stay in line.

5) Try not to walk in-between mirror and someone who is doing exercises.

6) Give people their space. Keep a comfortable distance from others when performing exercises.

7) Don’t start a conversation with someone while he/she is lifting.

8) Don’t say you are using the equipment when all you are doing is resting on it.

9) Help out other muscle builders, if you are asked to spot – do it! You will need their help one day… believe me.

10) Be polite!

And, please, don’t come to the gym naked like those guys in the picture.

This diet will be for those who want to increase lean body mass without gaining too much fat. This can even cut down some percents of your body fat!

Meal 1

7:00 – 30 grams of whey protein with water (drinking with milk will result in more fat in your diet), this will load your body with protein after the night. After some 20-30 minutes you should eat an omlette with bread and juice (try not to drink coffee because it dehydrates your body)

Meal 2

10:00 – one portion of gainer (at least 40 grams of protein), same thing with milk as in breakfast. Eat some fruit with this meal too (bananas, apples or something like that)

Meal 3

13:00 – 150 to 200 grams of lean meat (skinless chicken or tuna) with brown rice and some salad (type of salat depend how many extra fat are you ready to gain with this diet) + big fruit

Meal 4

16:00 – one portion of gainer with creatine. And any type of fast carbs (biscuits, apples …) if workout comes after this meal.

WORKOUT DAY

Meal 5

18:00 – post workout shake (including at least 40 grams of protein). 0.6..0.8 grams of dextrose per 1 kilo of bodyweight. 5 grams of creatine.

Meal 6

19:00 – now we are starting to reduce the carbs because it is evening, body wont be able to burn them before sleep – extra fat. So skinless chicken or tuna (other lean beef will do the job too) some brown rice and veggies.

Meal 7

22:00 – 30 grams of protein but now only and ONLY with water.

Meal 8

xx.xx – you can take casein protein right before you go to sleep, this way you will feed you muscles all night and wont wake up so hungry

This is just and example (working example though) of and muscle building diet. You can eat pasta sometimes instead of rice (pasta stacks up more fat). You can vary with this diet but stick to the high protein intake.

There are four main postulates of nutrition – water, protein, carbohydrates, fat. Three of them are a must – protein, water and fat. Human being can live without carbohydrates – like Eskimos, they are eating only fish and seals – only fat(mono and poli(omega3 and omega6)) and protein.

Water

H2O is the basic, no… not the basic – h2o is the reason of everything! Human can live 3 weeks without food but will die after 3 days without water! Muscles contain ~70% of water. Should I say more? You should drink for about 3 liters of water daily. But you shouldn’t drink more than five. Water assimilates in body with speed of 200ml in 20 minutes, so you should drink 200ml every 20 minutes until you reach the limit… you can drink every half hour but you shouldn’t drink every ten minutes. So if you feel thirst – this is the danger signal of your body that you need to drink immediately, but if you will drink as I said you shouldn’t get thirsty at all. The best time to consume water is 30 min before meal and a hour after. If you will drink water during the meal you will result in slower food digestion which is bad.

Proteins

Proteins are the building bricks of body, new cells are made from it, the old ones are repaired, hormones are produced with help of protein… well it pretty much rocks! Protein is made from amino acids and peptides which bound together different amino acids. Digestion system splits consumed protein into amino acids which absorbs into small intestine, then gets to blood, afterward into cells. Really important is to provide the body with constant amino acid intake… you should not overeat 3 times a day and think that you will grow… it’s not about quantity! It’s all about quality!! Your body can consume a small amount of protein in one meal (30-40gr) so you shouldn’t eat much more. And yes – you should eat good meat… sausages doesn’t count… and if you will eat too much your body will store the unused protein into your belly. You should eat: all kinds of meat (including fish etc), all kinds of milk products, eggs and sometimes a bit of soy. You shouldn’t count plants as protein source… their protein lacks some of important amino acids.
Different protein types vary in different speed of assimilation. This is important to know in order to plan daily diet. Meat, eggs, fish is consumed in about 2-3 hours (if something fat is eaten together with meat, food or eggs the assimilation time increases). Dairy products assimilate in 4-5 hours after eating. Whey protein powder assimilates in about 40 minutes so this is the perfect protein for mornings and after workout, the times when you fast need to regenerate your amino level. You can also consume BCAA aminos after workout (for example).

Carbohydrates

So the next big group is carbohydrates(or just carbs). This is the energy. If you lack carbs in your body – the energy will be consumed from your body fat AND muscles (basically the body will start to eat itself). Very important thing is the GI, GI shows how fast carbs are converted into glucoses the index can vary from 1-100: 100 is for pure glucoses, 76 is for donuts, 38 for tomatoes and so on, you can find information about GI of products on the internet. So if lots of glucoses gets into blood in a short period of time body exudes a lot of insulin in order to store the glucoses somewhere – in liver, muscles etc and if the glucoses is too much it is stored as fat. This is why it is important to know the GI of every and each food eaten. In your everyday diet you should use products with GI ~55 and less and ONLY after workout you need the fastest carbs you can gets – pure glucoses (grape sugar). You should consume about 0.8 gr of glucoses per kilogram of body.
There are some types of foods you should forget… bread, sweets, cornflakes and carbs which body isn’t able to store in muscles, so its stored as fat. So you can get quite fat eating fruits too! Sugar is made from 50% glucoses and 50% fructose so be careful with it too!

Fat

And The Fat. Fat is good! But only if fat is consumed in the right proportions. Fats are divided into satured fats (SF), monosatured fats (MSF) and polisatured fats (PSF). The last two ones are essentials fatty acids (EFA). You can get EFA from eggs, fish, grains, nuts, olives etc. you should stay away from SF, only in small amount they are ok. The worst of all fats are artificially made – trans fats. Trans fats are found in the junk food and semi-manufactured goods… FORGET THEM. So we will eat EFAs yayyyyy

Vitamins

Vitamins – as important as fat, carbs, water and protein. And remember that you need more vitamins than average people. So the doses are as follows:

Vitamin A 5,000-25,000 IU
Beta-Carotene 15,000-25,000 IU
Vitamin B1 30-300 mg
Vitamin B2 30-300 mg
Vitamin B3 20-100 mg
Vitamin B5 25-200 mg
Vitamin B6 20-100 mg
Vitamin B12 12-200 mcg
Biotin 125-300 mcg
Folate 400-1,200 mcg
Vitamin C 800-3,000 mg
Vitamin D 400-1,000 IU
Vitamin E 200-1,000 IU
Vitamin K 80-180 mcg

You should stay somewhere in the middle… max is for the big guys and min is minimal for everyone…

So, here we go:

#1 Dumbbell flyes

This exercise is great isolation for pectorals and it preserves triceps for the subsequent exercise. This exercise will make your chest look wider. Remember that you should use spotter when performing this exercise because you can get some  serious rotator cuff injuries if you don’t.

#2 Cable crossover

This exercise is excellent for finishing your chest training routine. It will give great pump and an extra push to your muscle, like saying “cmon’ let’s grow!”! Try to perform this exercise slowly, you don’t need heavy weight to get the results in this exercise.

#3 Incline dumbbell/barbell press

No, this is not the same as bench press, bench press doesn’t work out the upper pecs efficiently enough. If you want big, gladiator-like pecs you have to do one of these.

#4 Decline  dumbbell/barbell press

Pretty much the same, gives definition to pecs, works the lower region. If you want to build serious chest you have to split your chest workout in 3 parts – upper, middle, lower chest. This is the basic exercise for lower part of pecs.

#5 Posing??!!

Well this won’t really be a muscle building exercise, this will be… posing! Yes, you heard me right – posing. When you work out you should remember that posing is important not only for competing bodybuilders but for everyone. While posing you squeeze your muscles, the same as lifting, the only difference is that you squeeze the muscle parts you want to develop more, therefore you can add the desired shape to your muscles!
Stay tuned for more muscle building exercise tops! This was just the first edition. Come back for more…!

Get out more of your muscles as you lift. Try to lift more explosively, to increase the testosterone synthesis. Lift heavy but clean, with proper technique. Lower the weight quite slowly but then lift it up as fast as you can, this will make you stronger and build some good, lean muscle mass.

Tip #2

Try to do as little cardio as you can. This might sound stupid but this is how it works. You should change the way you train – few weeks power, few weeks endurance and so on – this is the key to great success in every sport, you need to train smart and hard. This muscle building tip is one of the most important ones!

Tip #3

Eat protein rich food (fish, red meat e.t.c.) if you want to stay tight and build lean muscle mass. If you don’t care about getting some fat too, you can eat just everything you see and you will build some muscle for sure – this is called bulking process, after whom you can burn the fat and stay tight and lean!

Tip #3

In order to build muscle, you MUST sleep a lot. In muscle building sleep is one of the most basic things, together with workouts and nutrition. If you want to build good muscle mass you need to sleep for about 8-10 hours a day.

Tip #3

Include main powerlifting movements in your workout. Squats, Bench, Deadlift – these are your gods if you are serious about muscle building. And remember that in these basic movements you will work out most of your muscle so make your workout routine smart, or you can chose one of the routines found on this page.

Stay tuned for more muscle building tips! This was just the first edition! Come back for more!

You can lose your muscle mass!

Yes, sounds scary. You go to gym to build muscle mass, not to lose it. But this is what happens when you overtrain – your muscle do not recover.Take a rest at least one day between your workout sessions and get enough proteins (about 30-35 grams per each meal). Of course, vitamins, and other nutritional supplements are important too. But proteins are the building blocks of muscle.

Overtraining decreases the level of testosterone in your body!

This is painful too. Here is what happens – you overtrain your body and it has to recover. If it doesn’t get enough nutritional supplements, it have to use something else. And this is where you lose your muscle mass. And not only that. You can lose your testosterone – your main male hormone – level. Testosterone is a creation and building hormone. But if your body is focused on recovery, it totally forgets to keep up your testosterone level.

Damaged immune system

Muscle building hurts immune system by general. It weakens your body workout after workout and then recovers. This is why vitamins are so vital here – to strengthen your immune system. If you get a flu – you’re out of gym for at least 1 week and you lose a lot of water and strength by that time. But if you overtrain – you lose your immune system abilities by at least 200%, so your body is like a broken fortress – every one can get in.

So keep in mind – the line between great workout and “too hard” one is pretty thin. No one better than you can feel your body. Train hard, rest good and build a body you’ve always wanted!